by LJ Alonge
I leave that part out of the version I tell Tomás.
“So do you think you have an issue with impulse control?” Officer Appleby asked.
“No,” I said, “I think I have an issue with liking nice cars.”
That’s how it is with us, always a back-and-forth. Officer Appleby tries to give me Adult Wisdom. I stick to my guns and come back with real talk. Once he dropped his voice real low, trying to sound all soothing, and asked why I hated school so much. Why did I throw erasers at kindly substitute teachers? Why did I feel it acceptable to come to school reeking of marijuana? I asked him to tell me what was so interesting about school. Learning stories about old dead white dudes who never did nothing for nobody but themselves? Not interested.
“Surely,” Officer Appleby said, “Shakespeare is not merely some ‘old, dead white dude.’”
Officer Appleby’s the kind of person who thinks that everything you need to know comes from books. Every weekend he stars in a theater troupe called the Bleeding Hearts.
They do kid-friendly versions of Shakespeare. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a bronze retablo of Shakespeare, the way Mamá has one of her mother in that creepy corner of the living room.
“He is to me,” I said.
He looked at me with one eyebrow cocked, like I was stupid. But I ain’t no dummy. I know all kinds of facts. I know that there are no pain receptors in the brain. I know that Venus used to look a lot like Earth before its atmosphere fried. I know that California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas all used to be a part of Mexico. I know how to tie seven different kinds of knots. I know all kinds of stuff even if I do think school is b.s.
Today, Officer Appleby wants to know what nonviolent strategies I might use to resolve conflicts. My next fight could mean expulsion from the district. We’re riding in his squad car through the neighborhood with the windows down. A smoky, barbecue-y breeze is blowing in. Norteño floats in from a party somewhere. On one block a bunch of kids with water guns chase each other across the street, the streams pinging the side of the car as we pass. On the next block two viejos look under the hood of an old Ford sitting on cinder blocks. Officer Appleby waves at them. They stand up straight and watch us pass before they bend over again.
“I don’t have any strategies,” I say.
“Here’s another question: Do you consider your conflict resolution methods to be effective?”
“When I’m fighting? I mean, the conflict pretty much ends right there. That’s effective to me.”
We hit a stop sign and a stray dog jumps in front of the car. It just stands there in front of the bumper, working at an itch on its matted back. Officer Appleby waits, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel. Anybody who’s been in our neighborhood for five minutes knows that dog is blind as hell. He ain’t moving. I reach over and honk the horn and it runs off.
“That’s what I mean,” Officer Appleby says. He’s trying not to sound annoyed. “The difference between being patient and impatient.”
“Patience would’ve had us sitting here all day like dumbasses.”
“‘Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.’” He flips his shades up, impressed with himself. “Hamlet.”
He turns the volume on the scanner all the way down and every few seconds he clears his throat. I think he wants me to ask him how he handles conflict, so I ask.
“A very good question,” he says brightly. “Little known fact about Shakespeare is that he was very antiwar, anti-conflict. He believed in carefully picking one’s battles. For example: I would like a promotion at work. I have served capably for over ten years now and still no promotion. But am I going to come right out and ask for a promotion? Do I listen to my wife and storm into my boss’s office, making ultimatums? No. That might make some very important people very mad. And maybe those people were just about to give me a promotion. And then where would my promotion be? Dead, that’s where. DOA. So I will continue to work diligently and be patient and wait for my opportunity and be extra-prepared when it comes.”
I stare out the window, at the dog wandering into the middle of another intersection. “How do you know it’s coming?”
“It will come. They always come.”
CHAPTER 3
PARADISE LOST
Coach Wise wants to know if we’ve ever heard of the word complacent.
“Any guesses?” he asks.
He blows his whistle and we’re running again. Justin and Janae run together, slow and steady, their arms and legs in sync. Behind them, White Mike has started walking. His cheeks are fired up, lava red. Adrian puts a hand on his back, trying to push him forward, but it’s no use. Mike’s too big and Adrian’s too small. I haven’t been able to feel my legs for fifteen minutes. The sun killed all the clouds; we’re getting deep-fried out here. When we finish we all crowd around a little bit of shade under the backboard, panting like dogs. It’s been thirty minutes of this, punishment for a bad practice. Last time I was this tired I was hopping fences, running from some stoner who realized I was selling him dirt. But at least I was making money.
“Complacent means,” I say, taking a deep breath, “that this running shit is for the birds.”
It’s true that we’re out of shape, but I’m not a rabbit—I don’t just run for no reason. I walk to the nearest tree and don’t look back. In the shade the sweat on my back turns cool. I don’t care about all the ants crawling over the bark. I close my eyes and lean against the trunk. It feels good here, better than good, and if my team had any sense they’d join me. Soon enough, White Mike walks over and lies down real slow next to me. He presses his cheeks into the dirt, first one side, then the other. Then everyone else comes, too.
“Well,” Coach Wise says, tossing us water bottles, “I hope everyone has learned their lesson.”
“Lesson?” I ask. My mouth is bone-dry but I don’t pick up the water. “You gonna revive me when I get heat stroke?”
Coach Wise shakes his head. “I was trying to make a point about your effort level. It was bad today. You’re developing bad habits.”
“The only habit we got is winning. Focus on that habit.”
Janae sits up. She splashes water on her face and pours some on Justin’s head. “I agree that we do need to practice hard,” she says diplomatically, “but I also agree that we might not have to practice this hard.”
Now that Janae’s spoken up, Justin has the courage to say something, too. “My vision was getting a little blurry for a second,” he says, quickly taking a sip of water.
Coach Wise gulps down an entire bottle, as if he’s done anything but blow his whistle. “You said you wanted to play inside, so we’re getting ready to play inside. It’s a different game.”
“Basketball’s basketball,” I say. “Inside, outside, wherever. It don’t become magic because the floor’s different. You lace up your shoes and hoop.”
Coach Wise shrugs. He says fine, he may not agree, but at the end of the day it’s our team. He spends the next thirty minutes droning about strategy for our next game. I’m sure it’s important, but I’ve got better things to do, like watch this ant run over my shoulder. It’s making crazy zigzags, running for its life. Right before it gets back to the tree I smash it.
Papá said he’s coming to my next game. He said so this afternoon, while I was helping him hook up our new TV. Mamá’s mad at him for buying it. She walked right past him when she got home, didn’t respond when he said hi. Papá couldn’t care less. Wait until Uncle Eddie sees it, he said. He’s going to piss his pants! I held it in place as he screwed it to the wall.
“You got it?” he asked.
“I got it,” I said.
“You sure?”
I gripped the edges tighter. “I said I got it.”
“Imagine the Raiders on this. Gonna be like we’re there.”
He grunted as he t
ightened a screw.
“Mamí will come around. Throw a nice horror flick on with a bunch of blood and she’ll come around.”
I watched him tighten the screws until they wouldn’t turn any more. He held all the screws in his mouth, in his cheek, like he was chewing tobacco. When he wanted to put in a new screw, he held one in his teeth, sucked the spit off, and spit it into his hand.
“You said your game’s inside, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re playing inside now. At the middle school. Just a scrimmage.”
“Good. Playing inside will be good for you.” He pointed his screwdriver at me. “You getting a little dark, Frankie.”
I looked down at my arms. They looked regular, maybe a little browner than usual, but regular. I’ve always been darker than Papá, whose cheeks can turn red as White Mike’s.
“The game’s tomorrow,” I said, ignoring Papá. “Five thirty.”
He tightened one last screw and stepped back. He pulled me over and put his arm around me. We looked at our reflections in the screen. “Ain’t you happy you got an old man who’s good with his hands? Ain’t you happy about that?”
I show up to the gym early, before the janitors have swept the dust off the floors. I take a couple of laps to loosen up, my shoes squeaking against the hardwood. It’s strange-sounding and part of me starts to miss the sound of the concrete, the way the gravel crackles. Since I don’t have a ball, I practice with an imaginary one, up and down the court, crossing over imaginary defenders and hitting imaginary lay-ups until I’m good and sweaty.
Slowly, the gym starts to fill. First, the janitors, who wipe down the floors. Then the ref shows up, a short guy who tucks his shirt deep into his shorts. By game time there’s maybe twenty people in the stands, including Papá, who’s in his work clothes, his shirt and jeans wrinkled because Mamá’s still not talking to him. A couple of feet from him is Officer Appleby. They’ll spend the whole game talking about my progress, how I’ve come so far this summer. Papá will laugh politely at his jokes, thinking he’s just doing what it takes to keep me in Officer Appleby’s good graces.
The other team huddles up at the other end of the court. They don’t look like nothing special. Nobody who looks crazy fast or strong or big. Nothing to be worried about.
“Okay,” Coach Wise says. “Just play our game. Do what you’ve been doing all summer.”
“Winning time,” I tell Justin. He daps me. I give Papá a thumbs-up and he gives me one back.
We win the tip. I get the ball, do my usual crossover and drive down the lane. I’m surrounded by three guys, so many hands and arms I can’t see nothing. I try to pass the ball out to Justin but it’s intercepted and they get an easy two. That’s my bad. The next time down, I pass it to Janae on the wing, but they close out on her quick, like they know she likes to catch and shoot. Janae’s not great going to the basket, so the ball gets poked away. Another fast break, another two points. Coach Wise folds his arms across his chest. I look up at Papá and he’s tipped his head to the side, the way he does when he can’t believe the A’s have given up a late-inning homer.
The whole game is like this. They trap me at half-court and force me to throw the ball into the stands. Coming down the lane is like being inside a carwash. I turn around and around looking for someone to pass to. We do our usual passing and cutting, and they pick off the passes like they know what’s coming. Coach Wise screams at us, the veins in his neck turning into big ropes. He begs us to find our Zen, to play harder. On defense we get lost behind screens we don’t even see coming. We lose our men running through a maze of bodies and back cuts. I get called for three fouls in the first five minutes.
“That’s not a foul,” I tell the ref.
He shrugs. “In streetball it ain’t. In here it is.”
At halftime we’re down by twenty-five. I look at Justin, who keeps looking at the scoreboard like they got something wrong.
“Damn,” I say.
“We can always come back,” he says weakly. He doesn’t even believe that.
We’ve got no chance, not even when the other team puts their subs in. We get nothing clean or easy. I get called for carrying. (“Streetball move,” the ref says. “Illegal.”) Instead of handing the ball to the ref I kick it into the stands and get ejected. Coach Wise begs the ref to let me stay in the game. What’s the point? Janae gets her shots blocked. Justin and White Mike miss bunnies. I’m watching the clock, wishing it would speed up. I don’t look up at Papá. I’m too scared to see the look on his face.
The buzzer puts us out of our misery. We’ve lost by thirty.
We huddle in a spot under the bleachers. I look at the grimy floor, at the wrappers and empty cups that slipped through from above. Out on the court the other team does a victory chant. Above us, their parents talk about us, how streetballers always get smoked when they play teams with any kind of organization.
“At least we kept the second half close,” White Mike says. “That, I would say, shows some heart.”
Coach Wise taps a pen in the palm of his hand. “I’m not one to say I told you so,” he says, “but I did tell you that indoor competition is much tougher. I did say that.”
“Maybe we should stick to playing outside,” Justin says.
“Maybe,” I whisper.
“Jesus,” Coach Wise says, rolling his eyes. “Is somebody dead? Did somebody die out there? You got your butts kicked and now your feelings are hurt. If you still want to play, meet me on the blacktop tomorrow.”
We return to the court silently, eyes down. Officer Appleby is waiting for me.
“Well,” he says. He struggles to keep a smile on. “That certainly was something, wasn’t it?”
“You don’t gotta be nice,” I say.
“That certainly was something.”
Papá’s waiting for me in the parking lot. I throw my bag into the back and hop in the front. I lean against the window and close my eyes. If Papá says anything right now, I might lose it. But instead he pats me on the shoulder. On the way up Bancroft I listen to the whining of his Chevelle, the clinking when he brakes hard. When we stop, the car bucks and kicks like a bull. It’s a nice car to look at but the engine’s rotten. Mamá wanted to use the TV money to get something more reliable, but the way Papá looks, with his arm hanging out the side—he was never going to give this car up.
The whole ride we don’t speak. When we pull into the driveway, he throws the car in park and leaves the engine running.
“Frankie,” he says, patting my leg, “I still think you’re doing pretty good.”
A knot the size of a tennis ball sits in my throat. My eyes start to sting. I get out of the car and slam the door. I’m more surprised than hurt. Papá’s been angry, confused, and disappointed with me before. He’s taken me on walks after Mass and told me I needed to do better. He’s sat next to me in the principal’s office and called me an embarrassment.
But he’s never, ever shown me pity.
The night I got locked up for joyriding I slept like a baby, knocked out as soon as I got home. Woke up the next morning like nothing had happened and clammed up when Mamá tried to talk about it. Officer Appleby says that’s one of my problems, that I take no time to reflect, that I don’t see the thread running between the past and present. I bet he’d be thrilled to know that tonight is different. My mind keeps hitting rewind. Every time I close my eyes I see the forest of arms, feel them wrapping around me and squeezing like vines. I throw the covers off and sit up, suddenly hot.
Tomás is crazy with energy. He sits next to the window and tries to pinch the full moon between his sticky fingertips. The whole room smells like gummy bears. He keeps asking why the moon is white.Why isn’t it gold, like the sun? And do I think he can jump to the moon? And why do fingernails look like the moon? And why do fingernails grow? Why, why, why?
“I
f you don’t shut up,” I whisper.
“You’ve got to be patient and keep your eye on the prize,” he says.
That’s Mamá talking. Tomás likes to repeat things he hears her say. I’m doing everyting I can to resist the urge to smack him.
“Shut up,” I say. “I’m telling you to shut up.”
“Saying shut up hurts you more than the person you say it to.”
“Stop repeating things Mamá says.”
Nowadays Mamá hands out wisdom like de la Rosas. She’s happy, so she’s painting more: An unfinished portrait of the hills blocks out a window in the living room. She stands there in a big white T-shirt, mixing buckets of pinks and silvers and oranges, biting her top lip. She wants to get the burned parts right, the way the black and gold mix together. I’ve seen her just stand there for an hour, not moving except to mix the paint a little. Around the house she’s made big mounds of things: beans, cans, loose change, rolls of toilet paper, pillows, shoes. You’ll spend a whole day looking for the remote before you realize it’s buried under a hill of phone chargers. But soon she’ll throw some white paint over the whole thing and start over. She might do fifty of them before she gets it right, but she says that’s the cost of love.
I don’t want any part of love, then. Sometimes I’ve seen her in these funks when she can’t get the eyes right on some vieja so all she does is drink Folgers and rearrange the candles and old photos on her altar, moving one thing an inch to the left and then an inch to the right, so much moving that it looks like when she started. “M’hijo, I’m lost,” she’ll say. “Completely lost.” She’ll lie on the couch, her eyes shut tight because she’s seeing the vieja everywhere, in spilled salt, on shower tiles. Even Papá will be on his best behavior. He’ll warn us to stay away, that we can expect a slap to the back of our heads if we get within sniffing distance of her. Days and days she’ll go without eating or changing her clothes.
