19.
I’m barely six feet tall and so skinny that Mr. Wilson doesn’t move me up to varsity until midway through my sophomore year. The varsity’s tallest player, Warren Fleming, is six foot three, and they’ve got a couple of other guys over six feet, so Mr. Wilson has me riding the bench. Mr. Wilson is a traditionalist anyway, and he believes in starting seniors because they’ve earned it. This is the prevalent thinking at the time, and while I understand the logic of it—I do like order—I know I can play with these guys and I already have, out on the playgrounds, but Mr. Wilson wants me to wait my turn. Rather than complain, I bide my time.
I’ve already noticed that some guys who shine on the playground can’t make it indoors because they won’t play defense or remember plays. They don’t have the discipline. One of my gifts is the ability to be a ferocious playground player while also being a steady and reliable indoor player. I’m coachable. I like my coaches. Don, Earl, Chuck, and Ray: man, these guys fill that hole where my dad never was. (And poor Marky, I don’t know that he has anyone. I have to be that person for Marky.)
Academically, I’m holding my own in the college-prep classes, making my way through algebra, then geometry, advanced English, American history, and while I’m no longer an A student like I was at Prospect Elementary, I am still a solid B student, usually. As an athlete, I have some status at the high school, though I remain as quiet and shy in the school cafeteria as I am sitting on Ray Wilson’s bench. Moving to Roosevelt has slowed down my game in one very important area: the ladies.
While in Hempstead I had already gone through a period of having regular sex with Theresa—and shared that awkward first kiss with Juanita—here in Roosevelt I’m starting all over again and I don’t know anybody. I mean, I know lots of guys who play basketball, but I don’t know any females. Nothing happening in that department. It’s just me up on the third floor of our house, getting to know my right hand. It’s backward, I know, the way I’m moving down the sexual pyramid from intercourse to masturbation, but I can’t help it. I can’t even get any dates. I’m too shy to ask any girls out. My manner is too reserved, too quiet. I’m nice, and I try to be well spoken. But that doesn’t attract the attention of any of the girls in my class.
It’s good fortune, not getting any nooky. Freda’s education was ended because of sex, so there is that cautionary tale for me to study. I soon become an uncle, Freda giving birth to her first son, Barry. They’re living down the street from us. And Freda is a great mom, but I still think, Oh, man, she could have done so much. I don’t want to be a father before I know what I’m doing.
Mr. Earl Mosley, my freshman coach, is telling me that’s right. Girls are trouble.
If you had stayed in Hempstead, Mr. Mosley is saying, you might already have become a father. “That ruins more ballplayers than bad knees,” he says.
20.
In spring, I step outside and take a deep breath. The air is fresh with the smell of loamy soil and wet pavement and budding trees. The snow has melted, leaving a few icy patches in the shadows, but the basketball courts are dry in the sun. I wear my Converse, my sweatpants with gym shorts underneath, T-shirt and sweatshirt hoodie and wool coat, and I’m waiting for my teammates to pick me up.
Down the street, the sound of a motor, a horn blares. Robert is driving his Rambler and Leon leans out the passenger window, shouting at me. “We making a house call on the Doctor!” Lenny and Ralph are already in the car, their breath making steam when I open the door and tell them to slide over. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles are on the radio, singing “Going to a Go-Go.”
We pool our dollars for gas money and toll money. Our crew is going to Rockville Centre, to Baldwin, to Uniondale, to Queens, to Brooklyn, to Harlem, to every court in Long Island and then New York City to play the best players from the five boroughs and beyond. We’ve beaten the best in Roosevelt, and now we seek out competition all over the city. After the hard winter, the courts dry off and city kids can be seen making their way to Hillside Park, to Baisley Park, to Jamaica Heights, Prospect Park, West Fourth Street, Thirty-Fourth Street, all the PS schools, Morningside Park, and Mount Morris Park up in Harlem.
Smokey sings, “Well there’s a brand-new place I found.”
We look for games.
We find games.
All over the city.
We show up anywhere and call next against anyone. Men in jeans and work boots. Stringy kids in shorts and sneakers. White kids. Black kids. Puerto Rican kids. Even a few professional players. Dick Barnett. Hawthorne Wingo.
We even play this kid over at Adelphi University named Bob Beamon. Beamon’s already in college, playing ball for the University of Texas at El Paso—UTEP—and he’s the national long-jump champ. When we pull up to the gym over there, guys are coming over saying, “Beamon’s in there, man, he’s dunking on everybody! He’s tearing up this gym.”
“Julius,” Leon says, “you got to let him know whose gym this is!”
We watch for a few minutes, waiting for our game, and Beamon is impressive. But when we finally get on the court, Leon puts up a jump shot that hits the back of the rim, and Beamon goes up to rebound.
I jump up, and rise. Up past Beamon, and I take the ball in my hand and bring it down through the rim.
The whole gym falls on the floor.
Beamon soon decides basketball isn’t his game.
I need to test my skill. I need to validate myself, outside of the gym, outside of my community. I am proud of my game, and of my crew, of Ralph and Robert and Lenny and Leon. Can’t stop us.
It’s like the Salvation Army all over again, only now it’s just us. Other teenagers are out there smoking weed or jacking cars, but we’re out looking for games. Sometimes we play for a few dollars, but that’s risky for us because we barely have enough money for gas to get home. We know how to drive out of Manhattan and avoid the tolls if we have to, but with no gas that means we’re walking. And if we lose, then that definitely means no snack money. Still, we’re cocky enough to take those bets some of the time.
Most guys in Brooklyn or Manhattan, they don’t know we’re from Long Island. They figure we’re another city crew, so when we beat them and then have to ask for directions back to Long Island, they are shocked and embarrassed. “Man,” they say, “you all from Long Island!”
They shake their heads. “We lost to Long Island? DAMN!”
My game travels. I can get to the rim on anyone. On any court. I walk on knowing there are certain things I can do. And out here, when we’re barnstorming, a loss means another hour before we get another game. So we are trying our best to win, play smothering defense when we have to. I teach the guys the same hand signals as Don used at the Sal, the two hands up to my neck to indicate we need to press. From playing together so much, we know each other and can run plays if we choose. We bring organization to street ball. We have a rhythm and pace to our game that sets us apart from some of the other guys out here. We’re not just running for the sake of running, we are looking for a certain flow and you get that by knowing who is effective in certain spots, where they like the ball, and where you should be on the floor when they have the ball. Within that framework, I like to improvise.
I’m probably the most capable of our five in scoring either off a fast-break or in a half-court situation, but if the inside is too clogged up, then I’ll pick out somebody to take a jump shot. We always play inside-out, as opposed to outside-in, the latter of which is far more common in playground games. I’ll kick it out to Ralph or Leon or Lenny for a mid-range jumper.
With us, we never come down and just jack it up.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Leon asks me when we’re sitting down after running the courts for a few hours.
“What?”
“How you’re playing,” Leon says. “Nobody plays like that. Flying around like that. Snatching rebounds from the air a couple of feet above the rim. Dunking over guys. You’re . . . a whirlwind. It’s a new way of playing
. Man, the Boston Celtics don’t play like that. The Knicks don’t. Nobody.”
And Leon is right, I don’t see many guys—or any, really—playing that way.
I start to hear that from opponents, from guys watching us in playgrounds, and can feel it when everyone standing alongside the court starts howling or rolling on the ground—literally rolling around—after a dunk or a one-handed rebound or a pump-fake pass that leads to a fast-break dunk.
We frustrate opponents, and often, when we’re getting dunks on the break or from our inside game—Robert is also a fantastic leaper and dunker—then our opponents get either dispirited or angry. We have to be careful when we run into opponents who really can’t hang with us on the court.
Those games can degenerate into chaos. Or worse.
I have a keen nose for trouble and, heeding Mr. Wilson’s advice, I try to avoid unnecessary confrontation. But sometimes I can’t avoid it. There are always guys around basketball courts in New York City looking for trouble, or gangs come around and they might pick on the new guys. And I’m still young enough that even in a situation where it might be more prudent not to park the Rambler and look for a game, we become bored enough or desperate enough that we’ll stop at some shady spots if we see a few guys with a basketball.
At one game in the Bronx at Gun Hill Park, we’re playing a few locals and the game is getting out of hand and I start making some crazy moves, jumping over guys and throwing down some big dunks. The guys we’re playing are starting to get pretty pissed off.
I dunk again.
And again.
We win 15–0.
This chubby guy who’d had a little swagger when we’d started the game, but whom we’ve been victimizing ruthlessly in the lane, now shakes his head. “Oh, so you’re out here embarrassing us, huh?”
“Man,” I say, “we’re just playing a little basketball.”
He pulls a knife out of his pocket. “You want to embarrass me?”
I back away. “No, I’m not trying to embarrass you. Why you pulling a knife on me?”
He’s holding the knife up and glaring at me.
That’s some bullshit right there. I start backing away.
“That’s cool. That’s cool. Game over anyway.”
I want to go home.
21.
Marky walks with labored breaths. His voice is a gentle hum filled with that soft air so that when he speaks, I lean in to listen. My Marky is a strange figure, with his wool pants, white socks, and dress shoes, his pursed lips, serious expression, brows wrinkled as he makes his way down Pleasant Avenue. He has a curved spine, short torso, small feet so that when he walks it is with an exaggeratedly straight, stiff back, a penguin’s march. He tells me he wishes he had big feet like me. How small Marky is, but how he seems to contain all of us, our family, our love, and when I see him go, I have to restrain myself from following after him to make sure he will be safe.
Marky has joined the Civil Air Patrol, now donning blue slacks, his white shirt, his peaked cap as he sets off on his emergency rescue practice sessions. The drills we do in school, the crowding under our desks, closing of windows and blinds in preparation for a nuclear attack—I assume Marky is doing a more sophisticated version of that, preparing medical supplies and canned goods for the eventual Armageddon.
Marky explains that’s not actually what they do. They’re working on making radio transmitters and how to read navigational charts. It’s like being in the Boy Scouts, Marky says, only with more electronics.
“Come with me,” Marky urges.
I’m not interested in wearing a uniform.
Marky actually wants to be like me, Mom has told me. He wishes he were tall and strong. He wishes he could jump as high, run as fast. But Marky is smarter than I am, I can already tell. A bookworm, whereas I’m what you might call a lunch-pail scholar. Perhaps because Marky doesn’t have the easy confidence of being a good athlete, he has to work a little harder at school, at being liked by his peers for who he is. He is a straight-A student, always reading ahead in his classes, and because of his easygoing manner and gentle personality, he surprises us all by winning his class presidency.
He pays attention. I drift. I dream.
We are in church, kneeling in the pews, my head against my hands and my hands against the hard wood bench backs, and I’m not listening to the sermon. Marky is beside me and suddenly he stands. He shuffles down the pews and then down the center aisle to the front of the church.
“Marky!” I hiss. “Marky, where you goin’?”
He keeps walking.
I listen to the pastor. He’s calling congregants up to be baptized.
I stand. I follow.
“Marky? You know what you’re doing?”
He kneels. I’m already up at the altar, so I kneel beside him.
Do you believe that there is one God who is father of all, and one Lord Jesus Christ?
Do you believe that Christ died to cover the debt of your sins?
Do you believe that Christ’s sacrifice was accepted by God and that he raised Christ from the dead?
Have you repented of your sins?
And I’m kneeling there beside Marky, and barely listening, watching as Marky mouths the words, his voice soft and his eyes fluttering as he gets the calling.
We bow before God, my little brother and me, the mystery of our connection and the power of our love proof to me that we live in God’s universe yet can never comprehend his will.
22.
Roosevelt High has only been around since 1960. Our three-hundred-seat gym only has risers and there are no championship banners hanging from our rafters. We practice in the empty gym, Mr. Wilson walking around us, working on our defensive positioning, knees bent, butt down, chin up, hands away from our sides with palms out. One afternoon, Mr. Wilson comes in and tells us he has something for us out in the trunk of his Chevy. We trot out there, eager, thinking he has our summer league trophies, and he pops the trunk and it’s full of red bricks.
“Everybody take two,” he says. “I am assigning these bricks to you and before every practice I want you to come out to the court with your bricks and I want you to keep them in your locker all year. These bricks are your life.”
What the hell?
We bring our bricks to practice. We do all our drills, our defensive slides, our rotations, our stances, everything with hands up with bricks in them. We run the gym, singing the theme song of The Beverly Hillbillies: Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed . . . while we do our laps. We run twenty laps a day like that, singing, a brick in each hand.
We divide practice into two categories, brick and non-brick.
One of the players, a skinny guard named Nick Marshall, breaks one of his bricks in half. He comes out to practice with a half a brick in each hand, and gets away with it for a while. Until finally Mr. Wilson notices.
“Where the hell is your brick?”
Nick shrugs. “This is all I got.”
Even Mr. Wilson had to start laughing at that.
23.
My last name starts with an E, and sitting right behind me in homeroom is Grace Fenton, an F. Sitting near Grace feels like sitting near a movie star. I steal glances. I wonder what she is thinking. Her thought processes are as mysterious to me—and as powerful-seeming—as the interior of the atom. The way she swishes her hair, the curve of her sweater, the lilt in her voice as she answers, “Present,” the soft rub of her feet against the floor, the smell of soap and vanilla that seems to waft from her.
This mystery, of confusion and crush and proto-love and lust all barely contained in this school, in my person, in my trousers, is derailing. I am on a track when it comes to basketball, to sports. I am moving forward in an orderly, steady manner. The game is pleasing and logical, returning to me what I put into it. Yet here is this lovely female, and I am as unequipped to play with her as I would be if Lew Alcindor stepped onto the court against me. My
precocious introduction to the wonders of sex and, um, genital rubbing did nothing to prepare me for the actual games of love. And my first kiss, with Juanita, hasn’t been replicated since. I haven’t been intimate with another female since my deflowering lessons administered via Theresa. Now I’m a half-foot taller, the best athlete in the school, and popular enough that the deacon at my church asks me to come up and say a few words to the congregation, but I can’t find a single word for Grace.
The pressure builds. I feel her behind me every morning, this force urging me to turn around, sucking in my attention, sweeping me away. If this distraction were in algebra instead of homeroom, I would be lost.
I sharpen my pencils. I organize them in their pouch. I straighten my notes and then straighten my binders.
Today, I will speak with her.
I turn.
She is beautiful and high toned like Freda. Her skin shimmers like brass. Her eyes are pleasingly ovoid with wisps of an inverted V-shaped brow above each. I can’t look her full in the face, to see beyond the gloss of her actually being Grace Fenton.
Her smell: there is something at once buffeting and deeply private about it, as if I have uncovered a secret.
She smiles. But what is she thinking? Her thoughts, and the potential for the disapproval they contain, frighten me.
“Man,” Leon tells me when I ask what I should do, “just ask her. Everyone knows you.”
I want to take Grace Fenton to the ball, the underclassmen’s version of the prom.
He tells me I am underestimating my own popularity, my own stature.
“Everybody knows you!” Leon says. “Man, you can operate on the court, but you got no game out here.”
After homeroom one morning, I slip into her wake.
“Um, Grace, my name is Julius—”
“I know your name!”
I want to flee.
“Grace,” I begin again. “My name is Julius Erving and—well—”
Dr. J Page 8
