by Nina Revoyr
"Hey, big shot," my father said as I approached. "You coming home with me, or are you and your teammates going to go out and cause some trouble?"
I smiled wearily. "We're gonna cause trouble," I said. "But I gotta shower first, so I guess I'm coming home."
Just then, Raina and Stacy emerged from the visitors' locker room. Even from where I stood, I could tell that Raina's eyes were red; it looked like she, too, had found a quiet place to cry. I didn't know what to say to her, and I hoped Claudia had brought her own car so that we wouldn't have to ride home together. Raina made her way toward us, slowly, and people turned as she passed; they watched her go, but seemed afraid to talk to her. When she'd almost reached her mother, though, someone finally stepped in front of her. I saw, to my surprise, that it was Paula. Raina stopped, and her face changed, and Paula took her into her arms. They hugged for what seemed like a long time. Raina's body relaxed slowly, giving itself up to this comfort. Then Paula let go, mumbled something to Raina, and began to walk over to me.
I stood there, watching her approach. I didn't know what she could possibly want, and half-expected her to curse me, or slap me across the face. When she reached me, though, she stopped and held out her hand.
"I just wanted to tell you," she said, "that you played a great game."
She looked me straight in the eyes. Her hair was a bit disheveled, her face was moist with sweat, and her voice was hoarse from yelling. I was so stunned that it took me a moment to remember to shake her hand.
"Thank you," I finally said.
"Your team has a lot of guts," she said. "Good luck in the next round."
I couldn't say anything, but Paula didn't seem to notice. She let go of my hand, and turned to my father, who looked as surprised as me. She nodded to him, slowly, and with great significance, as if she were conceding something, or handing me back over. Then she turned away from us, toward Claudia. Claudia looked oddly shaken; I realized that she'd seen the whole thing, and I wondered if Paula would talk to her now. Paula just stood there, though. But then she smiled. It was a tired smile, a complicated smile, containing sadness and anger and pain. But there was love in it too, and this love rippled out and softened the rest of her face. Claudia smiled back, and her eyes welled up. They looked at each other like quarreling sisters, like hurt but hopeful lovers. Finally, Paula nodded again, and Claudia nodded back. Then she turned and walked out of the gym.
Raina and I didn't talk about this, although I was sure that she had seen it. We didn't talk much at all over the next few days, and we weren't going to touch the subject of Claudia and Paula if we couldn't even speak about our game. On Tuesday morning, at the breakfast table, I tried to get her to discuss it.
"You played great, Raina," I said as we both bent over our bowls of cereal. Our parents were still in the bedroom getting dressed. "You played great, and we couldn't stop you, and you got nothing to be ashamed of."
She didn't look up from her cereal. "I fucked up in the last five seconds," she said. "So whatever I did before that don't mean shit."
I straightened up and looked at her. "But if it hadn't been for you, there wouldn't of been a last five seconds. The last five seconds wouldn't even of mattered."
Her shoulders were slumped and she kept her eyes lowered; she looked tired, sad, defeated. "Listen, Nancy," she said, "I know you're trying to make me feel better, and I appreciate it, but it ain't gonna work. So let's just drop it, okay?"
I considered this for a moment, and then spoke cautiously. "Okay," I said. "I just want you to know that I think you're the shit."
"I'm a big fuckin loser is what I am."
"Raina, that's so wrong. You know that's—"
She slammed her spoon down and glared at me. "Listen, you won, okay? What more do you want?"
I didn't know what to say; it was like she'd reached across the table and slapped me. I must have looked stricken, because Raina's face softened a little. She brought her braid around over her shoulder and started pulling on it, her hands moving one on top of the other, as if she were climbing a rope.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to snap at you. But can we please not talk about the game no more?"
And we didn't, not for weeks. Soon after we abandoned the subject that morning, our parents came in, and maneuvered around each other in the kitchen to make eggs and toast. They may have sensed the tension between Raina and me, but they didn't acknowledge it; I think they still had their own tension. I didn't wonder about them much, though, because I was still trying to make sense of what had happened with Raina. For some reason, until that morning, I had believed that her view of our meeting had been different from mine. I had known that she'd wanted to beat me, but I'd thought that the stakes had been different for her, that it had somehow been less personal. But now, seeing how upset she was—not just because she'd made an error, but because she had lost—I realized that she'd been competing against me as much as I had been competing against her. And I had won. It still didn't seem quite real to me; I still didn't know what to make of it. I'd been so used to thinking of her as better than me that I'd never considered the possibility of outdoing her. Now that I had, I saw that she wasn't invincible, and I wondered if I'd thought too much of her all along. Although I didn't want to, I admired her less, and it was obvious that she thought less of herself as well. The balance between us, clearly, had shifted. She seemed, now, to think that I had something, something she didn't, and I was afraid that it was true, but also afraid it wasn't true; that someday, I'd fail to live up to her expectations, just as she had failed to live up to mine.
Then another thought occurred to me, as obvious but startling as when you unexpectedly meet your own reflection. I was driven by hunger too—perhaps a different kind from Raina's, but it was hunger just the same. I, too, wanted to show people what I was capable of, and to prove myself—to the teachers who thought I was undisciplined and lazy; to the white kids who'd beat me up when I was little; to the black kids who'd laughed at the idea of a Japanese kid playing basketball; to Raina, who I admired but also envied; to my father; to my mother; to anyone who had ever believed that I couldn't succeed. This realization brought up other questions, though, because I didn't understand how the need to prove myself could coexist with my fear of acting. But it did occur to me that as much as I loved LA, my hunger was exactly why I'd leave it. It was the reason I was as fated to go as those, like Telisa and Raina, who couldn't seem to get out fast enough.
The tension remained between Raina and me, but we submerged it, and it finally got hidden, or almost hidden, by our reactions to other events. The biggest one, for me, was my team's elimination from the playoffs. The night of our loss to Buena, I stared grimly out the window on our bus ride back to school. I felt hollow. Losing was always devastating to me, but that night I felt like someone had died. I went out for a last sad meal with my teammates, and sat with Telisa and Q. We had just played our last game together. I knew, vaguely, that I'd never again put on our uniform; never again ride in a creaky yellow school bus with torn seat covers and stale air—but that wasn't what was hurting me just then. What hurt was that we had lost. We had gone all the way to the CIF semifinals, and lost to the eventual state champion, but it simply was not enough. It didn't matter how well we'd done, or who had finally beaten us. We had lost. I hadn't been good enough. I had failed.
Around eleven, I finally went home, keeping my windows rolled up and my eyes wide open, as I always did, now, when I drove. The house was dark and silent—everyone must have gone right to sleep when they got back from the game. I played with the dog for a while, then went upstairs, sprawled spread-eagle on my bed, and tried to contemplate the fact that my high school basketball career was over. It didn't register. I said it aloud but still didn't believe it. Maybe it would hit me once the whole season, and not just ours, was over—another two weeks down the line. As I lay there an unfamiliar question worked its way into my mind. I wondered if basketball would continue to mean so much to me,
apart from the histories and ties of high school, maybe even apart from Raina. For three years she'd been the reason I had pushed myself so hard. Could anything ever matter like that without her?
After a few more minutes of staring at the ceiling, I got up and took a shower. Just as I finished putting on shorts and a T-shirt, I heard Raina come out of her room, then the sound of the floor creaking as she tiptoed down the hallway. She knocked on my door and opened it when I told her to come in.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," I replied. "How come you're still up?"
"Couldn't sleep," she said. "You have a good time?"
I picked my dirty uniform up off the floor and threw it in my laundry basket. "Yeah, right. We ate stale french fries and cried in our Cokes."
Raina nodded. "If you'd of cried on your fries instead of your Coke, it would of made them saltier and they would of tasted less stale."
I looked at her wearily, too immersed in my sadness to untangle what she had said.
She smiled warmly. "I know how you feel."
I walked around my room, picking things up absentmindedly and putting them down again. "Well, it feels pretty bad," I said. "Any suggestions about how to relieve it?"
"Sure," she said, smiling. "Let's get drunk."
I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep that night anyway, so together we crashed in the living room and lamented the end of an era. We drank everything in the house—the six-pack in the fridge, a quarter bottle of rum, even a few shots of our parents' whiskey, straight, which was awful but highly effective. For the last three years, after the season had ended, there had always been the next year to anticipate, dream of, prepare for. There had also been countless leagues and AAU tournaments to keep us on our toes and to showcase us. Now, however, there was only some as-yet-to-be-named college team in the unimaginable void of next autumn. It was unthinkable that we'd be going to places where we didn't know the routine, where nothing was familiar or certain, where we were no longer coveted, but captured, and where we'd have to struggle along again at the bottom of the ladder—so at first we didn't think of it. Instead, we talked about the past. We conjured old games, remembered in remarkable detail; we laughed about stupid mistakes we'd made, complained about the losses we'd never have the chance to avenge. Neither of us said what I think we both feared—that perhaps we'd done our best already. There was no guarantee that we'd be stars in college, and it was possible that we'd already reached, and passed, the summit of our careers.
"This is crazy," I slurred finally. "We're too young to be feelin nostalgic."
Raina seemed to find this highly amusing, and laughed so hard she nearly slid off the couch. "Let's talk about next year, then," she said. "Where you gonna go?"
"I've got it down to four. But you first."
"Down to three."
"Tell me."
She threw a glazed look somewhere in my general direction. "Washington, Michigan, and Virginia. What about you?"
"Washington, Virginia, UNLV, and Arizona. When you gonna decide?"
"I don't know. Soon. Depends on them, though, too."
This was true. The way that most schools let you know you were no longer being recruited was by suddenly halting all contact, like some cowardly lover who stops calling instead of simply telling you she's no longer interested. We had both received such messages from a couple of schools that had been top choices, and now it remained to be seen if those schools still recruiting us would continue to do so. I noted that two of our choices—Washington and Virginia—overlapped, and if Raina chose either of those places, I swore I would follow.
"Tell me when you make up your mind," I said.
"You'll be the first to know." She spread her fingers wide on the carpet, looked down at them, back up at me. "Nancy," she said, "why don't you have a girlfriend?"
I thought, Here we go. But I said, "I don't know. I just don't."
"Don't you want one?"
"I don't really think about it. And besides, it ain't exactly like women are throwin themselves at my feet."
"You just don't know where to look. Maybe you gotta look up from your feet, although it's hard, 'cos they're so damn big."
I smiled. "Fuck you."
"Fuck you," she said. "But listen—I know plenty of people who wanna talk to you."
"Yeah, right. Name one."
"Stacy. That girl's been sweatin you for ages."
"Yeah, but she's sweatin everybody. I don't think there's anyone else who likes me."
"That's 'cos you can't see the things that are right there in front of you."
She cupped her hands over her knees and looked at me. I wanted to hear more about my mysterious and probably fictional admirers, but just as I opened my mouth to speak she pitched forward and gagged. I jumped to my feet and half-led her, half-carried her to the bathroom, just in time for her to throw up in the toilet. Her whole body shook as the liquor poured out of her. We knelt on that cold linoleum floor, in our T-shirts and shorts, for twenty minutes. I had my arm around her tighter than I would ever have dared if we'd been sober.
Somehow we managed to drag ourselves to a standing position, and I held her up while she rinsed her mouth out and washed her face. Then I fumbled for the doorknob, opened the door, and started to lead her to her room. We got as far as the hallway. There we crumpled in a tangled heap of arms and legs, laughing, and once we were on the floor neither of us had the energy to get back up. The carpet seemed incredibly comfortable. Raina yawned and curled up against me, and I consciously made myself think, This is probably the closest you'll ever get to her. Her head was resting between my chin and my shoulder; I touched the smooth, warm skin of her arms.
So how does it feel to hold the woman you love for the first and only time? Mostly it feels like the world has fallen away, and that time has stopped, or at least slowed down to a crawl, because you are aware of each passing second. It's not a feeling of joy, really, so much as one of pure astonishment. There is no "I" in "we"; I couldn't believe that down in the vicinity of our feet there was a dark shape impossible to identify as part of her body or my own. And although I held her, although she lay encircled in my arms, I felt like she surrounded me, as if I'd been trying to embrace a thunderstorm, or the ocean. Trembling, I touched her cheek, my fingertips starting just below her left eye and going down to the back of her jaw, then tracing the line of that perfect jaw around to her chin. My hand stopped there for a moment, and then I curved it over her shoulder, moving all the way down the length of her arm until I reached her wrist. I encircled her wrist with my middle finger and thumb; the feel of her pulse made my own heart jump. I brushed my lips against her forehead for just a moment, and wished that she'd awaken and turn her face up to mine. I imagined running my tongue softly along the length of her lips, feeling the gentle curve of them, the tiny wrinkles beneath my tongue; it would be like licking a wedge of an orange. I imagined her lips parting and her tongue meeting mine; I imagined holding it gently in my mouth, and licking around it, the way I'd lick the tapered, tart end of a strawberry. I wanted our lips to intertwine like fingers; to feel the soft, incredible smoothness of the inside of her mouth; to feed her, and be fed by her, this wet, delicious fruit; to drink in all the flavors of her mouth and try to taste her soul. But she was asleep now, and would not have wanted these things with me anyway, so I just held on to her more tightly and tried to remember the way she felt in my arms. She slept easily, her breath warm against my neck. I tried to match my breathing to hers. I tried to relax so I'd be more comfortable to sleep against, but my muscles were unyielding as stone. How could she possibly sleep? I would have liked to also, of course—I was thoroughly exhausted. And sleep, it seemed to me, was the nearest we could get to entering the void, the place where we all came from and would return to someday, and if I slept too, we could be there together. But my eyes stayed open by some will of their own. Raina threw an arm and a leg across me, and I pressed my face into her hair. I couldn't get her close enough.
&nbs
p; * * *
Those few weeks just after our season ended were a time of general chaos. It felt like every day was devoted to dealing with one in a seemingly endless string of postseason banquets, all-star games, and other miscellaneous honors. Q was named first-team All-League, but this did nothing to lighten her mood—the four-year colleges seemed to have cooled on her, and it looked more and more like she'd be attending a JC.
In addition to being All-League ourselves, Raina and I were both named All–South Bay, All-CIF, and All-State, and these awards were especially meaningful that year because it would be the last time we received them. We were also, to my amusement and pleasure, named Most Valuable Players of our respective leagues. Instead of Claudia paying up on the wager she'd made with my father, our parents took us out for a joint celebration dinner, and hung our plaques side by side in the dining room.
Throughout those weeks, my inner life was a mess. Normally, the only thing I thought about at that time of year was the NCAA basketball tournament. That year, however, the term "March Madness" could have referred to my mental state. My emotions seemed magnified and incompatible. About "the future" I felt an intense fear, composed equally of dread of the signing period, which was closing in ever more quickly, and of my terror at the thought of Raina choosing a school that was a universe away from me. I'd basically decided by then that I wanted to go to Washington—it seemed nice up there, and the school was in a city, and there was water everywhere you looked. Also, I knew there'd be at least one other gay girl—my AAU friend Rebecca Hill, who had signed there in November. I called the coach and said that I was probably coming, but didn't give him a firm commitment. This was all a secret, though, even to the rest of my household. I wanted to keep my options open. If Raina chose Washington, then I could sign with them as planned. But if she decided to go to Virginia, I could switch over to Virginia too, without anyone besides the Huskies coach ever knowing my original choice. Although I was scared by the implications of the half-commitment I'd made, I found—much to my own surprise—that I was actually starting to look forward to getting out of LA. Part of it, maybe, was that I now had a set place in which to picture myself; I knew I wouldn't be stepping into a void. And part of it was that the carjacking attempt—although I still couldn't face it head-on—had shaken me enough to make me think that it might be a good time to leave.
