by Nina Revoyr
At that moment, we heard the roar of a particularly loud plane, and looked up to see a 747 passing over us. It was approaching the airport, which was a couple of miles away, and it was so low we could see the lines in its belly.
Stacy watched it go over, then shook her head and looked back down at the ground. "I don't know why anyone would wanna come into this city," she said.
When we got back to Stacy's house, I called home but received no answer. I needed to get to practice, though, and my clothes were at my place, so I decided to take the bus home. Stacy wasn't going to her team's practice—she'd arranged to talk with their coach at school the next day. And she was seeing her lawyer again that afternoon, so she was nervous by the time I left. I caught my bus and sat near the front, closing my eyes and letting the events of the last few hours wash over me. The thought of Stacy going to jail seemed too outrageous to believe, but I knew that it was real. And she was right—things would be easier for Raina—and also, by the same token, for me. They had already been easier, really, for the last several years. We were stars, recruited athletes, who'd been showered with praise and attention; who'd always been treated like we were valuable, like we were chosen. And just as importantly, we'd been given a taste of life outside of LA, and this had immediately changed our relationship to the city—because no matter how bad things got for us, we knew that we could leave. I felt, on the bus that day, a tremendous sadness for the people who didn't have the same kinds of options, like Stacy, and for the people who didn't know what their options were, like Q. And it occurred to me, then, that the reason my friends were so much more bitter than I, the reason they were so anxious to leave, was that the city meant something different to them than it had ever meant to me. No one on the outside cared too deeply about whether I stayed there or not. But they wanted very much for my friends to stay, and not only for them to stay, but to suffer. For the first time I realized that my friends and I had been traveling on separate but parallel tracks. We were moving in the same direction, negotiating the same landscape, and carrying weighty and similar baggage—but the tracks did not meet, and their path was completely different from mine. It was bumpier, had more obstacles, and there were a host of bandits at every turn. I never lost sight of my friends; we rode side by side, and looked back and forth at each other, and talked across the space between the tracks. But it was as if I had always been watching their faces through a window. I loved my friends, and I could see that their journey was dangerous and painful. But the only ones who could really understand the dangers of that journey were those who traveled on the same hard track.
CHAPTER 17
The Black Businesswomen's Alliance held its conference during the third weekend in February. Claudia was gone all day on Saturday, and by the time I got home from the movies that night, she and my father were already asleep. On Sunday, Raina went to the conference too, in order to see her mother speak; that evening, my father drove over to join them for the party. Although I was tired, I made myself stay up. I wanted to find out what had happened.
At eleven thirty, I heard the cars pull into the driveway. Ann stretched, yawned, shook her leg out, and then walked over to the door. Claudia came in first, looking weary. The dog sniffed her hand, and licked it, before running outside to greet my father.
"Hello," I called out from the couch.
Claudia jumped a little. "Hi, Nancy," she said. Then she came over to where I was sitting. She looked at me closely, in a way she hadn't before; I saw the affection in her eyes, and the sadness. Something about this look made it impossible for me to ask her anything. She smiled now, a tired smile. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"I was just about to go brush my teeth," I lied.
"Well, that's what I'm going to do too," she said. "I'm exhausted. I'll see you in the morning."
I watched her go up the stairs, and then my father came in. He turned and waited for Raina, who appeared just as the door to the parents' room clicked shut.
"Hey, how'd it go?" I asked.
"Good," said my father as he fiddled with the lock. He sighed, took his jacket off, hung it up in the hall closet. "Anything exciting happen around here?"
"No, not really. I watched the Lakers game. They won."
"Mmm," said my father, looking distracted. Then he, too, went up the stairs and into their room.
Raina walked over and sat down on the love seat.
"I guess they're tired," I said.
She sighed. "Yeah, it's been a really long day."
I tried to read her expression. She seemed fine, although a little subdued. "So how'd your mom's speech go?"
Raina brightened up a bit now. "Oh, it was great," she said, smiling. "She had everybody noddin and, like, agreeing with her and shit, and everyone was laughin at her jokes. I didn't know she could be like that, you know? People were talkin about it afterward, they were all pumped up. It was kind of like she was a coach or somethin, giving a really good pep talk."
I smiled, liking Raina for liking her mother so much. "You're proud of her, huh?"
Raina nodded. "Hell yeah."
"So how was the rest of the stuff today?"
Raina shrugged. "I don't know. The conference stuff was kind of boring. They were talkin about all this work shit that I'm just not down with yet, you know? Employee relations, management, tax information, that kind of thing. And then the party." She stopped and looked down at her hands. "The party was kind of a trip."
I took a sip of the juice I'd been drinking, and tried not to look too interested. "Really? What happened? Did you have a good time?"
Raina put one hand on top of Ann's head, using her thumb to stroke the dog from nose to brow. "Well, I guess. It was just kinda weird. I hung out a lot with my mom's friends, right? 'Cos I didn't want to hang out with the parents."
I nodded. Hanging out with one's parents was almost always a social error—especially at one of their events, where they forgot they were parents, and tended to act embarrassing.
"And Rochelle and Kim, you know, talked with the parents a lot. But Paula completely avoided them."
I stared at my juice and didn't look at her. "I don't think she likes my dad much," I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Raina nod. "Yeah, I think you're right."
I wasn't sure if Raina knew the reason for Paula's disapproval, but I suspected that she did; at any rate, I was tired of the whole situation. "Paula's a bitch," I said.
Raina sighed again. "She isn't, though. She's great. I wish you could of known her before . . . all of this." She looked down at her hands, and then back up at me again. "She's been like an aunt to me, or somethin. I mean, Kim and Rochelle have too, but Paula . . . Paula would cook me dinner when my mom worked late. Paula bought me clothes when my mom couldn't afford them. Paula took me to AAU practice when my mom's car was broken down. She let us stay with her for a week after my father left, when my mom was too upset to be alone. The first year or so after the divorce, when my mom was sad all the time, Paula would call her almost every day and talk to her, get her laughin. I mean, she's always been there, she's always been great, and I just don't know what the problem is. I don't know if they're ever goin to get through this thing, and it just seems so fuckin stupid and sad."
I listened, getting more and more depressed, and feeling terrible, now, for Claudia. For the first time, I wondered if any of my friends had faced hostility because of me. My father and I occasionally saw signs of disapproval—from my mother, from some of his friends, from Asian strangers when the four of us went out somewhere together—but it didn't affect us much, because other than Q, who was different, we didn't see other Asians very often. We didn't have to deal with their sense that we'd betrayed them. Telisa, Stacy, and Raina, however, had welcomed the stranger in their midst, and I wondered now, finally, what it had cost them. I also wondered what it had cost my father and me to be those strangers, and what it was costing my father and Claudia to be together. I went to bed that night sad for all of us, lame
nting the price we had to pay for the choices we made, lamenting that prices ever had to be paid at all.
* * *
The CIF playoffs began the next week. Not surprisingly, both Raina's team and mine had won our leagues, and when the thirty-two-team field for the playoffs was announced, we were on the same side of the bracket. It was highly unlikely, though, that both of our teams would make it to the round where we were slated to meet, even though her team was ranked tenth in CIF now, and we were ranked ninth. The competition in the playoffs—at least after the first round—was always intense, and every progressively higher-round game was played as if the championship of the entire world was at stake. Raina's team would have a tougher time of it than we would. Their second-round game—assuming they got that far—would be against the sixth-ranked team in CIF, and because the third-place team they were playing in round one came from a very tough league (first-place teams played third-place teams in round one, and second-place teams played each other), they, too, would be a formidable opponent. To make matters worse, Raina's coach had suspended Stacy. This probably wouldn't hurt them too terribly—Stacy was not one of their top scorers—but still, she was a starter, and it would throw the other starters off a bit to have a different cog in their usual machine. Luckily for her, the local press hadn't learned of her arrest (she wasn't prominent enough to keep track of—if it had been Raina or me, the story would have been all over), and their coach's official statement on her suspension was that it was for "disciplinary reasons." He wasn't completely coldhearted, though—he was going to let Stacy sit on the bench with the team during games.
Our playoff picture—or at least our first game—would be easier, because we were not playing a very good team. Also, the tensions about Q, and about Telisa's home situation, had calmed, and everyone was cheerful and ready to play. Part of this feeling was the usual hope and anticipation that surrounded the postseason tournament. The three weeks of the playoffs were a time during which basketball seemed like the most wonderful invention ever; a time of collective excitement so great that even members of teams who didn't qualify were infected enough to go watch the games. Those collapsing high school gyms were suddenly packed with fans, and everything—from the lines on the courts to the leaves on the trees—seemed brighter, more defined, more itself. Part of the feeling, also, was that the clouds and rain of the last two months had finally lifted. The air was crisp and clean; the gold light of the sun seemed like a rare and thoughtful gift; the mountains stood huge and majestic to the east, their top halves covered with snow. It was as if the city had been unveiled, and its beauty was breathtaking. And all of this—the feeling of the playoffs, the look of the world around me—was especially vivid, because that year I was taking note of it and wishing it did not have to pass.
The first round of games took place on a Saturday. Raina's team had a two-hour trip to make, so she left early in the afternoon and we wished each other luck. Our game was at home, which I was glad about. The whole school seemed caught up in our endeavor, and we had its undivided attention, because the boys' team had not been strong that year and had missed out on the playoffs entirely. There'd been a pep rally the day before, and all of our teachers and acquaintances—all the jocks, and student council people, and gangbangers, and nerds—had told us they planned to come. I got to the gym at six—an hour and a half before game time—and found my teammates hyped, practically bouncing off the walls of the locker room. Pam was running around and showering everyone with punches, which hurt, because she was strong. Q was slamming lockers shut loudly and letting out an occasional yell. Telisa, who'd gotten a ride from Shavon, was pacing up and down pumping her fists in the air, and when she saw me, she came right over.
"Did you see them come in, homegirl?" she asked. "They're big and slow, and they look scared already. Dogmeat."
"Dogmeat!" Pam agreed.
"Woof!" Q said.
I smiled, glad my teammates were so excited. Telisa was probably right—our opponents were from the Valley; they were the kind of people who would never come into a neighborhood like ours by choice. But I said, "C'mon, y'all, chill out. Don't matter who they are. We got ourselves some work to do."
When we lined up an hour later and ran onto the court to begin our warmups, I felt a chill go through my body. The stands were already full, the crowd was buzzing, and we were a few minutes away from the start of a game we had to win to extend our season. My body was loose and relaxed, the ball felt right in my hands. The buzzer went off so we headed over to our bench, and I spotted my dad in the bleachers. Claudia was at Raina's game, of course, and he looked lonely up there. He pumped his fist at me and nodded. I raised my own fist, more for the crowd than for him, and all the kids in the stands—my schoolmates, my friends, our little junior high fans—stood up and started to cheer. This, I thought, as I looked up at them, is what it's all about.
After both teams had gathered at their benches, the starting lineups were announced. I was the last player to go, and the crowd went crazy as I ran onto the court. I had to smile. The rest of our starters met me at the free throw line, and we exchanged high fives and pounded each other on the back, yelled that victory was ours. I felt a sense of pride and importance, then, as we walked back to our bench, that I wished I could hold on to forever.
When the game began, though, it was clear that my concern had been justified. The other team was nothing special, but we were tight as a wire. We forced shots, threw passes away, tried to make plays that weren't there. We played the other team even for the first three minutes, committing four careless turnovers in the process. Once I went down hard on my back, and the whole crowd gasped. I was all right, but even after I got up, brushed myself off, and waved to acknowledge the applause of the crowd, we still couldn't get it together. It was terrible. Finally, Coach Fontaine called a time-out, and yelled that if we starters didn't care about the game, he'd be happy to put in the second string. We got the message. As we walked back onto the court, I gathered the five of us together and told everyone to calm down, take it easy, and remember to have some fun.
One or both of these speeches had the intended effect, because from there, the game was ours. The other team had decent inside players—a 6'3" center and a couple of six-foot forwards—but they were slow, and overweight, and became as helpless as beached whales against our fast breaks and swarming defense. The game was over by halftime. We led by twenty going into the locker room, and Coach Fontaine's speech this time—Standard Fontaine Halftime Speech No. 3—concerned keeping our intensity up in the second half and not lapsing into sloppiness.
The second half it just got uglier. Every door we tried simply opened without resistance, and the other team, obviously, just wanted the game to be over with so they could go home. I didn't enjoy blowouts—there was no challenge in them, and they didn't push us to get any better—but if they had to happen, I preferred that they happened to a team like this, which was wealthy, coddled, white. When Coach Fontaine took out the starters halfway through the fourth quarter, I sat on the bench and thought about the fact that we were ending our opponent's season, and I wondered what their seniors would be doing the next year. None of them, I was sure, would have anything to worry about. College awaited them, or maybe jobs, and no matter what the situation was, those kids would always have their parents to fall back on. That's why I couldn't feel too awful about what was happening to them on the court. When, late in the game, the junior high school girls in the stands adapted the words from a song by Tears for Fears and sang, "Shout, shout, look at the score! You are losing by thirty-four!"—I didn't feel sorry for the other team. They were having a bad night, but their lives, it seemed to me, were uncomplicated, and their futures were bright and assured. I knew we were all glad that we were beating them so badly—this was the one place where we had the goods and kids like them didn't; this was the one area in which we knew we could win.
That night I had a party at my house. My father, very considerately, went out to a bar i
n Marina del Rey, where he planned to meet up later with Claudia. Everyone on my team came over, plus various boyfriends and girlfriends and people from school. Telisa showed up late, with Shavon, and they were both grinning like they'd won the lottery.
"Y'all have sex in the car or something?" I asked.
Telisa laughed. "Well, yeah, but that ain't why we're happy."
"Why you happy?"
Telisa gave her girlfriend a squeeze. "Her dad's gonna let me stay with them for a while."
"What?" I almost shouted. "He knows what's up with you guys, doesn't he?"
"Yeah," Shavon said, smiling. "But you gotta understand. My dad's been through some shit with relationships too." I knew this was true—Shavon's mother was white, and her parents' marriage had been a big scandal in both of their families. "So he just took us out to get something to eat, right? And he told Telisa she could stay. He said, 'I'm mad at you both for not telling me the truth for so long, and I can't say that I approve. But I know what it's like to be in love and to have the world against you, and I don't wanna take part in all that hatred.'"
"Holy shit," I said, and I was grinning too. This was incredible, unbelievable—it was giving me some faith in the world.
We had a loud, happy night. We talked about good plays we had made, ragged on our coach, predicted victory in our second-round game. Eventually someone threw on some music and people started dancing in the living room, but I stayed in the kitchen with Q and Pam, talking to a couple of people from our Photography class. At one point, while I was opening a new bag of pretzels, I heard a guy ask Q how many she'd had that night.
"Twenty," she replied.
"Twenty?" the guy repeated, sounding incredulous. "Stop playin, girl. For real?"
"Well, Nancy had twenty-six."
"Twenty-six! Naw, girl, that ain't possible!"
We were both confused by his surprise at our not-unusual numbers, until it came out that he hadn't been asking about the number of points we'd had that night, but instead about the number of wine coolers.
