By Elana Lavine
Women take their time.
They sit, resting after a struggle with bra clasps and elastic waistbands, damp hair matted at their necks. Soon they will rise with brushes, turn on blowdryers. Or lean into mirrors, lips pursed in disapproval, unzipping bags of tubes and bottles, getting to work.
Others do not sit at all. They walk, shaking and swinging, a proud parade of aging flesh. My daughter cowers by our locker. Mom, she says, eyes round.
At the showers, curtains are optional. A woman reaches for a robe, her belly a map of scars. Another squats to flip her hair over and down, spraying the wall, wrapping a towel as turban, her only covering. I’m not showering here, my daughter says. I’ll wait until we’re home.
They make phone calls, play music. Cue up podcasts in their own languages, smiling at jokes. At the sinks, reunions and arguments. They brush teeth, spitting foamy blue. Cut nails. Tweeze eyebrows.
Among these battered lockers, there are lessons to be learned:
- Anyone can wear a thong.
- Flesh is prone to gravity.
- Tattoos should not be a surprise, ever.
My daughter is absorbing the curriculum quickly, pulling on socks, eyes down. No sweaty clothes will be changed, not here. Nearby, two sets of hooded eyes flash beneath colored hair, one too red for nature, one too black to be believed.
- Duels may erupt in unlikely corners.
Can you move your things please
I just need a bit of space
You already have lots of space, see
You could just be polite and move over
No fists, just rising voices. Still, the lotioned air is somehow filled with violence. Other women look, and look away. It’s not so hard to be considerate, to make some room. You have three bags. No, that one isn’t mine, why would you assume it’s mine? My daughter’s face is peaked, heading for the door. In the parking lot, I try to explain; there are only so many benches.
They act like babies, she says.
A locker room, a changing room. Everything keeps changing, no matter if we’ve walked or swam, swung racquets, flexed and extended to the beat. In a sanctuary of imperfection, every leg was once someone’s pride, every scalp full of remembered curls. Every woman, I remind my daughter, was once a girl.
Sure, she says. Like, a hundred years ago.
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Elana Lavine is a writer and physician in Toronto.