by Janet Walker
Chapter Thirty-Four
CASTING LOTS
“All y’all new girls, git ya asses over here.”
Patricia Butler, senior, issued her order with the casual playfulness of someone who knew she would be obeyed. She stood next to the senior Evelyn Dent, who sat on a bench in the middle of the locker room. There was general amusement over Pat’s words, but Dent, who was captain, mildly scolded, “Don’t be talkin to dem girls like dat—an cussin. You know how M’Grace feel bout dat.”
“Aw, Dent, shut the hell up, I’m runnin’ this,” Pat snapped playfully.
More smiles around the room—the girls knew that Pat and Dent, when they were off court, interacted much as a comedy team, with Pat the bossy wisecracker and Dent the long-suffering straight man. Dent straddled the bench and sat, slumping and patient and humble, as her co-captain took charge of the meeting. The four new girls, sophomores, looked at the captains in the center of the room and seemed stunned by the order, as if surprised anyone had singled them out, and so they did not immediately obey the command.
“Come own,” ordered Pat. “Over here by Dent. Hurrup! Hurrup!” she urged.
The newest Grace Girls—the awkward colt Kathy Prentiss, the leggy and quiet Tracy Sullivan, the shy and dimpled LaKisha Thomas, and the no-nonsense Vanessa Willis—lurched into action and moved to the center of the room, eyes wide with curiosity. At various points around the room, the other two seniors, Antonette Christian and Sandra Butler, and four juniors—Wanda Carver, Karla Head, Deidre Lowry and Dana McGavin—stood at their lockers with smug smiles because, unlike the sophomores, they knew what Pat and Dent were about to do.
With the four rookies standing around her, Pat began to speak, gesticulating, as she always did, with the dramatic animation of a ghetto girl—even though she had never lived in a ghetto.
“Ah’ight, now, I’m about to tell y’all sump’m very important. Y’all can’t be a member of this team without knowing about this.” Pat hesitated, knowing her introduction had captured the attention of her young audience, and savoring its effect on them. “Can y’all keep a secret?” she demanded.
The sophomores nodded.
“Ah’ight, then,” Pat continued. “It’s sump’m the Grace Girls do every year that don’t nobody supposed to know about but us.” Pat paused to look at her audience, relishing her role of Revealer of Secrets. “Y’all know how Miz Grace like to dress, right? Well, we play this game where we guess what color she gon’ wear the next day. Everybody make a guess and then put some money on it. If she come to school wearing the color you picked, you get the pot.”
Pat hesitated, but none of the sophomores had anything to say, so she continued.
“Now, the pot can be big—it just depend on how much money we put in. Sometimes it can be fifteen or twenty dollars. We bet every day ’cept Friday ’cause we don’t have practice on Fridays, but we try to bet the most on Wednesday so whoever win on Thursday can take a big pot home for the weekend. Y’all understand?”
The four sophomores nodded.
“And on Thursday we bet for Monday,” explained Toni Christian.
“Toni, I’m gettin’ to that, I got this!” Pat snapped, her stare lingering pointedly on Toni, which made the others chuckle and grin. Toni twisted her lips wryly and tried not to smile.
Pat pivoted her head away from Toni and looked again at the sophomores. “Since we don’t have practice on Fridays, when we bet on Thursday, we bettin’ on which color Miz Grace gon’ wear on Monday. Got it?” she asked the sophomores, and they nodded. Pat looked at Toni and added, “Satisfied?”
Everyone chuckled again, and Toni rolled her eyes.
To the sophomores, Pat impatiently asked, “Ain’t nobody got no questions?”
The four sophomores shook their heads no.
“Damn y’all some no-talkin’ new girls,” complained Pat. Their silence guaranteed an early end to the stage show of which she was the star, and she did not want it to end so quickly. So she continued, “Well, lemme say this: The Grace Girls been doing this ever since Miz Grace came here, and she ain’t never found out. So if she find out this year, we’ll know one of y’all told.”
The threat loosened the tongues, finally, of the sophomores.
“I ain’t telling,” the serious Vanessa Willis declared defensively. “I know how to keep a secret.”
“Me, too,” murmured the shy and dimpled LaKisha Thomas.
“Yup,” said tall Kathy Prentiss, nodding, eyes wide like an earnest child’s, big red bottom lip hanging open.
Only Tracy Sullivan, the fourth sophomore, said nothing. She merely nodded in agreement with the others.
“And anyway, why don’t y’all tell Miz Grace?” serious Vanessa Willis asked.
The question sounded like a challenge, like a questioning of tradition, and so a silence of displeasure fell over the juniors and seniors in the room.
“Because we don’t,” answered Pat, who thought that was all the explanation Vanessa needed.
“No, I don’t mean it like that,” clarified Vanessa. “I just mean, y’all don’t think Miz Grace would be flattered by it?”
The seniors relaxed—there was no dissension in the ranks, after all—but they also laughed at the idea of Miz Grace approving of a rule violation.
“She don’t know Miz Grace!”
“Sho don’t.”
Pat explained to Vanessa, “If it was somebody else, I’d say maybe, yeah, they would be flattered. But not Miz Grace. We breaking a rule, and that’s all she’ll see if she found out about it.”
“Yep,” agreed Toni. “Miz Grace believe in following rules.”
“Only the ones she likes,” added the soft-spoken senior Sandra Butler. She sat in a corner, inspecting her pretty fingernails for damage. The other seniors chuckled knowingly at Sandra’s remark and nodded in agreement.
When the room was quiet again, Pat resumed her role of instructor. “Y’all got any other questions?”
“Yeah,” said Vanessa. “You said y’all try to guess which color Miz Grace is gonna wear the next day. What if she wears two colors?”
“She usually do,” said Pat. “But you guessing which color she gon’ wear the most of. And pants count more than shirt.”
“What if two people bet the same color?” asked shy and dimpled LaKisha Thomas.
“Then you split the pot.”
From the corner, the New Jersian Dana McGavin piped up. “What if I put in a dollar, but somebody cheap, like Karla, put in fifty cents? We still split it fifty-fifty?”
“I ain’t cheap!” cute petite Karla Head declared, placing a manicured hand on her hip and pretending to be insulted. Everyone laughed.
“Naw,” said Pat, answering Dana. “You’ll git back more than her. Dent got it worked out. It’s based on percents, right, Dent?”
“Yup.”
“She the one good in math,” Pat explained to the sophomores about Dent. “And you ain’t got to worry about her cheating you. Dent ass so honest it ain’t funny.” Pat’s mood shifted—it was time to bring the show to an end with an authoritative flourish. She clapped her hands together once and announced, “Ah’ight, so that’s what we do every day after practice. Y’all in with us? ’Cause we can’t have no traitors up in here.”
The four sophomores and eight upperclasswomen exchanged grave looks. Pat made it a point to drill a stare into each young member until the sophomore nodded in compliance. When she came to the last one, Pat’s face softened and she said, “What you say, Haines Baby Girl? You in with us, too?”
Tracy Sullivan, appalled by the special attention, grew warm in the face. She responded, her breath tight in her chest, “Yeah. I’ll play.”
Pat looked as if she might smile. “But will you keep it a secret?”
“Oh,” said Tracy, understanding. “Yeah.” She nodded. “I will.”
Pat seemed satisfied with the answer. She looked at all the sophomores and said, “Good. Hope y’all brought some money w
ith you ’cause we starting today.” Pat brandished a small notepad and pencil as if they were weapons of war.
Toni, Wanda, and Sandra came forward, each holding up a hand so that all could see she gripped paper money in her fingers.
Pat became excited. “Yes! Green! That’s what I like to see! Nut’n git me happy like taking other people money!”
“You ain’t takin’ my money!” boasted little Wanda. “I know what color Miz Grace gon’ wear tomorrow.”
“Oh, now, here she go!” declared Toni to the other veterans, who chuckled together.
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Sure you do, Wanda,” teased Sandra.
“I do know what color she gon’ wear!”
“Wanda,” said Pat with strained patience, “you say that same thing every year, and every year you be wrong!”
“Not this time!” insisted Wanda. “She gon’ wear red!”
“How the hell you figure that?” asked Pat, humoring the little tomboy Grace Girl.
“’Cause I done figured out her pattern.”
“What pattern, Wanda?” challenged Deidra. “Miz Grace hardly wears the same thing twice!”
“I done seen her wear the same thing twice!” insisted Wanda.
“We ain’t talking about the whistle around her neck,” teased cute Karla.
Laughter.
“All right, don’t believe me. But when I win the pot tomorrow, don’t be askin’ me how I did it! Now, gimme a dollar on red! Blood red!”
“Listen to her,” said Toni to the others, “getting all specific, like she really know what it’s gonna be.”
“I do know!” insisted Wanda.
“That’s ’cause you probably been to Miz Grace house, spying on ’er,” teased Pat.
Laughter.
“Yeah,” added Sandra smoothly. “The peeping tom…boy.”
More laughter. Wanda stuck out her tongue at Sandra.
Pat addressed the sophomores. “New girls, y’all got some money? Cause y’all can add to the pot today, too.”
A commotion of sorts began among the four newest girls as they began scrambling toward their lockers to retrieve money for the game. Someone asked how much money they would need, and Pat, who was greedy, answered, “Five dollars, at least.”
Captain Dent immediately corrected, “Don’t listen to her. Most of the time, people play a dollar.” Dent’s comment, her first official remark of the meeting, sent relief through the younger girls, who knew their skimpy allowances couldn’t accommodate Pat’s inflated suggestion.
“Put your money on the bench, between Dent legs,” instructed Pat. “First,” Pat added, because some of the sophomores had quickly moved to act, “show me what you got, and tell me what color you bet, so I can write it down.”
While the team members announced their chosen colors and Pat recorded the bets and Dent allowed money to be laid between her dark soft thighs, no one noticed the distress of one of the sophomores, who remained apart from the others at her locker. A moment ago, Tracy Sullivan had walked to the lockers, just as the other new players had done, but she had known she would find no money when she got there. The only money she received from Aunt Madge was lunch money, and that was dispensed and spent on a daily basis, for the intended purpose. Knowing this, Tracy’s stomach tightened with worry as she headed for the locker, but she carried out the pretense because she didn’t want to seem the only girl who didn’t have spending money. So she had reached her locker, opened it, and rifled through her backpack as if she expected to find some change. At least it wouldn’t look so bad if she could pretend she’d had extra money but had spent it. Now, her breath coming fast and heavy, her face moist and warm, she realized the awful truth: She would have to return to the group and admit she couldn’t play the game. So with heart pounding, Tracy edged back toward the other girls and watched.
Dent continued to sit, several crumpled dollar bills between her thighs. Draped across the captain’s knee was a navy-blue velvet whiskey bag with a drawstring mouth. Tracy guessed it was where Dent would put the money she collected. Pat was standing, writing in the small notepad and encouraging bids. Tracy watched her teammates but their voices softened into muteness. It was Monday, the beginning of the second week of training, and she still marveled that she was a member of this team. Marveled with secret pleasure, for despite the short amount of time that had passed, Tracy was already beginning to feel close to the other girls. The Grace Girls, the locker room, the sports complex; their playful, sassy exchanges; Miz Grace and her prettiness and quiet ways—all of it formed some wonderful after-school lure to which Tracy looked forward each day, even more than she had to P.E. class. The good feeling continued as the basketball girls ran around the track and worked out with weights, and exercised to Janet Jackson music, all of them together, including Miz Grace. The sharing felt both foreign and sweet to Tracy. She had never had sisters, but being a Grace Girl made her feel as if she were part of some happy all-girl family. But each day, as soon as practice ended, as soon as she walked off the gym floor, a cloak of shyness dropped upon her shoulders, the one that always hampered her actions in new surroundings; the tenacious shyness that gripped her all day, during classes. The Beckoreos, in general, had turned out not to be as unfriendly as she had once believed, but they were still from another world. Still discussed things she knew little about: fathers who lived with their families, and mothers who joined the PTA, and church choirs and elementary schools where children wore blue-and-white uniforms and the teachers were nuns. And so off the basketball court, when she felt she had nothing in her life that was comparable to the lives of her new schoolmates, Tracy remained silent. Silent, and as invisible as she could make herself. It was that way now, in the locker room, for despite her desire to be in their midst, despite the fact that she shared their fascination for Miz Grace and the woman’s clothes, Tracy found it hard to speak in front of her teammates. There were too many of them, too many bodies standing so close to her—and now, something more: the moment when she would have to admit she had no money to play their color game.
“Yo. Yo. Baby Girl? You don’t hear me?”
Something registered in Tracy’s brain and she realized co-captain Pat Butler was addressing her. “Oh,” she said, pounding inside. “You talking to me?”
The others laughed. Tracy glanced around at them, uncertain.
“Yesss, Baby Girl!” hissed Pat with exaggerated impatience. “Where yo brain at? What you bettin’?”
Spurts of breath warmed the skin beneath Tracy’s nostrils and she felt heat radiating from her face. “Um, I, uh, spent my money…”
Tracy was prepared to say more, to stumble out an explanation that would ward away the piteous looks she expected to get, but Pat interrupted with a wave of the hand, saying, “Oh, well, bring some tomorrow.” Pat closed her little notepad and looked at Dent. “That’s it, then.”
“Tracy, here’s a dollar, if you want to bet today.”
Tracy looked. Sandra stood on the other side of the group, arm stretched forth as she held out a dollar bill in her slender pretty fingers. The gestured startled and embarrassed Tracy. Did they think she was a charity case and needed a loan?
“Yeah!” said Pat, eagerly snatching the money from Sandra’s fingers.
“Hey!” protested Sandra.
“Aw, girl, shut up,” snapped Pat, “you know I’m gon’ give it to Dent.”
“That’s right, Tracy, we do that all the time,” Toni explained. “Somebody always forgetting to bring money. Just pay Sandra back tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” said Sandra, “but if you win, I expect a tip.”
Everyone laughed.
Tracy smiled. “Ah’right,” she agreed. “Thanks.” Because she thought that was the end of her part in the discussion, Tracy fell silent and then became puzzled when the others kept looking at her expectantly. She frowned, confused. “What?” she asked.
“Baby Girl?” called Pat sweetly in a tone commingling exasperation and affection. Then s
he bellowed, “What color! What color you bettin’, Baby G?”
The group laughed again.
This time, Tracy realized their laughter was good-natured. “Oh,” she said, flushed and giggling. Quickly, she thought about her bedroom at Aunt Madge’s house and responded, “Mmmm…pink?”
Pat frowned dubiously. “Hell naw, Baby Girl,” she said. “You think Miz Grace gon’ wear pink? That’s worse than Dana and her yellow.”
“All right, now!” warned Dana, pretending to be insulted.
Tracy, unable to think of a response to Pat’s remark, wriggled uncomfortably. Her discomfort amused Pat, who chuckled, opened her little notebook, and began writing. “Ah’ight, Baby Girl. You want pink, you got pink.” Pat added, “But I don’t think Sandra gon’ be gittin’ no tip tomorrow.”
Everyone laughed and Tracy grinned with them, but as soon as the meeting adjourned, she rushed away to the relief of the showers.