by Nina Revoyr
"They'd have no problem with that," said Telisa. "If there was any problem, it'd be that they play too much alike."
"Girl, what you talkin about?" I asked, laughing. "We don't even play the same position."
"Maybe not, but y'all still play alike."
"Get outta here," I said, although I knew what she meant. Raina and I played different positions, but we were noted for a lot of the same things—defense, intensity, getting the job done against people and teams much stronger and faster than us. But still, to compare my game to Raina's seemed ridiculous. I could see what might make someone draw parallels, but it was so clear to me that Raina was simply better—a better person, because she truly inhabited her life and moved through the world with such purpose; a better player, because she loved the sport for itself, and wanted to honor it by devoting herself to it completely. I knew more than anyone that my efforts amounted to a poor imitation of Raina's, that for the last two years I'd pushed so hard because she did.
CHAPTER 6
By mid-November, my level of stress was at an all-time high—our season was about to begin. And if the high school season—in terms of recruiting—had always been the least important part of the year, now I was convinced it was the most important. After all the camps and leagues, the AAU tournaments and nationals, your senior season of high school was all you had left. And in your last season you had to confirm all the good opinions that scouts had developed about you during the summers, or, if you were coming off of a bad summer, you had to prove that that performance had been a fluke. Many of the top recruits would sign their letters of intent that month, and thus spare themselves this pressure, because no matter how their senior year turned out, they were already committed to a school, and the school to them. But some of us, including Raina and me, decided to hold off, either to await a better offer, or simply to keep from making a premature choice.
By that time the thrill of being the recipient of such relentless attention had deflated, for me, into something else, something new and not altogether pleasant. In a way, I suppose, the recognition we received—not just from colleges, but from reporters and other players, from people who stopped us on the street—was somewhat wasted on us. We had never not been wanted—at least not since we were very young; we didn't know, yet, what it meant to be an anonymous face in the crowd. I liked the newsprint and the honors that came my way, but they would have meant so much more to me just five or six years later, when I was a face in the crowd; when I knew too much to assume my right to anything. But by November of my senior year, I'd become tired and a bit uncomfortable with all the recruiting. I continued to file the letters that arrived, thought halfheartedly about my options, talked politely to the coaches who called on crackling long-distance lines.
The joy of it, though, was gone.
It wasn't that this long-distance courtship didn't have its funny moments. There was, for example, the time that the Ohio State coach called Natalie's house, and the phone was answered by Natalie's three-year-old sister, Kara, who'd just woken up from a nap.
"Is Natalie home?" asked the coach.
"No," answered the sleepy child.
"Is your mommy home?"
"No."
"Is your daddy home?"
"No."
"Well, where is everybody?"
Pause.
"I don't know," cried Kara, who then promptly dropped the phone and started to wail. The alarmed coach, imagining Natalie and her parents dead in a back room somewhere, called the Compton police department all the way from Ohio, and had them go and check the place out. Everything turned out to be fine—Natalie's mother had been in the bathroom the whole time, and hadn't heard Kara's cries. Natalie cheerfully shared this incident with everyone she knew, and then ended up signing early with Ohio State.
It also wasn't that I'd grown indifferent to the attention, or that I was tired of being hassled all the time—no, I wanted to get a scholarship; I wanted that final sign of affirmation. Rather, it was that the process of selection itself had become bewildering. I had the feeling that my whole future would be determined by the act of signing one piece of paper, that each decision I made would limit the number of options I had from there. If I stayed close to home, I might end up limited and stifled, but if I went someplace far away I might change so much I'd eventually lose contact with the things that had made me who I was. My whole future, it seemed to me, would be like the irrevocable falling of a fixed pattern of dominoes, all set into motion by the one domino I tipped over by choosing a college. I was completely terrified of that future.
Raina, on the other hand, was lusting for it. She kept talking about how great it would be to live someplace different; how much she was looking forward to meeting new people. She also talked about the things she wanted to do after college, a time I found impossible to imagine. One Saturday afternoon, while we were running some errands, she tried to get me to discuss this too.
"So where you wanna be ten years from now?" she asked.
"I have no idea. I don't even know where I'm gonna be ten minutes from now."
"Well, I know that," she said. "You're gonna be at the grocery store, with me."
We'd been sent out to buy broccoli so that my father could make a stir-fry, and to pick up some NyQuil for Claudia. Raina was driving her mother's Honda, and we were headed east on Manchester, out of Inglewood and into LA.
"Do you think you'll try to play pro?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I don't know. I ain't that crazy about the idea of livin in a foreign country. Besides, it all depends on how college turns out." We stopped at a light, and a young Mexican boy who was standing on the center island held a bag of oranges up to Raina's window. "What about you?" I asked.
"I don't know, either," said Raina. She waved the boy off and he moved farther down the island, offering his product to the car behind us. "Whenever I imagine basketball stuff, though—you know, screaming fans, last-second shots, cameras going off everywhere—it's always in terms of college, not pro. Maybe it's 'cos I've never seen a pro women's game, I don't know. It's not like goin pro never crosses my mind—and it'd be cool to play in Europe; I heard you can make thirty, forty grand a year there, even more if you're a six-footer, like you. But when I picture my life after college, I tend to think about jobs, you know what I'm sayin? And about where I'm gonna live and all that." The light changed, and the car moved forward. "But whatever happens afterward, college is gonna be great."
I turned and looked at her. "So you still got no idea about where you gonna go?"
"Nope," she said. She stopped to let an old man, who didn't seem particularly attached to reality, stumble across the street. When we'd passed him, Raina shook her head sadly. "It sure ain't gonna be in LA, though." She was silent for a moment; then she brightened. "Remember all those places we got to go for camps and AAU? They were cool places too—New Mexico, Arizona, Washington, Virginia . . ."
". . . Connecticut," I added. "New Orleans."
She smiled broadly. "Just imagine actually living in one of those places, and being able to take trips to other places, for free, because of basketball. And if you play for a good team, you'll be on ESPN and shit, with Ann Meyers doin the color commentary."
I didn't say anything, and stared out the window. Her enthusiasm bothered me, because I wasn't enthused. None of the things she was talking about sounded good to me. I couldn't imagine living in the places she'd mentioned—I couldn't fathom the idea of living anywhere except LA—and while I'd enjoyed the trips I'd made, this was only because I'd gone with friends, and invariably, I was homesick by the end. I didn't understand how Raina could be so excited about things that caused me such discomfort and terror. And I was hurt too, because her desire to leave LA and high school behind was also linked, in my mind, with a desire to leave me. I, of course, had no desire to part with her. Living with Raina, for me, had been like breaking in a new pair of jeans—they didn't fit very well at first, but got comfortable quickly, and now I wanted to
wear them all the time.
I didn't talk to her much—that day, or ever—about where she wanted to go, but I watched the proceedings of her recruitment with great interest. If I couldn't be at the same school with her, I wanted at least to be in the same region. This would be difficult, because we were both getting calls from all over the country, but I would try to coordinate my interests with hers without being too obvious about it. The second signing period in mid-April loomed much larger to me than graduation in June. Graduation marked the end of one era, but signing day marked the beginning of another, and so, of all others. I didn't want that day to come. I wanted time to freeze now, with Raina living in my house, eating at the same table, sleeping on the other side of the wall. What I felt about her was like nostalgia in advance. Since nothing of significance had occurred between us yet, this sense of wistfulness should have struck me as odd. It didn't, though. I don't know why. But it was as if I knew even then that I'd recall the events of this time for the rest of my life, that this was the experience against which I'd measure all others.
* * *
Just after Thanksgiving—which my dad and I spent at home while Claudia and Raina went down to San Diego—my team had our annual alumni game. The purpose of this event was twofold—to give us a practice run, along with the earlier scrimmage, before our first official game; and to encourage alumni interest in the current team. Often teachers showed up to cheer on the old stars they'd once had in their classes, and afterward, all of the players would go out for pizza.
Telisa, Q, and I got there early enough to survey the competition. I dropped my sports bag next to our bench and took a walking lap around the court. This was always the first thing I did upon entering the gym—it was as if the gym were my estate, and I was checking the grounds to make sure that everything was in order. It had been part of my pregame ritual since the beginning of my junior year, when I'd inherited the team from Vicki Stewart, the All-State guard, who had graduated the previous June. Today I took special note of everything, since it was our first time playing at home that year. I noticed how good the newly painted lines looked, but squatted down at one point to touch a spot that hadn't been properly waxed. I got to the wooden bleachers and shook my head in dismay—they were brittle and ancient, and looked about as stable as a house of cards. I glanced up at our scoreboard, which, since my freshman year, had been in the habit of getting stuck when there was 2:23 to go, and I hoped, as I always did, that it wouldn't break down altogether during some crucial juncture of a game. Two of the overhead lights had burned out, so it always seemed like dusk. The floor was warped in the northeast corner, where some water had leaked in during one of the heavy winter rains. Maybe the rains had also contributed to the yellow paint chipping off the walls; sometimes I'd leave the building with flakes of yellow stuck to the bottoms of my shoes. As I walked through the gym that night, I took deep breaths, inhaling the rich, pungent odor of sweat that hung heavily in the air. I'd always loved and welcomed this smell, and I think that every true athlete does. It is the smell of effort and competition; of people challenging their own limits; of bodies glistening and taut and alive.
We still had plenty of time before the game started, so I went to the bathroom, and then to my locker, where I got one of the wristbands I always wore when I played. On the inside of my locker door there was a newspaper clipping—the report of our loss in the playoffs the previous winter. We'd only made it to the second round before being upset by a lower-ranked team, and I was still haunted by that defeat, by my subpar performance. I stood there and read the article twice.
By the time I got back out to the court, about ten of the alums had arrived and were warming up at the far basket. Most of them were people I knew—girls who'd been senior or juniors when I was a freshman—and the first thing I noticed, as always, was how much weight they'd put on since their playing days.
"Yo, Nance!" yelled out one of them, a big center named Tracy. "Come over here and talk to my son."
"Wassup, Tracy?" I yelled back, and then I walked over to Chris, her three-year-old, and squatted down to talk to him. "Wassup, little man? You've grown about two feet since last year."
He was wearing a Bulls cap and a black sweatshirt, and trying, without much success, to bounce a basketball. He stared up at me in a daze, and then looked back at his ball.
"What you been up to, Tracy?" I asked his mother as I stood back up. The last I'd heard, she'd dropped out of junior college.
"Not much, homegirl," she said. "Got a job now, but other than that, just kickin it, tryin to take care of him." She nodded toward her son. Chris had the round eyes and broad nose of his father, who'd been killed in a drive-by two weeks before Chris was born.
"That's cool," I said. "Gotta keep gettin paid, right?" I didn't know what else to say to her. Too many of my former teammates had similar stories—junior college, a dead-end job, more school for a while, and then nothing. Three other girls besides Tracy had their kids with them that night, and I couldn't believe these were the same girls I'd played and partied with just a couple of years before. There was another girl, Letrice, who was sinking jump shots from the corner—she'd been just this side of good enough for a scholarship. Now she was an assistant manager at Lady Foot Locker in the mall, and it was the best job held by anybody there. In the bleachers sat another ex-player—Pauline Rider, who'd been a sure shot to get a scholarship until she'd blown her knee out the summer before her senior year. She never went anywhere, not even to a JC, and I didn't know what she did with herself now, but she often showed up at our home games and then left without saying a word. Only one of my ex-teammates had made it to a four-year college—Vicki Stewart, who had a scholarship to Oregon.
The same people were playing for the alumni team as the previous year, minus one, my friend Rhonda Craig, who was doing time for selling speed. I chatted with them all for a few minutes before heading back to our side of the court. Then I heard a voice behind me shout, "Hey, it's the Asian Invasion!"
I turned around and grinned. It was Rhonda. "Wassup, girl?" I said. "When'd you get out?"
"Couple weeks ago, and shit am I glad."
We walked toward each other and I hugged her, the most genuine hug I'd given anyone that night. Rhonda was short, 5'4", and stocky, but muscular and deceptively fast. She'd been like a big sister during my first year of high school. She was a senior point guard when I was a freshman, and she'd named me "Maddog" for my overzealousness on the court. That year she'd driven me around to open gyms at different schools, taken me out with her drinking buddies, given me all kinds of advice on high school and how to deal with team dynamics. The speed thing hadn't started until after she'd finished school, when her mother had stopped working because of a shoulder injury and Rhonda had wanted to help her out. She'd just dabbled in sales, sold a little on the side of her regular job at Vons, and luckily, she'd never gotten into crack. Even though we were still hanging out a lot when she started with the speed, I didn't follow her down that path. I had done speed, and weed, and wasn't averse to dabbling in other mischief; I'd gone along for the ride a few times when some of the friends I had then had broken into cars at the beach. But Rhonda, despite her own choices, had picked me up by the collar and set me firmly on the high road. She was the one who had made me understand the value of my talent in basketball, and once I believed it could lead me into a future, the mischief didn't seem so appealing anymore.
"So how was the pen?" I asked, clapping her on the shoulder.
"Fucked up," she said. "But check this out. I only been there a couple days, right? And guess who I ran into?" She named a player from Morningside, who'd graduated the same year as she and who was in on a robbery charge. "So we got this three-on-three tournament goin. And me and her picked up this other girl Rita from Compton, and we kicked everyone's ass and took the whole thing."
"You played with a girl from Morningside?" I said. "You traitor!"
"Hey," Rhonda protested, "when you in jail, you do what you got
to."
We talked and laughed some more, and tried to figure out when we could get together. Then I heard the loud, Midwestern-tinged voice of our coach calling me from across the gym. I told Rhonda I'd talk to her more after the game, and went over to Coach Fontaine.
"You girls can have your little party after you play," he said. "Right now you've got a game to worry about."
"All right, Coach," I said, annoyed.
"Now get everyone doing the layup drill, and stop with this horsing around."
"Okay."
Telisa, who'd been standing nearby, shook her head. "Chill out, man," she said when he was out of earshot.
Coach Carl Fontaine was a former assistant football coach—my father had coached against him—who'd been "demoted" to girls' basketball eight years before because of a minor scandal involving drunk driving and an off-duty cop's new car. He was in his late fifties, and overweight, and he wore ridiculously tight green polyester shorts to practice. He had a huge purple eggplant of a nose, and sickly pale skin, and about five long gray hairs which he combed over the bald dome of his head. Although he knew a lot about basketball, he couldn't relate to any of us, and sometimes, after he'd made some incomprehensible remark about politics or the neighborhood, we'd all look at each other and roll our eyes and wonder what planet he'd come from.
I went back over to our side and started my team on the layup drill. We got loose, slapped hands, encouraged each other. The game began a few minutes later.
We played sloppily at first, and much to our embarrassment, the alumni were all over us. Despite being overweight, their superior size and strength translated into a lot of garbage points under the basket. By the middle of the second quarter we'd pulled ourselves together, and we made a run at them and tied the game by halftime. Coach Fontaine was not happy, though—in the locker room he chewed us out for being distracted and not playing with our usual intensity. We got the message. In the second half we stepped up our game, and soon the difference in conditioning began to show. The alums were out of gas by the end of the third quarter. We pulled away and won by twenty.