Janae

by LJ Alonge

  “Yeah!” we yelled into the wind.

  Now we’re on Coach Wise’s lawn. The grass is beyond dead. His house is a low-slung bungalow with gutters full of leaves, newspapers for blinds. A lawn chair rests on its side, next to an old, shriveled hose.

  “Coach!” we yell. “Coach!”

  I put my ear to the door. I hear rustling, a chair scraping across the floor, the pages of a book flipping rapidly.

  “Coach,” I say. “What the hell was that?”

  “Back already?” he asks.

  “You left us!”

  He opens the door. A dollop of shaving cream rests on his Adam’s apple. He’s in a brown suit and matching fedora. His shoes are buffed to a mirrored sheen. He looks full of pride until he sees us glowering at him, and then he laughs in a kind of frightened way.

  “I have seen many things,” he stutters. “But one thing you never get tired of seeing is a team coming together. This is cause for celebration.”

  He starts clapping. We’re hungry and tired and thirsty. We walked around an entire city in one night. We peed in dank alleys. We cut our fingers hopping over chain-link fences. We are not in the mood.

  “I suggest you explain some things,” Frank says, cracking his knuckles.

  “I am also very upset with you,” Mike says, halfheartedly kicking the lawn chair.

  We all nod.

  Coach Wise pulls out a trash bag from behind the front door and leaps off the porch. He approaches us cautiously, holding the bag far out in front of him. I snatch it. He stands back, his mouth in a hopeful half smile. I pull out a bunch of gold-and-blue jerseys. Our names are printed in block letters on the backs. The letters are crooked, and the jerseys are too big when we try them on, sure—but they’re ours. They’re ours.

  At first, we timidly walk around the yard in them, craning our necks to see our names. We trace the stitching. Then we ask people passing by how we look, older people who don’t care and tell us so. But by then we’re strutting around, taking group pictures with imaginary cameras, doing pretend postgame interviews. If you’re not with us, we don’t care what you have to say.

  “Now,” Coach Wise says, “now you look like a team.”

  On the front of the jerseys is our name: TEAM BLACKTOP.

  That way, Coach Wise says, we’ll never forget where we came from.

  LJ Alonge has played pickup basketball in Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Kenya, South Africa, and Australia. Basketball’s always helped him learn about his community, settle conflicts, and make friends from all walks of life. He’s never intimidated by the guy wearing a headband and arm sleeve; those guys usually aren’t very good. As a kid, he dreamed of dunking from the free-throw line. Now, his favorite thing to do is make bank shots. Don’t forget to call “bank!”

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