by Nina Revoyr
There was a 7-Eleven on the far corner, right next to the check-cashing place, and Raina and I decided to go in and get some candy. Although this was a normal stop for me, I felt a bit nervous that day. The night before, my father and Claudia had gone in to buy some toilet paper, and had run into two men who had cursed at my father for being with one of "their" women, and then had told Claudia that she should be ashamed. I didn't know what I expected to happen now; of course the men would be long gone. Ty, the young basketball fanatic who worked on weekday afternoons, raised a hand in greeting when he saw us come in.
"Yo, Nance," he said, pulling his short, stocky body out of his chair. "What you gonna average this year? Thirty-five a game? Forty?"
I picked out a pack of gum, set it down on the counter, and shook my head. "Eighty," I said. "Naw, maybe seventy-five. Gotta get my teammates in on the scoring action too."
He took the dollar I held out and then gave me my change, silver coins gleaming in his earthy-brown hand. "Culver City's gonna be pretty tough this year," he said. "You think you can beat 'em?"
"No problem," I said. "They got no size, so they can't handle our big people."
Then Raina came up to the counter and set her candy bar down. She was standing only an inch or two away from me, and I could feel the electricity of her presence, as tactile as any touch. My heart began to beat so loudly that I was afraid she'd be able to hear it. I took a deep breath to compose myself, and cocked a thumb at her. "Ty, this is Raina Webber," I said.
Ty put a hand on top of his head, his splayed-out fingers palming his skull like a basketball. "Raina Webber!" he exclaimed. "Damn! I thought you looked familiar! I saw you play against Carson last year in the playoffs!" He shook his head and whistled. "You cleaned up, girl! You schooled those motherfuckas!"
"Yeah," I said, smiling, "she's the shit."
Raina shoved me on the shoulder. "Naw, you the shit."
Ty put his hands up, as if to stop us. "Y'all are both the shit. Damn. Couldn't get me on the court with either one of y'all if you paid me a thousand bucks."
We laughed. Raina looked slightly embarrassed, but also pleased. "Well, it's nice to meet you," she said to Ty. "I'm stayin with Nancy and her pops now, so I guess I'll be in here a lot."
"Naaaw . . ." he said, looking at her cockeyed. "For real?"
"Yeah," we both said, and I grinned, happy about it all over again.
"Well, that's cool," Ty said, nodding. "I'll be seein you then. Y'all keep each other out of trouble, now."
When we went back outside, Raina stuck the candy bar into her waistband and bounced her ball. "That dude seems really cool," she said. "You go in there a lot?"
"Yeah," I said, "either there or to the liquor store by our house." This was true. Because there were no supermarkets for miles around, we often went to the 7-Eleven, or to Mr. Wilson's liquor store, when we needed some basic necessity. We also went to the 7-Eleven to use the ATM machine—there were no banks nearby—although if we didn't get there by the time the machine shut down at seven, we had to go all the way to Hawthorne to get cash.
Raina and I stopped just around the corner from the store so I could open my pack of gum. I handed her a piece, and unwrapped a piece for myself, while she considered the graffiti on the side of the building. I looked at it too. IF was written several times, in various sizes, all across the wall. There were IFs painted everywhere in the neighborhood, occasionally even on the door of our garage.
"Inglewood Family Bloods," Raina said thoughtfully, naming the huge set which controlled our part of the city. We saw the names Baby Loc, Crazy De, and some others we couldn't decipher. Some of the names had been crossed out by rival gangs. Smiley R.I.P., it said on the upper right corner, and Kill Crabs at chest level to the left. All the writing was black and spindly, and painted at sharp angles; it looked like a jungle gym had been splashed against the wall.
We walked west on Manchester, and then turned left on 12th Avenue, back into a residential section. I'd made this walk almost every day for the past eight years—to get to the park, of course, and then, during my sophomore year, because I was going to see Yolanda, my ex-girlfriend. A few minutes later we encountered the crack lady. She was an extremely skinny woman of indeterminate age whose joints and limbs all seemed to fold in on themselves, as if she were a collapsible structure. She always wore a dirty black bandanna and a black Members Only jacket, and she could be found wandering the streets and mumbling to herself at any time of the day or night. I'd been seeing her around for the last couple of years, ever since crack had come into the 'hood. Now, she walked toward us, completely oblivious; she would have walked right into us if we hadn't parted to let her through.
On the next block we passed a pair of junior high school girls who were walking home from school. One of them nudged the other and said, "Girl, that's Nancy Takahiro!" I ignored the two girls, and tried to put on a serious expression befitting an important local hero, but I don't think it worked, because Raina laughed.
"You goofball," she said. "You know you love it."
I gave her a shove, and said, "Fuck you." She was right, though. I did love it—not just the attention of the kids, but the kids themselves, the 'hood and everyone in it. I was the great-grandchild of immigrants, in love with America—and the Inglewood of the 1980s was America to me.
Raina lost her balance for a second as a result of my shove, and then resumed her stride. She walked slowly, breaking off once in a while to bounce the ball against the side of a building, or to bend over and dribble circles around me. I loved watching her move—she was fluid, but there were a few small breaks in her movement, as if she were a river interrupted by rocks. She could dribble low, behind her back, through her legs, do a perfect crossover, but it wasn't the fancy stuff that made her such an effective guard. It was that the ball seemed drawn to her hand, as if by some invisible force, always returning to it no matter what direction the rest of her body was going. When Raina dribbled, her wrist didn't move, but her fingers ebbed up and down on the ball, like waves. And although she wasn't skinny, she had narrow, quick-moving hips, which she swung one way or the other to avoid the people who were blocking her path.
We stopped because Raina had to tie her shoe, and as she crouched down I picked up her ball. I started dribbling both her ball and mine, making them hit the ground at the same time, and then alternating the dribble so that one bounced while the other was in my hand. Then one of the balls hit a corner that jutted up from the sidewalk, and rolled off into the street.
"Give it up, girl," Raina said, laughing. "You forwards can't take care of the ball."
"It bounced off that piece of cement there," I protested, pointing in the general direction of the sidewalk as I stepped down off the curb.
"Yeah, right," said Raina, standing again. "Just leave the ballhandling to me—and the babies."
I turned around and looked at her. "Huh?"
She smiled. "You know how good babies can dribble."
I brought the ball back, came right up in front of her, and looked down into her face. "Yo, why you tryin to dis?" I said. "You know you can't stop me. Just see what happens when I post you up, you fuckin little shrimp. I'll just step on you and crush you like an empty Coke can."
We grinned at each other fiercely, and I noted her wide forehead, the tiny mole on her right cheek, the soft, lovely skin just beneath her shining eyes, which was slightly lighter than the rest of her face.
Just then, we became aware of a low thumping sound, the vibrations reaching our feet through the pavement before the sound actually came to our ears. We both looked up, and saw that a car had turned the corner—a bright red Honda, sparkling new, with tinted windows and a tremendous sound system. I had seen this car before; it usually made its rounds about that time. It rolled down the street slowly, the pulse of the music entering my feet and my legs, running all the way through my body until it seemed to replace the beating of my heart. As the car got closer, we saw some of its other extras
—shiny, elaborate rims, a lion ornament on the hood, a front grille that might have been lifted from a racing car. The driver's window was rolled down a few inches, but all we could see was the top half of a man's face, and a pair of black shades. It was clear that he was looking for someone, and I feared for the person he sought. When he pulled up level with us, he slowed the car down even more, and then stopped, right in front of what looked like a bloodstain. Through the crack in the window, I could see him considering us, and I felt an icicle of fear in my chest. I hoped we hadn't caught him in the middle of a bad day. Raina stood up straight and held her ground beside me; I had the presence of mind to do the same. I wanted to say something to her, but the music was so loud that it seemed to have absorbed all other sound. The window inched down a little farther, and I half-expected to see the muzzle of a gun slip out over the glass. There was a very long moment when nothing happened. Then the man put his hand to his mouth, drew it away, and blew us a kiss. He rolled his window back up and drove down the street.
When he had turned the corner, I collapsed against the nearest palm tree and laughed in relief. "I was scared, girl!" I said. "Shit, I can't believe I was so scared! I mean, I've seen that guy before, he usually don't bother no one but his buyers, but damn, I was gettin ready to piss my pants."
Raina shook her head and squatted down on the pavement. "I was scared for a second there too."
"People around here don't usually mess with me," I said, my heart still beating fast. "And they won't mess with you, either, once they know who you are." I paused and shook my head. "Shit, a little group of the Inglewood Families used to come to our games last year, and they were some of the best fans we had."
We were both quiet for another few moments, and I could hear some kids shouting at each other in a yard a little further up the street. I took a deep breath, and the air smelled like late summer in LA—dead grass and a bit of dust. After another minute, I stood up straight again, and looked at the tree I'd just been leaning against. The bark was peeling off of it in inch-long curly strips. There were a couple of IFs carved into one side.
"Come on, girl," Raina said, standing up. "Get away from that tree and let's go to the park before you get hit on the head by a coconut."
I turned my eyes up toward the spreading circle of fronds; it was like looking up someone's skirt. "There's no nuts in this tree," I noted seriously.
"Maybe not," Raina said, smiling now. "But there's a hella big one under it."
We continued down 12th Avenue, talking and laughing, our heart rates gradually returning to normal. After waiting for a few minutes to cross 90th Street, we squeezed through the back entrance of Darby Park. There were people playing tennis to the left of us, although without the net, which had been stolen the year before. Beyond them, we saw two baseball diamonds, the walking path, and in the distance, the southwestern part of Inglewood. The land level dropped dramatically just west of the park, so that when you stood on the grass, you could see the Forum and Hollywood Park, and look down at planes descending toward the airport.
As we passed the tennis players, the park's two basketball courts came into view. They were slightly undersized, with huge cracks that caused the ball to bounce crazily if you dribbled on them. The chain nets were mostly rusted, but whenever you scored a basket, they made an emphatic and satisfying clink! like a handful of pennies all hitting concrete at once. The taped red squares on the backboards had fallen off, leaving only faint shadows, and half the lines on the pavement were worn away. One of the rims had been bent by someone hanging on to it after a dunk.
I smiled as soon as I saw the courts—I'd grown up here; I'd been playing at the park for almost ten years by then. When I first developed a halfway decent shot, the summer I turned nine, I was suddenly a lot more liked. It was as if I had learned the secret handshake for membership in the 'hood. With the people I met at the park, and eventually, with the players I met through school, spring leagues, and AAU, I felt, for the first time in my life, something close to a sense of belonging.
The first few members of the usual afternoon pickup crowd were already there. Ordinarily a few stray high school boys showed up, some middle-aged men who either worked at night or not at all, and the occasional younger kid who risked life and limb for the privilege of playing with the big people. Sometimes, but not often, there'd be some girls from Morningside, the other public high school in Inglewood. And later, after five, a whole new influx of players would arrive, men and sometimes women getting off of work, people ready to run or shove or hit out the frustration that had built up throughout the course of the day.
The way pickup games started was so universal at courts across the city that someone might have issued official instructions on the subject. When it was early, and there were only one or two people, they just shot around by themselves. Sometimes with two people, but more often with three, a game of Twenty-One was proposed: each player for him- or herself against the other two. If a fourth showed up, or if there were two groups of two, a game of two-on-two would be suggested. As time passed and more players appeared, this expanded to three-on-three, four-on-four, and finally, to five-on-five full court. People chose teammates on the logical basis of height and visible physical condition, but also on the basis of the air a player might have, or his race, or the brand of his basketball shoes. Eventually there would be a backup of people waiting on the sidelines to play the winner. Usually the games went to eleven or fifteen. You didn't want to lose, because if you did, you might have to wait half an hour before seeing the court again. If you continued to win, you could keep the court all night.
We surveyed the situation as we approached. On one court a lone high school kid was shooting semi-accurately—not a varsity player, because all the varsity boys were playing at the school that afternoon. On the other were two men who looked like they were in their mid-to-late thirties. The taller one, who was about my height, was a dark brown–skinned man with a protruding potbelly so large that it might have been grafted onto his otherwise slender frame. The shorter one was light-skinned, with inch-long hair that was almost straight, and bright hazel eyes. We watched for a few minutes. The guys' shots were reasonably accurate, but their technique was terrible. Both of them depended on their off-hands so much that they seemed to be shooting two-handed. They had no follow-through, and the taller one took a step sideways as he released the ball. Raina gave me a nod and we headed over to their side of the court. They obviously played for fun, were not serious players. Easy prey.
"Hey, guys," Raina said as we approached, "how 'bout a game?"
They stopped and looked us over, and I could read the thought that flitted across both sets of eyes—girls. I also saw that they didn't know what to make of me in particular, an Asian kid in a predominantly black town. All of the people in the 'hood, including the regulars at the park, were used to me by then, but strangers still did double takes when they saw me.
"Okay, sure," said the potbelly. His voice was low and solid, and I might have liked him if he'd had the sense to take us seriously. "Maybe you two want to split up, though."
"Naw, it's cool," Raina said. "We'll play together."
"You wanna shoot around a little to warm up?"
"Naw, we don't need to. We just played somewhere else." This was true—we'd left our respective practices about an hour before. And of course at that time, in high school, it seemed we had always "just played somewhere else."
Raina shot the ball for outs, and made the free throw with a commanding clink! of the chain net. The taller man raised his eyebrows. She took the ball back behind the key a few feet, and bounced it to the shorter one to check. I lined myself up to the left of the key. Raina passed me the ball to start the game, I passed it back, and she took four quick dribbles to her right. I made a jab step with my left foot and got my man going in that direction; then I cut right sharply and burst into the lane, where Raina hit me with a perfect pass. I went in for the easy layup and scored. On the next point, Raina pa
ssed to me, I passed right back to her, and she took a long-range jumper from about three feet in back of the key. Swish—or rather, clink. The shorter man swore. Raina grinned. Beads of sweat gleamed like diamonds on her forehead.
On the next point we took a little longer to try a shot, poking here and prodding there, trying to figure out which part of their defense was most likely to give. Finally I took a pass on the left wing, faked right, then drove hard to the baseline and shot a power layup from the left side of the basket. On a power layup you take off with both feet, making a wall of your body and shooting with the ball way out in front of you so that your shot can't be blocked from behind. People still try to block it, unless they've been taught better, and this guy came down on my shoulder so hard that I had a bruise there for more than a week. I scored anyway. Basket and foul. On the next point, Raina, in a rare lapse of concentration, threw a soft floating pass that the shorter guy picked off. It was their turn.
There is a rule about men playing pickup ball against women: the women almost always win, because the men, most of whom are just average, nonskilled guys who show up at the park for fun, believe that they have already won the game simply by virtue of their being male, while the few women who play the parks are usually serious players, college caliber or better, and for them these men are no competition. Men who are real players are of course a different story, and can usually beat most women. But these real players are far outnumbered by the other type, the average guys, who only come to the parks occasionally, and who see basketball as nothing more than a fun way to get some exercise. These guys can't imagine the possibility of a woman—any woman—being better players than they. The regulars, however, know better.
There's a great story about Cheryl Miller and her brother Reggie. When they were in high school and junior high school respectively, Reggie would approach men at the park while Cheryl hid in the bushes, and tell them that he and his sister would play them for money. I can imagine what the guys must have thought—here's this skinny young kid barely sprouting his first body hairs, and he's going to challenge us with who? His sister? Sure, buddy (wink, wink). Bring her on. So they'd agree and then out would pop Cheryl—6'2", agile and unstoppable. She and Reggie would then proceed, of course, to devastate their opponents, and make enough pocket money in the process to buy their dinner. I almost feel sorry for their victims. Almost. Little did they know that they'd bet on a game with the future star of the Indiana Pacers, and the greatest women's basketball player of all time.
