by Janet Walker
***
“Tracy?”
The soft voice melted into Tracy’s consciousness. Her cheek lay against a soft white pillow. She turned over in bed and looked at the doorway. Miz Grace stood with her hand on the doorknob, wearing a dark silk robe, her lips bare, her face an even brown color, hair falling haphazardly to her shoulders. Tracy squinted. So this is what beautiful people looked like in the morning.
The woman smiled. “Good morning,” she said in the same soft pleasant voice that had awakened the teen.
Tracy smiled sleepily and sat up. “Morning.”
“Sleep well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I thought we could get dressed and go out for breakfast?”
The tone of her coach’s voice surprised Tracy. She wasn’t used to Miz Grace giving orders that sounded like questions. Tracy nodded once in approval. “Yes, ma’am,” she said and threw back the covers.
When they were showered and dressed, they went to a restaurant in a luxury hotel with marble floors and glass ceilings. After her trip to the breakfast bar, Tracy came to the table with enough items to justify her having two plates: grits, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage links, sausage patties, and pancakes. Grace’s single plate contained cubes of cantaloupe, honeydew melon and pineapple, and wedges of orange and grapefruit.
“That’s all you gonna eat?” Tracy asked critically.
“Are you gonna eat all that?” Grace countered.
They laughed.
“You haven’t listened to anything I’ve said in our nutrition sessions, have you?”
“Yeah, I have,” the girl insisted, spearing a sausage link. “You said eat healthy. I’m eating healthy!” She pointed. “I got the meat group. Bread. What’s the other one?”
“The other ones are fruit and vegetable, and dairy.”
“I got dairy!” the girl declared triumphantly. “Butter!” she said, pointing at her pancake.
“What about fruits and vegetables?”
The girl’s triumph fell away before she flinched happily with a new thought. “Orange juice!” She picked up her glass. “I got that, and that’s fruit.”
Grace eyed the girl with mock disapproval. She picked up her own fork and speared a cut of honeydew. “I hate to see how you eat when I’m not around, Sullivan.”
The girl smiled and dug hungrily into her meal.
After breakfast, they drove to a mall to catch after-Thanksgiving sales. On the way, they passed a mall complex, and Tracy asked why they hadn’t stopped. Grace smiled secretly and said, “Might see some of your classmates there. I know a safer place.” Tracy grew sober at the comment; it reminded her of Miz Grace’s rule about keeping their friendship a secret.
When they arrived at the chosen mall, Tracy did not know in which city they were, but she knew they had traveled thirty minutes to get there and that she never saw anyone she knew. In fact, most of the shoppers were white, and while many glanced at Grace twice or smiled when they saw her, that was largely the extent of intrusion from them. “Do they know who you are?” Tracy asked. “They think they do,” Grace replied. At one point, a smiling white couple approached them. The woman, clutching her husband’s arm, said in a melodic and pleasant Georgia drawl, “Excuse us, but mah husband and I were wondering who you are.” A moment’s hesitation, of anticipation, hung over the four—Tracy, Grace, the man and woman—before Grace smiled and said, “I get that all the time. But I’m not anyone you would know.”
Tracy’s eyes snapped wide with surprise, but a sliding glance from her coach instructed her to remain quiet.
“Oh, well, we’re sorry,” the lady apologized, her cheeks flushed. “It’s just that you’re so pretty, and the way you carry yourself we thought you might be somebody famous.”
Grace smiled politely but said nothing else, and the couple moved away with embarrassed expressions of farewell.
When they were gone, Tracy looked at Grace, puzzled. “They wouldn’t have told anybody about us, Miz Grace,” the teen said.
Grace gazed straight ahead as they walked. “That had nothing to do with us, Tracy,” she said softly.
By lunchtime, they had accumulated several bags of clothes from The Gap, Rich’s, Macy’s, Lerner’s, and other boutiques. It had been, for Tracy, an exhilarating experience, literally a dream come true, to walk into a clothing store and choose anything she wanted. “Anything, Miz Grace?” she had asked to make sure she’d heard the woman correctly. “Anything” had been the reply. “As long as it’s tasteful.” And with that permission, Tracy Sullivan had floated to her favorite stores and selected an outfit at each place—one outfit, because her aunt-instilled conscience told her not to be greedy, though she longed to be, for the first time in her life. When it was over, she held in her hands bags containing four pairs of pants, four shirts, and a pair of high-heeled ankle boots, and her heart thudded warmly in her chest and she glowed with a happiness she had never felt before. “Thank you, Miz Grace! Thank you!” she squealed.
Lunch was at a darkened restaurant where the food was delicious, and Tracy kept staring across the table in disbelief at the beautiful woman, her coach, Jazz Nelson’s wife, Amazing Grace, Miz Grace, and felt disembodied, as if such a fantastic experience were happening to some other girl and not to her.
“Tracy? Did you hear what I said?”
Tracy snapped out of her staring daze. “Huh?”
“Where’s your brain, Sullivan?”
“I’m sorry. I was just… Um, what you asked me?”
A smile leapt into Grace’s eyes. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Tracy smiled, blushing, looked away. “Oh. Nope,” she admitted.
Grace nodded with grave interest. “Why not?”
“I just… My mama say she’ll kill me if I get pregnant.”
“Just because you have a boyfriend doesn’t mean you have to get pregnant.”
“I know.”
“Is there one that you like?”
“Uh…nope. I mean, there’s some I see I think they cute, but…none I wanna go with. Well,” she added, “one, but…he already go with somebody.”
Grace was quiet a moment and then carefully said, “Beware of pretty boys. They expect to conquer. And so they prey on good girls like you.”
Tracy snapped a glance at the woman, searching, wondering. One day last month, Miz Grace had caught Tracy and Eric talking to each other in the gym before basketball practice. Even though the main door that connected the academies’ twin gyms remained locked on the boys’ side, on the girls’ side the door simply had to be pushed by its handle in order to be opened. Some girl had done so because when Tracy passed by, the door was ajar and in the space of the opening crouched Eric Richardson, stage-whispering her name and beckoning her over. Tracy was distressed by the invitation—didn’t that fool know better? What if they were caught by Coach Tab or Coach Julia or the mean staffers or Miz Grace? And what if somebody told Sheila Roundtree? Still, Tracy had gone over to see what Eric wanted. “Boy, you gon’ get me in trouble” was her greeting, to which Eric laughed and said, “What, I can’t say hello to you now? You too much of a superstar to talk to me now?” he teased lightheartedly. She had cut her eyes at him and was about to rattle off the list of reasons he should leave her alone, but before she could, Miz Grace materialized at Tracy’s elbow, startling both teens because they had not seen her walk up. “I will personally see to it that you don’t have a college career, Eric Richardson, if I ever catch you doing this again” was Miz Grace’s stern greeting. “Oh!” Eric responded nervously, “I-I’m sorry, Miz Grace!” She pulled the door shut in his face and burned a look at Tracy. “What’s the rule about this door, Sullivan?” she had asked, speaking softly—and curtly, for they had not yet become friends. “Um, we shouldn’t…it shouldn’t be open?” Tracy had replied. Miz Grace had merely stared at her with disapproval before softly stating, “Disregard it again and you’ll be wearing black and gold this season. I promise you that.” Only a
fter the coach was walking away did Tracy connect the remark with its meaning. Black and gold were the school colors for L. Carlton Haines.
Now, as they sat across from each other at the restaurant table, Tracy gazed at the woman, the frightening coach who had incredibly become an affectionate friend and had just warned her to beware of pretty boys, and the teen nodded in obedience and promised, “Yes, ma’am.”
“And remember, if a young man is already involved with someone but tries to approach you, that’s not a compliment to you. It’s an insult, because he has shown you that he doesn’t think you deserve someone who’s only interested in you. It means he has a character flaw, and just as he’s trying to cheat with you on his girlfriend, he’ll do the same thing to you, if he gets you.”
“Oh.”
Grace hesitated. “What does your aunt say about boys?”
“She says I shouldn’t get serious since I’m too young to get married right now.”
“Good advice. What does she say about sex?”
“She just say don’t do it. ’Cause it’s fornication.”
Surprise registered on Grace’s face but she quickly erased it and spoke carefully.
“I know we haven’t known each other that long, Tracy, but I care about you. And not just because you’re my player. I—” The words love you appeared in Grace Gresham’s mind, surprising her, but she quickly disposed of them and finished, “—want you to be happy. And one of the ways to do that is to not let anyone take away the control you should have over your body. The most precious thing in the world is having the opportunity to give your virginity away, instead of having it stolen. Right now, you’re a beautiful clean temple, and many men are going to want to defile you. Don’t let them. Make sure the one you let in cares about you. And even then, no matter what he says, no matter what, Tracy, make him wear a condom. Insist that he wear one. Do you hear me?”
Tracy’s cheeks flushed. “Yes, ma’am,” she mumbled, looking at her plate.
“Tracy, look at me.”
The girl obeyed.
The woman continued. “It’s like you have a beautiful home with pretty white carpet. A man comes to your door with muddy boots on and wants to come inside. You say, ‘First, take off your boots.’ And he says, ‘But I’m much more comfortable with my shoes on.’ Do you let him come in with the muddy boots, or do you insist he take them off?”
“I’ll make him take ’em off,” the girl answered.
“And if he doesn’t, you don’t let him come inside, no matter how much he begs. Do you understand?”
Again, Tracy lowered her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
Manicured pretty hand reached out and grasped the unrefined teen hand and squeezed it.
Tracy, surprised by the contact, looked up at the woman’s face to see what the touch was for.
“I mean that, Tracy. Never let any man do anything to you that makes you uncomfortable. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl replied.
Grace released Tracy’s hand and they finished the rest of their meal.
After lunch, they returned to the mansion. So that Tracy could see the features of the property, they mounted a golf cart the Nelsons used to get around the estate. At one point, they dismounted and entered the small building that housed the basketball and racquetball courts. There, Tracy picked up the orange sphere of her favorite hobby and smiled.
“Come on, Miz Grace. Let’s play Twenty-One.”
Grace opened her hands in a gesture that meant she wanted Tracy to throw the ball. The girl obeyed. “No,” Grace said. “Let’s play Amazing.”
Tracy made a confused face. “What?”
Grace pointed at the court floor, on which were painted blue circles with white letters on them. The circles were located at various points across the court, from inside the lane to the free-throw line to the three-point zone. “These circles each have a letter. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Stand on a letter in the proper order and shoot. If you hit each shot, you’ve spelled amazing.” Grace dribbled the ball several times and swiftly passed to Tracy. “You want to go first?” she asked.
Tracy bounce-passed the ball back. “Nah, you can go. Age first,” she teased.
Grace caught the pass and smirked. “All right,” she said and dribbled to the free-throw line. “But remember, you have to match or exceed what I do.”
“I got it.”
Tracy watched as her coach positioned herself for the shot. She had never seen Miz Grace in the position to play ball, and the sight struck her as strange, as if they were momentarily not coach and student but two students.
The ball sank through the nets neatly, making them snap.
Tracy made an impressed face and retrieved the rebound. “That was pretty, Miz Grace,” she said sincerely. “But probably a lucky shot,” she teased.
“That’s A,” Grace said, a smile lingering behind her features. She calmly dribbled to the top of the key, where she positioned herself, shot, and sank the ball. “That’s M,” she said.
“Whoa,” exclaimed Tracy softly. She retrieved the rebound, threw it back.
Grace returned to the freethrow line, hit again. “A.”
“Look at you!” the girl exclaimed in approval and again retrieved and threw the ball. Grace shot from just outside the key.
“Z.”
Tracy’s lips parted in wonder. Grace caught the pass from the girl and launched another shot from a nearby position. She smiled. “I.”
“Dag, Miz Grace,” Tracy said softly and tossed the ball back.
Grace stepped away from the key and launched again.
“N.”
A pass and a shot from the sideline.
“G.”
Tracy stared in awe.
“Pass it back,” the woman said. The girl obeyed. Grace went downtown, to the area of the floor between the top of the key and the half-court line, and shot. The ball went in.
Tracy stared, mouth open.
“That’s the exclamation point,” the woman explained. “You don’t have to duplicate that.” She walked over to the girl, who stood near the basket, and held the ball up for Tracy to take. “Your turn,” she challenged.
Tracy held the ball and did not move, but in that moment she decided she would never, never question anything Miz Grace told her to do.
