by Janet Walker
***
For the next three weekends, Tracy found herself again inside the gray-glass luxury of Grace’s Jaguar, on her way to the black-owned luxury of King Estates, heading for the white-walled luxury of Gracewood Mansion. Throughout this time, the Grace Girls had six ball games—two on Tuesdays, one on Friday, the other three on Saturdays. The Friday game occurred the first weekend, and when it ended, Tracy went home with Grace that night, because the team no longer practiced on Saturday mornings. On the last two weekends, there were no Friday games, so Tracy waited after school, bubbling with secret joy, so that she could leave campus with Grace. Each time she drove home with Grace, Tracy reminded herself she was not experiencing a dream, that she was, indeed, blessed with a friendship with the woman she thought the most wonderful person in the world.
On her second visit to the mansion, which occurred the first weekend in December, Darrel Nelson was home, just as Grace had said he would be. Thrilled and overwhelmed by his presence, Tracy found herself bent low on the indoor court of the estate, hands stretched out before her as she sought to check and guard Jazz Nelson and prevent him from making a basket. She was at first intimidated by his presence, warm-faced and tongue-tied, while Grace kept assuring her that Darrel “didn’t bite” and was really a much nicer person than she was. In the end, after an abbreviated game of one-on-one, during which he gave her pointers and graciously allowed her to execute a spin and fake that left him staring at her in surprise, Tracy came to regard Darrel as she imagined she would a kind older brother. It was an encounter that left her in trembling disbelief for a day.
On that same visit, Tracy learned that Grace’s secret Sunday errand was disseminating sandwiches and fruit drinks to homeless people in a park downtown. Standing with Grace at the open trunk of the woman’s black BMW, Tracy helped pass out the food items with silent admiration for the woman she called coach. Miz Grace was an angel, she thought. Mean and unsmiling at school, but really an angel. “And this angel likes me,” she kept thinking. “A girl Mama always said nobody would like. This pretty angel likes me.” Afterwards, as they drove away from the scene, she asked, “Why do you do that?” Grace pondered the question before answering softly, “Because I can.”
Later, they walked through the luxurious Phipps Plaza, Atlanta’s mall for the rich, where Tracy’s mouth dropped open in shock at the price tags in Saks Fifth Avenue. “Two thousand dollars? What fool would pay that much for a coat?” the girl scorned. Grace pretended to be insulted. “I beg your pardon!” she said defensively, and they laughed. In Neiman Marcus, Tracy refused to choose any merchandise for herself—Aunt Madge had sternly instructed her to refrain from accepting any further purchases offered by the teacher—but Grace, unaware of the girl’s real reason for refusing, insisted on getting Tracy something. It turned out to be a two-hundred-dollar necklace and earring set. Tracy, who had eyed the set and then moved on to other browsing—including trying on, at Grace’s insistence, an outfit—gasped in surprise when she emerged from the dressing room and found the flashing yellow-gold set in a blue velvet jewelry case the woman handed to her. Tracy’s eyes blurred and she embraced the woman harder than she had ever embraced anyone in her life—with the possible exception of her aunt, but Tracy was not sure if the hugs she gave Aunt Madge ever matched the intensity of emotion she felt when she embraced Miz Grace in Neiman’s.
On the following weekend, Darrel Nelson was out of town for a road game, so the weekend became, for Tracy and Grace, one of athletic adventure and fun. In the exercise room on the second floor of the mansion, Grace demonstrated how to use the weight machine. Tracy tried to imitate the movements but trembled with the effort before giving up. Afterwards, they each mounted a machine—Tracy, a stair climber; Grace, the treadmill—and vigorously strode to the music of Janet Jackson’s “When I Think of You.” The lyrics of the ebullient love song buoyed Tracy’s spirits and made her pump zestfully on the climbing machine.
That evening, they drove into town for a Beck-Riverdale game, after which Tracy returned with Grace to the mansion. The next morning they dressed in green-and-black biker outfits and headed for the health club where Grace and Darrel were members. Joyner’s Health Club impressed Tracy; it was much like the Beck sports complex. And the fact that the club was an exclusive-membership establishment made Tracy feel both unworthy and privileged when she walked in with Miz Grace, who everybody at the club seemed to know and like. They rented a pair of the club’s trail bikes from a dark black man who wore spandex shorts and had more muscles than Tracy had ever seen on a body. She was dazzled by the man’s good looks, and was amused and thrilled when he subtly flirted with Miz Grace. “Anything for you, Mrs. Nelson,” the man said when Grace asked for the best bikes in stock. Later, Tracy exchanged a secret grin with the man, for she had caught him watching Grace in admiration as the woman walked away.
Outside, Tracy and Grace whizzed along the spa’s six-mile bike trail, going first in one direction, then in the other, until their lungs grabbed heaping portions of air and their brown complexions glowed pink with the warmth of rushing blood. It was, for Tracy, the most fun she had ever had exercising, and it astounded her when Grace told her afterwards that they had pedaled twelve miles. After the workout, they showered, received massages from spa staff members, and changed into street clothes. Tracy felt pampered and tingly and new, and at one point she worried that the happiness in her heart would expand to the point of bursting.
On the third weekend in December, Beck faced Haines in their celebrated Christmas tournament. At noon the next day, Grace left Tracy at Nyeema’s Beauty Spa in Buckhead and then drove to Phipps to shop. At Nyeema’s, the salon’s namesake personally undertook the transformation of Grace Nelson’s feminine tomboy pupil into an elegant, striking, pretty young woman. Mrs. Rich NBA Wife had paid handsomely for the special Sunday appointment—Nyeema’s was normally closed on that day. But Nyeema liked Grace Nelson, and more than that, she liked the woman’s persuasive monetary tactics, so Nyeema cleaned and waxed the teen’s skin; carefully arched her brows; artfully applied makeup to the girl’s face; delivered a thorough manicure and pedicure; and deep-conditioned, relaxed, cut, and blow-dried the girl’s hair into a classy, shoulder-length, bone-straight pageboy that parted on the side and curved toward the chin. A photographer Nyeema contracted took pictures of the new look and promised to get them to his client the next day. Afterwards, when Grace returned to pick up the teen, she and Tracy observed the girl’s new look in a mirror and squealed in delight, hugging each other excitedly. To celebrate, Grace drove Tracy to Phipps, where she had outfits picked out for the girl to try in the dressing rooms of Saks, Neiman’s, and Lord & Taylor. In the end, there was an elegant caramel knit pants ensemble, two pairs of trendy solid-print wide-legged pants with matching vests and funky clogs, and a seductive cream-colored, body-hugging cashmere dress whose hem, as it turned out, ended above the girl’s knees. There were also two pairs of blue jeans, a pair of Capri slacks, a Navy jacket, a camel-hair swing coat, flesh-colored classic leather pumps, black flats, and leather riding boots. At the end of the shopping trip, Tracy had delivered to the woman another tremendous embrace that left them both breathless.
They had first come together as friends on Thursday, November 22, and the spa makeover occurred Sunday, December 16. For Tracy, the twenty-five days were a glorious passage of time. Not only had she met Jazz Nelson and become Miz Grace’s friend, she had also found herself at the center of attention wherever she went in school. None of the students knew the depth of her friendship with Miz Grace, but they knew the two had a special connection, and this made Tracy the most envied student at the academies. As she passed down the corridors of Beck, a blur of friendly faces passed by and offered praise for her ball playing. Not-so-friendly faces challenged her on court, both at practice and during actual games, and dared her to try one of her successful moves. Shrill blows of referees’ whistles pierced her ears. The vibrating thunder of clapping hands and stomping
feet made her flesh tremble. Swirls of color surrounded her—burgundy and tan and orange and green and other foreign-colored pompons and uniforms. Congratulatory slaps pounded against her shoulder blades. Eric Richardson’s gray eyes studied her discreetly before and after games, and in the cafeteria on Wednesdays and Fridays, but he had not spoken to her since the day Grace caught him stealing a conversation with Tracy in the doorway that connected the gymnasiums.
Approval for Tracy’s ball-playing issued also from Grace, with discreet looks of admiration when they were courtside, and with tender words of appreciation when they were alone in her office. Tracy averaged 27 points and 15 rebounds a game. She amazed not only the world of Beck, but auditoriums full of people, including scouts from NCAA colleges. The scouts had learned about Grace’s rookie-to-watch through the Sports Illustrated article in which Josh Shepherd wrote that Tracy could “quite possibly become the most exciting athlete women’s high-school sports has seen since, well, her own coach”—a quote that pleased Grace immensely.
At some point during the month, Grace and Tracy began holding conversations, between sixth period and basketball practice, at the woman’s table-desk on the gym floor, something other students noted with curiosity, for many had long wished for, and ever been denied, the opportunity to converse privately with Miz Grace. And so most were baffled by the attention she gave to Tracy Sullivan. But Tracy, in her state of pleasant oblivion, was not aware of how deeply she was envied at school. She was not aware that her conversations at home with her aunt and uncle always drifted to the topic of Grace and the team. She was not fully aware that her sudden rapt attention in class and her increased desire to do homework, as well as her sudden complete lack of interest in anything she heard at the Kingdom Hall, were the results of her desire to fulfill the role of being a disciple of Grace. And whenever she spoke to schoolmates on the phone (for she had acquired Beck friends—or at least girls who desired to be her friends), even as she chatted agreeably and sometimes allowed them to discuss the goings-on in their lives—yes, even as she did all this, Tracy’s conversations always eventually, inevitably turned to the topic of Miz Grace.
