Hold Love Strong

by Matthew Aaron Goodman

  “There’s got to be like a hundred colleges in New York,” she said. “There’s Fordham and NYU, and all the city colleges, and St. John’s, and FIT, where, you know, aspiring clothing designers go. There ain’t no historically black colleges though. Ain’t that strange? You’d think with all those rich people, like the Cosbys and Puff Daddy, they might have started one.”

  Through and through, Kaya was sure she was going to college. Someplace. Somewhere.

  “College, Abraham,” she said. “That’s what I’m about. I don’t got to go to Harvard like Ms. Hakim. There must be a bunch of colleges that’ll accept me. But maybe Harvard? You never know. If I score real high on the SAT. I got good grades. Like Mandela said, it ain’t who am I to be brilliant? It’s who am I not to be, you know?”

  Kaya was so about college and that SAT that the window to kiss and make love with her was so small it might as well have been a pinhole in an all black sky. No matter how or what I whispered in her ear, no matter how smooth I tried to move and ease into foreplay, all she wanted to do was talk positive and negative integers, binomials, vocabulary words, and college majors.

  “What you think about psychology?” she’d ask me in the middle of my sweetest, gentlest kissing on her neck. “Or sociology? You know Ms. Hakim majored in religion?”

  Kaya told everyone within earshot about colleges. My grandma loved it. She listened to Kaya like everything she said was a drip of honey on the tip of her tongue, so sweet its savoring was not to be rushed.

  “College,” she’d say to me after Kaya left. “Abraham, you know, you smart enough.”

  My Aunt Rhonda humored Kaya, but she mocked her when she was not around.

  “That chick talks more white every day,” she’d say. “What the fuck does intrepid mean anyway? And loquacious? Abraham, if I didn’t know she loved your ass, I’d swear she was cursing you.”

  On the rare occasion when Kaya spoke about college and Donnel was present, he’d look at me and his gaze would grow harder, more exacting, as if he were trying to dissect a delicate insect, a butterfly steeped in fog. His mind was the perfect fit for higher education, precise in its movements, associative. And he wanted to go to college. I saw it on his face. And once he swore he could do it.

  And when Kaya spoke about college my uncle watched her the way a man ponders an old picture of himself, a plain and simple expression on his face as if he was not just hearing and seeing Kaya but soaking in the recollections of that time in his life, the many events, and the feelings that swelled in his chest about who he had been and where he could have gone—college. Sometimes my uncle wondered aloud about what it would be like. And sometimes he said he was going to take classes as soon as he got some money in his pocket. But he was also scared of it, as if sitting in an institution of higher education was more difficult than sitting in prison, an institution meant to limit men, even rot them away.

  Eric didn’t have a job or a social life, and when he wasn’t drawing the only things he did were sleep, eat, watch TV, and spend any money he had on scratch tickets. But when Kaya talked about college Eric stopped and listened like a piece of lint being sucked into a vacuum, all up in Kaya’s mouth, leaning into everything she said. Once, he got so close to her he repeated her declaration verbatim, with the exact intonation and pronunciation.

  “I am going to college,” he announced, launching to his feet from the couch. “Make no mistake about it!”

  “Eric,” said my Aunt Rhonda. “All you do is sit in front of that TV. And you ain’t even got your GED. Ain’t no college gonna want you. You got to get that piece of paper first.”

  So Eric said he was going to get his GED. When? Soon, he said. And my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda told him to take Donnel with him. But no one pushed him on it because no one believed he would do it. Not because Eric was slow minded. But because Donnel wasn’t leading and Eric had only liked learning once, when he was in art class in elementary school. So he procrastinated and delayed investigating GED classes. He lied and said he called some schools but the ones that called him back didn’t have any room for him.

  As for me, I didn’t think about college. Rather, I considered it. I paid attention in the school assembly about college that our guidance department held for the entire eleventh grade. I heard them talk about the college admissions process, the applications, preparing for the SAT test. And deep inside, I wanted it. But I neither acted on nor seriously considered my consideration of college. It wasn’t ignorance or laziness. It was that I didn’t believe I should leave Ever; or that I could. I was just as afraid as my uncle. No, I was more. So, no matter what Kaya said, that free SAT test came and went without me.

  III

  Although I was at the park, on a concrete basketball court, the scent was of an old recreation center’s gymnasium; sweet; sweat; old warped wood that had been wet, then dried, then wet and dried again. It was humid and tropical, a bastion of physicality. A half-dozen police cars were parked along Columbus Avenue. Police officers leaned against them. A few folded their arms across their chests. The others stood with one hand propped on their holstered gun. It was the middle of August, the summer of 1999, a little more than four months before the twentieth century came to an end, a new millenium. Some people talked about an apocalypse. The sun was just beginning to set. The lights around the court were beginning to flicker and hum. The day, like all days in Ever, was a day of wanting. I was warming up with my team, dribbling, going through layup lines, shooting jump shots, preparing to play in the championship game of the summer league sponsored by the Police Athletic League. Everyone from Ever, every Lotto player and scratch-ticket junkie, clairvoyant and hellion, temptress and trickster, every calliope and manifesto and sage confounded by the world was gathered around the court. They debated and elated. They established reasons based on historical precedence why they shouldn’t pay taxes and bills. They recalled previous championships and inflated the points they scored in the game. Some sat on milk crates and folding metal chairs. Others stood. Some young brothers climbed and clung from the fence to get a better view.

  Sucking on a lollipop and wearing white shorts so small and tight they might as well have been a stain on her thirty-three-year-old body, my Aunt Rhonda walked through the crowd, flirting and meandering like a cat, aloof yet hopeful.

  “Hey,” she said, waving, winking, pointing her lollipop here and there. “How you doing? Look good? Huh? You want to know me? Shoot, nigga, get a library card. Look up Nefertiti. Then maybe we can talk.”

  Outside the fence, two crackheads, their brown faces gaunt and green, solicited a revolution, declaring and arguing over the fact that they would fight and pummel each other for the sake of our enjoyment while a handful of young, truculent men mocked them, because they could and because they were not as separate from the men as they hoped to be.

  “Time for…,” one crackhead shouted, holding his fists up like a boxer, priming us for their self-loathing.

  “…the war of all wars!” said the other brother.

  “Who cares about basketball? We gonna go at it!” responded the first. “Me and him! We gonna beat each other down!”

  “For a dollar.”

  “Who got a dollar? You got a dollar? For one dollar we’ll make each other bleed!”

  “One dollar, that’s all it takes!”

  Donnel and Eric were in the crowd. And Kaya was there. And my grandma had taken the day off from work so she was there too. But she was supposed to be coming to the game with Mr. Goines, and he was nowhere to be found. So she stood in the crowd with the expression of a barren island surrounded by a sea of people. Her face did not move. She kept her eyes on me. It was as if only I existed, as if she were impatiently demanding yet waiting patiently for me to do that anything, that something she just knew I could do. Ever since my uncle’s coming-home party, Mr. Goines and my grandma had been fighting, arguing about anything and everything. What made it happen was that he kept moving to be a part of our family and my grandma
kept pushing him away, keeping him at arm’s length, crushing him just enough that he came back swinging, not physically, but with frustration and fear. He questioned her loyalty. He said he deserved a woman who supported and welcomed him. He told her that she projected all of the blame of her past heartbreaks onto him. Yet they stayed together.

  Because she had hope. Because she always had hope. And so did he.

  My grandma clapped. She called my name. “C’mon, Abraham,” she said. “Let’s go, baby. Bring that trophy home. We always got room for more.”

  My uncle’s fervent piety had relaxed since he had come home. Wearing an almond-colored linen shirt and pants set, he stood on the sidelines with old friends like Elijah and Hector Mendez, whose five-year-old son, Junior, stood beside them, looking up, studying their expressions and dispositions, a miniature replica of Hector learning what it took to be big.

  “You remember that time you killed those niggas from Bed Stuy?” Elijah asked my uncle. “Dropped fifty on them, sent them back to Brooklyn like bitches.”

  “And you remember when we was like Junior’s age and you was dunking?” Hector asked my uncle.

  “Nigga,” scolded Elijah. “Ain’t no one dunking when they was five! Not even Jordan could do that!”

  “Who’s talking about Jordan?” Hector defended. “I’m talking about Nice, nigga. The king of Ever Park.”

  A ball hit hard off of the rim and bounced to my uncle.

  “See,” laughed Hector. “Just like a baby to its mama. Junior be going to Carmela just like that. Go ahead, shoot.”

  Holding the ball in both hands, my uncle looked down at it like it was a tome, an entire encyclopedia set, an almanac.

  “That’s a basketball,” teased Elijah. “In case you forgot.”

  “Forgot?” said my uncle. “Brother, a man ain’t never forget what he bleeds.”

  My uncle took two dribbles with his right hand, then two dribbles with his left. Then he pointed at the closest rim, which was some twenty-five feet away.

  “Ten bucks says you can’t make it,” Elijah challenged.

  My uncle took one more dribble. Then he raised the ball over his head, flicked his wrist, and shot…an air ball. His friends broke out in raucous laughter. My uncle considered them. Then, as if letting go of a weight, he smiled a sheepish smile that was the first easy smile I’d seen on his face since he’d come home. So it was relief, an expression of the notion that all he had to be was a man, not some immortal, unconquerable hero. But then the smile was not just the product of the air ball, the joy of old friends, or self-acceptance. Luscious was at the court too. She stood on the other side, as far from my uncle as she could stand. But when he missed that shot, he looked across the court and caught her looking at him. Thus, as much as his smile was the product of his missed shot and his friends’ laughter, it was an apology, an admission of smallness in the presence of the beauty he still longed for.

  “Let’s go, A,” Donnel shouted. “Get your head in the game!”

  Donnel stood on the baseline with friends. He glared at me. He knew I was nervous. And he knew all of the reasons, how first I was nervous because I was always nervous before a game. And how I was also nervous because it was a championship game and everyone from Ever was there so people would be talking about the game until the championship game next summer. And Donnel also knew I was nervous because Kaya was there. But more than anything Donnel knew I was nervous because he was nervous, because here was a chance for him to show my uncle how, despite everything, we were great without him; great without Mr. Goines too. Because he, Donnel, was the man of the house; because he had protected me; because he had taught me how to be a man. So I was not just a basketball player who utilized a layman’s version of my uncle’s style of play, that untouchable nonchalance that he had once carried himself with, but I was also fierce and strong.

  “Focus,” Donnel demanded. But he wasn’t satisfied. So he walked out onto the court. “Come here.”

  I stopped warming up and waited for him. When Donnel reached me, he clamped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled my ear to his mouth.

  “We got this,” he said. “Understand?” He pointed at the concrete. “You leave it here. Everything. All the blood, sweat, tears. Ain’t nothing can stop you.”

  The referee blew the whistle. The game began. And we, the ten young brothers on the court, touched hands, embraced, and wished one another luck. Then there was the jump ball. We competed. We defended and offended. We slammed our hands on the small of one another’s backs. We grabbed one another’s jerseys and shorts. We grappled for rebounds and loose balls. We patted one another’s asses, slung our arms over one another’s shoulders, uttered words of love and encouragement. We slipped and skidded on one another’s skin. In any other place, in a dark room, a bright room, the boiler room of the school, a stairwell, a motel on the highway, or in a Jacuzzi on the threshold of Niagara Falls, what we did would have been foreplay, making love minus disrobing and penetration. We sprinted and permeated. We pressed and squeezed one another. We clutched and tore free. And when our lungs were hungry for oxygen, we breathed deeper, harder. We only rested momentarily. When there was a break in the action we put our hands on our knees, blinked, licked the sweat off of our lips or let it fall, watched it spot the concrete.

  All around the court, people rooted and cheered. They shouted our names and nicknames. They ooohed and ahhed. Some hooted. Others hollered. Older men commented on our skills. Younger men shook the fence and banged on it to celebrate our moves. Women delighted over our idiosyncrasies, our musculature, our haircuts, fashion sense, and tattoos.

  “Look at Abraham,” Taquanna shouted into Kaya’s ear. “Nigga still thinks he’s too cute. Walking with that swagger.”

  “Taquanna, shhh!” scolded Kaya, so focused and wanting for me her brow was coated with a sheen of sweat.

  At halftime the game was tied and both of my knees were bleeding from diving on the court. DJ Q spun records, and little sisters, adorned in candy ring pops and candy necklaces, faces stained from ice pops, danced the sugar-fueled synchronized routines they’d choreographed earlier. After my coach told my team what we needed to do, Donnel stormed across the court wielding a towel and a bottle of water like a sword and shield.

  “Keep working,” he said. He straddled my legs as I sat on the court. He bent over, poured water on my knees, and dabbed at my wounds with the towel. “You wearing those niggas down.”

  He studied my injuries. “Ain’t so bad,” he said. Then he looked down at me and smiled. “But A,” he said. “Be smart. Stay on your feet. This is concrete you playing on, not a pillow.”

  He handed me the bottle of water. “Twenty more minutes,” he said. “That’s nothing. So don’t stop fighting. Don’t quit for nothing.”

  Q stopped playing music. The referees blew their whistle for the game to resume. Wesley Timmons, the small, skinny, perpetually starving boy whose responsibility it was to watch the ball for the referees, and who stuffed his loose socks with candy and junk food from the corner store so he could feed his little sister before they fell asleep on the bathroom floor of their aunt’s apartment, tossed the ball to them. Then we, ten young, strong men, walked, ambled, moseyed, and sashayed onto the court.

  I glanced at my uncle. His face was stone, but his eyebrows were crooked, and he bit his bottom lip so he looked proud yet struggling to understand what he’d seen. I didn’t play anything like him. No colleges recruited me. I was not even a starter on my high school basketball team. My coach said I didn’t listen, that I couldn’t listen, that I didn’t know how. Singleton, he’d shout, you got your own agenda, a personal modus fucking operandi. You don’t execute. You’re not organized. You don’t move with purpose! Straight lines, right angles; there were plays I had to abide by, rules for movement, established responsibilities and regulations meant to create and maintain harmony. I was to go from point A to point B at this specific time, when this specific thing happened, this man
y times. But how? All my life I moved when deemed necessary, not as movement was construed. Dart here. Wait there. Try and tell a brother who built his own horn, wrote his own song, and taught himself how to play when to make music: it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t do it. But it wasn’t because I was unruly or disrespectful, or defiant and arrogant in my belief that I knew better than my coach did. I didn’t have the ego of a celebrity or an NBA star. Rather, my style of play wasn’t governable because basketball was the way I lived, so personal every action, every dribble, every pass, every move to the basket, every defensive stance was essential, notes in a song.

  My whole soul went into playing. I fought for position beneath the basket with players twice my size and strength. I swerved. I juked. I loped and jogged and sprinted and I gritted my teeth and swooped. I flipped the ball underhand, hooked it over my shoulder, floated it high off the backboard. I dribbled to the hoop without the consideration of ever being stopped. I threw blind passes around my back. I played with my mind but I was fueled by burning guts. I warred. I smashed. And I talked trash with a wounding precision. With an omnipotent hate, with the knowledge of what hurt most gained only through projection, I told you what your mother was and what your father was and what that made you no matter how determined you were, how hard you tried not to be. I said such things because I had heard them all before, because although I was able to fight through them, I knew their weight, how the steady procession of derisions could knock even the greatest man down, chisel his stone pedestal and armor away.