She's Got Game

by Veronica Chambers

  “Whoa, no future plans for your eardrums, huh?” her mother said.

  Jamie turned the music down.

  “What’s wrong?” her mother asked. “Is it the quince?”

  Jamie shook her head.

  “Is it Dash? I thought things were going really well with you two.”

  “They are,” Jamie said miserably.

  “Then what’s the problem, hija?” Zulema asked, making herself comfortable on the studio couch.

  “Dash invited me to a family dinner at the country club, and his snooty stepmother kept going on about the dress code and country-club standards like I was someone who had no class at all,” Jamie explained.

  Her mother got up, smiling, and came over to her daughter. “I, for one, love it when people underestimate me,” she said, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’ll put on a nice dress, you’ll go to dinner, and you’ll knock their socks off, because you are one impressive young woman.”

  “Why should I want to impress her?” Jamie asked.

  “Be the bigger person, hija.”

  “Why should I be the bigger person? Because she’s rich and I’m not?” Jamie asked, exasperated.

  “You should be the bigger person,” her mother said softly, “because you are the incredible Jamie Sosa. And she’s not.”

  With that, her mother kissed her on the forehead and left the studio. Jamie was once again alone with just her thoughts for company.

  Every time her mind drifted to the idea of dinner at the club, all she could think of was the pinched, distasteful expression on Bev Mortimer’s face. The look that said, You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with a guy like Dash.

  Jamie wanted to believe that she was being too sensitive. Her mother always said, “What people think of you is none of your business.” But at Fitzgibbons, Jamie had encountered plenty of Bev Mortimers and their daughters, and it had left a nasty taste in her mouth. As much as she didn’t want to think back to those days, the memories suddenly rushed back, impossible to suppress.

  There had been her art teacher, Mrs. Ward, who had accused Jamie of plagiarizing her term paper, “Picasso, the Ultimate Player.” Mrs. Ward had been so convinced that Jamie could not have written such a sophisticated analysis of the relationship between the artist’s work and his affairs with women that she’d taken the case all the way to the dean, in the hopes of having Jamie expelled. It was only when Jamie agreed to submit to an oral exam on Picasso’s life and work with the entire art department that the plagiarism charges had been dropped.

  Even now, just thinking about the whole incident made her furious. It had been utterly unfair. Her parents might not have gone to fancy colleges, but they’d seen a little bit of the world. Guernica had been her father’s favorite painting ever since he was a high school student and saw a play that used the Spanish Civil War and Picasso’s iconic painting as a metaphor for the sugarcane wars between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And her mother might not have been able to afford a real Picasso, but she had poster reproductions of his work that she cherished.

  As for her own theories about Picasso’s psychology as a cheating dog with majorly ambivalent feelings toward women, all Jamie had had to do was read Françoise Gilot’s memoir. Gilot was the only woman who had had the strength to leave him.

  It wasn’t rocket science, Jamie remembered thinking. I just did my research.

  Being called a cheat had hurt her. And while she had had her fair share of run-ins with social ostracism at the hands of mean girls, her position as the freak of the school hadn’t been complete until she started hanging out with Nils Stotter.

  Jamie’d had no interest in Nils, the son of a Swedish ambassador, when she first met him. But never having gotten close to the girls in her dorm, she was happy for the company he seemed willing to provide. She had liked to tease him for his fondness for wearing knee-length shorts and dark socks. He’d called it the Bermudan business suit, but Jamie had let him know that he was firmly in Sound of Music territory.

  Once they’d started hanging out, they soon fell into a pattern. Every Friday night they went to see a film at the student center. Afterward, Nils would walk her back to her dorm. One night, he asked her, very formally, “May I hold your hand?” She had nodded, more surprised than excited. But when her hand was in his, Jamie had marveled at how long and smooth his fingers were and how warm his hand was as he grasped hers on the cool Connecticut evening. It was as if he had had a warm ball of coal sewn into his palms, transmitting heat from his hand to hers.

  For weeks, Jamie had let herself bask in the warmth of Nils’s attention. He walked her to class, sat with her in the lunchroom, joined her at assembly. On Sunday afternoons, Nils cooked her traditional Scandinavian meals from ingredients that his grandmother shipped over in big wooden crates: Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes with lingonberries, salmon gravlax with mustard sauce. She was still a girl who loved her lechón, her rice, and her beans, but Nils got her to fall for new foods, and, in the process, she fell for him, too. Hard.

  Then Parents’ Weekend had arrived. On that Saturday morning, all of the parents had gathered in the great hall of the big stone building that had been the original residence. Adults milled around, holding cups of coffee and agendas. Nils, Jamie, and the other students were dressed in their charcoal gray blazers, the boys in red and gold ties, the girls in red and gold pleated skirts.

  Her own parents couldn’t make it, so Jamie had volunteered to work at the event for a little spending money. She was sitting at the information table, greeting new parents and giving them their necessary information, when Nils walked over with his parents and introduced her to them.

  Nils’s mother had thin blond hair, pale pink lips, and high cheekbones, like an art-house movie star. She was perfectly lovely to Jamie, asking questions about the Bronx and Jamie’s artwork that made it clear that Nils had spoken of her a lot.

  And then—“Papa, this is my friend Jamie,” Nils had said. But Nils’s father had looked right through Jamie in a way that made her feel two clicks past awful. Just like that, her good mood had vanished.

  Ambassador Stotter continued to ignore Jamie and spoke only to Nils. “Where is the dean, son? Does she know that I’m here?”

  Nils spoke again, firmly this time. “Papa. Please say hello to my friend Jamie.”

  His father kept his eyes focused on the wall directly above Jamie’s head. “Nils,” Ambassador Stotter said, “I’m only here for one day. Let’s prioritize.”

  Then he strode away. She had never learned what happened in those few hours between the time Nils turned to follow his father and the next morning, when she saw him at breakfast. But whatever it was, it changed everything.

  “Hey, where are you sitting?” Jamie said when he walked in with his mother that morning. “I’ll join you.”

  Nils shook his head and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m having breakfast alone with my mom, if that’s okay.”

  After Parents’ Weekend was over, Nils went back to having lunch with the embassy kids—the sons and daughters of diplomats, who at various points had known one another at the United Nations International School in New York. He never spoke to her again. And she didn’t have the strength or courage to confront him and ask him what the hell was up.

  Shaking her head, Jamie refocused. Enough of the painful past, she thought. She had to work. She had been doing a Warhol-style portrait of Binky as a birthday present from Amigas Inc. and began to fill in one of the quadrants, then thought better of it. She was too mad to paint, and paint was too expensive to waste.

  Her cell phone rang, and she looked at the number. Dash.

  “Are you still upset?” he asked when she answered.

  “No,” she said, lying.

  “Well, I would be if I were you,” he said. “But the secret to dealing with Bev is to not let her manipulate you. If you don’t come Saturday, it’s like she told you to stay away and you did.”

  Jamie was silent. In one
short conversation with Bev Mortimer, all her insecurities had come rushing back, and Jamie wasn’t sure whom she was madder at—Bev, for being so condescending—or herself, for letting it get to her.

  “You there?” Dash asked when the silence had dragged on for several moments.

  “I’m here.”

  “Please come to dinner,” Dash pleaded. “It would mean a lot to me to have you there.”

  Jamie thrust her shoulders back. “I’ll be there,” she said.

  And she silently added, in my own fashion.

  EVERYTHING ABOUT the West Side Country Club was designed to intimidate—at least, that was the way it felt to Jamie. Approaching the main building, she had a flashback to the time when she was eight years old and watched The Wizard of Oz on TV for the first time. The perfectly manicured driveway reminded her of the yellow brick road, and the magnificent building that was set high on the hill looked just like the palatial dwelling that Dorothy and Toto visited in the Emerald City.

  The Mortimers were already at the club when Jamie arrived. Dash and his father had met for their usual Saturday round of golf. Dash had been beating his father at the game since he was nine years old, but they both cherished the time they spent together, even if the likelihood of any real competition was slim.

  While the boys played golf, the women spent the day at the spa. Bev had what was called a medical facial and what Binky referred to as a professional spackle and grout. Binky got a manicure, pedicure, and blow-out. She had invited Jamie to join them, but Jamie had passed. She needed time to prepare. She’d decided to make a statement at dinner, to let Bev Mortimer know exactly what she thought of her stupid club with its stupid dress code and rules.

  So she had dressed in an old-school Wild Style T-shirt and a Day-Glo pink spandex miniskirt over supertight skinny jeans. On her feet were a pair of canary yellow Converse high-heeled sneakers. On one arm, she wore a gaggle of studded black-leather bracelets; on the other arm, she’d carefully painted an intricately designed fake tattoo. She knew it was a bit much, but rightly or wrongly, she felt impelled to run the risk of ruining everything to make her point. To that end, she’d gone completely extreme with her makeup—tons of black eyeliner, black mascara, and bold red lipstick.

  She topped the whole ensemble with a classic Burberry trench that she’d scored for just ten dollars at her favorite consignment store. The lining and hem had been in tatters, but Carmen had hooked it up with a purple-check trim that made it look not merely as good as new, but positively haute couture.

  When Ferris, the Mortimers’ driver, showed up at Jamie’s house to get her, he’d tried to persuade her to change.

  “Miss Sosa, far be it from me to question your sartorial choices,” he said, “but I do believe there’s a dress code at the club.”

  Jamie feigned ignorance and tugged at her trench coat. “Is Burberry banned, Ferris?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, the trench coat is quite fetching,” he said. “I’m referring to your jeans and sneakers.”

  Jamie smiled brightly. “Oh, the jeans and sneakers are quite on purpose,” she said. Then, looking at her watch, she added, “We’d better go, Ferris. I’d hate to be late for dinner.”

  Ferris coughed. “I’m sure that I could call ahead to Dash and explain that we’ll just be a few more minutes.”

  Jamie wouldn’t be swayed. “No need! I’m ready to go.”

  But now, as she sat in the back of the silver Bentley, Jamie felt her courage waning. Her actions were going to have repercussions, there was no doubt about that. And for the first time, she realized that those actions would have impact not only on her. Binky was a client. Her parents were paying for this outing.

  Jamie shuddered. What was done was done. She could only hope that Mr. Mortimer didn’t fire her on the spot and that Dash and Binky would understand that she wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, she was just trying to teach their stepmother that stereotypes were ridiculous. If Bev Mortimer wanted to treat her like some extreme conception of a girl from the hood, then Jamie was going to show up and represent the hood, to the max.

  All too soon, they arrived. Ferris parked the car and escorted her to the opulent dining room. The domed ceiling must’ve been thirty feet high, and globes made of tiny gold lights hung down like planets in the solar system.

  Each table was covered with an ivory tablecloth, and the plates were hand-painted with gold stars and accents. A classical music trio played softly on a raised stage, and Jamie was surprised at how lovely she found the whole scene. Once, during her time at Fitzgibbons Academy, one of her suitemates’ parents had taken all the girls in their suite to dinner at Tavern on the Green. Despite how generally miserable she’d been at Fitzgibbons, she’d had a nice time that night. Everything had seemed special and memorable—from the fairy lights twinkling in the trees to the horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park to which the girls had been treated after dinner.

  For a moment, Jamie considered turning around, going home to change, and coming back another night, when she and Dash could have a fancy grown-up dinner without his frosty stepmother around. But this wasn’t just about her, Jamie reminded herself. It was about standing up for all Latinas—letting Bev Mortimer know that not every Hispanic with brown skin and dark hair was a chola from East L.A.

  She took off her trench coat and revealed her ensemble. She could feel diners at the nearest tables turn and stare. She stared back, defiantly.

  Ferris spoke to the maître d’. “This is Miss Sosa, with the Mortimer party.”

  “Miss Sosa,” said the maître d’, looking down his ski-slope nose. “I’ll be happy to seat you momentarily. But it would seem the Mortimers did not explain that there is a dress code for the dining room. T-shirts are frowned upon. Jeans and sneakers are not permitted under any circumstances.”

  Jamie looked around, emboldened by the attention she was receiving. “That’s ridiculous!” she said loudly. “As you can see, I’m wearing a skirt over jeans, and the sneakers not only have heels, they’re limited editions.”

  The maître d’ cleared his throat and lowered his voice, as if to neutralize her loud tone. “Miss Sosa, if you would permit me, we keep spare clothes and shoes on hand for occasions such as this. I can assure you that they are perfectly appropriate.”

  Jamie shook her head. “And I can assure you that my best friend’s father is deputy mayor, and I can have this whole place closed for discriminatory practices.”

  The maître d’ looked horrified. Jamie smirked. All those hours of watching Law and Order were finally coming in handy.

  She heard a cough behind her and turned around to find Dash and his father standing there. Dash looked confused. Mr. Mortimer looked bemused. “I hope an exception can be made for our guest,” he said calmly, his silver hair and dark gray suit epitomizing class.

  “Of course, sir,” the maître d’ said. “May we ask that the young lady keep the trench coat on?”

  “I’ve got no problem with that,” Jamie said with a nod, “as long as I get to keep my sneakers on. You never know when I’ll have to dine and dash.” She laughed and pointed to Dash. “Get it? Dine and Dash!”

  Her boyfriend did not look amused. “What the hell are you up to?” he hissed in her ear, as he guided her firmly into the dining room.

  As she followed him, she whispered, “Just keeping it real D., just keeping it real.”

  When they arrived at the table, Bev Mortimer was waiting. She still wore her sunglasses and only barely turned to acknowledge Jamie’s presence.

  Binky got up and, of course, gave Jamie a big hug. “Hey, amiga, what’s up?”

  “Really, Binky,” Bev said, finally deigning to speak. “Must you be so ethnic in your displays of affection?”

  All of a sudden, Jamie understood why Binky was such a big hugger. It drove her stepmother batty. It was also clear that Jamie’s getup was working Bev Mortimer’s last nerve. Behind her glasses, Binky’s stepmother vacillated between scanning th
e room and staring at Jamie. Finally, she spoke to their guest.

  “Would you really have us believe that you have no suitable clothes for a dinner out?” she asked. “Even the dress you had on yesterday was an improvement over this ensemble.”

  Jamie, who had begun to feel slightly silly, turned indignant again. “Funny, I think that most people would agree that my outfit is much more stylish than yours.”

  Mrs. Mortimer was about to respond when the waiter came by with their first course. “To start your meal, we’re serving a lobster salad with sunchoke mayonnaise and pickled tomato,” he said.

  Jamie picked up a fork.

  “The smaller one, dear,” Bev said with a smirk.

  And that was when it hit Jamie.

  Her plan had backfired. The joke was on her. Jamie knew her salad fork from her dinner fork. She and Amigas Inc. had set hundreds of tables for quinceañera celebrations, and Jamie had always taken great pleasure in getting every detail perfect.

  But Bev Mortimer had made her so mad that she’d not only forgotten her basic table manners, she’d forgotten who she really was. She was proud of her Bronx pedigree, proud to rep the boogie-down as Jamie from the block. But part of that girl’s identity was as a girl who’d spent hours at the Cloisters staring at the Unicorn tapestries. A girl who spent hours on eBay looking for gorgeous vintage dresses. A girl who loved beautiful things and beautiful evenings just like this one. Being really mad at Bev Mortimer had made her behave in a way that did nothing to highlight the belleza of her Latina spirit. She’d embarrassed herself, her people…and Amigas Inc.