by Nina Revoyr
"Oh, well, in that department," Q said, laughing, "I can top Nancy's numbers anytime."
Telisa and Shavon came into the kitchen, still grinning. With some prodding from Pam, Telisa told her story about finding out that she'd gotten into Berkeley, and everyone was duly impressed. A bit later, after the beer was gone, someone broke out the weed. I chased him into the small backyard so the house wouldn't smell, and a bunch of people followed him out to partake.
"Don't you want some?" the guy from Photography asked when he noticed me standing in the doorway.
"Naw," I said. "It don't do much for me."
"Yeah, Nancy's the straight-and-narrow one of the bunch," said Pam.
Q laughed. "Well, the narrow one, anyway."
Raina didn't get home until almost two—her team had won easily, and they'd gone to Denny's after their long ride back. Our parents came in soon afterward, and then things wound down pretty fast. Most people left, but some of my teammates stayed, and I rustled up some sleeping bags and blankets. Raina and I each discovered one of my teammates crashed out in our beds, so we found a few more blankets and joined the multitudes downstairs in the living room. Everyone talked and giggled for another couple of hours. We finally went to sleep around dawn.
A few hours later, I was awakened by a strange snuffling sound and a horrible smell. When I opened my eyes, I found Ann standing over me, holding the socks I'd worn the night before and pushing them into my face. She grunted and wagged her tail when she saw I was awake. I got up and fed her a bone. We let everyone else sleep awhile longer, and then went around the living room, Ann sniffing at other people's faces—without the socks—in order to wake them up. When I got to Raina's spot I saw that she was completely covered, not an inch of her showing, the blanket drawn up over her head. I grabbed the top of it and pulled it back. She was awake already; I found her lying there grinning up at me with her teddy bear wrapped in her arms. I smiled, and in the instant before she said, "Good morning," I felt the delight of seeing her for the first time that day; I knew she was the most adorable thing on the planet; and I fought the overwhelming urge I had to kneel down and hug her. We had won our first playoff game, my teammates had spent the night, and Raina was there smiling up at me. It didn't seem possible that life could be any better.
Claudia, Pam, and Q, who barely fit into the kitchen together, made a big cholesterol breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. We decided to eat in the living room so we could watch the Knicks game. Q and I stood there ragging on each other while we put food on our plates, and Claudia shook her head at us and laughed.
"You two go back a long way, don't you?" she said.
Q stood up straight, looked serious, and touched a spot maybe an inch down on her forehead. "We been friends since we was this tall," she said.
In the living room, Telisa sat staring at the television. She was a huge Patrick Ewing fan—she loved to imitate his scowl, and wore blue-and-gray Nike Georgetown shoes to practice. We ate and laughed and cheered for the Knicks, and everyone seemed reluctant to leave. They did, though, around three, and the house seemed empty when they were gone. We had finally finished celebrating our first playoff win. And that night, after dinner, I helped Telisa move in with her girlfriend.
* * *
Our next playoff game was on Wednesday. School hardly seemed to exist that entire week; it was a waste of time, irrelevant. The only thing that was real for me was basketball. Our practices were long and intense, but I don't think anybody wanted them to end. There was a feeling of huge significance in the air, and on Tuesday, the unspoken thought on everyone's mind was that that afternoon's practice might be our last. I remember feeling a love and appreciation for my teammates which was greater than I'd ever felt before. There were people I planned to keep in touch with—Telisa for sure, and maybe Q—and of course I'd known all year that these would be our last few months together. But I was thinking more now about my other teammates. Although I wasn't as close to them, theirs were the faces which had populated my life, and I knew that I would miss them when I left.
I wondered if Raina was feeling the same way. She was spending a lot of time with her teammates, hanging out with them in the evenings, not getting any homework done. She'd made up with Stacy too, which I was happy to hear.
"I still think what she did was pretty stupid," she said on Tuesday night. "But being pissed at her don't help anything."
On Wednesday morning, we were having a family breakfast when my father suddenly leaned in close to the sports section and then looked up at Raina and me. "Wait a minute," he said. "Do you two know who you play if you both win tonight?"
Of course we knew, but we hadn't said anything, and we didn't say anything now.
"Who?" Claudia asked, as she buttered a piece of toast.
My father pushed the paper toward her. "Each other."
Claudia raised her eyebrows as she looked at the pairings. "You're right," she said. Then she looked at each of us. "Did you know that?"
I said, "Yup."
Raina said, "Uh-huh."
Neither of us looked at the other.
Raina's team was playing at home that night against a higher-ranked opponent, and I'm sure that part of the reason we hadn't discussed the possibility of our teams colliding—although certainly not all of it—was that no one expected her team to get past this round. Our fate was in question too. We were playing Lynwood, my friend Theresa Golding's team. And while we were ranked slightly higher, we were playing at their place, which would definitely be a factor. Lynwood was in an even rougher area than our school, and they had loud, devoted fans; it was difficult for anyone to come out of there with a victory. On the bus that evening, we didn't horse around as much as usual. We just did our bubble-gum ritual, and passed Clyde around, and stayed quiet while we psyched ourselves up.
The game was just as tough as I'd expected it to be. Lynwood ran a box-and-one defense, which meant that four people played a zone while one player followed me wherever I went. I had a hard time shaking her off; she was like a big and persistent mosquito. Telisa couldn't get a pass to me because my defender was denying me the ball, and when I did manage to break free long enough for my teammates to find me, my defender was on me again before I even had a chance to square up to the basket. Meanwhile, everything was going right for Theresa. She was hitting outside jumpers, leading the break, somehow squeezing between Q and me to grab rebounds. The crowd loved it. At the end of the first quarter, our opponents were up by five, and I felt winded already from contending with my shadow.
At the break, we heard the wrath of Coach Fontaine. "Stop trying to force it to Nancy!" he yelled, his face red and all five hairs falling onto his forehead. "Q, pop up into that big gap in the key. Telisa, look for her, she's wide open, and so's Pam on the other wing. And if they keep collapsing on Nancy and Q, then just take the open shot. They're going to be giving it to you all night long."
He was right. Their guards were leaving Telisa alone, so she woke them up by hitting a couple of jumpers. When they finally came out to guard her, she dumped it off to Pam or Q, and Q made use of the gap in the middle, hitting several easy shots. Even with me out of the picture, we pulled even by halftime. My teammates were picking up the slack.
In the second half, it was more of the same. Tough defense from them, lots of points from Theresa, every possession extremely hard-fought. They made the mistake of trying a full-court press, which gave me some more room to operate, and then called it off quickly after I had three quick scores on fast breaks. Q, Pam, and Telisa were still doing the bulk of the scoring, though, and my teammates managed to keep us even through three quarters. Then, with just a few minutes left in the game, the girl who'd been guarding me all night finally began to tire. I still felt good—all my late-night sprints with Raina were paying off—and as my defender lost a step or two, I intensified my attack. I managed to shake her off now, and Telisa, who actually grinned the first time I broke free, hit me with a crisp, perfect pass. I scor
ed then, and again on the next possession, and again on the one after that. Meanwhile, the other team failed to score on three straight trips down the floor. The crowd grew restless and impatient. Finally they put someone else on me, a substitute with fresher legs, but she wasn't half the defender the first player had been, and I hardly noticed her presence. In the last two minutes we were flawless. Telisa stole a pass at half-court and hit Q for the score, and that turned out to be the final basket. A minute later, when the buzzer sounded, the score-board showed that we had won by six.
The bus ride home was surprisingly quiet. We all felt good about the win, and went around giving each other high fives, but there was something less euphoric about our mood after this victory; we all seemed more serious and thoughtful. It was as if the initial excitement of our adventure had worn off, and suddenly the danger of the situation had become more real. We were far enough into it by then to realize that we were on new and unsafe ground, and that a wrong step in any direction could mean disaster. The person who seemed least affected by this mood was Q. She'd played a great game—she'd had twenty-five points to my sixteen, and had pulled down thirteen rebounds—and a little clump of college scouts had been sitting in the stands. She'd furthered her cause tremendously that night, and I was glad for her, although I also wished I'd been a little more impressive. I didn't let myself dwell on it, though—the most important thing was that we had won.
The bus dropped us off in front of our school, and my father, who'd been driving behind us, picked me up and took me home. Claudia's car was parked in front, and I wondered if Raina was back yet. She was. She came rushing into the living room, still wearing her uniform, looking wired and very alert.
"What happened?" she asked breathlessly, leaning forward.
"We won by six," I said.
"We won by three."
She stood there looking at me, and I looked back at her, and something of huge dimensions happened, as if the whole world tipped off its axis and then righted itself again. I found I was short of breath and that my heart was beating fast. "I'll see you on Saturday," I said.
CHAPTER 18
For the next three days, we avoided each other. We went straight to our rooms when we got home from school, and when we emerged for our meals, we hardly spoke. Our parents were amused by the situation, but also, it seemed, a bit self-conscious and careful—I realized that each of them, too, had a stake in the game. It had been easy for them to remain impartial, uninvolved, as long as their daughters' careers had been separate; but now we were actually competing directly, and neither of them was comfortable. It probably didn't help matters that Claudia's friendship with Paula appeared to be over, especially in light of my father's failure to stand up to his bosses. I watched our parents circle each other, and wondered if Claudia thought she might have made a mistake.
Meanwhile, Raina and I were not amused by the game at all. It wasn't that we were angry, or trying to psyche each other out; no, I don't think that ever occurred to us. Rather, it was that the present situation fell outside the bounds of what we'd established as our friendship. This game, which was a CIF quarterfinal, had a great deal of meaning for both of us, and would have been important no matter who we were facing. But it was all the more important because we were facing each other. Raina's reticence, and avoidance of me, made it clear that she, too, had a lot riding on the outcome. But our friendship, with its definable boundaries and allowable topics, could not accommodate an event of such clear significance. It was too dangerous for either of us to admit how much we wanted to win.
At school, I was useless as always. I sat in my classes, preoccupied, and wrote notes to Telisa and Q about how our lives depended on beating Leuzinger. We were all solemn; we'd raise our fists as we passed each other in the hallway, and talk each other through the long practices. It was as if everything we cared about was wrapped up in the game, and all that mattered was what would happen when we played it.
The only nonbasketball thing that occurred during this period was that Stacy's boss dropped the charges against her. She called us on Thursday night to give us the news.
"He said to just forget the whole thing," Stacy said gleefully, and sounding like she'd already raised a glass or two in celebration. "He fired me, of course, and I gotta put in some volunteer work, but shit—at least I ain't goin to jail."
"What changed his mind?" I asked.
"My mom," Stacy answered. "I mean, she didn't try to talk him out of pressin charges or nothin, but they go back a long way, you know, and I guess he just didn't want to send her kid to the pen."
"I'm real happy for you, girl," said Raina on the extension in her room. "But don't ever pull that kind of shit again."
"I won't," Stacy promised. "You don't get but one mistake."
"And some people don't even get that."
This development broke the tension between Raina and me, at least for half an hour—it gave us something to focus on besides the game. She came into my room for a while, and we talked about our teammates' plans for the next year, never touching on what we ourselves might be thinking of doing. It would turn out that Stacy would pull that kind of shit again. She'd get arrested several times over the years for various petty thefts, and occasionally for drug possession. In these later theft cases, the wronged parties wouldn't be as generous as her mother's friend, and so Stacy would spend a couple of years in jail. On that night, though, during our senior year, Raina and I didn't know this yet. We were just sitting there talking about our friends, about school, about everything except ourselves and the bond and competition that existed between us. It didn't matter. I was happy, and I remember thinking that I could spend every evening for the rest of my life the way I was spending that one—talking to Raina, looking at her, feeling the warmth of her presence spread through my body like wine.
On Saturday morning, my eyes flew open at seven thirty and I jumped out of bed. I hadn't slept well but when I awoke, I felt rested, full of nervous energy. I went downstairs to the kitchen and found that Raina was already up.
"Hey," she said when she saw me.
"Hey," I replied.
I got two bran muffins out of the cupboard, and we sat reading the paper at the kitchen table. We didn't speak, and were both so tense that we jumped whenever the dog made a noise. I glanced at Raina a few times. Her shoulders were high and tight, she was leaning forward a little, and both fists were clenched on top of the table; she looked, more than anything, like she was about to take off on a sprint. Finally she said she was going out to meet her teammates for breakfast, and I was relieved when she was gone—if she hadn't left the house, I certainly would have had to. My father came downstairs in his bathrobe a little after nine, and he was wide awake, hungry, and cheerful. This was my father's nature, and I understood it well. No matter what else was going on his life, he was always happy about the promise of a good battle.
"So who's going to win?" he asked, smiling and petting the dog.
"I don't know," I said.
He went over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. "Well, you better know, because Claudia and I have a wager going. Whichever one of us loses has to take the whole family out to dinner."
He was clearly excited, and I felt my hard, cold anger toward him soften and warm just a little. "Well, don't count on me," I said. "It's gonna be a tough game."
"Hey," my father said, grinning at me, "what makes you think I bet on you?"
I had half a muffin left on my plate, and I threw it across the kitchen at him, smiling. It bounced off his shoulder and was recovered by Ann, who took it off into the dining room grunting happily.
"Okay, okay," he said, laughing. "I did bet on you. So you'd better not cost me dinner. Although if we went to your favorite place and got a few Big Macs, it would only run me five or six bucks."
I smiled and rolled my eyes. "Yes, Daddy."
After watching a couple of college games on ESPN, I went over to Q's place at three for our pregame pasta load-up. She and h
er family lived in a two-bedroom apartment which was three blocks west of the Forum. Q's father slept in one of the bedrooms, and Q, her sister Debbie, and Debbie's two young children in the other. Debbie and Mr. Murray had made us three huge pots of spaghetti and sauce, and we all ate sitting on the living room floor, beneath the framed poster of Malcolm X. We discussed, sans coach, the things we needed to remember for the game—how their center, Diane, was a killer right beneath the basket but hopeless even five or six feet away from it; how Keisha, their best forward, always drove left and was easy to shut down by overplaying that side; how Raina, who had no visible weaknesses, preferred to see what the flow of the game was like before stepping in and taking over. Also, she was the kind of player whose first few attempts to establish herself often affected the way she performed for the rest of the game; she tended not to play as well if she was thwarted in the first eight minutes. Our game plan was to take away the strengths of Diane and Keisha; to try to establish the tempo right away; to realize that Raina wouldn't dominate in the first couple of minutes and to not be reassured by her initial silence. Also, once she did finally step up and make her presence felt, we had to prevent her from wreaking havoc. I found that the more we kept talking about Raina, the more I was getting scared. She was the player I'd measured myself against and tried to live up to for the last three years. And even though I knew I had her respect, I was afraid that I didn't deserve it—that I was a fake, an impostor, nowhere near the real thing. I drove home as soon as we'd finished our meal and prayed that I wouldn't embarrass myself.
* * *
There are certain rare, astounding moments when you feel especially alive. Everything comes into sharp focus, and it is as if the vast, gray, unused portion of your mind has suddenly begun to function. You can feel each cell in your body; you can feel your muscles wrapped around your bones; you hear the messages jump from synapse to synapse. The rest of the time you wade blindly through life, simply trying to get through the day with a few small pleasures and a minimum of pain, and nothing distinguishes one day from the next; nothing has any particular meaning; everything is variable and haphazard. But in those one or two moments when you are truly alive, everything takes on the importance of life and death. And you begin to think of the rest of your life in terms of before and after, as leading up to those times or away from them. Because you are functioning in those moments on such a heightened level, the world stuns you with its magnitude and complexity, and you are able to take it in, to understand. And later, when you refer to your knowledge of life, it is those moments that you mean; it is those moments which stand out like bloodred flowers in the desert and they will never be lost from your heart.