The Moves Make the Man (7 page)

You're crazy, I said. I didn't touch him. He never even knew I was in the area. I pointed at Pete, who still looked a little puzzled.

Offense initiated contact, he said. White ball.

Asshole, I muttered, which I never curse but was mad.

That's a T, he said, tooting the whistle. Two shots. Pete?

Pete finally woke up, knowing he was to shoot. He hit both free throws.

One bucket to nothing, said the coach. White ball.

This time Vic tried to go right but I blocked him off, forcing him to use his left which most kids cannot yet do, spending most of their time only shooting. Sure enough he sort of stumbled and made a clumsy crossover and I grabbed the ball again. I was inside him so I just spun right up and popped a twelve-footer, but the whistle was blowing already as I was in the air.

That's a reach, said the Coach.

Aw, come on, no it wasn't, said Vic. It was clean, Coach. Vic was actually excited by the steal. He was a lover of the game for sure. Nice grab, he said.

Thanks, I said. But the coach had got the ball and bounced it back at Vic.

A reach, he said. Second personal. White ball.

Well, this time Vic finally got the idea he did not have to drive by me but just get the ball over to Pete for an open shot, and he did and Pete hit it from right underneath and I was down two. He did the same next time, faking the pass first and drawing me off, a nice move, then lofting it over me for a lay-up for the shooter. Three-zip. He tried the same thing next time but this time I pretended to go for the fake and backpedaled and picked Pete up before he could shoot. He went straight up without a fake and I jumped a half second later so I would be at peak just after he let it go and I was and slapped the ball away.

The whistle blew.

Hack, said the coach, shoot two.

Some of the guys on the sideline had clapped when I
smacked the shot away, and now they made some Aw, come on! noises. They were okay, I suppose. Too bad they would have to play all year under the burrhead.

Pete hit both of his shots of course. Guys like him turn into beautiful robots when you give them the chance to shoot. I wonder what they do with the rest of their life. They sure don't play defense.

The coach got the ball as it dropped through from the last shot and bounced it back to Vic at the top of the key.

Coach…said Vic.

Play it, said the coach.

Vic looked at me and winked. Then he pretended to dribble but bounced it right into my hands. I turned and drove left behind Pete's back, he was just waiting for his next shot anyway, and flipped it in off the boards with my left hand.

The whistle blew. Pushing off, said the coach, pushing off Pete's back, we'll take it the other way.

I won't take it no way, said Vic disgusted, kicking the ball away when the coach threw it to him. The only thing he pushed off was the floor.

Get back out there Victor, said the coach, as Vic walked away to the sideline. You want to start this year?

Here's a kid could win us the city, said Vic, and nobody but you cares he's a nigger. Sorry, he said, waving at me.

Sit down, Victor, said the coach, and you won't be standing up in uniform for some time.

Maybe win us the states, he said, to the boys on the ground. They were all staring at the floor. The states, guys! The state championship! Pushing off, my ass, he said, and walked out of the gym.

We will continue as a one on one, said the coach. White ball after the foul. Shoot it, Pete, said the coach, shoving
the ball at Pete over by the foul line.

Those were the magic words. I was eight feet away and didn't even try to stop it, but of course it went down anyway. That kid could shoot, I'll hand it to him. I took the ball as it came through the net, snapped a bounce pass at the coach's feet, and turned to go.

Five-nothing, white takes it, he said, as the ball banged off his shins. Take a hike, boy.

Good luck with the Globetrotters, one kid hollered as I pushed on the double doors. Nobody laughed though.

He'll probably make them, said another.

I hope so, said one more.

By then I was through, back in the hall, and the doors were bonging away. The last sound I heard from that gym was the big old scream of the whistle.

Classes went along okay those first few weeks, no fuss, no fights, no friends. I was being careful, checking things out, not jumping into anything or anybody too fast. I was not lonesome or anything, having my brothers and Momma at home, though I began not to see any of my old dudes and girls now going to Parker across town, them still all together and me apart at the Nut. There had been a couple of people I met towards the end of sixth grade I thought we might get to be buds when we hit seventh, but of course we were not going to now. To make friends, you got to be around.

Most friend things happen between times. You got to be free to tag along walking home with somebody when they have been at band practice and you at hoops or in the library, and you see each other and maybe don't know much yet but like the looks and next thing you know you are walking through strange neighborhoods but it is exciting, finding someone and seeing his way home, all at once. Maybe you go in and have a couple of cookies or something, but usually not, not at first. You wave and split and think about the guy that night and see him the next day and know he was looking
to see you too. Maybe that day he walks home with you, or at least partway.

You have got to be flexible too. You must say okay when someone wants to chuck the football even though you do not prefer that particular ball, or even to look at somebody's dumb bugs collection or something, which usually means it will be a limited friendship but you check those out too. If a dude says Hey, let's swap lunch, you must take what he has and swallow it smiling, even when it is something nasty like livermush sandwich and graham crackers while you are giving up a drumstick and pie. The food is not what matters.

All this stuff is important, black or white, third grade or seventh. Something catches your eye or even your ear. You may like the way a certain dude looks in his shirts or the way he sounds singing Shake a Tailfeather on the playground before school in a kickball game while waiting to get his ups. Many of my interests start in class with people. I will like the way someone talks when they are called on, or how they stand when they recite or the way they react when they do not know an answer at the board or they laugh. Mostly I am not one to go for the dudes and girls who put on the comedy show all the time, trying so hard and often quite funny but someway sad. They are too ready to be liked and like you back, while I enjoy the difficulty of seeing if I like somebody and do they like me, not setting out to attract but being careful and watching things reach between the usual gestures. One strange thing that always gets me is, if somebody writes a dynamite book report and reads it out loud. Nothing like a great book report to show somebody's class.

At Chestnut, I was just settling into my checkout. I was drawn to a few people very slightly but it is usually very slight at first, which is fine. There were all kinds of new
attraction things in French class, because the way people handled the accent operated much like the book reports always had in English, or like seeing someone shoot a pretty jump hook. We had this main pronunciation test every week. I remember the toughest one was for the hardest letter to say right in French, which is the letter r. Teacher picked one word chock-full of r and everybody had to stand up and say it out loud. The word you got was BARBARA. Man, you could look very guggly up there rolling those r sounds the wrong way in your throat, or you could look grand. One girl and one boy nailed those suckers right on the line, and I right away got interested in knowing them, all in due time. I would have, too, but the due time never came, because something very horrible took me out of friendship commission during my third week at Chestnut.

What happened was, my momma and Henri went down one day to the medical building downtown, a very old place, to see Doctor Sykes for Henri's physical which you have to get just before the first game of the football season or you cannot play, and Henri was a halfback. He got off school, Momma got off work and took him down, they had lunch at the H & W, which Henri said later was shrimp and quite good, a lot of fun, big day, all very nice.

But then when they got to the medical building Momma asked if they would play the usual game, which was this. The medical building is only four stories tall, but it has this rickety old wooden and wrought iron elevator that is slow as molasses. And starting when Maurice was a kid, my momma would always challenge us to a race up to the fourth floor where Doctor Sykes was, the kid taking the elevator by himself and Momma running up the stairs. I guess this always took our mind off getting a shot or whatever it was. It was
always very much fun, and you would have Momma standing down there on the first floor landing while you got inside that old dark wood box with strange old carvings along the top and in the corners, and you would close that clackety old iron door across the front and outside Momma would pretend to be sneaking up the first few stairs for a head start and you would giggle and yell at her to stop, not fair, no Momma not yet, and she would jump back and then sneak again and you would near about collapse with giggles, which sounded very loud and peculiar inside that box by yourself. Then you would put your hand on the handle, this old leather grip I never liked to touch personally, and you would say Ready and Momma would crouch down like she was going to blast off up those stairs, and you say Set and she gets this scowl on her face and maybe puts one foot on the first step and you scream No! Then you push down on the handle, and laugh and say Go too late and Momma looks very cross and betrayed, and then the power engages and shakes the whole old box and gives you a scare but then you are going up. It is half scary, half wonderful. You pass the first landing and Momma is even and maybe says Ha! at you. At the second landing she is a little behind and pretending to pant a little bit but says she will catch her wind and beat you clean. At the third landing you see her head coming up only as you pass above and at the fourth you beat her. She comes straggling up the stairs moaning and rolling her big pretty eyes and acting like she has climbed a mountain in high heels. You laugh so hard you don't even know it when next thing Doc Sykes has your britches down and jabs you with a typhoid booster.

So on this day Momma asked if they would play, which they had not done for ages probably, Henri being fairly old
by now, though I still play it once in a while for old time sake I guess as I am getting quite old too. Well, said Henri, what about if we switch? Momma asked what he meant and he said he would take the stair and she should have a chance to ride the vator. They laughed about this switcheroo, Henri saying he wanted to see if she really could have beat us all those times and pretended not to and so on. Henri remembers every word they said, because of what happened then.

So Momma went into the vator, laughing and acting scared, and Henri pretended to cheat up the steps and Momma started to laugh like we all did and said Ready? and Set? and then slapped that handle down with a giggle and never said Go and Henri took off up the steps. He passed her at one, was ahead of her at two and she was laughing out that it was no fair because the machine had got too old and was not as fast as it used to be, and at three he was far ahead and only just saw the top coming up. But when he got to four he saw nothing but then heard the most horrible noise and in front of him through the iron gate saw the cables shudder and then one of them went tawang and snapped and he heard Momma scream and the whole building boomed and shivered. The vator fell all four floors plus the basement and crashed bad on top of some big poles they put down at the bottom of the shaft called bumpers but the rubber that was supposed to help break the fall on them had rotted pretty much away and would not have done squat anyway.

You don't need to hear all about the rest of how they pulled Momma out and so on. Henri said it all but I could barely listen, especially after he told how Momma looked, which was she was all broken and twisted and bleeding out of both her ears. Henri can talk like that, because he is older and wants to be a veterinarian and so has to stand the sight
of blood, but not me, not my momma.

I got home that day as usual, feeling good with an A on a French test, and found Maurice and Henri moping around the house very gloomy. They told me, and I didn't cry but wanted to see Momma. They said she was in the hospital with her head shaved on account of the iron doors had crashed all over her and fractured her skull bad as could be and still stay alive. We went and saw her. She looked pretty awful and if you don't mind I'll skip it. The doctor said she would be okay though. They took care of everything and her brain was fine but she had to stay in the hospital for several weeks. He showed us the x-rays which none of us could tell beans about but he showed where the breaks were and left her brain alone. If you had asked me I would have said anything wrong up there would mean a mess forever, but thank goodness I am wrong on that one.

Anyway, naturally Momma being bad in the hospital changed our life at home right away. The three of us sat down and figured out what we would have to do to keep things rolling in the house. This was hard because we did not know every little thing that Momma had been doing when she was not at work, and we did not know where things were kept and what kind of cleaning stuff you used where and such. We found all that junk out later, but at first it was difficult to plan everything. Still, we did it. We wrote down everything we could think of in the way of chores and duties, and we divided them up.

We saw very clearly right off that none of us would have time anymore for the things we used to do on our own, Mo with what you call troubled kids at an orphanage downtown, Henri with football, me with hoops and making new friends. We wanted to keep the home going fine, not just so we
would live okay but mostly so that by the time Momma did come home we were easy and sharp at everything and so she could stay in bed and we take care of her without her feeling the need to get out of bed to help and hurt herself. We could not show any struggle if she was around at all.

So, what I got was, dinner and making lunches for everybody to take in the morning. There were other things too, like trash and raking leaves but I already did those. Cooking was new, though. I won't tell all the complicated way the divvy worked, but cooking was most convenient for me, and as nobody else knew any more than me about it, I took it. I even thought it might be fun.

It was not fun. It was a very touchy business. Things burn when you think you have hardly put any heat to them at all, and other things lie cold and wet in the pan all the while you think they are cooking away with plenty of gas. There is an awful mess to be made for the slightest sandwich. Although we all had to eat what I cooked and suffer alike, Henri was hurt the most because he was to clean up after, and I had much trouble staying neat about the kitchen.

The first two nights we had fried eggs and toast and the third night we had Velveeta cheese melted over plain spaghetti, and then I was out of ideas for the next night so we had eggs again, only this time scrambled, a little too long. I began to wonder how I was going to make it through the weeks, much less my brothers who were both big, and needed more nourishment.

But then on the fourth day after Momma's accident I was called out of French class and sent to the office of the counselor. The counselor is this tall bony lady with large teeth very straight, and large eyes too, which are green, a color I never see in colored folk. Her hair must have been long but
she wanted it to look like less, for she wadded the whole length of it up in back of her head and hung it there in a hair net that was like the bag you keep your crabs in when you fish for them off a pier in the sound. On the whole, though, she was nice enough looking.

She acted very tender towards me, like I was a bird with a broken tail or some such, so of course I knew she knew about Momma. For some reason this made me cranky and shy at the same time. I guess it was nice of her, though, and I guess I knew that somewhere deep, and made myself polite. She mumbled along for a while and then she asked did I want to talk about my mother and home situation? No, I said, thank you but I'd just as soon not. Fine, she said, very quick and agreeable, just fine. Thanks, I told her.

Then she started telling, sort of in a dreamy voice, about this family in a far off land. It was a story. It was about how this family of beavers, for that is what they were, lost their mommy beaver when a tree fell on her and found that they had to take care of their beaver dam and their river pool all by their courageous little self, gnawing down trees and finding water vegetables and making their nice vegetable beaver pies and oh so many things. And it was very, very hard and they had to grow up in so many ways so very, very fast.

Never trust anyone who says very, very, because you are only supposed to say it once and twice means they are trying to put something over on you or else are stupid. This counselor was not stupid but she must have thought I was. When she stopped to take a breath, before going into how the littlest beaver got so frustrated trying to make his beaver pies the right way, I cut her off sharp and said, We do just fine for ourselves.

What? she said, coming down hard out of beaverland.

We are doing just fine all by ourselves at home. We don't need anyone to notice us, thank you.

She pressed her lips together and nodded hard. Then she switched to shaking her head and said, But like the little beavers, don't you think you could use someone to—

No, I said.

You see, the beavers let Mr. and Mrs. Muskrat come and take care of—

No, I said. Nobody comes to help. No.

She clammed up at that, and sat staring at me. A couple of times she started to say something but I frowned because I could see she was still on the beaver kiddie kick. She sat back and stared again. Then, finally, in a sudden blurt, talking not in her dreamy voice but straight up, she said, Okay, buster, how's about you learn to cook here at school?

Now you're talking, I said.