by Liara Tamani
“But what can I say? You are the Rex Carrington. At least I got to try you out for myself. If you would’ve waited another two weeks, I would’ve given you the goods. But too bad for you, boo-boo.”
No anger at my back, a fresh wound starts to spread just beneath my skin. I push it down to the place with the million other hurts I don’t have time to deal with and hang up. Then I grab my juice, my plate out of the microwave, and sit at the counter on one of our uncomfortable-ass barstools.
Every time I have to sit on one of these, it pisses me off. Who buys concrete chairs? I would sit at the table, but those chairs aren’t any better. All the furniture in this house is uncomfortable. My father says it has to match the house’s modern style. Man, he can get on somewhere with his modern style.
Our old tiny house, with all of its worn upholstered furniture and wallpapered rooms and halls, where Mom had once walked and ate and slept and talked and been . . . where she’d been . . . was perfect if you ask me. But my father didn’t ask me. He sold the house without—you know what, I’m not even about to start.
After a couple of bites, I look over at the opening to the hall that leads to my father’s room. One look, that’s all I’ll allow myself. Sometimes, after I’ve been out here a while, he’ll come out of his room and ask me about the game. And I’ll ask him about the hearts he looked at that day and if he had a surgery. And we’ll actually have something that resembles a conversation.
Okay, one more look, but that’s it. The entry to the hall looks like an empty picture frame. The frame is modern (of course) with a wide, dark wood trim. And inside the frame, there’s a white wall, illuminated by a small recessed light. Doesn’t look like the frame is getting a picture tonight.
I eat my last bit of arepa, wash it down with juice, and carry my dishes to the sink. But before I rinse my dishes and put them in the dishwasher, I lean back against the counter and look at more pictures of Carli on her brother’s IG feed. Her gentle face is the perfect antidote to tonight’s roughness.
I have to give big ups to her little brother. Carli’s social media is on lockdown, but Cole’s is wide open. And he’s a sharer, a big-time sharer. A big-time lover, too. Seems like every few weeks, a new girl takes over his feed. Not completely, though. Carli constantly gets play.
But tonight, Cole’s posted a bazillion pics of their whole family together. Old vacation and family outing photos . . . things like that. And it’s not even throwback Thursday. The gallbladder thing with Carli must really have him thinking about how much he loves his family. How perfect they are. What I would give to know that feeling for even one second.
After finishing my dishes, I head upstairs to my room. But before I reach the landing in the middle of the stairs, where my father’s frame disappears from my line of vision, I turn around and look one more time.
Two minutes later I’m still standing here, staring at nothing.
This is stupid. I’ll go knock on his door. If he doesn’t answer, he doesn’t answer. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I walk back down the stairs and then down the hall that leads to his room. There’s a slit of light underneath his door, and when I get closer I hear the faint sound of the TV. My knuckles are about to hit the door when I stop and think about how much he hates me.
The thing about it is, I don’t blame him for hating me. I don’t blame him for never wanting to be around me or talk to me. I get it. If I had never been conceived, Mom would still be alive. It’s my fault she’s not here. I’ve always gotten it.
But right now I need to share Carli with someone who won’t laugh. Even though we have no history of talking about girls, and I’m pretty sure the conversation will be awkward as hell, I want to sit on my father’s bed, like one of his patients, and talk about what I feel in my heart.
The slit underneath his door turns black, and the TV silences.
I lower my fist. It’s all good. I’ll go out back, lie under the trees, and talk to Mom, like I always do.
CARLI
I’m sitting in the gym after school on Wednesday, half reading a magazine and half watching my team run through plays. Even though I can’t practice, Coach Hill still wants me here because I’m the captain, the leader of the team. I swear every time she reminds me of that, which is every chance she gets, an alarm goes off in my head. An alarm that’s been sounding since Saturday. A reminder to tell her and the team that I don’t want to play anymore. That I’m not coming back to play after the surgery tomorrow.
With my Spanish book open to hide my magazine tucked inside, I’m reading an article about how numbers can provide clues to your life’s direction. The girl in the picture beside the article looks crazy-confident, like she knows exactly where her life is headed, and I’m trying to get a little bit of that.
Coach Hill blows her whistle, long and hard.
“Carli, watch out!” a few of my teammates shout.
I look up in time to miss a ball flying toward my head. It bangs loudly against the bleachers behind me.
“My bad,” Vanessa, my backup, says with a way-too-sorry look on her face. I didn’t see what happened, but I’m guessing she missed another one of Jordan’s hard passes. It’s really not her fault, though. Coach Hill plays me so much that Vanessa hardly ever touches the court. And now, with the playoffs so close, everyone’s putting on the pressure for her to step up.
“Why don’t you go ahead and take her out for the rest of the season?” Jordan, our point guard, yells at Vanessa. The bestie can be a little overprotective. She’s standing with her hands interlaced on top of her head—deep dimples in her milky brown cheeks even when she’s mad.
If you only knew, I think before saying, “I’m fine,” and get up to get the ball.
“Well, hurry up, then,” Jordan says, and jokingly gives me the middle finger.
I smile, happy she’s playing with me. We’ve been kind of distant this week. She’s been complaining that I’ve been too quiet, that I’ve been keeping something from her. But there’s no way I can tell her about quitting the team. And I can’t tell her about my parents, either. Telling her would make it too real.
At least we’ve had Rex to talk about. She’s convinced the kiss was at least partially for me. You see, he broke up with his girl hours after catching me.
Jordan knows because she has a cousin who has a best friend who has a boyfriend who plays basketball for Woodside who said that Rex broke up with his girl on the bus and everyone heard. Said she cursed Rex out so bad for leaving her that he had to hold his phone out of the window so he wouldn’t have to listen to it all. Sounds crazy, I know. Why not just hang up in her face? Maybe because he’s too sweet.
As I walk to get the ball, which bounced two rows down and rolled to the opposite side of the bleachers where the band always sits, I reach to touch the hospital menu in my back pocket, to make sure it’s still there. I’ve been secretly carrying it everywhere with me since Saturday. Gonna write my number on the back and give it to Jordan to give it to Rex when he plays at our school Monday. I don’t even have to tell you how bad I wish I could go (holding-my-pee-until-the-end-of-the-movie bad). But I’ll be at home recovering from surgery.
After I retrieve the ball, I overhead pass it back to Jordan as hard as I can.
Jordan catches the ball and immediately drives down the lane for a layup, her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth and the wristband on her left arm pulled up over her elbow.
“You ain’t Michael!” I jokingly shout.
She makes the layup. “Oh, I’m not?” she asks, and walks the ball way out beyond the three-point line. She shoots and it drops.
“Oooooooo,” the team says in unison. But I’m not even surprised.
Jordan has known since elementary school that she wanted to be the female version of Michael Jordan and has been pushing toward her dream ever since. I wonder if it has to do with her name.
I’ve been reading about this theory called normative determinism, which basically s
ays that people’s names can influence what they want to do with their lives. If Jordan is any indication, it’s definitely true. Either way, I’m happy for her, I really am. But sometimes I get jealous that she has a dream and I don’t.
“Okay, let’s get back to work!” Coach shouts.
And back to the magazine. Here’s what the article’s telling me to do in order to get a clear look at my life’s direction: write the numbers one to ten and beside them, list things that have happened the corresponding number of times this week.
Can’t be trivial things, like how many Jelly Belly Buttered Popcorn candies I ate or how many times I’ve spotted Sabina Karlsson (this black model with red hair and freckles like me) in a magazine. Although I have been seeing her everywhere lately. They have to be things with meaning. Things with weight (with the way my life has been going, I should have no problem there).
And after I make the list, signs are supposed to start popping up with more frequency. Signs. Yeah, only the things I’ve been following since the fifth grade when one saved my life.
It was a Sunday. Daddy was getting ready to visit his parents’ grave. I wanted to go, but he always insisted on going alone. So I went outside to practice my ball-handling skills in the driveway, hoping that when Daddy came out to get in his car, he’d be so pleased that he’d take me with him.
The basketball rolled into the street, and I ran after it without looking. Then a giant swallowtail, the largest butterfly in North America, swooped in. I’d cut one out of the Houston Chronicle after reading about its six-inch wingspan the day before. Tacked the photo up on my wall.
And there it was, in all its majesty, flying right in front of my face. I stopped suddenly, and a car whizzed by me so close that it felt like death giving me a cold hug.
And now, when the world is coming at me faster than ever—and I have to decide which parent to live with and how to tell my team I want to quit basketball and what to do with my life—I’m supposed to up and stop looking for signs just because Cole made me feel stupid? Exactly. So here goes:
1. Number of shoes Daddy removed before going to sleep on the sofa Saturday night after the hospital. On Sunday I woke before dawn and saw him asleep with his long legs hanging over the sofa’s edge in the same clothes from the night before. I removed his other sneaker, covered him with a blanket, turned off SportsCenter, and went back to my room.
2. Number of Lucille Clifton poems I copied in my prettiest handwriting and placed on my wall while waiting to hear the kettle whistle from the kitchen on Sunday. Mom makes tea first thing every morning.
3. Number of words I said to Mom and Daddy when I walked into the living room. Is. It. True. Cole was still asleep. Mom looked confused. Initially, Daddy looked scared, like a little kid who’d just gotten in big trouble, but his lawyer side came through.
4. Number of sips Mom took of her tea as lawyer Daddy summarized the same details Cole had given me the night before. As usual, Mom tried to keep her cool. But her right pinky finger wasn’t having it. It was tapping the hell out of her mug. Her right pinky was pissed.
5. Number of minutes that elapsed between the end of the conversation and Daddy leaving to buy boxes from U-Haul.
6. Number of exchanges Mom and Daddy had before Daddy moved out. All averaging ten seconds and all about which thing belonged to who.
7. Number of times per hour I begged Mom to tell me the reason they were splitting up.
8. Number of times this morning I thought I heard a knock at my door and got up and checked, but no one was there. Cole hasn’t been in my room since Saturday night. Four days.
9. Number of times Daddy called me last night. The Rockets were playing the Clippers and he wanted me to study the rhythm of James Harden’s step back. Normally I’d be annoyed, but every time I saw Daddy flash across my iPhone’s screen, I was five years old again, hearing his keys jangling at the door, telling me he’s home.
10. (x a thousand) Number of times I’ve closed my eyes and seen Rex’s face. His big down-slanted eyes staring into mine. If only he could see my pain and come hold me now.
REX
When a mother tree is dying, she passes on messages of wisdom to her baby seedlings. No lie. Suzanne Simard, this badass forest ecologist, has actually traced messages moving down a dying mother’s tree trunk, through the fungus in the ground, and into her seedlings. Dying trees speak to their children.
Crazy, right? That’s my favorite thing to think about when I’m out here in the pine forest behind our house. Makes me think Mom spoke to me when she was dying, too. Makes me think, in the thirty seconds she held me on her chest before her heart stopped beating, she somehow gave me a lifetime of lessons.
I just wish I knew what they were.
Tell Me
CARLI
Cole came into my room this morning and I get to see Daddy today. That’s all.
REX
Yo! Once again my boy Cole comes through. He started to fall off for a minute. Hadn’t posted all week. But this morning, on my way to school, he’s making up for it—plenty! At the red light, I look down at my phone again and see he’s posted another picture of Carli. She’s riding in the backseat of their old-school Land Rover in a pink T-shirt with a rainbow. Underneath the rainbow the words Easy Like Sunday Morning are in gold, glittery letters. Man, easy is right. I swear it’s never been easier to look at someone’s face. And she’s smiling so big. I mean huge.
They’re on their way to Carli’s surgery and Cole gave up all the deets. Say what! It’s like he was personally giving them to me.
There’s only one problem. Well, actually four.
1. I’d have to skip school and I have a precalc test second period. Dude, I studied all night for that thing. I could make it up next week, but a weekend is a long time to forget things like:
2. I’d miss gym period, which is the mini-practice before tonight’s game. I need that time to make my 111 shots a day. Gotta keep the jump shot dropping! Plus, Coach Bell will wonder where I am. I don’t want to disappoint him again.
3. Carli’s surgery will be at Houston Methodist in the Medical Center, the same hospital where my father practices. Last time my father caught me skipping school (eighth grade, to try and stop this OG oak tree in the neighborhood from being chopped down by a builder), he didn’t say a single word to me for weeks.
4. I hate hospitals. Haven’t stepped foot in one since I was born. Every time I even drive by one, the world plops its fat ass right down on my chest, making it almost impossible to breathe.
But really, all these problems don’t have shit on the promise of Carli. All week she’s been glinting off the shiny parts still tucked inside of me. The pure and happy and hopeful parts, the parts starving for love. I’m telling you, it would kill me to miss this chance to see her. No question, all my shiny parts would go dull.
CARLI
When we get to the hospital, Daddy’s already in the waiting room. He’s sitting in a chair, hugging his briefcase, staring at the ground. Even though he’s in his lawyer clothes, his scared little-boy face is in full effect.
See, this is exactly what I was trying to tell Cole. I hate seeing Daddy like this. Whenever I catch him this way, everything inside me plunges toward the place he must’ve gone when he was eight after hearing both of his parents died in a car accident. An endless pit with no sound or light.
I hope Daddy hasn’t been sitting around his rental house like this. The thought of it makes me want to tell him that I chose him. Makes me want to tell him that I’m going to his place after surgery today.
When he sees us, he wipes himself clean of the little boy and stands up.
Without thinking, I run to him.
As I slam into his chest, he hugs me tight, lifting my feet off the floor. “Hey, Angel-face,” he says.
“Hey, Daddy,” I say, and as my feet touch the ground, my stomach growls super loud, like it’s saying Hi, too.
“Hungry, huh?” Daddy says, and laughs. “Yeah, I r
emember when I tore my ACL in college and couldn’t eat the night or morning before surgery. It was awful.”
I’ve heard about his ACL a million times. Everybody has. He tore it mid-season of his senior year at Kentucky. Left knee. Says it’s what ruined his chances of going to the league. But right now I can hear about his ligament all day. Every word he speaks is filling up the massive hole his absence is digging inside me.
I want to tell him how strange it’s been not having him home. How I’ve been missing his morning pancakes, the smell of his aftershave, the sight of his socks on barstools and sofas and tables, and his keys, especially his keys. But nothing comes out.
“Hey, Dad,” Cole says, right behind me.
Dang, already? I feel like the girls on The Bachelor when someone interrupts their one-on-one time too soon. But I act like the bigger person and step aside.
Mom doesn’t come into the waiting room. She’s in the lobby, talking to the reception lady behind the large, circular desk. Mom must feel my eyes on her because she glances in my direction through her oversized shades before pointing toward a hallway. The reception lady nods, and Mom turns away and waves at us to follow her.
Walking down the hall, Mom’s ahead with Cole and I’m lagging back with Daddy.
“How’s the new place?” I ask Daddy, hoping it’s full of those manila folders and flip-top boxes he’s always bringing home from work. Better to be working than sitting around sad.
“It’s nice. You’ll have to come stay for a weekend as soon as you’ve healed up. I only signed a six-month lease because I plan to buy a house this summer, but I still want it to feel like home for you and Cole.”
Way too much of the new reality rushes in at once, and I can’t think of anything else to say.
Daddy ducks under a doorway. “You can do that thing you do to your walls, and I can help you transfer it all when we move. I’ve already helped you start. Hung a life-sized poster of Candace Parker in your room yesterday.”