Hooper

by Geoff Herbach

  But I am truly excellent at dribbling, as good as Khalil, maybe. Many dribble drills are the ones I did for hours and hours in the ice and snow of Philadelphia’s sidewalks and in the basement of Renata’s house, where the floors are a little uneven. These are Steph Curry dribble drills.

  “Farmer! Man!” Khalil says. “You got a handle!”

  “Yeah?” I say, without stopping my dribble, two basketballs that I make go between my legs one after the other.

  Then coach fires passes at us, and we dribble quick between our legs, back and forth, and then fire the ball back out. This drill is like a baby game to me.

  “Farmer has ball skills,” Rashid says almost so I can’t hear.

  “Yes, but I am not a farmer,” I say.

  “You’re a Polish farmer,” Rashid says. He smiles.

  It’s good, I think.

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE F-W-B

  There is a small bus built for twenty people that waits at the entrance of the Minneapolis Academy main door. I’m outside first after I showered fast. These showers remind me of my time with the nuns. The floors had puddles where you soaked your socks, and there was no privacy. Also, Jesse began his nosebleeding once more in the dorm room. I don’t want to watch Kleenex making more piles.

  Jesse does a weird thing before I leave the room. He says, “If I let you take my phone, will you take a couple pictures inside Devin’s house? I want to be an architect.”

  “Can I watch some videos on the phone?” I ask.

  “Sure! As long as you take pictures.”

  I agree. And so I carry the phone in my hand as I leave the building. I watch Hakeem highlights while standing outside the bus, waiting for the other 17U Fury players to come out from their rooms. Hakeem is number thirty-four, like I am in my school.

  By the time the other boys have come out, I have watched videos of Steph Curry and Michael Jordan and LeBron James. I think of all of these players, I am more like LeBron James in my speed and my jumping. I do not shoot as good as he does, but I think he had to learn to make jump shots as he got older and that part of his game did not come as easy as his driving and jamming. His jump shots are not as soft as Curry’s or even Jordan’s.

  James is three inches taller than me, though. He is also one of the greatest of all time, so maybe I am not so good?

  But I am only sixteen. Maybe I can be the greatest? Devin walks past me and goes on the bus. No, not me, I think. Maybe Devin Mitchell can be the greatest.

  “Farmer, why you staring off in space? You getting on the bus?” Khalil asks. He has come outside and is dressed better than me in my warm-ups. He is wearing black jeans and a shirt buttoned up to the top button.

  “I have a phone,” I say, and show it to him.

  He shakes his head. “Okay, dude,” he says.

  “It’s a nice phone, right?” I say. “I didn’t steal it.”

  “Good.” Khalil laughs.

  This is a joke. I made it. During this night Khalil begins to laugh when he looks at me, because I make more dumb jokes. I think I was meant to be funny. I think I remember that I was funny before my mom died. I remember her laughing at me with tears in her eyes. I remember her gathering me in her arms and laughing.

  The neighborhoods we drive through are nice and then they get much nicer and then much more. This is not what I expected to see, but Jesse did give me his phone because of architecture, so maybe.

  Soon we drive by a lake with giant homes nestled on tree-lined bluffs. The bus stops in front of one.

  “This is it?” I ask.

  “Devin’s pops is so rich, bro,” Khalil whispers.

  I stare at the white, modern expanse of this house. So many giant windows. So many old, big trees surrounding it. Now I understand why Jesse wants pictures.

  We all leave the bus in a single line. Out in the driveway, Mr. Doig says to us, “Be on your best behavior. Show Devin’s father that you understand what it means to be a member of the Fury.”

  “Yes, sir,” Khalil and a few others say.

  Devin shakes his head and closes his eyes.

  We walk up the drive and then onto stone steps that rise through steep white walls and planters with bushes.

  “How’d his dad get so much money?” I ask Khalil.

  “He’s an inventor or something and owns a business.”

  Devin heard me. “My grandmother had money. It’s not all my father. She built something real by herself.”

  “What did she do?” I ask.

  “Famous jazz singer,” Khalil says. “For old people.”

  “Jazz singer?” I say. They don’t know I listen to jazz every morning. They don’t know how Renata loves it. “She sings jazz? Your grandma?” I ask. Nobody answers me. Devin’s father stands at the front door.

  “Come on in, come on in!” he shouts. “Welcome D-I Fury basketball! Welcome Coach Cliff. We’re so happy to see you boys here.”

  “I like jazz. Me and Renata listen to it all the time,” I whisper to Khalil.

  “You’re a weird-ass farmer,” Khalil replies quietly.

  We walk into the front door. I follow Khalil, and Mr. Doig walks in right behind me. Mr. Mitchell pats all the boys on the shoulder and smiles wide. When we get nearby, he looks past me to Mr. Doig and says, “Hello, Karl! How these boys treating you? They staying in line?”

  Mr. Doig glances at Devin. Then he says, “They’re a fine team. We’ve never had so many athletes, so much speed.”

  The first room I enter is very big with tall white walls and warm yellow light coming from lamps. I pull out Jesse’s phone and take a pic. Then I realize that the black-and-white photos on the wall are the people I eat breakfast with each day. All are famous jazz people. Oh boy. I lose my mind.

  “Dizzy!” I shout.

  Yes, I mean very much shout.

  “Are you dizzy, Adam?” Mr. Doig asks.

  “Dizzy Gillespie!” I point at the big photo on the wall of a puffy-cheek guy playing a bent trumpet. “Thelonious!” I point at another of a man leaning over the keyboard. “Mahalia!” I point at a picture of a woman raising her hand, singing. “Coltrane!” I shout at a man with a sax.

  “Really?” Devin says to me. “You know these people?”

  “Kid knows his music!” Mr. Mitchell says.

  “Jevetta!” I say, pointing at a picture of a very young Jevetta Mitchell with arms spread, singing big. “I saw her in Philadelphia with Renata. She’s so good.”

  “That’s my grandma,” Devin says.

  I turn to Devin. “What?”

  “Jevetta Mitchell. She’s my dad’s mom, man,” Devin says.

  “Jevetta?” It’s like I have been hit on the head and stunned. I stare at Devin. “She is grandma?” I say. I drop the a like I used to when I just learned English.

  “What’s that accent?” Mr. Mitchell asks me.

  “Polish,” I say.

  “Polish? No kidding? You eat at my table, son. You’ve got me curious.”

  As we walk from the big living room with beautiful photos down a long hall, Khalil talks over my shoulder. “You just made yourself favorite white boy, Farmer.”

  “FWB?” I ask.

  “The F-W-B!” Khalil says. Everyone looks at me.

  “Maybe Farmer is better,” I say.

  THIRTY

  TELLING NO JOKES

  All of us sit in a dining room that looks out onto a nice, grassy backyard. Ten of the players sit at a big table, and they laugh and eat many lasagnas and breadsticks. Devin and I sit with his parents, Devin’s sister, named Saundra, Mr. Doig, and Coach Cliff. I have only had lasagna a few times, but this is as good as anything I have put in my mouth. It’s as good as my real mom’s bigos, which is lots of meat in cabbage and honey that tastes like heaven. I have four full servings, which makes Devin’s mom think I am crazy, but in a good way.

  Devin’s dad says, “If you love Caroline’s cooking, Caroline will love you right back. Isn’t that true?”

  �
��I know you have good taste, that’s all,” Mrs. Mitchell says.

  “I do. Also, I am so hungry every day, so this is extra good,” I say.

  “Devin, bring this child back here anytime. He needs nourishment.”

  “Yeah,” Devin says quietly.

  Maybe it’s because I’m drunk on food? I keep talking free, like I’m a real Polish kid who likes parties and people.

  There are speakers hung in the corners of the dining area. All the meal, they play songs that I love, songs that Renata and I have listened to throughout our life together.

  “This is a good song. Miles Davis. He’s a smart man,” I say.

  We hear Modern Jazz Quartet and Brubeck and Mingus and Stan Getz and Charlie Parker. Each one I can name and I can hum along. The boys at the other table have their conversations and talk basketball and girls and other sports, too. But I get more from this meal. By dessert, Mr. Mitchell tells me the whole story of Jevetta, how she was born in Chicago in 1939 and got to study opera in New York, but only loved jazz music, and how she toured all over the world, and how she was old enough to be in the South of the United States, performing back when she couldn’t drink from white people’s water fountains and had to use separate doors to get into concert halls, and all this crazy stuff I have seen on TV but thought was ancient history, not from people who are just grandmas now.

  Devin doesn’t say a word through any of this talk. He looks down at the table.

  Mr. Doig does not say anything, either, until the story of Jevetta is complete. Then he talks to Devin, who still does not look up. “None of that trouble got in the way of your grandmother’s success, did it, Devin? She kept working to achieve her goals. Climbed to the top of the ladder. I wish our culture valued those stories instead of focusing on how this country fails your people.”

  There is a moment of silence.

  “Come on now, Karl. Our culture loves those stories,” Mr. Mitchell says. “How much TV time every fall Sunday morning is dedicated to retelling some NFL player’s rise against all odds?”

  Then Mrs. Mitchell says, “Jevetta has a magical talent, Karl. That voice opened doors that would not open for most people of her generation.”

  “All hard work pays off in some fashion,” Mr. Doig says.

  “I do think most hard work pays off,” Mr. Mitchell says. “The other story happens, though. There is hopelessness, poverty that is too great to overcome without the benefit of great talent, great luck, or more likely both.”

  This I understand right away. “Yeah! If I couldn’t dunk, I would be eating at McDonald’s in Northrup right now,” I say. “Just a dumb Polish kid with only one friend who has a fluffy mustache. No one wants to hear this story.”

  Devin turns and looks at me. A small smile creeps on his face.

  “Now how in the world did you get to Minnesota?” Mr. Mitchell asks me. I think he’s happy to change the subject.

  “I’m adopted.”

  “Don’t hear much about Polish adoptees, not like Russian or Ukrainian kids.”

  “No. Maybe not? Polish people have big families usually, I think. So maybe kids get taken care of? But I saw plenty of orphans when I lived with the nuns. Maybe those kids are from families like my family? Death caught us by surprise, and we fell to pieces.”

  There is silence for a moment.

  Nobody wants to say anything. I am in shock these words have fallen from my mouth, and I don’t want to say anything more. I think of the black ink coming into the apartment in my dream. But some kids can’t stop themselves. It’s Devin’s twelve-year-old sister, Saundra, who speaks.

  “What do you mean, death caught you by surprise?”

  Carli says I must talk. Okay. I take a heavy breath. I speak slowly. “My mom—her name is Malwina—got cancer. She probably had it for a long time, because I remember her going from strong to weak when I was smaller, but I don’t know, except I know she died.”

  Everyone looks at me wide-eyed, like they are sad, or maybe want more information?

  “My dad was so upset about my mom. We lived on a farm with my grandpa, who was my mom’s father. Dad and Grandpa got in a big fight. Dad pushed my grandpa down on the floor of the kitchen and he kicked him and then I tried to fight my dad, but I was seven years old, and we left that night. We went to Warsaw. It’s the biggest city in Poland.”

  “Yes, we know it. We’ve been there,” Mr. Mitchell says.

  “You?” I say. This is surprising. I can’t picture the Mitchells in Poland. Also, just saying “Warsaw” makes me sick to my stomach. I exhale to get rid of the black ink. Then words fall out of my mouth that have never fallen out. Why here? Why in this home sitting next to a big basketball kid who doesn’t seem to like me?

  Because Carli.

  “I don’t like Warsaw. My dad said we belong there in the big city, because we’re Sobieskis, and Sobieskis are important to Poland. We’re supposed to be the greatest Polish family, kings, except at school nobody treated me nice, maybe because my dad drank all our money and I missed so many days when he was angry or asleep and none of my clothes were clean and none fit and then he started hitting me so much I felt ill and then he would feel so sad about hitting me he began to cry all the time, and then he’d get mad about crying and he’d do it all over again and again, and I got kicked out of my school, and I should’ve gone to another, but I didn’t go to it. Then Dad knocked out three of my teeth all at once and he lost his mind and hugged me and cried and soon after took me to a Catholic home, a nun school—it was an orphanage, I guess—and he cried and cried and said sorry, but he just left me standing there. The nun held me, and I watched him walk across the street, light a cigarette, then get in a car driven by a man I never saw before. I don’t know what happened to him. They couldn’t even find him when Renata adopted me.”

  By this point, all the players are silent, even the ones at the other table, and they’re staring at me.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Mitchell says.

  “Were they baby teeth?” Saundra asks. “The ones your dad knocked out?”

  “What kind of question is that, Saundra?” Mr. Mitchell asks.

  “If they’re baby teeth it’s not so bad!” Saundra says.

  “No. Not baby. Renata got me some new teeth. A bridge?” I point into the side of my mouth.

  “Who is Renata?” Devin asks. Even he is looking at me now, maybe for the first time.

  “She’s my adopted mom. She teaches college in Northrup at Trinity.”

  Mr. Doig nods. “That’s how we found Adam. Ted Anderson down there.”

  “Well, how did Renata even find you? Is she American?” Saundra asks.

  I sigh. Because I have said more words in a row than maybe I ever have in my entire life, I am already exhausted. But everyone leans toward me. I have to tell the rest or I will seem like a weird kid, right? I take a big breath. I nod.

  “Yeah. Renata is American. She is a Slavic scholar, so . . . I was living with some other kids with the nuns for a couple of years and it was okay, but then I did something. I was ten years old and I had begun to be hungry all the time, because I think I was beginning to grow fast, so I stole some candy bars from the store across the street from the nuns. The store clerk saw me and tried to chase, but I was too fast. I knew he recognized me, because I was in there all the time. I got scared and didn’t want to go back to the nuns. I was in trouble with them a lot already and this seemed much worse, so I ran to Lazienki Park. This park is as big as the whole town of Northrup, and it was summer, so I could hide in there, in bushes and trees, and sleep okay on newspapers against this stone wall behind bushes, and there is plenty of water to drink. I just had to stay away from cops, you know? But by the fourth day I was hungry, even though I ate some trash.”

  “Trash?” Khalil shouts.

  “What do you mean, trash?” Mrs. Mitchell says. She has tears in her eyes.

  “It was food, but in the trash, yeah,” I say. “I think maybe I began dreaming whi
le I was awake, because I didn’t have enough food.”

  “That’s called hallucinating, dude,” Khalil says.

  “You could’ve been poisoned from eating trash,” Saundra says.

  “Let Adam talk,” Devin says.

  “Okay. Maybe I was hallucinating? It was a hot summer day, and I was lying along the stone wall behind bushes to rest and I heard this music begin to flow from a piano. They have concerts in this park, so that is not weird, except it was Chopin music.”

  “I play Chopin!” Saundra says. “I’m practicing a nocturne for my piano competition.”

  “Oh. Yeah. The nocturnes. My mom played those. She played piano well, and Chopin was her favorite because he is a Polish guy . . . and because I was a little crazy, maybe, I thought she was the one playing the music in the park.”

  “Like, her ghost?” Rashid asks.

  “Yeah. I think so. I left my wall and wandered across a field, right through a soccer match and then to the concert. I sat down in an open chair and saw that the piano player was an old man in a tuxedo, not my mom, and then I just lost it bad. I started crying like a baby.”

  “Didn’t you say you were ten? You were a baby, practically,” Mrs. Mitchell says.

  “I cried when I couldn’t find Mom in the Mall of America two weeks ago. My phone ran out of battery,” Saundra says.

  “She disappeared for all of five minutes,” Mrs. Mitchell says.

  “I was lost!”

  “We know. Could you be quiet?” Devin says.

  “What happened?” Khalil asks me.

  “This woman, who was young, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and said in the ugliest foreign-sounding Polish I ever heard, ‘What is wrong with you?’ It was Renata. She asked, ‘Can I help you?’ I wanted help pretty bad then, so I said, “‘Yeah, please.’”

  “It’s like the ghost of your mom led you to your new mom,” Saundra says.

  I just nod, because I thought of that many times, and I don’t want to think too hard about it now. It might make me cry like a baby again. “Renata was studying Adam Mickiewicz, a Polish poet, for her PhD dissertation. My name is Adam, which she thought was a sign she was meant to find me. It took her almost two years to get through bureaucracy, but she adopted me and brought me to live with her in Philadelphia.”