Janae

by LJ Alonge

  “Boooo!” someone shouts.

  I turn around. People take deep breaths and cup their hands around their mouths. The booing is bitter and harsh, all of it bleeding together into something big and overwhelming. Someone asks for a water bottle to throw at Justin. Someone else wants to know if that’s really Mike from that Disney show. Some people jump out of the stands and edge onto the court so they can get a little closer, really be heard. My sisters tug on my skirt, reminding me to boo. I do it, at first quietly, hoping they won’t hear me, and then I do it until I’m straining my throat. I do it until I’m out of breath, and I’m surprised at how good it feels to be out of breath again.

  The boys watch us. They watch me. They huddle together, tense and confused. They start to jog off the court, into the night, so close together they seem fused at the shoulders. I boo even louder.

  CHAPTER 10

  CALL IT A COMEBACK

  The last thing I remember is my sisters discussing how to get vomit off a chiffon blouse. The next morning, Granny finds me on the floor of the bathroom, my cheek stuck to the linoleum.

  “You’re back,” I mumble.

  “I can’t leave you alone for a couple weeks?” She sighs. She steps over me and starts running the bathwater. I listen to her splashing happily.

  Later, I hear the muffled sounds of her crime shows through the bathroom door. Every few hours she brings me saltine crackers and ginger ale. When I have enough strength to get up, I crawl to the living room and lie at her feet.

  “You happy now?” she says, throwing a blanket over me.

  “I didn’t mean to, Granny.”

  “I hope not!”

  Her feet are warm and soft and smell like lavender. I fall asleep, and when I wake up, it’s night. There’s a tiny jackhammer lodged in the front of my brain.

  “Please turn down the TV,” I whisper.

  “Don’t drink things you shouldn’t drink!” She mutes the TV. “So what caused such stupidity, dear?”

  “I was out with the twins.”

  “Ha! The two of ’em share one brain! You know that!”

  I tell her about the basketball tryouts, about the psychic.

  She laughs. “Bad luck! You just got beat!”

  “What if it is my luck? Can’t you do something for that?”

  “Baby, you can’t control luck any more than you can control the weather.”

  I lay my head in her lap.

  “That’s your problem,” she says. She puts a cool rag on my forehead. “You’re good at everything! You don’t even know what to do when something goes wrong.”

  “I shouldn’t have quit basketball.”

  “It’s just a game, Janae.”

  “No it’s not, Granny!” My tears are falling onto her feet.

  “Lord,” she says. “Don’t cry about it! These ain’t real problems. If it’s so important to you, go fix it!”

  Outside, the world feels sunny and new. The last two days have been a fog. I close my eyes and listen to the ice-cream man drive by, his jingle loud and cheery. My basketball clothes are wrinkled from being in the bag so long. When I get to the court in Berkeley, the bald-headed coach is busy hustling some kid. He’s pulled his socks up to his knees.

  “I want to talk to you,” I say.

  “You look terrible!”

  “It’s urgent.”

  He drops the ball, and we walk to a corner of the bleachers.

  “I want to play ball again,” I say.

  He leans in. “And?”

  “I want a coach.”

  “And?”

  “You’re my only option.”

  “Okay then!” he says, smiling. “I’m honored, and I promise with all of the coaching power vested in me that I will never let you down or in any way—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Now I just need to start putting together some pieces around you.”

  “Who you got so far?” I ask.

  “Well, I’ve got a couple things in the works that I’m hoping come through in the next few weeks, really just a matter of time—”

  “How many players?”

  “As of now? Nobody.”

  “I got a team already.”

  “Great, bring them here.”

  “No,” I say, “you have to come with me.”

  The leather seats in Coach Wise’s pickup are cracked. Pieces of leather cut into my back and my butt. Coach Wise drives with both hands on the wheel, slowing down to a stop at the yellows and accelerating smoothly on the greens. Since it’s Friday night, the boys will be at a quiet little court near the Coliseum, a court we practiced secret plays on in case we ever needed them in a close game. It makes me nervous that he isn’t nervous. I stick my head out the window and let the air punch me in the face.

  “Why do you want to coach basketball so bad?” I ask.

  “You know what I did for thirty years, Janae?” he asks. “I sold insurance.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “You know how fast time flies when you’re doing something you hate?” He snaps his fingers. “Like that. And one day you wake up with no hair, and everything you want in life is out of reach.”

  When we get to the park, the boys are playing two-on-two. I walk right up to the edge of the court, to the white out-of-bounds line.

  “Hey, boys,” I say.

  “Your ball,” Frank says, ignoring me. “Take it out.”

  “You guys wanna play threes?”

  For a second, for less than a second, Justin glances at me. Then he passes in the ball, and they’re playing again.

  Coach Wise asks if this is normal, the guys ignoring me like this.

  “No,” I say. I walk onto the court and block Mike’s shot. The ball rolls to the fence.

  “Does anybody see how weird our basketball is acting?” Frank asks, walking to the fence. “It’s, like, moving on its own. Like it’s possessed or some shit.”

  Justin and Adrian and Mike look at their shadows. I look at Coach Wise. He jogs to the center of our circle.

  “Maybe I can help?” he says, extending his hand. “Coach Wise.”

  “Who’s this guy?” Justin says.

  “He wants to coach us,” I say.

  “Who’s ‘us’?” Frank says. “And what do we need a coach for?”

  “If I may,” Coach Wise says. “What I’d like to do is take you guys to the next level.”

  “The next level of what?”

  “Well, maybe you’re unhappy with your current situation, which requires that you always go to different sketchy courts not knowing what’s going to happen. Maybe you’d like to have a more stable playing environment. Maybe you’d like a little more exposure for all of your hard work.”

  “So you’re saying we might get paid?”

  “Well, there are certainly many types of rewards that come with playing inside.”

  “What do you think?” Frank asks, nodding to Justin.

  Justin looks at me. Maybe I’ve never seen him before until today, I think. He’s making me feel small, naked, exposed.

  “Let’s do it,” Justin says, throwing the ball to me.

  Frank, of course, rolls his eyes.

  CHAPTER 11

  EXTRA CHEESE

  Coach Wise keeps a book titled The ABCs of Teamwork under his arm. He reads with his finger, mouthing the words silently. For a week, we don’t go anywhere near a basketball court. Instead we do the human knot in a dewy field at sunrise. We stand in a circle and play “telephone” under a noisy overpass. At Tilden Park, we walk single file, all of us blindfolded except the leader, who leads us around thousand-year-old oak trees and evergreen shrubs. Coach Wise asks us to sit in a circle and share our deepest fears. Nobody says anything.

  “The team,” Coach Wise shouts. “The tea
m! The team!”

  What team? I wonder. Frank won’t even look at me. Justin stands between Adrian and Mike so he won’t hold my hand in the human knot. At the end of the day, we take the bus together and I sit in the front by myself, listening to old nurses talk about their grossest patients. I’ve never felt so lonely around friends. I watch them greedily, laugh with them when they pull the stop-cord and the bus driver curses so loud the nurses shake their heads and cluck at him. I know the boys hate me, but I’m so glad to be near them, they could ignore me for the next hundred years and I wouldn’t care.

  “I can see how close you guys are getting,” Coach says after we do a trust fall. “Don’t you guys feel closer?”

  We all look away. The boys had caught me an inch above the ground, so close I’d braced my hands for impact.

  “That will be the key to our success! The team, the team, the team!”

  Today we pile into Coach Wise’s pickup and head over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, up and down the hills, through the narrow zigzagging streets, until we can see the beach. I zip up my jacket. It’s chilly, not beach weather. The ocean is gray and churning; nobody’s in the water. There’s a stinging saltiness in the air. Stray dogs sniff at the garbage cans, fighting off the seagulls for the best scraps. Sand swirls in circles, biting our naked shins.

  “Can’t beat this!” Coach Wise says, stepping on a rotted tree branch.

  “What are we doing here?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. We walk onto the beach behind him, our sneakers sinking unsteadily into the sand. Coach Wise takes off his shoes and walks to the waterline.

  “The greatest team of all,” he says, looking down at his book. “Water and land. Destruction and creation. Yin, yang. Enjoy this!”

  Coach Wise walks back to his truck. The boys stand a few feet away from me, their hands in their pockets.

  “What a nut,” I say, hoping to get a laugh. The boys don’t answer. I want to kick sand onto their shoes, do something silly, but Coach’s pickup backfires. We all turn to the parking lot.

  “Okay!” he shouts. He’s quickly reversing. “This is your final project! Use teamwork to get back to my house! Think of it as running a fast break!”

  Then he drives off, his tires kicking up a cloud of sand behind him. We watch him turn onto the Great Highway and speed down a side street. The waves crash behind us, uninterested, unmoved.

  “Shit,” I say.

  Frank picks up a handful of sand and throws it at the water. “I can’t believe we let you get us into this shit.”

  “How was I supposed to know?”

  “Sorry, forgot. Nothing’s ever your fault.”

  “Maybe you’d like me more if I never said anything.” I turn to Adrian. He turns away, staring at the horizon.

  “Maybe,” Mike says, “we want to talk some things out?”

  “Shut up!” Frank says to Mike. Then he turns to me and hollers, “You got us run out of the park the other night! You left us hanging!”

  I look away. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  “Nobody can stand you. You’re an asshole. We just like you because you’re good.”

  I turn to Justin. “You’re just gonna let him say that?”

  Justin shrugs and looks away.

  I could punch Frank in his miniature-ass mouth. I could throw him into the ocean and watch him bob like a buoy. But he marches away, toward the parking lot, kicking at the seagulls in his path.

  “Come on!” he shouts.

  Instead, Adrian sits in the sand.

  “Maybe my opinion doesn’t matter,” he says, “but I don’t wanna pick sides.”

  Justin and Mike look at each other and then sit down next to him.

  I stand over Justin. My shoes are dangerously close to his fingers. “And what?” I ask. “You’re staying with him?””

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Whatever,” I say. “Have fun freezing.”

  I head to the park across the street. Frank disappears down an alley a few blocks away. I don’t care what happens to any of them. What I need is to get a lift back to the East Bay—but after an hour of sticking out my thumb, I still don’t have one. I spend the last few moments of daylight at a gas station, asking people for rides. They get in their cars and lock their doors. There is no sunset: The sky goes from light gray to black in an instant. Lights begin blinking on in apartments across the street. When I get close I can hear the voices of kids, the sounds of plates and microwaves and TV laughter. Fog blindly gropes its way inland. I take shelter in a bus stop, but the bus is out of service. The streetlight blinks yellow, and then it dies. I blow warm air into my hands. I’m trying to convince myself I’ve done the right thing, but I can feel my eyes getting watery. That’s when I hear teeth chattering. It’s too blurry and too dark to see who it is. I’m wiping my eyes, taking a step toward the other side of the street, when I realize it’s Frank. He’s got a newspaper wrapped around his bare shoulders. We’re silent for what feels like an eternity.

  “You want my jacket?” I ask.

  “No,” he says.

  The wind knocks the newspaper out of his hands. I can see the goosebumps on his shoulders. I slip one arm out of my jacket and throw the free half over him. He moves closer.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  We walk back to the beach, our shoulders rubbing, getting warm.

  The beach is too dark to go looking for the rest of the boys, and the waves are so loud we can’t tell where the sand stops and the water starts. This must be what oblivion looks like, I think. Total darkness, all the lights turned off, all the candles blown out, nothing but TV static. Frank and I stand on the edge of the parking lot—right where the glow of the streetlight ends, where civilization ends—and squint vaguely in the direction of the ocean. We call out until our voices crack. Our words are smothered in the liquid churning.

  “Maybe they left,” I say. I look for a wave, some sea foam. Nothing.

  “Maybe,” Frank says.

  But he keeps calling and I quickly join in, hoping he doesn’t think I was trying to give up. Slowly, the boys stumble out of the darkness, first Justin, and then Adrian and Mike, their legs pushing heavily through the mounds of sand, their hands shielding their eyes from the light. They look like they were buried: Sand coats their arms and legs, their cheeks. Without thinking, I start rubbing the sand out of Justin’s Afro, and I’m surprised when he leans in so that I can dig my fingers in deeper. I feel something cold dripping on my leg—his shorts are soaking wet.

  “The tide kind of snuck up on us,” he says, his teeth clacking.

  And then comes the thick silence that happens when we’re alone and Coach Wise isn’t there to tell us what a wonderful team we are. I know I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t know what. Granny’s taught me to never give a refund or an apology, and so the words feel peanut-butter-sticky in the back of my throat. They’re just words, I tell myself, but the thought feels too much like a lie to take it seriously.

  “It’s cold,” Justin says. He’s jogging in place to get warm.

  We walk a couple of blocks inland, following the smell of baking cheese to a rundown pizza place. One of the flour-dusted cooks recognizes Mike and lets us in after he autographs twenty pizza boxes. We huddle around the oven. I hold out my hands greedily, as close to the fire as I can get without burning myself.

  After a few minutes I start sweating, but I can’t tell if it’s because of the heat or because the silence is back. I know that sooner or later I’ll have to explain myself. A bell rings, and a guy comes running over with an uncooked pizza. We scatter, bumping into buckets of flour and steel drums of marinara sauce. He shoves the pizza into the oven, glaring at us as we reconvene in front of the flames.

  “I understand if you guys don’t want to be cool with me,” I say, because I’ve given up
, because the right words won’t ever come out.

  “We do,” Justin says quickly. He doesn’t take his eyes off the flames. “But you never said anything about what happened.”

  He looks at me. I look into the fire. “I don’t know what to say. Saying sorry doesn’t feel like enough.”

  “What else can you do?”

  There’s this wise look in Justin’s eyes, like he knows what he’s talking about, like he’s been through something. He looks older than us, and suddenly I want him to hug me, to pat my head.

  “I was messed up,” I say. “I thought my life was over. I didn’t know you guys would be there that night. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  Somebody out front loudly orders a supreme, extra cheese, chop-chop. The words float between us, ringing around in the quiet.

  “I used to eat pizza every day.” I sigh. Anything is better than silence. “At this place by my house. My sisters would take me, but then they heard pizza gave you pimples, so they stopped going. I still brought slices home in case they changed their minds, but the next day the pizza was in the trash, buried under some junk mail. It wasn’t even good pizza, it was gross, but it always tasted better when you had someone to eat with.”

  I can’t swallow the giant knot in my throat. Why am I even talking about this? “Never mind.”

  Justin moves back from the fire a little, closer to me. “I love pizza. Even the gross kind.”

  One by one the other guys nod. There’s a part of me that’s thawing out, that wants something as obvious and cheesy as a group hug, something to prove this is real, but you have to take what the defense gives you. I’m glad for even this much.

  “Beautiful,” one of the fat pizza guys says. He’s clapping a wooden pizza paddle against his fleshy hand, creating big clouds of flour. “Really beautiful. Now if you don’t mind—get the hell out.”

  CHAPTER 12

  FRESH START

  Coach Wise sees us coming from a block away. He peeks out the window, then slams it closed. It’s early morning; we got a ride in a taxi. We stuck our heads out the windows to look back at San Francisco, at the skyscrapers gleaming like mirages. The driver kept looking at us in his rearview mirror, like he expected us to jump out at any moment. “What are you thinking?” he yelled, turning up the heat. “Are all of you wacko?”