by Janet Walker
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It was the best day of her life. Ever. From the moment they rolled away from her aunt’s house, Tracy felt at once numb and exuberant, filled with a foreign happiness she immediately found addictive. The strange pleasure made her heart thump loudly when the two of them entered the Georgia Summit sports arena through the VIP entrance in back. She floated with disbelief while walking beside the beautiful Miz Grace, whom arena workers addressed politely as Mrs. Nelson, and the feeling continued in the Family Lounge, a large room located high up in the arena stands, where the families of the Majestics—wives and girlfriends and children mostly, but also mothers and men—sat above the crowds and socialized before, during and after the game and ate food Tracy realized was far better than the hotdogs and nachos the fans munched below. In fact, the buffet was a complete Thanksgiving dinner that included turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie, and other dishes, and although Tracy wanted to partake of the food, for some reason she had no appetite. In the Family Lounge, people called Miz Grace Grace, although an old white man who Miz Grace said was a writer for Sports Illustrated came briefly into the room and boomed, “Gresham!” when he saw her. Tracy noted with appreciation the way Miz Grace introduced her to others. Her coach seemed proud at each introduction, placing a hand on Tracy’s arm or back, smiling fondly and speaking with warmth. At first, it was This is one of my players, Tracy Sullivan. Then it became This is a dear young friend of mine, Tracy Sullivan. And to the Sports Illustrated reporter: This is Tracy Sullivan. She’s a sophomore but she’s my starting shooting guard this year. You’ll want to keep an eye on her.
Tracy was proud to be seen with Miz Grace. The outfit her coach wore had proven to be more appealing, when Tracy saw the woman standing, than it had been in the car. When the woman was seated, it looked like a pantsuit, but now, as she stood in the lounge, Tracy saw that the outfit was actually a floor-length knit dress that hugged the torso and hips snugly and flowed loosely beneath the buttocks. Its most dramatic feature, however, was a side split that parted up to the thigh, revealing a perfectly shaped leg clad in silken brown pantyhose. The exposed leg, like its hidden counterpart, was enclosed up to the calf in a snug-fitting suede flat boot. Tracy overheard Miz Grace tell somebody’s pretty wife, who had inquired about the outfit, that the boots were Gucci and the dress, Armani. When Tracy first saw the split and sexy thigh of her coach, she blushed. It was the first time she had seen Miz Grace the way Scooby and others must have seen her—as a woman, after all.
While Tracy longed to see the game up close, Grace preferred to view the action on one of the huge TV monitors in the Family Lounge. So she enlisted somebody’s friendly niece—another tall girl who, unlike Tracy, was quite at ease in her surroundings—to accompany Tracy down to the floor, where Majestics players had courtside seats. “It’s okay?” Tracy asked before walking away, for she didn’t know if it was rude to leave the woman or not. “Yes,” Grace insisted, smiling. “Go! Stay until the end, if you like. I’ll be here, waiting.”
The friendly niece, Tracy learned, turned out to be Jessica, and her uncle was the Majestics’ starting forward Jason Mathers, who had been in the league for years and had been a key factor last year in helping the Majestics win the Playoffs. Jessica was pleasant and conversant, explaining anything to Tracy she thought needed an explanation. My uncle this and my uncle that fell from Jessica’s lips during most of the first half, while Tracy sat overwhelmed by the sights and sounds: the cheers and humming conversation of more than two thousand fans; the hundreds of lights in the ceiling of the spacious auditorium; the loud buzzers and bells and shrill whistle blows; the thunder of running feet against wood as the players sprinted up and down the court—smaller, almost boyish versions of the sweaty brown-skinned monoliths she had watched on TV all her life. I can do that I can do that I can play like them she thought at one point. And she did not fail to notice the TV cameras and rows of photographers, some of which knelt only a few feet away from her and Jessica to shoot the action on court. Tracy wondered how they would have reacted if Miz Grace had been courtside, too. Earlier that day, when she and Miz Grace entered the auditorium, early-arriving fans and some of the Summit staff had asked for the woman’s autograph. When that happened, Tracy had turned and regarded Miz Grace with awe—the same look she would give the woman later that night, when she saw the word Gracewood etched on the wall outside of Grace’s home.
