The Choice

in Budapest, we would have trained together. “Pay attention!” Béla
tells the girls. “She’s Hungarian, like us.” To watch Ágnes Keleti take
the Ęoor is to watch my other half, my other self. e one who wasn’t
sent to Auschwitz. (Keleti, I later ĕnd out, bought identiĕcation papers
from a Christian girl in Budapest and Ęed to a remote village where
she waited out the war, working as a maid.) e one whose mother
lived. e one who picked up the seam of her old life aer the war,
who hasn’t let her hardships or her age destroy her dream. She lifts her
arms, extends her body long, she is poised to begin. Béla cheers wildly.
Audrey imitates him. Marianne studies me, how I lean, lean toward
the TV. She doesn’t know I was a competitive gymnast once, much less
that the same war that interrupted Ágnes Keleti’s life also interrupted
—still intrudes on—mine. But I sense my daughter’s awareness of my
held breath, of the way I follow Keleti’s body with my body, not just
with my eyes. Béla and Marianne and Audrey applaud each Ęip. I am
breathless when Keleti is slow and controlled, when she leans all the
way down over her legs to touch the Ęoor, and then revolves from a
seated forward bend to a backward arch, and up into a handstand, all
grace and fluid motion. Her routine is over.
Her Soviet competitor takes the Ęoor. Because of the uprising in
Hungary, the tensions between Hungarian and Soviet athletes are
especially fraught. Béla boos loudly. Little Audrey, two years old, does
the same. I tell them both to hush. I watch Larisa Latynina the way the
judges do, the way Keleti must be watching her. I see that her high
kick is maybe a little higher than Keleti’s, I see the buoyancy of her
Ęips, the way she lands in a full split. Marianne sighs with
appreciation. Béla boos again. “She’s really good, Daddy,” Marianne
says. “She’s from a country of oppressors and bullies,” Béla says. “She
didn’t choose where she was born,” I say. Béla shrugs. “Try twirling
like that when your country’s under siege,” he says. “In this house we
cheer for Hungarians.” In the end, Keleti and Latynina share the gold.