The Necessary Hunger

by Nina Revoyr

  After the game, I gave my wristbands to a couple of the junior high school girls who always came to watch me play. Then all of us, current players and alumni, went off to Numero Uno. We pushed a few tables together, creating a big, sweaty mass of basketball players in the middle of the restaurant. There were enough older people—Rhonda, Tracy, and some other players from even earlier—to order a pitcher of beer, and we younger ones snuck gulps when none of the waitresses were looking. We ordered four pizzas, with various toppings—half of one of them covered with anchovies, at the insistence of Letrice.

  "I hate fish," Pam informed us, putting one fist on her hip and the other squarely on the table.

  "Me too," Telisa said. Then, turning to me, "Hey, don't you and your pops eat fish raw?"

  I smiled. "Only on special occasions."

  "And you like that shit?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

  "Hell yeah," I said, still smiling. I chose not to remind her about the one time I'd made her try a piece of raw tuna, at my sixteenth birthday dinner in Gardena—after eating it, she'd sheepishly asked for another.

  "Listen, y'all," said Rhonda, "that ain't even the problem here." She turned to Letrice and shook her head. "Girl, the whole table gonna stink when that anchovy shit come. Ain't none of us gonna wanna eat."

  "Well, then that's good, homegirl," Letrice said, grinning. "It'll keep y'all from puttin on any more weight."

  She was immediately showered with curses and little sugar packets.

  "Look who's talkin," Tracy said. "Quiet as it's kept, Ms. Letrice, look like you put on a pound or two yourself."

  Letrice crossed her arms and patted each of her shoulders. "I ain't gettin fat, though. I'm just fillin out."

  When the pizzas arrived—despite Rhonda's concern—we all dove in as if we hadn't eaten in weeks. Telisa inhaled a piece of the pepperoni, and then, despite my threats that I would refuse to drive her home, ventured a piece that had anchovies on it.

  "Y'all should try some too," Letrice said, addressing everyone on the current team. "It has protein. Give you strength. And the way y'all played tonight, it look like you gonna need it."

  We had run out of sugar packets, so we threw our napkins at her instead.

  "What you talkin about?" Telisa said, gesturing with her hands. "We beat your ass by twenty. Remember?"

  "Only 'cos we let you. Right, Tracy?"

  "Yeah," Tracy agreed. She'd been cutting up her pizza into tiny pieces and feeding them to Chris, but now she looked up at us and grinned. "We was feelin kinda sorry for y'all."

  Pam and Celine, who were sitting directly across from her, both snorted in disgust. "Yeah, right," Pam said. "You was just plain sorry."

  It went back and forth for a while, like a verbal passing drill—each person trying to throw an insult at the next with more accuracy, more bite. Finally the alums from each era began to argue about which team had been the best, and they all contended that their teams had been superior to the present incarnation.

  "The best team ever," Rhonda said, "was the year that Tracy and me were seniors. That was the only time we ever beat Morningside, and they won the whole state that year." She turned to me in triumph, as if challenging me to dispute her.

  "Don't look at me," I said. "I ain't arguing. I was on that team too, remember?"

  "Yeah," Rhonda said, "but you was just a Maddog freshman punk who only played fifteen, twenty minutes a game."

  "That was a hella good team, though," remarked Letrice, shaking her head at the memory. She'd been a junior then, and the third-leading scorer behind Vicki Stewart, the All-State guard, and me.

  "Uh-huh," Tracy said. "I remember that Morningside game. They led all the way into the fourth quarter, and then we caught 'em and won by like ten or twelve."

  "You won by five," corrected Telisa, who'd been on the JV team with Q that year, and had watched the whole game from the stands.

  "They tried to press us," Rhonda said, ignoring her, "but we just passed our way through that shit. You scored like thirty, thirty-two points that game, Letrice."

  Telisa shook her head. "She had nineteen," she said, "and only six in the second half."

  Letrice turned to Rhonda and Tracy. "And remember how we shut down Angela Smith?" Angela Smith was their All-State forward, a crunch player who normally came up big when the game was on the line. "It was like we put handcuffs on her and shit. She didn't score a single point in the fourth quarter."

  Telisa covered her eyes with her hand, groaned, looked up again. "That's 'cos she was hurt," she said. "She didn't even play in the fourth quarter."

  Letrice reached across the table now and smacked Telisa on the forehead. "Shut the fuck up, computer brain," she said.

  After the older players recounted a few more of the high points from their careers, the talk turned, somehow, to everyone's present lives. We young ones heard tales, then, of child-rearing and junior colleges; of the frustrations of shitty jobs and of well-meaning but ignorant social workers; of the pecking order and inedible food in prison.

  "This little rich girl tryin to tell me to go back to El Camino," Tracy said, referring to the caseworker with whom she had to meet in order to receive her welfare checks. "But what's the point? If I got a AB, then I could work for maybe five dollars an hour 'stead of four twenty-five or four fifty."

  "And work's a pain in the ass, anyway," Letrice said. "Nine to six or seven every day, gotta smile at stupid people you'd rather smack upside the head."

  "Y'all should try jail," Rhonda said. "Shitty food, gotta watch your ass every second, and you walk around all day in this tiny cell that's smaller than the bathrooms in the gym."

  They were all silent for a moment.

  "You know, I never would of thought I'd say this," Letrice began, "but I kinda miss bein in high school." She waved a hand toward us, the current players. "Things get harder when you done with school. Y'all still got it easy."

  "What makes you think we got it easy?" asked Telisa, as she pushed her plate away. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and looked at Letrice. "It's hard for everybody these days. Shit. We don't got it easy."

  "Yeah, you do," said Rhonda sadly. "You just don't know it yet."

  I glanced over at Q, who'd been quiet all evening, and saw that she was staring down at her plate. I thought I knew what she was feeling. It was fun to hang out with our former teammates, but I was scared by what their lives had become. A few times Raina and I had run into some older girls at the park, washed-up ex–high school stars who'd never made it anywhere, and we'd looked at each other and the same thought had been in both of our minds: That will never happen to me. Those girls at the park, and a couple of the girls at the table, had been the hopes of their neighborhoods once, as we were now. But by my senior year, I thought of them as sad, bitter specters—the ghosts of seasons past.

  I tried to catch Q's eye, but she wouldn't look up. It occurred to me that she might have been even more frightened by our former teammates' lives than I was. The few small schools that had expressed interest in her still seemed a bit uncertain, and her father was putting a lot of pressure on her to get a scholarship—so much so that he didn't seem to be considering any of the other routes she could take to college. But then again, as Telisa said, how would he know about that kind of thing? No one in the family had ever gone. In fact, Raina and I had a big advantage over many of our friends and teammates simply because our parents had gone to college themselves, even if, in Claudia's case, it was only for a while. Therefore, they expected us to go too, basketball scholarship or not, whether it took loans, financial aid, robbery, blackmail, or a combination of all of the above.

  At any rate, the conversation was getting a little too heavy for me, so I brought up a topic which I knew everyone would have plenty to say about—Coach Fontaine.

  "Y'all should be glad you was coaching yourselves tonight," I said. "Coach Fontaine really gave it to us at halftime."

  All of the alumni groaned—both out of disgust at the man
, and relief that they didn't have to deal with him anymore.

  That motherfucka," said Rhonda, "still got the worst garlic breath I ever smelled."

  "Naw, it's a dog shit smell," argued Tracy, and so for the rest of our time at Numero Uno, we debated about the best ways to describe Coach Fontaine's breath, and clothes, and hair. I was feeling better, and I noticed that Q was laughing now too. We slapped hands at one point, and I held on for an extra second, wishing I could send a message through my touch. We're gonna make it, I wanted to tell her. We're gonna be fine.

  CHAPTER 7

  The next night it was Claudia's turn to cook for her friends. When Raina and I got home from the park a little after seven, we were greeted by the sweet, tangy smell of teriyaki sauce. My father was nowhere in sight—he must have fled the house again. Claudia was in the kitchen, and Rochelle, Kim, and Paula were sitting in the breakfast nook. All four of them were talking easily, and laughing; it looked like the tension from the previous dinner had completely blown over. This made sense—they'd all seen each other at a couple of their group's meetings, and had probably worked things out. It no longer seemed strange to me that Claudia was having people over. My life was so full of her presence, and Raina's, that I couldn't remember, anymore, what it had been like before they came.

  "Hi, girls!" Rochelle called loudly when she saw us, raising the wineglass she held in her hand. She seemed genuinely happy to see me as well as Raina, and I was glad; I liked her—but at the same time, her attention made me nervous.

  "Hey," said Raina, walking ahead of me.

  "Hi," I said.

  Kim greeted both of us as we got to the table. Paula said hello to Raina, and then nodded at me.

  "The chicken's not quite done yet," called Claudia from the kitchen. "But you can have some when it's ready."

  "Great," Raina said.

  Since there wasn't any room for the two of us to sit, we stood behind the table and leaned against the wall. I wanted to go upstairs and change, but I knew it would seem rude if I left right away. Rochelle asked Raina, then me, where we were thinking of going to college. She was wearing a loose, flowing, blue-and-green jumpsuit, which looked great on her ample frame. As she talked, she kept glancing over her shoulder.

  "Girl, get over yourself," said Kim, who had on jeans and a blue cotton short-sleeve shirt, her typical restaurant attire. "I see you checking yourself out in the window."

  Everyone laughed. Rochelle put a fist on her hip. "Honey, I look good tonight. And what's wrong with admiring myself when I don't have anyone else to do it for me?"

  Claudia came over to the pass-through and shook her head. "You keep shaking your head at me, girl," Rochelle said to her, smiling, "and we'll see what happens with the deal I've been getting you on work clothes."

  "Oooh," said Raina, grinning.

  "Speaking of clothes," said Kim, "what are you going to wear to the conference, Claudia? One of those boring suits the Times makes you wear? Or something a little more interesting?"

  "I haven't thought about it yet," answered Claudia, who was clad, at the moment, in a sweatshirt, jeans, and apron. "What are you going to wear, Kim?"

  Kim leaned back and folded her hands behind her head. Her chipmunk cheeks lifted as she smiled. "Well, I just got me this fitted green dress. Maybe that and some pantyhose and heels."

  Rochelle leaned over. Her blue-and-green sleeves hung loose, like the sleeves of a kimono. "You go, girl. You've got such a nice figure, and its always hidden in those loose-butt ugly pants you got on. I wish you'd wear dresses more often."

  Kim smiled. "Well, there ain't much use for dresses in the restaurant."

  Raina went to the refrigerator and pulled out two Cokes. She tossed one over the table at me, and opened the other. "Hey, what's this conference y'all keep talking about, anyway?" she asked.

  Claudia opened the oven. She and Ann looked in at the chicken intently; then Claudia frowned and closed the door. "The Black Businesswomen's Alliance," she said, turning toward her daughter, "is holding a conference for black women in the workplace. We're doing a huge publicity campaign—newsletters, phone calls, flyers in stores and companies and at Department of Social Services offices. Yvette Harrington's going to be the keynote speaker. You know who she is?"

  Raina and I both nodded. Yvette Harrington was somewhat of a legend. Born and raised in Compton, she'd worked as a grocery clerk for several years before starting to bottle her own salad dressing in the back of her house. The dressing had sold so well that she began to make other things, like soup and spaghetti sauce; finally she'd rented an old warehouse in Lynwood and started Harrington Foods. Although her inexpensive, home-style products still sold best in black areas, they were stocked in stores, now, all over Los Angeles. She'd eventually turned to politics, and a few years before, she'd been elected to the California State Senate.

  "Anyway," Claudia continued, walking over to the table, "this conference is for all black women—professional, blue-collar, even women on welfare. We're having talks and events for the group as a whole, and then special, smaller workshops designed to address specific needs. There'll be a whole range of different things. For example, we'll have a panel for professional women about breaking through the glass ceiling; and on the other end of the spectrum, a workshop for unemployed and underemployed women about basic job-search skills—how to write a cover letter, how to act at an interview, etc. But you should ask Paula about more of the specifics—this thing is her baby. She and a few other women from the BBA came up with the idea, and she's the head of the speakers committee."

  I was impressed with Claudia. She sounded so efficient and businesslike, and I'd never seen this side of her. Raina nodded and scratched her cheek. "That sounds like a really broad range of women," she said. "Do you think they'll all feel comfortable together, or have a lot to say to each other?"

  Paula looked at her like a teacher whose favorite student has just come up with an intelligent question. "That's a concern of mine too," she said. "We'll have to see. There are some professional women, sellout sisters, who don't want to go to the conference, for exactly the reason you're talking about. And I'm sure that some of the blue-collar women and women on welfare will be too intimidated to show up." She smiled. "But what we're hoping, of course, for the women who do go, is that some networking will happen—that some of the unemployed and underemployed women will meet potential employers, and vice versa. Also, on a more subtle level, I think it'll be good for everybody there just to see each other—good for the underemployed women to see sisters who are making it, and good for the professional women to see that we've still got a long way to go. If it all comes off, it'll be a hell of a weekend—a day and a half at the airport Hilton, and a big party at the end of the second day."

  Paula seemed, now, to be in business mode. With her level, serious voice, her self-confident manner, and the crisp, elegant suits she wore, she must have cut an impressive figure in the working world. Despite Raina's claims, though, that Paula was one of the most generous people she knew, I couldn't bring myself to like her after what she'd said about my father. I wanted to make her address me, so I asked her a question: "So what's Claudia going to do?"

  Paula looked at me with an expression I couldn't read, and then turned to Claudia and smiled. "Claudia," she said, "is giving a speech to the whole group about being bigger than your position."

  Raina and I looked at each other. "Huh?"

  Paula laughed. "She's talking about how to have more influence on the work environment than your job description calls for—getting people to pay attention to race and gender concerns, getting things done that you want to get done."

  "Basically," Rochelle said, "how to be an uppity black woman."

  "I still don't get it," Raina said.

  "It's like this," said Rochelle. "We've all done it at some point or another. For example, just a couple of years ago at Robinson's, the work clothes for women were all boring and prissy and small in the butt—and you know Liz
Claiborne said she didn't make clothes for black women." She smiled while Claudia turned around and patted her butt. "Anyway, I got them to order business clothes that were better cut, better suited for sisters. I also got them to stock makeup for black women, which of course we didn't have, and now we're gradually building a larger black clientele." She took a sip of her wine and put her glass back down on the table. "Paula got 20th Century to seek out more black home buyers by placing listings in black newspapers and local offices in black communities. And your mother," she said to Raina, "has gotten one of the most historically conservative papers, the Los Angeles motherfuckin Times—"

  "Rochelle!" said Claudia.

  Rochelle dismissed her with a wave of the hand. "Anyway, she's gotten them to consider adding a section that addresses community interests and concerns, a kind of open section for real people, not newspaper people, to write their reports and opinions. She took an informal poll the last time they made a big round of subscription calls, came up with a proposal, and ran it past the old white men who run the paper." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "You may not know this, Raina, but your mama is bad."

  "Oh, hush up, Rochelle," said Claudia, but I could tell she was pleased.

  "And at the conference," said Rochelle, ignoring her, "on the second morning, she's going to give this talk. And believe me, she'll be something to see." Rochelle offered her palm, and Kim placed her hand on top and pulled; it was an older, gentler version of our high five.

  "Yeah," said Claudia, "I can't wait. And I'm gonna tell stories about all of y'all."

  I leaned over and petted the dog, who'd come over to say hello. "Are you nervous about it?" I asked Claudia.

  She turned toward me, and I saw the same spark in her eyes that I knew must have been in my own when I was thinking of an upcoming game. "A little," she said. "But I'm really looking forward to it. I've got about half the speech written already."