Saskia is wearing her hair out today. It’s neatly curled with a curling iron and glistens in the sun. She attempts to tuck strands of it behind her ears. Tru does it for her, her hand lingering just behind Saskia’s right ear. They stare at each other, suddenly shy again, their mutual bewilderment confessing they have reached a certain level of intimacy. “Who yuh waiting on?” Tru asks with a smirk, removing her hand.
Saskia shrugs. “Hm. Someone wid a nice fade an’ big brown eyes. She’s di forward everybody’s been talking about on di school’s football team. You know her?”
“Is she cute?”
Saskia blushes. “I dunno. Maybe.”
“You say she plays? Does she have di best game ever?”
“Today we’re about to find out dat she’s di best high school football player in all of Jamaica, playing fah di best team. Those St. Andrew High School girls look like giants out there, but I bet she can beat them.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Hm. Sounds like you really like her.”
Saskia shrugs. “I think so.”
“You think?”
Saskia nods and smiles shyly. “I really like her.”
“I’m sure she really likes you too.”
Saskia looks down at her shoes. Tru does the same. “Let’s do something nice aftah di game. Maybe we can go to Devon House fah ice cream.”
“So dat yuh can eat up all ah mine when I’m not looking?” Saskia laughs.
“Sharing is caring.”
Mrs. Rosedyl, who’s on her way to the VIP section of the bleachers with an older black man dressed in all white, stops to greet Tru. Mrs. Rosedyl is smiling, looking extra tanned from the sun. She’s wearing a visor, a white polo blouse buttoned all the way up to the neck, and a salmon pleated skirt, looking very much like she’s about to play a game of badminton or tennis with the royal family.
“Ready for the game, Tru?” Mrs. Rosedyl asks.
“I was born ready.”
“I’d like you to meet Mr. Andre Porter. He’s a recruiter from Cambridge University.”
The man smiles with perfectly aligned teeth—the straightest teeth Tru has ever seen besides her mother’s. He shakes Tru’s hand.
“You have a good handshake,” he says to Tru in a clipped British accent that also surprises Tru, who has never met a foreigner who isn’t white. “Firm,” Mr. Porter says. “I like you already and I haven’t even seen you play. A woman with a man’s handshake!”
He turns to Mrs. Rosedyl, who laughs. Her laughter seems apologetic to Tru and Saskia. “Ur . . . uhm . . . and Saskia here is our exceptional net-ball team captain!” she tells him, quickly changing the subject.
“Hello.” Andre bows slightly when he gently takes Saskia’s hand like a prince greeting a princess. But Saskia grips his hand and shakes it.
Mr. Porter, who seems caught off guard, says to Mrs. Rosedyl, “You’re making some firm handshakers at this school. I’m impressed!”
Tru thinks she sees her headmistress flush red. If her blouse wasn’t buttoned all the way, Tru would’ve probably seen that reptilian vein she gets in her neck whenever she’s upset as she says, “They’re all amazing and exceptionally gifted, Mr. Porter.”
Following her successful CXC pass last year and admittance to sixth form, which is now co-ed, Tru had gone to Mrs. Rosedyl about starting a soccer team at the school. She made the case that girls can be good and competitive at male-dominated sports too, and given that the school has so much money already set aside, why not put it to good use? Mrs. Rosedyl didn’t appear too thrilled at the time, dismissing Tru with, “I’ll think about it.” Next thing Tru knew, Mrs. Rosedyl made an announcement on the intercom for Tru to come to see her in her office. Her classmates oohed as Tru gathered her things to go to the principal’s office. When Tru arrived, Miss Thelwell, the PE teacher, and Miss Fairweather, the guidance counselor, were there, all three women smiling. “Tru, Miss Fairweather told me how much it would mean to you if we start this new program at our school. I was telling Miss Thelwell about your proposal. Her father, Ronnie, was a soccer coach at St. George’s College. He’d love to come back and coach our team. But there’s one catch . . .” Mrs. Rosedyl pursed her lips in a thin line. “You’d have to help recruit.”
Tru gleefully took on the task, designing flyers with Kenny’s help and handing them out all over campus. She even spoke onstage at assembly, encouraging girls to try out for the team. To Tru’s surprise, girls from every form signed up, more girls than Tru thought would ever be interested in soccer, girls willing to try out despite their status as Branded or Uptowns.
After Mrs. Rosedyl walks away with Mr. Porter, the girls turn to each other and giggle. “That skirt is hideous!” Saskia says.
“And aren’t visors outdated?” Tru laughs, shaking her head.
“Also, what’s up with that man and handshakes?”
“His hair says it all. Old school.”
Saskia laughs. “Well, I showed him!”
“Yes, you did.”
“A scholarship to Cambridge University in England goes a long way,” Saskia says.
Tru smiles. “And if I get it, you can visit me, since yuh mother is there. Dat would be nice.”
“What yuh mean, if you get it? You will. Good luck,” Saskia says, echoing Patsy when Tru spoke to her over the telephone this morning. “You’ll show dem. I’m so proud of you.” They have been talking a lot more lately, at least once a week. It took almost a whole year for this to happen, for Tru to begin to forgive her mother. She’s not sure if she’s fully there yet, or if she’ll ever get to that place of complete forgiveness. In her quiet times, there is still an unexplainable ache she feels, which throbs like the nerve of a phantom limb. She is secretly relieved that her mother hasn’t been pushing the possibility of having Tru come live with her and her girlfriend, Claudette, in America, though Roy has put in the paperwork for a visa application for Tru to visit. “At least you’ll ’ave di option. Ah could introduce you to Claudette,” her mother said. Tru only nodded, leaving quiet on her end of the line.
“Yuh mother has a girlfriend? Dat’s so cool,” Saskia mused when Tru confided in her. Tru felt guilty about lying, since her mother has never uttered such words to Tru. Tru has only inferred that the woman living with her mother might be more than her roommate. “Claudette sen’ har love too”; “Claudette an’ I not g’wan be home on Sunday, we going on a boat trip”; “Me an’ Claudette saw a good movie di other day”; “Claudette fried fish today an’ it remind me suh much of Port Royal. Dey still fry good fish an’ bami ovah dere?”
By then, Tru and Saskia had been going steady for a couple months. They had gone all the way, Tru finally surrendering to the all-encompassing feeling of being girl and boy, hard and soft, powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Tru loves Saskia’s muscles moving under her damp skin, and her heaving chest against hers like she’s breathing for her, her heart beating for them both. Patsy doesn’t know about Saskia. Tru doesn’t like the idea of pinning things down, defining them. She relishes this ambiguity of liking who she likes. And besides, Tru wants to take it slow. She’s not at that stage where she feels comfortable disclosing her personal life and desires to her mother. But she will tell her about the University of Cambridge and her plans to study psychology there, if all goes well.
Before she goes off to the locker room to prepare for the game, she looks both ways, making sure the coast is clear before she draws close to Saskia for a small kiss. In that pause, Tru’s heart ceases and she knows that after the game all she wants to do is sit in Saskia’s cool room or lie across Saskia’s bed with her to listen to music together, or make their own, the sun spread over them through the window. But it’s only a moment. Saskia blushes and steps away a little. The world has intruded once again. With a shadow of caution covering her face, Saskia gives Tru’s hand a squeeze, then stalks off to the stands, her white Wilhampton High School T-shirt merging quickly with the crowd.
She jumps and clutches her chest. “Yuh coulda given me a heart attack!”
“Jus’ a warning. Yuh standing out here looking lost when yuh have a game to play.”
“So? How yuh know ah wasn’t meditating?”
“Meditating, my rear end. Di word is tardy. Yuh face right next to it in di dictionary. Look it up.” He winks.
Tru cuts her eyes at him. “Your dictionary needs an update. ’Cause I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Who is di cute girl?” he asks.
“None ah yuh business,” Tru replies.
“Yuh looking kinda sad. Everyt’ing all right? Is wha’ she do yuh?”
“Mind yuh business, Marlon.” Tru laughs.
“Yo, Ricky!” Sore-Foot Marlon hollers across the lot. “Check out Tru Juice friend.”
Albino Ricky’s eyes expand, growing in circumference to fit the width of his face when he follows Sore-Foot Marlon’s crooked index finger to Saskia, who is now sitting cross-legged in the bleachers. He tosses his cigarette and stops. “Wah? It g’wan pour to rhaatid!” he jokes. Asafa comes over too to stare, all three boys gawking, their curiosity pressed up against her.
“Can I get har numbah?” Albino Ricky asks.
“You all should get a life,” Tru replies. “Is jus’ a classmate.”
“Jus’ a classmate?” Sore-Foot Marlon smirks, his comment private.
“Stop it!” Tru says.
“Stop what?” Sore-Foot Marlon asks, playing clueless. “Tru Juice, ah haffi give yuh props. Neva knew di day would come . . .”
“What’s dat supposed to mean?” Tru asks, reveling in the indecent delight. “Yuh know I got more game than you, Marlon.”
“Oooooooooooh!” the other boys hoot, cupping their mouths.
Bewilderment and intrigue lance Sore-Foot Marlon’s eyes. “You do, huh?” He brings his face close to hers like he wants to kiss her. “We’ll see about dat, Tru Juice.”
She stares boldly in his face; something in it triggers her—the slight twitch above his thick eyebrows, maybe. Or his light eyes reflecting an image of her in their deep centers. With a strong graceful lift of her head and squaring of her shoulders, revealing an almost irrepressible vitality, she says, “I’m very good at other t’ings yuh won’t know about.”
“Heresy!” Sore-Foot Marlon’s astonished laugh joins hers. “Di dictionary has yet another word bearing yuh beautiful-ugly face.”
“And yours . . .” She smiles at him.
When the other boys leave in a bevy of laughter to find their seats in the bleachers, Sore-Foot Marlon stays. He reaches for her hand. “Now more people will get a chance fi see what ah always know—dat you’s di real deal.”
His playful smile returns, followed by the gold flecks of mischief in his amber eyes, as he holds his face at an angle to get a really good look at her, his laughter leaping out. “Actually . . . you’s second best to di real deal.” He stretches both arms toward the blue of the sky like Rocky at the top of those steps in the movie. “I am di real champ.”
Tru laughs out loud. “Now, dat’s tacky—”
“What?”
“Show-off!”
Brushing his lips across her cheek, he says, “I’m quite disappointed, Tru Juice, because ah thought yuh got more balls than dat. How yuh g’wan say yuh got good game an’ not act like it?”
Without waiting for her reply, he strides jauntily across the parking lot toward the bleachers, leaving her smiling and shaking her head. “Arrogance!” she calls out after him. “Yuh face right next to it in di dictionary!”
He waves her off, and she stares after him, her hand cupping his breath on her cheek.
INSIDE THE LOCKER ROOM, TRU PULLS OUT THE NECKLACE HER mother sent her from her godmother Cicely—a tiger’s-eye pendant for good luck. “I’m passing it on to you wid yuh godmother’s blessing, ’cause yuh need it more,” her mother said over the telephone. Tru puts it to her lips and then latches the silver clasp around her neck, letting the pendant fall inside her jersey so it can be next to her skin.
From the soccer field, Tru sees her friends sitting in the bleachers next to Roy, who is beaming with unbridled pride. Beside him, holding one baby to her breast while the other dozes in a stroller, Marva is pursing her lips as if she’s trying to hold back tears. Her face shares the same look of hope that burns in Kenny’s and Miss Maxine’s and Miss Foster’s and Miss Belnavis’s and Mr. Pete’s and Sir Charles’s, and the faces of Tru’s other old neighbors from Pennyfield. Only Mama G has refused to come, because her church forbids her to go to movie theaters and stadiums.
Roy had taken the initiative to invite most of Pennyfield, like he had taken the initiative—finding his calling—to start a soccer camp sponsored by the Jamaica Constabulary Force for inner-city boys and girls, which also provides scholarships from money donated by local businesses and major corporations. Sore-Foot Marlon, Albino Ricky, Asafa, and many of the boys on Pope’s team are involved. “It reduces crime rate by giving these boys an’ girls somet’ing to do. Somet’ing to hope for. Somet’ing dat build their confidence an’ prove to them dat dey have a future,” Tru heard Roy telling a reporter in an interview he did over the telephone. He was written up in the Jamaica Observer with his new title: “Superintendent Roy Beckford Changes a Troubled Community with Football.” When Tru told her father about Pope’s team and what he’s trying to do with it, Roy became interested. Pope gave the team over to Roy, trusting that Roy can take the team a lot farther with his reputation and ability to get sponsors to grant them more and better opportunities. Today, Pope is in the stands too. Today, he nods discreetly at Roy, who nods back, before nodding at Tru—his braces glistening in sunlight. Today, he points his index finger at Tru and mouths, Your turn.
Tru scores two goals for her school. All of her training seems to funnel to this moment: her father teaching her how to kick that makeshift ball with all her might, the many games she played in the dwindling emerald light surrounding the bald patch of land behind Roman Phillips Secondary with her friends. How Sore-Foot Marlon kicked the ball to Albino Ricky, who bumped it on his knees and kicked it to Asafa, who head-butted it to Tru, who did a horizontal kick, her right leg almost touching her forehead, straight into the net. She repeats the move now, to raucous hoots and hollers. Miss Maxine and Miss Foster, who had brought their Dutch pots, bang them with metal spoons. Roy hugs Kenny, almost lifting him off the bleachers, and then turns to kiss Marva full on the mouth.
“Pennyfield to di werrrrrrrrl!” Albino Ricky shouts, grinning from ear to ear.
THE END.
Acknowledgments
MY MOST HEARTFELT THANKS AND LOVE TO:
My wife, Emma Benn, whose encouragement helped me to finish this book; my agent, Julie Barer, who had been sold on this project from the very beginning; and my editor, Katie Henderson Adams, Cordelia Calvert, Michael Taekens, and the Liveright team, who fell in love with Patsy and made it possible for her to enter the world.
I am also very grateful to those who helped me along the way as I worked on this project—my mother, my grandmother, my sister, and my dear friend Janae Gaylyn, who has read every draft. I am also truly grateful to my nephews, Logan and Jayden, for being such gifts during this process; my best friend, Tina Whyte, for listening and for your tremendous help; Alistair Scott for your wealth of knowledge; Latoya Blackwood for your motivation and support; Tracy-Ann Ferguson for your keen eye and insight; and Miss Claudette for your wonderful spirit. Also heartfelt thanks to Sharon Tucker-Gordon, Wayne Gordon, Tameka and Lionel Taylor, Juliet Jeter, Louie Benn, Benny Benn, Lavern and Linda Adger, Aunt Lillian, David Watkins, Cheryl Benn, Carolyn Horton, Nancy Kirby, Iris Bonner, Eugenia Benn, Charlie Benn, Sheldon Shaw, Craig Wooten, Sharon Gordon, Marcia Wilson, Anna Masilela, Richa Deshpande, Chengcheng Tu, Shayaa Muhammad, Krystal Brown, and Debbie Hardie for being true angels of love. And special shout-out to Lamont and Alicia Adge
r for going out of your way to cook some good food for the soul when I needed it the most. And Rowena Hunter for your prayers.
Many thanks to Hedgebrook and Sewanee, especially Richard Bausch; the New York Foundation for the Arts; the MacDowell Colony; Lambda Literary; and Kweli literary journal, Mosaic literary magazine, Kimbilio, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation for your constant support of black writers.
I’m forever grateful for my predecessors, beginning with my great-grandmother, Addy, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Audre Lorde, and Paule Marshall.
Much gratitude to Marva and Danville for the inspiration. And to all the mothers who have helped me during the birthing process of this book. I couldn’t have done it without your insights and encouragements. You know who you are! This is for you.
Last but not least, thanks to Jamaica, my homeland and beloved country, for the lush, but mostly untold stories; and my second home, Brooklyn, for the opportunity to tell them.
ALSO BY NICOLE DENNIS-BENN
Here Comes the Sun
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Nicole Dennis-Benn
All rights reserved
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