Work Text:
Eric knows there’s something wrong with him—he isn’t supposed to feel like this—but he can’t help it.
He doesn’t let himself think about it very often, but it haunts his subconscious thoughts anyway. It haunts him more now that he’s in Madison and his figure skating costumes have suffered a similar fate.
It’s red.
One of the photos hanging on the staircase wall of Eric’s house in Madison is of his parents in 1993. Mama and Coach are beaming, dressed in UGA red, during Suzanne’s sophomore and Rick’s junior year. They tell him the story of their college romance every time his birthday rolls around: they started dating back in the spring of ‘92 after a semester of Suzanne tutoring Rick in statistics. She introduced him to her parents while wearing his letterman jacket, and he introduced her to his after one of his games.
Coach’s jersey from his time as UGA’s star quarterback is framed over the den, hanging above their television for all to see when the Bittle uncles descend on their house for NFL Sunday.
By contrast, his mama’s uniform as a member of UGA’s cheer squad is sequestered away in a clear garment bag, hidden in her closet behind the winter coat she bought when they spent Eric’s winter break in Colorado three years ago—the farthest northwest he’s ever been. He hasn’t seen snow since.
The only reason Eric knows it’s there is that he saw her put it away.
When Eric lets his thoughts drift, he thinks back to that photo. Coach’s arm wrapped around his mama’s shoulders, around her bright red cheer uniform. A pristine white ribbon tying her blonde hair back in a ponytail. The pleated black trim of her skirt stark against her skin, tanned from practice in the Georgia sun.
“Cheer was never as important to me as football is to your daddy,” his mama tells him when he asks her about it. “I did it because it was fun, but it was never my life. And when I got pregnant in the middle of my senior year—well. Cheer wasn’t considered a sport by the school, not like football, so it didn’t matter much in terms of money if I stopped doing it. I dropped it; I couldn’t very well tumble when I had you growing inside me, now could I?”
Eric thinks about that a lot. Would his mama have kept cheering after she graduated if he didn’t come around? Would she have shifted into a cheer coach instead of settling down into her math degree after giving birth to her one and only son?
(“At least she had a son,” Aunt Delilah, Coach’s sister, once said during the Bittle’s memorial day cookout when Eric was nine. She must have thought he and his mama were in the kitchen like always, but at that moment Eric was refilling the pitchers with sweet tea. “If she was only going to have one baby…”
“Not much of a son, though,” Uncle Benjamin, Coach’s brother, had snorted around a mouthful of pecans. Eric’s grip on the ladle he was using to refill the pitcher faltered just a little. “Suzanne was showing everyone tape of Dicky’s last practice. He does spins and twirls. Bless his heart. Rick’s boy should be playing football.”
Aunt Isabella, the oldest Bittle sister, had smacked Uncle Benjamin upside the head. “Don’t talk about Suzie or Dicky that way,” she chided. “Not when you’re eating their pie. Suzanne told me Dicky made the pecan pie while she made the peach.”
Uncle Benjamin looked down at his plate and frowned. He didn’t stop eating it, though.)
The picture next to his parents’ 1993 photo is of his mama showing off her engagement ring at Coach’s graduation in 1994. The next one is of Eric as a two week old infant at his mama’s graduation in 1995. The one after that is of Eric as a two year old at his parents’ wedding in 1997. No one really whispers about his parents and their pre-marital baby—maybe because they were already engaged when he was born. Maybe because they both got college degrees anyway. Maybe because his parents fit really well into the boxes made for them; they’re not weird.
Only their son is. The son that people used to call their daughter behind their backs.
Still. Eric thinks about his mama’s red cheer uniform and wonders:
What would it look like on me?
《✶》
It’s because he looks like his mama.
Despite what everyone (probably) hoped, Eric Richard Bittle came out a little more Phelps. PeePaw isn’t very tall, and he’s only gotten shorter with age. With MooMaw peaking at four-foot-ten, it’s no surprise his mama is barely five-foot-two, and thus Eric is a giant to the Phelps at age sixteen and five-foot-six. Of course, that makes him miniscule to the Bittle side of his family. Coach towers over basically everyone at the Phelps family gatherings, but he fits right in with the Bittles. Eric’s shortest Bittle uncle is his Uncle Christopher, and he’s five-foot-eleven.
“He’ll always say he’s six flat, though,” Aunt Isabella’s daughter Mary Jane says with an eyeroll. She’s the same height as Eric. She plays tennis.
Eric isn’t broad like Coach—in fact, staying compact and flexible was critical to figure skating, which he still does when he has the time. Hockey might add to his shoulders, but he’s never going to be big, and he’s never going to stop cycling through ballet positions with his feet as a means of letting energy out. He likes hockey, but figure skating will always be his first love on the ice.
So—yes. Eric Richard Bittle looks like his mama and takes after her, too. Flips, spins, and jumps are in his blood more than football ever was.
MooMaw swears he takes after his daddy in some ways, and maybe she’s right, but Eric knows for sure that he takes after his mama.
After all, they both have bright red costumes that they’ve hidden away. Hers is so nice—she looks so pretty in that picture by the staircase. There’s always going to be a part of Eric that wants to be beautiful instead of handsome, sparkling in the spotlight at the middle of an ice rink.
He looks like his mama, and the outfit he wore to the South Atlantic Junior Regionals last year when he brought home gold is scarlet and sparkly. He stares at it sometimes, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. The color isn’t the same but it’s close—close to the other abandoned sports outfit in the house. Not displayed like the Bulldogs jersey, but hidden away to be forgotten.
Cheer and figure skating. Two peas in a pod.
When Eric is feeling especially gloomy, usually after NFL Sunday and his uncles and male cousins have poked and prodded his figure skating past and refusal to play football, he’ll ask the universe, why couldn’t I have been born a girl?
He likes to bake. He likes figure skating. He likes Beyoncé. He likes feeling beautiful.
(He likes boys.)
If Eric were born Eleanor, the name his mama claimed she would have christened her daughter if she had one, none of the things he likes would be seen as queer. It’s normal for a girl to bake. It’s normal for a girl to figure skate and wear glittery costumes. It’s normal for a girl to love Beyoncé the way Eric does—as an artist, performer, and visionary; not just as a poster to drool over. It’s normal for a girl to enjoy feeling beautiful.
(It’s normal for a girl to like boys.)
But Eric isn’t a girl, and he doesn’t really want to be one, no matter how much easier it would have made his life.
That doesn’t stop him from thinking it, though.
And it definitely doesn’t stop him from looking in the mirror, seeing Suzanne Bittle née Phelps in his reflection and wondering if the uniform that’s older than him would look the same on his body.
《✶》
When Eric is sixteen, home alone after hockey practice and staring at his last figure skating medal feeling sorry for himself, he sneaks into his parents’ room and takes the garment bag hidden behind his mama’s only winter coat.
He looks like his mama, he reminds himself. He looks like his mama and she’s beautiful.
Eric takes off the clothes he changed into after hockey practice and with trembling hands, slips the bright red cheer uniform onto his slim frame.
It looks admittedly strange on him, he thinks as he inspects his reflection in his full-body mirror. Eric is three inches taller than his mama ever was so the skirt looks obscenely short on his legs—and cheer skirts already look obscenely short, even the ones from the ‘90s. He doesn’t have breasts so the top fits strangely across his chest. His hair isn’t long enough for a ribbon.
A year ago, it would have been long enough for pigtails. Eric got a haircut right before the move to Madison. Maybe he could find hair clips instead.
The red looks the same—vivid against his Georgia-tanned skin. The pleated black edge rests on his thighs and swishes nicely when he swivels in place. If he put on a bra and stuffed it with something, maybe the shirt would fit well, and it’d look like he had a pixie cut on purpose. He could draw the UGA logo on his cheek. He could be a UGA cheerleader, if only for a few minutes.
The look isn’t perfect, but it… it works.
Eric is beautiful.
His last figure skating costume is a specter in his memory. Cheer uniforms aren’t sparkly; Suzanne didn’t sew sequins onto this in a mad fury over the course of a few weeks. But it represents something similar in both of their lives. A moment before something huge happened that changed everything.
Before Suzanne had a baby. Before Eric moved away.
He twirls in place, reveling in the way the fabric lands on his thighs. I like this, Eric thinks, but he isn’t scared.
Figure skating was a solace found in the wreckage of peewee football. A stage where he could be alone—a stage where he could shine.
A thought strikes him like a lightning bolt.
If Eric was born as Eleanor, would he have done figure skating at all?
If figure skating came from the wreckage of peewee football… There’s no way Eleanor would have been signed up for football. Maybe she’d be a gymnast or ballerina first in preparation for cheer.
He’s been wrong this whole time, Eric realizes, as he pushes his hair around. His life wouldn’t have been easier as a girl. Maybe it would’ve been the same, but in a different context.
Eleanor might have been pushed into cheer the way Eric was pushed into football instead. Maybe she would have been bullied by her teammates for being too weird, too strange, too queer but in the opposite direction. Instead of figure skating, maybe she’d pick something like softball or soccer until she got locked in a utility closet by cheerleaders instead of football players. Maybe she would’ve kept doing it anyway until she was pried away from it because her daddy got a new job and she had to leave. Maybe she would have joined the co-ed hockey team after moving to Madison either way.
Maybe hockey is inevitable.
Does Eric like his mama’s cheer uniform because he’s Eric? Would Eleanor be transfixed by Coach’s football jersey instead? Is the deviance what makes it alluring?
Being g—being different has been a part of Eric for as long as he can remember. He can’t imagine that Eleanor wouldn’t share that similarity, not if she’s him with mildly different body parts.
He spins around one last time and lets the skirt fill out around him.
The uniform looks good, Eric decides. He looks good. Strange fit be damned.
He takes pictures to remind himself of that before stowing the uniform in the garment bag and sliding it back behind Suzanne’s winter coat.