by Nina Revoyr
The next morning, without consciously realizing I'd decided to do so, I packed up my things and drove home. I was supposed to stay in San Diego for the rest of the day, but for once I couldn't stand to be alone with my thoughts. It wasn't that San Diego was the problem, or that Inglewood, when I returned there, would be any better. I didn't really know where I wanted to be; for the last few days I'd just wanted to be anywhere except the place I actually was.
Raina was home when I got back. I went straight upstairs to my room, ignoring the "hi" she offered from the kitchen. I shut my door, dropped my bag, and flung myself down on the bed. Within moments I was drifting off—the drama of the last few days had left me so exhausted that I fell asleep whenever there was a lull in the action. So when Raina's knock came at the door a few minutes later, I thought I'd manufactured it in a dream and didn't answer. But when it came again, louder, I sat up. "Come in," I said.
"Hey," she said as she opened the door. She stuck her head in and looked around, as if she thought I might have rigged something heavy to fall on her when she stepped into the room. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she came in. "Your present got here today," she said.
I looked at her skeptically and was about to turn away, but then I caught sight of what she held in her hand. It was a soft, floppy, chestnut-colored figure with curly brown hair and maroon clothing. "A Cheryl Miller doll," I said before I could stop myself. It was. Someone, I never found out who, had been making these handmade Cheryl Miller dolls for the past three years. People brought them sometimes to USC games, showed them off to their friends, had them signed by Cheryl Miller herself. I had mentioned a few weeks earlier that I'd love to get my hands on one but didn't know how I could. And now Raina had found one for me. She'd gone through all that trouble. Even though we had barely spoken.
Since neither of us was making a move toward the other, Raina laid the doll down carefully on my desk. "I hope you like it," she said. "Made in America. Although the Nikes might of been made in China, you know, with child labor or some shit like that." She glanced at me uncertainly. "But probably not," she continued, "since they're made out of cloth. Do they make cloth in China? I don't know."
She stood there and looked at me. I realized that this was her peace offering, her apology, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything just then, and so, after a few moments of awkward silence, she turned and left the room. I walked over to the desk and picked up the doll. It was a raggedy doll, about two feet long, made of soft brown cloth and stuffed with cotton. The detail was wonderful—there were red Nike swoops on the little white shoes; the sides of the hair were cut short, just like Cheryl's; the number 32 and the name Miller were embroidered onto its maroon-and-gold Trojan uniform. Suddenly, as I stood there looking at it, my eyes went hot with tears. I'd been bitterly angry at Raina for acting the way she had, and now I was angry at her for making it impossible to stay angry. Damn it. Just as I was getting used to hating her, she had to go and do something nice. I was totally unprepared for such kindness. And I had no idea until then that love tinged with pain could be just as formidable, if not more so, than love untouched by cruelty or betrayal. Holding the doll tightly against my chest, I sat down on the carpet and rocked. Underneath all the layers of anger, disappointment, and resentment, I discovered a capacity for sorrow I hadn't known I possessed. Slowly but steadily, the tears rolled down my cheeks—at first the tears of that sorrow, but gradually, the tears of relief. I felt like a person who'd just survived a horrible accident—I didn't know yet how injured or maimed I might be, but I knew, at least, that I was alive.
After I'd finished crying, I sat and pondered what my next move should be. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My eyes were puffy and my hair a ball of frizz, but after a few yanks of the brush and splashes of water on my face, I was somewhat more presentable. I made my way downstairs and into the living room, where Raina lay on the couch reading Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Giant Steps. She looked up at me as I came in. She had offered me an apology, and I had to let her know that I accepted the offer.
"Wanna shoot some hoops?" I asked.
She closed the book and smiled. Our eyes met for a moment, and in that look was an understanding of how close we'd come to real disaster, how fragile the peace was now. It didn't matter. She was in sight again. We'd narrowed the gap between us. She said, "Sure."
CHAPTER 12
The future that Raina so desired was rapidly closing in. We'd both played several games by then, and I no longer noticed anything that wasn't directly related to basketball. Once the season began every year, it was like I entered a time warp until it ended four or five months later. During that period the world rolled along without my knowledge of it, and I was always amazed at how quickly the time had passed when I emerged to discover that seasons had changed, books had been written, revolutions had occurred in my absence. My senior season was speeding by even faster than usual because I didn't want it to end. Once it was over, I'd only have a few more weeks to make the decision about college. I did what I could to put the brakes on the passage of time. I tried to hold on to the individual moments but they slipped through my hands like water.
After Christmas, as she'd promised, Raina began preparing for her tournament. She claimed to have gained four pounds on Christmas Day—which, of course, no one else could detect—and she did a combination of sprints and longer runs in order to burn them off. Both of our teams were practicing, and afterward, Raina would hang out with her teammates, so I didn't see her much the next couple of days. My father's friends brought our parents home the night of the twenty-seventh; they both looked rested, tan, and happy. We sat on the floor of their room while they unpacked.
"We didn't miss you in the least," my father said. "Did you miss us?"
Raina and I both said, "No."
He grinned. "Then why are you in here watching us put our clothes away?"
I rolled my eyes. "Because we're bored."
Claudia picked up a handful of clothes, threatened to throw them at us, but then dropped them in the laundry basket. "Well, what have you been doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said.
"Playing basketball," Raina said. "And hanging out a lot." She fiddled with her shoelace, looked up at her mother. "I saw Paula today."
Claudia looked at her, quickly, and so did I—she hadn't told me this.
"Really?" said Claudia. "Where?"
Raina clasped her hands over her knees. "At Barry's Chicken & Waffles," she said. "I went there with Stacy after practice, right? 'Cos Kim'll feed us sometimes for free. And Paula was there too, eating lunch."
Claudia pretended to be very interested by something in her bag, and when she spoke, her voice was noticeably subdued. "How is she?" she asked.
"Good," Raina answered. "It was great to see her. She sat with us while we ate, and then Stacy and I went over to her place and just chilled on her balcony. It was a perfect day to do it too—the sky was real clear. I'd forgotten how nice the view is in Baldwin Hills."
Claudia didn't say anything; she just looked down at her clothes.
"She's all excited about the conference," Raina continued, and I thought her mother flinched a little. "You know Paula—she's the happiest when she's got a big project to work on. Anyway, she gave me a couple of books for Christmas, and she even gave Stacy one, isn't that cool?"
Raina sounded so normal, so cheerful, and I wondered why she was doing this. It was possible that she didn't know what was happening between her mother and Paula. But then she looked at Claudia searchingly and said, "I miss Paula, Mom." And I knew she understood that something was wrong, even if she didn't know exactly what it was.
Claudia unfolded a pair of pants, and then folded them again. "Yes, she's been—we've both been—very busy these last few weeks." She didn't lift her head, and Raina just looked at her. My father, who'd been quietly unpacking through this, touched her very lightly on the shoulder. "Anyway," Claudia said now, glancing over at us for a moment,
"Wendell and I are very tired. Maybe you should leave us alone now."
Raina nodded silently, then stood up and walked out of the room. I followed a few seconds later, after saying good night to our parents. The dog, who was lying at the foot of the bed, looked from me to my father, and decided to stay where she was. Down the hallway I heard Raina's door close. I wondered if she and Paula had talked about Claudia, but somehow I didn't think that they had. Maybe Raina was trying to force her mother to deal with her friend, or maybe she was just sticking up for her. At any rate, I knew she wouldn't discuss it with me. I stopped for a moment, wondering what was happening in the parents' room. But all I heard through the open door was silence.
* * *
In the week between Christmas and New Year's, my team had a tournament at Artesia High School. Artesia was a basketball powerhouse—both its boys' and girls' teams were always strong, and it hosted a girls' winter tournament and spring league every year. The boys had a star freshman named Ed O'Bannon, and eight years later, he and his younger brother Charles would lead my father's beloved UCLA to its first NCAA championship in twenty years. At any rate, the Artesia tournament was one of the biggest and most talked-about tournaments of the season—there were thirty-two teams, including enough state- and CIF-ranked teams to make the level of competition unusually high. A lot of my AAU buddies were playing, and because of the high concentration of potential college material, the top of the bleachers would be packed all week with vultures. I was anxious about how we'd do—there were the scouts, of course, and although I'd played in front of them enough by then not to let their presence affect me, I still didn't want to fall on my face. But what concerned me even more was how my team would perform. We weren't seeded, because of the abundance of ranked, big-name teams. My team was considered a squad with one star and four no-names by the people who made these rankings, who must not have been noticing the ascendance of Q. This tournament was a good chance for us to show everyone that they'd been taking us far too lightly.
Our first game was like a warmup—we played hard, but there was no question of the outcome, which had been determined, in my view, as soon as the pairings were announced. We were matched up against a weak team from Orange County, and we led by fifteen at the end of the first quarter. I worked hard to keep everyone's concentration level up—it was important to continue to execute well, because sloppy play in an easy, meaningless game might result in sloppy play in a later important one. Since there was no pressure on me to carry the team that day, I set up Q as much as I could. She played well, making easy work of the other team's center. Q would do a reverse pivot as soon as she got the ball and then shoot from way over her head, which effectively nullified the height advantage that the other center usually had. When the player moved closer to try and guard Q more tightly, Q put the ball on the floor and plowed right past her. Q's extra weight helped in that kind of situation—she was so strong that I'd once seen her hit a power layup with three people hanging off of her shoulders. Sometimes the player guarding me would drop back to cover Q, which left me wide open on the wing or in the corner. Then Q would dump it back out to me, and boom, I'd have an easy open jumper.
Despite the easy flow of the game, there was another factor which was making me nervous—the presence of Raina. Her team was playing early those days at another tournament nearby, so Raina, who was being very considerate in the spirit of our delicate truce, had promised to come to all of my games. I forced myself not to glance into the bleachers where she was sitting, but each good play I made was like a tribute to her, an offering. Somebody up there was watching out for me. My passes were all sharp and reached their targets. My shots flew off my fingers with perfect backspin and arch, and most of them hit their mark; although I only shot twelve times that day, I hit nine of them, plus several free throws, to finish with twenty-three points. I was actually kind of glad that Raina was there—her presence kept me on my toes, and prevented the blowout from getting boring. Q scored twenty-six points and grabbed twelve rebounds, and I hoped that the scouts had taken notice. Her father certainly had. He came down and hugged her after the game, and was even friendly with me, for once.
After I'd stretched my calves, which had been threatening to cramp the entire second half, I went up into the stands to join Raina. She was sitting with a big group of our AAU friends, next to a bunch of neighborhood girls who kept pointing at them and giggling excitedly. Two more games were on tap for that evening, so we had at least three hours of hang-out time. That made me happy. I was glad to see these folks; it was like a mini-reunion of the basketball elite. There were about twelve of us that night, a collection of the reasons that the scouts were in attendance, and I could see them looking over at us and scribbling on their clipboards, although we all pretended not to notice.
These were the players I'd spent my springs and summers with; I'd hung out with them at camps and tournaments all over the country. About half of them had already signed, and as I approached, I heard them telling Raina how glad they were to be done with recruiting. She listened to their stories, but I knew she didn't regret holding off. Most of them had signed early for reasons of status or security, and without much concern for the differences between the actual schools, but Raina was so deliberate that she needed to weigh all the factors before she could make a choice. We didn't just talk about serious things, though. We also exchanged stories about our teams, ragged on each other, recalled strange or funny episodes from the summer—like the time when a group of us stole our coaches' beds at Blue Star, and then returned to our rooms the next afternoon to find they'd stolen ours right back. I loved hanging out with this group of people, even if I wasn't particularly fond of every individual in it. My high school teammates were great, and I spent a lot of time with them, but there were parts of my basketball life that they could never understand, experiences we didn't have in common. But these girls had gone to the same places, played in the same tournaments, been through the same wringer and expected the same reward. Despite differences in neighborhood, and race, and class, we had this one defining experience in common.
There were two other gay girls in this particular gathering of people—Rebecca Hill, a white girl from Ventura who had signed with Washington, and Theresa Golding, a black girl from Lynwood who hadn't signed yet, but who was rumored to be leaning toward Vanderbilt. Rebecca was funny, irreverent, and completely down-to-earth; she was one of the few white kids from the suburbs who mixed well with us. Theresa was on the quiet side. She was an avid churchgoer who never swore, but who could make "shoot" or "darn" slide off her tongue in a way that sounded utterly obscene. I liked them both, and felt the kind of sisterhood with them that I always felt with other family members in a big group of straight girls.
There was one point at which the bond felt particularly strong. It was at halftime of the first of the two games we were watching, and we had all just returned from a food run laden with hot dogs and popcorn and nachos. Theresa had been talking about a player we all knew, a girl from North Carolina who'd called her the night before because she too was thinking of signing with Vanderbilt.
Then Lydia Slater, a prissy but deadly blond center from the San Fernando Valley, piped up: "Yeah, she's a really great player. But you know what?" She leaned in close and looked around conspiratorially. "I think she might be gay!"
Theresa shrank back a bit, and Rebecca looked down at the court.
Raina, though, pressed both hands to her cheeks and gasped. "No! Really?"
Lydia nodded, looking serious and concerned. "Yeah," she said. "I was using the phone next to her at Blue Star last summer, and she was being all mushy to someone named Chris, and then later I saw her showing a picture of Chris to her roommate, and you know what?"
"What?" Raina asked, leaning closer, eyes wide and palm cupping her chin.
"It wasn't a boy!"
Raina drew back and put a hand across her heart. "Oh my God!"
Rebecca and Theresa and I fell out laughing. Natalie,
who'd just joined us, rolled her eyes and shook her head.
Lydia looked at us. "What are you guys laughing at?" she asked, which only made us laugh harder.
"Nothing," I said. "Just forget it." A couple of years before, I might have withered in this situation, felt very acutely the other girl's privilege and my own status as outcast and weirdo. By now, however, my views had changed—in my eyes, it was she who had the problem.
The next day, we had what was probably the most unpleasant game of my high school career. The trouble started right before the opening tip-off, when one of the other team's players, a light-skinned girl on an all-black squad, lined up next to me at the circle and said, "Yo, ain't you playin on the wrong team?"
I looked at her quizzically and asked what she was talking about.
"North Torrance already played a couple hours ago," she replied, and then I understood what she was saying. North Torrance, which was Stephanie Uchida's old team, had an all-Japanese-American roster.
I shook my head in disgust and didn't say anything. Telisa, however, had heard the whole exchange, and glared across the circle at the offending player. "Do you know who you talkin to?" she asked angrily. Telisa didn't sound like this very often, and the rest of our team, including Q, who was waiting in the middle for the jump, turned around and looked at her in surprise.