by Barry Wolfe
“I know. But I can’t let you go,” I reply. I’m feeling the wound already. She pulls away completely and gathers her things together. She looks at me tenderly, quickly kisses my cheek and exits the car. Once outside the car, she turns and says, “I love you, Izzy White,” and begins running toward the entrance. I roll down my window and yell after her, “I love you too, Desirie Jackson.”
As I’m driving home, an old song by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters keep repeating in my mind. Soon I’m singing at the top of lungs, “That Woman”.
Chapter
23.
Jump Shot Redux
On a dreary afternoon late in October, I find myself obsessing about the possibility of nuclear war. This new terror arose in me when President Kennedy announced that the Soviets have placed Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. These missiles, according to the Washington Post, have a range of up to 3,000 miles. In other words, they could land on virtually any part of the United States. Of course, if the Soviets were ever to lob a few missiles in our direction, we would have to reply in kind. It’s not rocket science to deduce that the possibility of world-ending nuclear war is a very real one. Well, I guess it is rocket science, but you catch my drift. I haven’t slept well since the President’s speech. I keep thinking about all those drills from the past when all American school children had to dive under their desks to protect themselves from the inevitable Atom Bomb. In our nuclear world diving under anything won’t help much. Ever since the speech I have been rapidly cycling in and out of paralyzing states of terror. In calmer moments I wonder if there will be a world left in which to live. While in one of these terrorized states, my phone rings. I don’t answer it right away, because I mistake the ring for the alarm bells going off inside my head. When I can finally discern that the bells I’m hearing are actually the rings of a telephone, I answer. “Hello?” I almost scream out. “Izzy, are you alright? It’s Mel Gray.” It took me a moment to focus.
“Mel who?”
“Mel Gray…from Howard.”
“Oh Mel. Of course! I’m so sorry. I’m worrying about the missiles and was in the middle of an anxiety attack when you called.”
“Missiles? What missiles?” I’m pissed that Mel has not joined me in worrying about the fate of the world. “The missiles! The ones the Russians have installed in Cuba. A nuclear war is about to destroy us.” I hear Mel chuckling.
“Izzy, is there nothing you don’t worry about?”
“Mel! I can’t believe you’re so blase about missiles that are just 90 miles from Miami.” Trying to ignore my hysteria, Mel changes the subject.
“ Let me tell you why I called. The Negus has asked me to ask you to play with our intramural basketball team.” This information is so perplexing that I entirely forget about missiles in Cuba. “The Negus asked you to call me?”
“Yes, he sho enuf did, Mistah Izzy,” Mel replies. I ignore his imitation of the character ‘Lightning’ from the old Amos and Andy TV show. We had argued about the racist nature of the show. “He wants me to play B-Ball for Boss?”
“That’s right. He wants you to be balling for Boss”. We both laugh at his double entendre. “When does the season start?”
“In about 3 weeks,” Mel says. Forlornly I ask, “I guess the games are played in the Quonset hut?”
“They sho enuf is, Mistah Izzy,” Mel replies with a cackle.
“Will you cut that crap, Mel. We settled that argument awhile back if I recall.”
“You were settled. I’m still unsettled. I can’t believe you can’t see how racist that show was.”
“And as I said, I’m not sure the show represented anything, but these were gifted actors who created genuinely funny characters.” With some pique, Mel says, “You still have a lot to learn, white boy.”
“I’m sure I do. We can take up the argument again, if you like, during basketball practice at the Hut.”
The thought of playing organized basketball again got my heart racing. I had never made my peace with the way my collegiate career had come to an end. Although my injury healed, my confidence didn’t. Now I’m being offered another chance to shine, playing the game I love more than any other. When I show up at the Quonset Hut for our first practice, I see several players who don’t look familiar. They don’t look like any of the Boss fraternity brothers that I remember seeing at the frat house. When I ask Mel about it, he tells me in a whispered aside that I’m not the only ringer who’ll be playing for the Boss team this year. Mel drags me over to a huge muscle-bound dark-skinned, so-called new Boss Pledge. He is six feet six and weighs about 240 pounds. “Izzy, this is Roscoe Barnes. We call him Bad Ass. His name says it all. You don’t want to drive to the hole if he’s in the vicinity because he’ll make you eat the basketball. Bad Ass was an all-state center from Florida, and he led his high school team to the state championship two years ago. He led them in scoring, rebounds and blocked shots. “How you doing, Bad-Ass?” I ask him as nonchalantly as I can. He looks down at me. His eyes go wide for a moment and then resume their normal, cold stare. “I be cool. How you be? You that little white boy who played varsity a year or so ago?”
“That’s me.” I’m relieved that he recognizes me. I sense that otherwise he would not have been cool with having me as a teammate. I look around and see 10 to 12 guys shooting about a half dozen basketballs. The sound of bouncing balls brings back the memory of my first varsity practice in the Hut two years before. That funky sound always makes me think of a group of fans whomping the floor with rubber hoses. Mel takes me over to another ringer, Walter “Eagle” Holloway, who is consistently draining 20-foot jump shots from the corner when he isn’t displaying some nifty moves to the basket. Walter is a thin, lanky, 6-foot, three-inch all-state forward from Pearl High School in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s nicknamed “Eagle” because of his ability to “fly” to the basket. I watch in disbelief as Eagle practices his patented move. He starts in the corner, fakes left, takes one step right before gliding the rest of the way to the basket. The only Boss brother that I recognize is the first one I ever met--Colby Betterman. He is the guy who let me in on my first trip to the Boss house. I’m told that he is 6’2”, but the way he jumps, he plays like he’s 6’5”. He doesn’t shoot as well as the rest of us, but is a beast on the boards, despite his lean frame.
Despite our heavy school schedules, we are able to get in several practices before our first game with the Kappas. Howard’s Intramural Basketball program is organized into different leagues. There is the Professional School League, the Fraternity League, The Frosh League, and the Independents League. League winners engage in a playoff leading to a championship game. After Mel and I have several arguments over who would play point guard and who would be the shooting guard, we agree to alternate in those two respective roles. With Bad Ass and Colby controlling the boards and Eagle shooting from the corner and driving to the basket, we know we have a strong team. Most of my teammates are in better shape than I am. Mel thinks we have the speed and mobility to play an up tempo game and he argues for that. I don’t object; but by the middle of each practice, I have my tongue hanging out as I try to keep up with my teammates’ pace. So in my first game against the Kappa’s, I rapidly cycle from the game to the bench. I can only last about 5 minutes at a stretch before I need a blow. The Kappas have some talent but most of their players had spent time on the Howard football team. They are a muscle-bound group that wants to physically intimidate us. But they have no one to compete with Bad Ass Barnes who physically punishes the Kappa defenders as much as they punish him. I spend most of the game at point guard because my jump shot has to readjust to the weird dimensions of the Hut. I only make two out of ten jump shots. To make up for my shooting deficiencies, I keep feeding Mel, Bad Ass, and Eagle. They each score 20 points on jump shots and moves to the basket. Our passing is sharp and routinely leaves a man open for an easy shot. Final score-Boss 72, Kappa 59.
As my jump shot becomes more a
ccurate, Boss’s scoring increases. We score 80 points against the Alphas for a fairly easy win. There are no games during the upcoming Christmas holidays, so we have to wait until the New Year until we have a chance to improve on our two wins and no losses record.
Unlike previous years, Desirie and I see a lot of one another during the Christmas holidays. A day after Christmas, Desirie tells me that Mel is hosting a Christmas party at his Aunt’s house, and she wants me to go with her. I say, “Sure. “What’s Mel’s Aunt like?”
“She’ s a very successful woman who’s not hurting for bucks. She owns a house on Blagden Avenue. Have you ever heard of the Negro Gold Coast?”
“Of course,” I reply.
“Well, wait until you see her house. About ten years ago, she relocated to DC from Georgia wanting to work as a beautician. Through hard work and some lucky breaks, she now owns several beauty salons in DC, one not very far from Howard University.”
“I can’t wait to meet her.”
The following Saturday we arrive at Mel’s Aunt’s house a little late. Desirie seems very agitated and I assume it is because of our tardiness. She literally pulls me into the house. The house is a beautiful four-bedroom brick colonial with large rooms and high ceilings. I am astonished by the spaciousness of the place, as I was a few years before with the size of Henry Prescott’s house. I remind myself that the stereotype that all Negroes are poor and live in hovels must be consigned to the dustbin of white supremacist demagoguery. A huge Christmas tree stands in the far corner of the large living room. The luminous tree decorations lend a festive glow to the entire room, which is now filled with the smiles and chatter of a dozen party guests. In the background we can hear Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters singing their up-tempo, bluesy version of White Christmas. Mel comes over to greet Desirie and me. “You two sure make an outstanding couple,” Mel says with a bit too much cutting sarcasm for my taste. But I ignore my irritation and try to be pleasant “Yes, we do ‘standing out’ very well, don’t we?” I reply. Mel shepherds us around the room to introduce us to a number of people we do not know. He leaves us in the company of BOSS brother, Colby Betterman and his dazzlingly attractive girlfriend, Maria Starnes, a raven-haired, sandy complexioned, green-eyed beauty. It takes the greatest restraint for anyone in that room to keep from gawking at her; until she opens her mouth. Maria is a Junior Fine Arts major at Howard with Academy Award aspirations and a painfully obvious affectation. Whenever she speaks she reaches an annoying level of pomposity in a very bad imitation of an Oxonian accent. Colby stands beside her grinning away as if he had just bagged the biggest fish ever. Maria is dominating the conversation with a monologue on her past and future acting achievements when we hear someone coming in the front door. Mel thought he had locked the door so he dashes to the foyer to see who has entered. It’s his aunt who has returned early from an apparently unsuccessful dinner date. She looks around the room at the party guests; and when she sees me, her cold stare turns icy. She then looks at Mel and in a voice that no one in the spacious living room could fail to hear, she yells, “I TOLD YOU THAT WHITE PEOPE ARE NOT ALLOWED IN MY HOUSE! NOW YOU GET THAT PECKERWOOD OUT OF HERE!” With that she rockets herself upstairs. All eyes are on me. I turn beet red and feel like I could now comfortably fit into a thimble. Mel comes over to me crimson-faced and filled with apologies. This very brief taste of racial hatred directed at me hurts like hell. Consumed by shame and humiliation, I grab Desirie’s hand and lead her toward the front door. To no one in particular, I say “Good-bye.” The coup de grace of the evening, however, comes when I overhear Mel whisper to Desirie, “I told you that bringing Izzy was not a good idea.” Out of the corner of my eye I see Desirie glaring at Mel. But she says nothing. Because she is upset, I am super-polite. I open the car door for her. Softly and gently, I ask her what’s wrong. But she continues her silence for the next 15 minutes. The conversational void initially makes me nervous. But my angst soon turns into anger. To break the harrowing silence, I finally ask Desirie,
“What was that?”
“What was what?” She asks, glaring at me the same way she had looked at Mel only moments before.
“I heard what Mel said to you, and if looks could kill…”
“Leave it alone, Izzy.”
“Leave what alone?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Now she can’t even look at me. She’s glaring out the window. “I know you’re upset but I don’t know why. I’m the one that was humiliated. I thought that my girlfriend might be sympathetic.”
Instead of commiserating with me, Desirie is very quiet. “Desirie, I know you’re upset about something, but I don’t think it is because your alleged boyfriend has just been kicked out of somebody’s house because of the color of his skin.” Desirie can no longer remain quiet. She explodes: “Listen to you, Izzy. Everything is about you. You’ve just had a taste of what happens to Negroes everyday.”
“Ok, so this is new to me and completely unexpected. I’ve never had this happen to me during my entire time at Howard. Aren’t I entitled to feel bad about it?”
“Yes, you can feel bad about it Izzy, but it’s hard for me to sympathize when this is the common fate of every Black person in this country. What happened to you tonight is nothing compared to the abuse that Black people experience every fucking day of our lives just because of the color of our skin.” This last bit she says to mockingly hold a mirror up to my own words. “And we take it from people with the color of your skin. And that’s what has me so upset. What am I doing with you, Izzy? What are we doing? The world’s not ready for this—for us. Black people don’t like it just as much as white people. You’ve been at Howard almost four years. Haven’t you learned that yet? What chance do we really have in this world? We can’t even marry in many of these great United States.”
“So we won’t live in any of those states. “
“You’re missing the point, Izzy. Even if we could legally marry, what do you think would happen to our children?”
“Why are you so afraid, Desirie?”
“Aren’t you? What do your parents think of our relationship? Are they happy about it? Are your friends happy, Izzy? I can tell you that no one on my side of the fence is happy. Not my parents, not my friends. Not even Mel.”
This felt like a gut punch. “Mel? He’s said nothing to me about it. I thought he was happy for us?”
“Well, he’s not.” A dark cloud of silence overcomes us both. When I drop her off at her dorm, she gives me no kiss, only a look of despair.
We have plans to go to a party that a friend of hers is giving on New Years Eve. Despite the tension, we agree to go. Through a series of tearful phone conversations, we also agree that we will table all conversations about the future and just enjoy what we have now. The future scares us both but for different reasons. She fears the implications and complications of an interracial marriage. I fear marriage and maybe even adulthood. When we share these revelations, we both can clearly see that anticipating the future poisons our present. We agree that we are both too young to even contemplate a permanent future together. “Let’s just be college lovers and see what happens,” she says. “RIGHT ON, MY SISTER!” I practically yell into the phone. Desirie laughs at my absurd affirmation and laughingly taunts me with my words; “So now we’re brother and sister?” We both laugh and know that all is well. Once again we are each other’s main squeeze.
One of the most difficult things for me to accept about my life is the fact that when one life endeavor thrives, another becomes difficult. When my basketball game is good, my love life stinks or my grades sink. If my love life prospers, my game suffers. And that’s what begins to happen in the first month of 1963. Desirie and I are having the best time of our lives during the month of January. We see each other every day; we laugh a lot and even find the time and place for the occasional “roll in the hay”. Even our fellow students are becoming comfortable with the idea that we are a couple. On the other hand, the accurac
y of my jump shot for the next several intramural games is close to zero. We manage to win the three games we play in January against the Ques, the Phi Betas, and Alpha Phi Omega, the national service fraternity, but no thanks to my jump shot. I make two shots in each game and none of these except one is a jump shot. Bad Ass, Eagle, and Colby, however, dominate the backboards and Mel shoots the lights out of the gym in all three games. I know something is wrong, but can’t figure out why this is happening. I content myself with the role of playmaker and distribute the ball to my teammates. But the jump shot has always been my bread and butter. There were times in high school when I felt I could score at will and I knew as soon as the ball left my hand that my shot was accurate. Even in college I occasionally had that feeling, one that has now totally deserted me. In February my problem continues. My accuracy begins to improve, but only slightly. We scrape by the Kappas. This time the score was 82-80 thanks to Mel’s bank shot just as the final horn blows. We have a second easy game against Alpha Phi Omega’s, but then every team has an easy game against them. After winning seven games in a row, we are afflicted by the disease of overconfidence. In our second game against the “Ques” of Omega Psi Phi, we take our opponents too lightly. We had already beaten the Ques once even though they had several former Howard players. Taking a ten-point lead into the second half, we stop our potent running game. The slowed tempo is just what the Ques need to gradually reduce our lead. As the score gets closer, we start making mistakes and pointing fingers at one another. The fluid chemistry of our game disappears. I throw passes to areas where I expect my teammates to be and they are not there. Mel and Eagle complain to me about my errant passes. Bad Ass is upset because I’m not getting the ball to him enough. I complain because my teammates are not moving without the ball and our offense is sputtering. Because of our continuing sniping, we don’t realize that the Ques have just taken the lead with only a minute left. I call time out. I call a play to set a screen for the Eagle, and he has the option of shooting from the corner or driving to the basket. Eagle is the only player on our team with a decent shooting percentage in the game. I bring the ball up to half court and feed it to Mel who fakes like he is going to drive to the hole. He passes the ball to Eagle hoping he will be open for a clear shot. Instead Eagle is double-teamed and can neither shoot nor drive. Mel moves over to help Eagle and is able to receive a pass from him. But with only a few seconds left in the game, Mel has no choice but to shoot a jump shot outside of his comfort range. The ball clangs off the rim, and the game is over. The Omega Psi Phi team is victorious, 80-78. In the beginning of March we have a successful return match with the Phi Betas. Boss and the Ques have identical records of 9 and 1 at the end of the regular scheduled games. During the single-elimination playoffs, we knock off the Alphas, and the Ques beat the Kappas. The long-awaited rubber match between Boss and the Ques is to be played on Friday.