The Necessary Hunger

by Nina Revoyr

  There was a long, loaded silence. Then my father said, "Oh, give me a fucking break, Larry. You know that's bullshit. If the kids pulled a block or two, then it was their own damn idea. And if the two of you are going to threaten me, then at least have the balls to really threaten me instead of hiding behind these stupid insinuations."

  "We're not trying to threaten you," said Larry. "We just want you to think a little before you do anything."

  "Oh, you want me to think, huh? Well, think about this: get the fuck out of my house."

  I heard the rustle of clothes as the two men stood up. "You show that kind of disrespect again," said Dr. Shelton, "and you won't have a place to go to work tomorrow."

  "Right, and I have witnesses that you came over here and wanted to talk to me. Now get out of here."

  The two men rose and left the house, and my dad slammed the door behind them. He stormed off toward the kitchen, and I ran down the stairs after him, the dog following right at my heels. I got there just as he was pulling a bottle of beer from the refrigerator; Claudia was leaning against the sink. His lips were pressed tightly together, and I noticed that his hand, the empty one, was clenched into a fist. Claudia and I both stood there looking at him, not saying anything. He finally saw us, looked annoyed. He said, "What?"

  "Are you all right?" Claudia asked.

  He fumbled in a drawer for the bottle opener, found it, popped the cap off of his beer. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm wonderful. I've never been better." Then he pushed by us, sat down at the table, and used the remote to change the channel on the television. He ignored us and stared at the screen.

  * * *

  Because neither of the parents would talk about what was happening with my father, I tried to ignore it and distract myself with league. This wasn't especially hard, because I liked to play in league. There were certain teams that were always particularly fun to victimize, like Beverly Hills, whom we hated on principle, and whom we never beat by less than thirty points. Their school had a two-story indoor parking lot, a huge, perfectly clipped front lawn straight out of a brochure for some Ivy League college, and a retractable basketball court that closed over a pool. We played them at their place in mid-January. As we stood by the edge of the hybrid thing waiting for the two halves of the court to come together, we tossed Peanut M&M's into the water. All of their players wore diamond earrings, which they took off at their bench before the game. It was very important to us to kick the shit out of them.

  During the junior varsity games, which were held immediately after ours, my teammates and I would wander around the neighborhood of the school where we'd just played. Wealthy neighborhoods were the best. The whole group of us strolling through Beverly Hills or El Segundo turned more than a few peroxided heads. We were like kids let loose in a store full of expensive china—everyone watched us uneasily, expecting disaster, and that made it all the more fun for us to be there.

  If we'd played at home, we'd make a quick trip to the corner store, and then, home or away, we'd come back and make a nuisance of ourselves in the bleachers. The JV game would be about half over by then, so for the last two quarters we would comment on the other team.

  "They fadin fast like Michael Jackson's skin," said Q.

  "They weak like solar-powered vibrators," said Telisa.

  "They nonexistent like Reagan's brain," said I. Then: "Number 21 look pretty good, T. Why don't you go try to talk to her after the game?"

  "Not my type, homegirl. Besides, I got a woman already. Why don't you go try sweatin her, Q?"

  Q put her hand on her hip in mock offense. "Girl, you barkin up the wrong tree. Why don't you go, Nance? You the one that's been single 'bout fifty years."

  I pretended to be insulted. "Aw, girl, why you dis me?"

  "'Cos you deserve it," Telisa answered.

  "Foolish Asian girl."

  "Foolish black girl."

  We both turned to Q. "Foolish Asian-and-black girl."

  It was our senior year, and we were determined to have as much fun as possible. On the bus rides home Telisa and I would make up raps; after a particularly exhilarating win we'd all dance or roughhouse in the aisles until the bus driver pulled over and threatened to make us walk. We didn't care. These girls were my friends, my family, and I only had a few more months to hang out with them. Our time was passing—I could almost hear it, as if the last few seconds of my most important game were ticking away on an invisible scoreboard. We taped our newspaper clippings up in the locker room and drew word bubbles on the pictures of our opponents. We wore our green-and-white letter jackets everywhere—even, in Telisa's case, to church.

  For some reason, around this time, I kept remembering an old man we'd encountered when we were sophomores. We were at Denny's one day after a game, and Q took the cherry off her chocolate sundae and tied the stem into a knot with her tongue. Telisa and I thought this was brilliant. We kept asking the waitress to bring us more cherries, and then lost ourselves in laughter while Q repeated her trick. There was a man sipping milk in the booth across from us; he was the oldest man I'd ever seen. "Check out the mummy," Telisa said when she noticed him watching us, but we soon forgot him and turned our attention back to Q. When we started to leave, though, the man sat up straight, and grabbed my arm as I tried to walk past. His gnarled hand felt like something dead against my skin. His eyes, though, were bright and lucid, and the tiny purple veins that laced his eyeballs seemed to grow darker as he stared at me like a messenger from some unimaginable country. "Savor it, all of it, even the pain," he said in a surprisingly steady voice. Then he let go, and we walked out of the restaurant, Q and Telisa making jokes about crazy old men. I laughed along with them, but my arm still tingled where the old man had touched it, and I never quite forgot what he'd said.

  During the league season I wasn't home as much, or at least it felt that way, because even when I was present in body, my mind was always on our next or our previous game. The house seemed more like a pit stop—just a place to roll into, fuel up, and get the damaged parts fixed before I sped off again into the never-ending race of the season. My father I didn't notice that much. I think that most kids relegate their parents to scenery at times, taking it for granted that they'll always be there to cook dinner, do laundry, and nag about homework, but allowing them no significance apart from their function in our lives. When I did bother to pay attention, he seemed burdened; I'd find him staring out the window sometimes and looking very sad, or sitting slumped at the kitchen table with his head against his fist. The humor which had always been his way of deflecting painful matters seemed now to have vanished completely. He'd relax more when Claudia was home, though, and it was getting harder and harder to remember a time when he had ever been without her. During his better periods, he continued to be shamelessly romantic, and had a penchant for demonstrating his love in ways that were quite embarrassing—to me—like when he hired the singing telegram people to come sing "Wonderful World" for Claudia's birthday. The only time he really seemed to focus on me was when he tried to talk about my picking a school, which was, of course, talk I quickly deflected. Otherwise, while Claudia occasionally gave me a searching look after Raina left the room, my father remained oblivious. I avoided being alone with Claudia for fear she'd bring something up, and saved my love-related complaints for Ann, whom I'd taken to walking every night. She was, of course, extremely sympathetic.

  And what was Raina up to all this time? I don't know. We saw less of each other once the league season began, and I was almost too busy to miss her. I didn't care as much, now, about how her season was going—partly because I no longer asked about her point totals; partly because, when I did happen to hear them, they seemed to be about the same as mine. If only one of us had been a recruit—or if there'd been a big disparity in the number or quality of the schools recruiting us—our relationship, I'm sure, would have been more tense. Fortunately, though, things seemed fairly even between us. For every coach that stopped calling me, one also stopped cal
ling her; for every school that stepped up its efforts for her, one also stepped up its efforts for me. We were two of the most sought-after players in the state, and we were getting equal amounts of attention. I doubt that Raina would have particularly minded if I had gotten more. But if she had gotten more—despite my attempts to be mature—I think I would have minded a lot.

  Raina's love life was a mystery to me, as always. She appeared to have forgiven Toni again—a fact that I found frustrating but not surprising. I think her resolve was broken when Toni presented her with her belated Christmas gift. But even I could understand this, when I found out what it was: floor seats to the Lakers-Celtics game. For the several weeks that followed, Toni called Raina at least three or four times a day. This was unlike her, and I wondered if it had to do with the fact that Raina would be graduating soon, and leaving at the end of the summer. Sometimes she left mushy messages on the answering machine when Raina wasn't home, which annoyed me. Didn't she know that I usually got home before Raina and was the first one to check the machine? Maybe she did know. Maybe that was the point. Finally, I just started to turn the machine off in the morning before I left for school.

  Neither Raina nor I was home much during those weeks, but when we did spend time together—in her room, watching Moonlighting, shooting baskets in the driveway—it was apparent that some tiny new bridge of understanding had been forged between us. It was the paradoxical sense of familiarity and discomfort which comes from heightened knowledge. At any rate, we did not pretend to be so unaware of each other. One day when Raina came home from being out somewhere with Toni, upset once again at something she'd done, I said, fed up, "You know, you deserve better than to hang out with people who are always bringing you down."

  I expected her to get mad, but instead she smiled and replied, "And you should give yourself more credit than to think that people wouldn't like you if they knew how much went on in your head."

  Our eyes met. I smiled back at her. A month before, neither of us would have spoken like this, and we certainly wouldn't have been able to look at each other if we had. But things were different now. Maybe it helped that we had each seen firsthand a bit of the other's weakness. And while her reaction to our talk at the beach had angered and disappointed me, my general discovery that she feared being open to people seemed to round her out somehow. It did occur to me, though, that despite what she'd said about the things that went on in my head, our friendship was still dependent upon my never voicing what I felt. And there were certain topics we never touched upon—our missing parents, what my father might know about me, my utter lack of love life—because we couldn't have talked about anything real without talking about what existed, and didn't exist, between us. But the irony of our holiday crisis, the unforeseen result, was that our friendship, having survived it, was actually stronger. Because of the pain we'd experienced and the knowledge we'd gained, there was a fullness to our relationship that hadn't existed before. We appreciated it now, we meant more to each other. I don't mind admitting this scared the hell out of me.

  * * *

  During this period, both Raina and I went on our recruiting trips. I spent two days each at Iowa, Washington, Virginia, UNLV, and Arizona. Raina went to Michigan State, Michigan, Stanford, Virginia, and Washington. The trips were fun, I suppose, especially since I got to miss school, but the novelty of being flown somewhere, then dined—if not wined—and taken around a school for two days, wore off almost immediately during my first trip, which was to Iowa. I met coaches, players, professors, alumni, and athletic directors, a revolving-doorful of people whose names escaped me as soon as I was out of their presence. I watched practices and games, and got shuffled around between the coaches and players, who took me to their classes, their dorm rooms, their apartments. I saw the schedules which outlined who was responsible for me at what time, and I felt, more than anything, like a child whose babysitting arrangements were being made. Most of the players I met were cool, and some were honest enough to tell me the drawbacks of their programs and the idiosyncrasies of their coaches. I tended to gravitate, though, toward the players who were from LA. The coaches, not ignorant of the ties of geography, had set things up so that I stayed overnight with a player from California on every single one of my trips. In two of the cases, the player's roommate was Asian, and that was probably intentional too. The coaches couldn't have planned, though, the conversation I had with the sophomore point guard during the first night of my visit to Iowa.

  From the moment I met her, I was sure I'd seen her before, even though she was from Washington, DC. And where I'd seen her, I thought, was at a gay club at home. When some of the Iowa girls took me out to a local house party, I maneuvered the player, Jamie, away from the others, under the pretense of wanting to ask about the program. She was good-looking, with skin the woody color of maple syrup, and bright, liquid eyes. We talked for a few minutes about how Iowa was doing that season, and then I asked her if she ever went out to LA.

  "Yeah," she said, pulling at the hair which hung just to her shoulder. "My dad lives there. I go out and stay with him for two or three weeks every summer."

  "Oh really?" I said. "I thought you looked kinda familiar. What do you do when you're in LA?"

  She suddenly looked at me with greater interest. "Oh, I go . . . out."

  "Oh yeah?" I said, smiling. "What kind of places you go?"

  She smiled back at me now. She knew. "Oh, just places. You know. Long Beach, Pico-Union, West Hollywood."

  Some of the most popular women's clubs were in Long Beach, Pico-Union, West Hollywood.

  Just then, two other players joined us and we cut our conversation short. We already knew what we needed to, though. I hung out with Jamie for the rest of the weekend, and learned about her life there. She told me that no one in the athletic department knew she was gay, and that if there were any other gay players on the team, they kept it to themselves. She'd had a hard time meeting people in Iowa and was looking forward to moving back to DC. My visit there was like a vacation for her; we stayed up until three a.m. both nights, and had a snowball fight once while the campus slept, me soaking my borrowed jacket. There were a couple of times when I got vibes from her, and I was sure she would have been up for something if I had been interested. I wasn't, of course. Still, I liked hanging out with her, and knew we could have become good friends, although the school didn't win me over. Too cold, too flat, too country for me. Even Jamie's presence there wasn't enough to make me go.

  The other eventful visit I had was to Washington, because Raina was there at the same time. We actually didn't see that much of each other—we were whisked off to separate classes, met with the coaches at different times, and were only together at their game and at a practice. But it was still intriguing and fun to know that she was around somewhere, going through the same routine. And when our paths did cross, we compared notes, and gave each other our real impressions. During the game, which Raina and I watched from right behind the home bench, I commented that all of the Washington players, even the guards, were big and stocky.

  Raina nodded in agreement, and grinned at me. "They ain't called the Huskies for nothing."

  When my campus visits were completed, I had an overwhelming amount of new information to process. Like Raina, I decided to make a chart listing all the good and bad things about each of the schools. Some of these distinctions were easy—Virginia, which was close to DC, was a plus for location, and Washington a minus for weather. Las Vegas was ugly but had great support for its women's basketball team, and Arizona was exactly the opposite. Seattle had large numbers of Asians and gays, whereas Iowa was the whitest, straightest place I'd ever seen. It seemed like every place was a trade-off in some way or another—a few good qualities for an equal number of bad ones. The one thing the schools had in common, I noticed, was that they were all in states I'd been to with my AAU team. I worked on my chart for days, until my head began to hurt from looking at it. I consulted my Cheryl Miller doll for advice, but
she didn't have much to say. And I still wasn't any closer to making a choice.

  CHAPTER 15

  On the last Wednesday night in January, Claudia got home a little earlier than usual in order to cook dinner for her friends. Although it was five thirty—prime time for pickup ball—I was home studying for my upcoming finals. Raina, who had her schoolwork more under control, had gone to the park by herself. My textbooks and notes were spread out on top of the coffee table in the living room; I sat on the floor and leaned over them while Claudia shuffled around in the kitchen. She was making some kind of pasta dish with lots of basil and oregano, and as I stared, unseeing, at the chemistry book in front of me, I wondered if Paula would come. She had boycotted their last two dinners. And while Rochelle and Kim, apparently, had spoken to her on the phone, Claudia hadn't talked to her yet. Meanwhile, as far as I could tell, Kim and Rochelle had been lobbying on Claudia's behalf; Kim had left a message about a conversation they'd had with some other person on the speakers' committee.

  A little before six, the doorbell rang. It couldn't have been Kim or Rochelle, since they weren't due until seven thirty, and I was trying to figure out who would show up unannounced when Claudia came into the living room.

  "Glued to the floor?" she asked, smiling, when she saw I hadn't moved.

  "I was about to get up."

  "Uh-huh," she said, continuing on toward the door. "Right. And it's probably one of your friends, anyway."

  I got to my feet, slowly, to see who it was, but when Claudia opened the door, she just stared for a moment. "Hello, Paula," she finally said.

  I didn't know what to do, and sat down again. From where I was, I couldn't see Paula, and I wondered how she looked. It took a few seconds before she replied. "Hello, Claudia. It's been a long time."

  Claudia stood very straight, her hand pressed tight against the edge of the door. "Are you here for dinner? I told Kim and Rochelle not to come until seven thirty."