Slam!

by Walter Dean Myers

  But if Mtisha was peeping something strange about Ice I knew I should check it out. I knew it and didn’t want to do it. I was scared again.

  I don’t like hospitals. Whenever I think of hospitals all I can think of is people dying and stuff like that. I’ve never been sick a day in my life. I don’t even catch colds.

  “I know you’re not wearing those raggedy sneakers to the hospital,” Moms said. “Your grandmother’s not in a coma, you know.”

  “These sneakers ain’t raggedy,” I said.

  “Those sneakers aren’t raggedy,” she said. “And yes they are too raggedy to be going to the hospital to see your grandmother.”

  Right. So we get dressed and walk on down to 135th Street where Harlem Hospital is. We had to go in past the guards and the downstairs desk. They gave us two blue passes and told us to go to the fourth floor.

  We get up there by elevator and a nurse, kind of fine-looking, tells us where to go.

  Grandma had another person in her room, a woman who looked like she was really tore down. She was light-skinned and skinny with white hair and she was breathing funny. When we got to the room the woman pulled a curtain around her bed. I was glad because I didn’t want to see her.

  “How you doing, Mama?” That’s what my mother said to her mother, which was cool.

  “I’d be doing a lot better if whoever it is they got fixing the food here knew how to cook!” Grandma Ellie said. “All they know how to fix here is watery mashed potatoes and something so bad Hamburger Helper done give up on it.”

  “You know the doctor doesn’t want you to eat any fatty foods,” Mama said. “He told you that, didn’t he?”

  “Before they let a doctor tell people what they can eat and what they can’t eat they should find out how good his mama cooks,” Grandma Ellie said. “If his mama can’t cook then he don’t know what good food is and he don’t care what he give you.”

  “I told Greg he didn’t have to come but he insisted on seeing his grandmother,” Mama lied.

  “Why on earth do you want to be in a hospital on a nice day like this?” Grandma Ellie asked me. “You ain’t got no friends? Maybe it’s your breath.”

  “Get out of here, Grandma.” I sat on the edge of the bed and saw Moms make a face. “I just wanted to check you out.”

  “I’m doing okay.” Grandma Ellie looked away from us toward the window. “You know, when you reach my age things don’t work like they supposed to. You liable to wake up in the morning and have an arm fall off, or maybe one leg don’t want to walk right.”

  “Did the doctor get the results back?” Moms asked.

  “Yeah. He said a whole lot of things which all added up to the fact that I was sick. Well, I could have told the young fool that from the start.”

  “He say what was wrong?”

  “Said I’m old, and I’m creaky, and that old creaky people don’t get around like young juicy people,” Grandma Ellie said. “But the doctor talked about me, and the nurse talked about me, and I’m tired of hearing about how sick I am, and how many pills I got to be taking and all. Tell me what you people are doing.”

  “Just making it from day to day,” Mama said. “Trying to get Greg to get his head into the books.”

  “What’s wrong with you and them books, boy?” Grandma Ellie’s voice flattened.

  “Nothing wrong with them,” I said. “Just I’m in a new school and the other kids had more math than me.”

  “That’s the only subject you having trouble in?”

  “I’m a little bit behind in everything, I guess,” I said. “The school I’m in is more advanced than my old school.”

  “It’s hard, ain’t it, son?” Grandma Ellie put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I just want to share this with you, baby,” she said, softly. “I really don’t care because it’s not my life. And I’d bet two Roosevelt dimes that nobody else cares — maybe excepting your mama and that’s cause she still thinks it’s her job — because it ain’t their lives. It’s your life, do you care?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then deal with it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I didn’t appreciate Grandma Ellie running me down like that. It’s not that I didn’t want to give her respect, but I don’t think she should have run it down on me like she did.

  “He got a new assignment,” Moms said. “He’s supposed to explore his environment. That’s where he lives and everywhere.”

  “I know what environment means, Mavis,” Grandma Ellie said. “You going to do one of those television programs on our neighborhood?”

  “No.”

  “Lord, don’t tell me you got your lip stuck out because I told you I don’t care about how you doing in school?”

  I didn’t have nothing to say because I thought she was just running me down because she could. I put my mind on something else completely. She and Moms ran their mouths for a while more and then it was time to leave. Moms kissed Grandma Ellie and I kissed her and we were ready to leave and peace out but Grandma Ellie couldn’t leave it alone.

  “When you finish your television program I’d like to see it,” she said.

  Yeah. Sure.

  We did the kissing thing again and then we left. Moms said she was coming back in the evening and said that Derek wanted to come, too.

  In the elevator on the way down a guy with a bandaged face was moaning real loud and the woman with him was patting him on the shoulder. The guy must have been about fifty years old and acting like a baby. I was looking at this and I didn’t even notice Moms crying until we got into the lobby.

  It didn’t take no whole lot to figure she was crying cause her mother was sick, but I asked her anyway.

  “Just the idea of losing her shakes me up,” she said. “It’s the kind of thing you don’t want to talk about.”

  “What she got?”

  “She had a tumor, but now it’s spread,” she said.

  She teared up again and turned away. Hey, I don’t like to see her cry. I don’t like to see her cry for no reason. But like when it’s about somebody being sick and stuff it’s even worse.

  We went on home and Pops had made some supper. We had black beans and oxtails and collard greens and rice. It was good. I can get into some oxtails.

  We had two practices during the week and they were both bad. The coach had this thing where every play was going to come off a pattern. The guards were supposed to bring the ball down center court, then signal the pattern and everybody was supposed to run it. That way everybody was supposed to know what everybody else was doing. The guards were Trip, Nick Young, me, and Ducky. Ducky was a guard because he was too small to be anything else, not because he could play. He couldn’t dribble without looking at the ball, which was his main problem.

  Anyway, during the first practice the coach kept us running patterns that were supposed to end in an easy layup for one of the forwards. But what happened was that the picks didn’t work, or if they did it was just because everybody knew what the play was supposed to be and stopped when they saw the pick. Half the time they would have to pass the ball back out to the guards and we’d end up running the same play over again.

  We ended the practice with everyone shooting from the three-point line. A lot of the guys, even Ducky, could shoot threes when nobody was on them. It wasn’t a sweat practice. I figured maybe the practices would get better later on.

  When I got back to the block, some kids had set up a hoop in front of the bicycle shop and were playing some rough three-on-three. Derek was playing and I watched him. He looked pretty good until he saw me watching him, then he tried to showboat. I went upstairs and he came up a little later, smelling from the sweat and with his pants split up the back.

  “They ain’t your school pants, right?” I asked.

  “You going to sew them up for me?” he asked. “I’ll give you two dollars to sew them up before Mom gets home,” he said.

  “Wher
e’d you get two dollars from?”

  “Daddy.”

  “He was drinking?”

  “No, he just gave me the two dollars,” Derek said.

  I got the needle and thread from Moms’ room and started sewing up Derek’s pants. He had just split the seam so it wasn’t any big deal.

  “How I look out there?” he asked. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “Not as good as me,” I said.

  “I’m not as old as you are,” he said. “Could I make your school team?”

  “What position you going to play?” I asked.

  “I’ll be the guy that shoots the ball.”

  “That’s my job, and you can’t make it,” I said. “Plus we got two other guards that can play. Both of them are around six feet.”

  “I’ll make it when I go to Latimer,” Derek said.

  “You going to Latimer?”

  “That’s where all the brainiacs go, isn’t it?”

  “Are you a brainiac?”

  “Yep,” he shook his head like he meant it, too.

  “Get on with your bad self.”

  I finished his pants, got the two dollars, and gave him one back. He went on a fridge raid and I took out my books and started looking over my homework. I wondered if Derek thought I was a brainiac because I went to Latimer. I knew I didn’t think I was one.

  We had the second practice on a Monday at lunchtime and the coach divided us up into a “Red” team and a “Blue” team. Trip and Nick were the guards on the Red team and me and Ducky were the guards on the Blue team. Trip and Nick took turns picking me and driving past Ducky. But they weren’t making legitimate picks. They were stepping out and blocking me so I couldn’t get past. But when I got the ball and put a move on Trip, the coach got on my case.

  “You have any idea of what team ball is supposed to be?” he asked me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you bright enough to remember that we’re supposed to be playing team ball?”

  “What’s it got to do with being bright?” I asked.

  “Then why don’t you tell me what it has got to do with?” he said.

  I walked off the court. Later for that fool. He was giving everybody else their propers, but he wasn’t showing me nothing. Even if he had a beef he didn’t have to diss me right there on the floor.

  Mr. Goldstein came into the locker room a little after I got in there. I was changing clothes and he sat down on the rubbing table and asked me what was wrong.

  “You didn’t see what was going on out there?” I asked him.

  “I saw what was going on but I might interpret it differently than you did,” Mr. Goldstein said. “He needs you to concentrate on playing the kind of pattern ball that he thinks is going to help the team win. What’s wrong with that?”

  “How come Nick and Trip don’t have to do it the same way I do?” I said.

  “Because he wants to give the starters more latitude,” Mr. Goldstein said. “They have to run the game.”

  “What you know about basketball?”

  “I used to coach the team here,” he said. “Then I had a heart attack and had to give it up. I work part time now. But I know the game. I know the game and I know what you got in here.”

  He reached over and tapped my chest.

  Goldy, that’s what everybody called him, was thin, a little stooped, with a long face that always looked a little down. He didn’t have much hair, just a few white strands that he combed across the top of his head.

  “You used to play?” I asked.

  “A little. I was never that good. If they played like they do today I would never have made a team. I enjoyed the game, though. Like you do. It was important to me.”

  “Why?”

  “It was something I could do,” Goldy said. “I might not have been great, but I was better than most kids in my neighborhood.”

  He talked some other stuff but I wasn’t even listening. I was thinking about Nick and Trip starting and me being on the bench. It was like I was some kind of a scrub or something.

  “Take a shower,” Goldy was saying, “and try to calm down. And when you start feeling sorry for yourself and thinking that life isn’t fair, ask yourself is it fair for you to have so much talent and some of the other kids not to have it?”

  “Yeah.”

  In the afternoon this white girl named Karen slipped me a note in English. It said “Will you pose for me tomorrow after school?” I wasn’t too sure what she meant by that. Why did she want to draw me? Then I figured maybe she was hitting on me. She had a nice face and a real tough body so I figured maybe I would give her a play. The more I thought about it the more I figured she must have been checking me out and decided that she liked what she saw. She was probably kind of shy so she had to slip me the note instead of dealing with it face-to-face. That was all good because I liked shy girls. And it was okay that she was white, too. I’m not prejudiced or anything like that.

  What I was hoping was that she didn’t want to jump into any heavy stuff too fast. You got to worry about things like safe sex and girls getting pregnant before they get married. The thing was that if we messed around and she did get pregnant I would probably have to have some help supporting her until I got to the NBA. I’d have to explain all that to her folks because they might be prejudiced.

  Once I got to the NBA and started pulling down those big bucks we could get a house in the country or maybe in California. Actually, it would probably depend on who I was playing for. If I was playing for the Knicks I’d get an apartment in Manhattan, across from Central Park. One of those fancy apartments with about three or four bedrooms in case we had more kids.

  The English teacher said we had to turn in a term paper or a photo essay on somebody we admired. Then the period ended and Karen came right over to me.

  “You going to pose?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Okay, here’s the picture I want.” She laid a picture on my desk and gives me this little smile. “We’ll meet in the band room at three-thirty. See you later.”

  Then she was gone.

  I looked at the picture. All it was were a pair of old-looking hands looking like they were praying. Under it was written “Durer.” The dude could definitely draw.

  I went on home thinking about the picture and Karen. The more I thought about her the more I was against marrying her in the first place.

  Derek was home when I got there and he asked me what I thought about Grandma being sick.

  “What you mean?”

  “She looked all right to me,” Derek said.

  “She’s sick on the inside,” I said. “Not on the outside. Were you just born stupid or something?”

  “I just asked you a question,” he said. “You don’t have to jump bad, man.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I went on into my bedroom and opened my math book again. I thought I was studying but after a while I saw that I was just looking at the book but not thinking about the math. What I was thinking about was Mr. Nipper and the basketball practice.

  The thing was that everybody had to be about something, and I was about ball. He didn’t have to diss me on the ball court. That was wrong and he knew it was wrong but he didn’t care. Where that put me was I had to either quit and give up what I was about or go back and still play with the team and just give up my respect.

  The picture that Karen gave me was on the bed and I looked at it and put my hands like the guy had it in the picture. I looked in the mirror and it looked whack. I tried to relax my shoulders and do it again but it was still looking stupid so I put it back in my binder.

  The remote was on the end table and I grabbed it. The dancers on the screen moved to a steady beat. The music reached for my mind and I let it go.

  So it’s Friday morning and I’m sitting in history listening to Mr. Penny, the history teacher, talk about all the arguments they had before they set up the Constitution. It was boring because I didn�
��t see what difference it made. Mr. Penny caught this kid named Joe Ming reading the paper under his desk and asked him what his problem was.

  “Isn’t it the Constitution that’s important?” Joe asked. “Not what they said on the way to drafting it?”

  “But if you’re looking for clues to what they meant when they wrote certain parts of the Constitution it helps to know what the arguments were leading up to the writing.”

  Mr. Penny liked talking to Joe and you could tell. Everybody else in the class liked him talking to Joe, too, because he wouldn’t mess with us. I let my mind drift off to when I was supposed to pose for Karen. Karen had probably saw my hands in class and knew they were like classical hands or something. I liked getting into things with other kids in the school. That was a difference between Latimer and Carver. At Latimer the kids were always looking to get into something.

  Karen was in the band room and so was Charley Movalli, and some other kids. They were just hanging out but when Karen started setting up her drawing pad they came over to check us out. She said she was ready and I got my hands in the pose.

  Karen started sketching. She threw the first one away after a bit and started a second one right away.

  In about two minutes there was a whole stream of people walking in, checking out my hands and Karen’s sketch. I really wasn’t going for it too tough but I kept trying to keep my hands still.

  “Say, Slam, why do you have your face fixed like that,” Charley asked. “She’s only drawing your hands.”

  “I got to be in the mood,” I said, trying to feel holy.

  After she finished I checked out her drawing. It was good. I could draw but she was really doing it. On the way out of school she told me I had great hands.