There was bitterness in his voice, but the accusation stung me to an anger that roused me from my torpor. “You got shot four years ago because you wouldn’t listen to me when I knew something. Now you won’t listen to me when I don’t know anything. I am exhausted from you not listening to me.”
He gave a nasty police smile, the pale sunlight glinting on his gold front tooth. “Then your wish is granted. I am going to listen to every word you say. Once we finish running the gauntlet.”
The end of the sentence came out under his breath: Mr. Contreras and the two dogs I share with him had apparently been watching for me, because all three came bounding down the front walk as soon as I got out of the car. Mr. Contreras checked his step when he saw Conrad. Although he had never approved of my dating a black man, he had helped me nurse my broken heart when Conrad left me, and was clearly staggered to see us arrive together. The dogs showed no such restraint. Whether they remembered Conrad or not I didn’t know: Peppy is a golden retriever and her son Mitch is half Lab-they give everyone from the meter reader to the Grim Reaper the same high-energy salute.
Mr. Contreras followed them slowly down the walk, but when he realized I’d been injured he became both solicitous and annoyed because I hadn’t told him at once. “I would’ve come got you, Cookie, if you’d a only let me know, no need for a police escort.”
“It was late at night when it all happened and they released me first thing this morning,” I said gently. “Conrad’s a commander now, anyway, at the Fourth District. This factory that burned last night is in his territory, so he wants to find out what I know about it-he won’t believe it’s sweet nothing at all.”
In the end, we all went up to my apartment together, the dogs, the old man, Conrad. My neighbor bustled around in my kitchen and produced a bowl of yogurt with sliced apples and brown sugar. He even coaxed a double espresso out of my battered stove-top machine.
I stretched out on the couch, the dogs on the floor next to me. Mr. Contreras took the armchair, while Conrad pulled up the piano bench so he could watch my face while I talked. He pulled a cassette recorder from his pocket and recorded the date and place we were talking.
“Okay, Ms. W., this is on the record. You tell me the whole story of what you were doing in South Chicago.”
“It’s my home,” I said. “I belong there more than you do.”
“Forget that: you haven’t lived there for twenty-five years or more.”
“Doesn’t matter. You know as well as me that in this town, your childhood home dogs you your whole life.”
1 Remembrances of Things Past
Going back to South Chicago has always felt to me like a return to death. The people I loved most, those fierce first attachments of childhood, had all died in this abandoned neighborhood on the city’s southeast edge. It’s true my mother’s body, my father’s ashes, lie elsewhere, but I had tended both through painful illnesses down here. My cousin Boom-Boom, close as a brother-closer than a brother-had been murdered here fifteen years ago. In my nightmares, yellow smoke from the steel mills still clouds my eyes, but the giant smokestacks that towered over my childhood landscape are now only ghosts themselves.
After Boom-Boom’s funeral, I’d vowed never to return, but such vows are grandiose; you can’t keep them. Still, I try. When my old basketball coach called to beg, or maybe command me to fill in for her while she dealt with cancer surgery, I said “No,” reflexively.
“ Victoria, basketball got you out of this neighborhood. You owe something to the girls who’ve come behind you to give them the chance you had.”
It wasn’t basketball but my mother’s determination I would have a university education that got me out of South Chicago, I said. And my ACTs were pretty darn good. But as Coach McFarlane pointed out, the athletic scholarship to the University of Chicago didn’t hurt.
“Even so, why doesn’t the school hire a substitute for you?” I asked petulantly.
“You think they pay me to coach?” Her voice rose in indignation. “It’s Bertha Palmer High, Victoria. It’s South Chicago. They don’t have any resources and now they’re on intervention, which means every available dime goes to preparing kids for standardized tests. It’s only because I volunteer that they keep the girls’ program alive, and it’s on life support as it is: I have to scrounge for money to pay for uniforms and equipment.”
Mary Ann McFarlane had taught me Latin as well as basketball; she’d retooled herself to teach geometry when the school stopped offering all languages except Spanish and English. Through all the changes, she’d kept coaching basketball. I hadn’t realized any of that until the afternoon she called.
“It’s only two hours, two afternoons a week,” she added.
“Plus up to an hour’s commute each way,” I said. “I can’t take this on: I have an active detective agency, I’m working without an assistant, I’m taking care of my lover who got shot to bits in Afghanistan. And I still have to look after my own place and my two dogs.”
Coach McFarlane wasn’t impressed-all this was just so much excuse making. “Quotidie damnatur qui semper timet,” she said sharply.
I had to recite the words several times before I could translate them: The person who is always afraid is condemned every day. “Yeah, maybe, but I haven’t played competitive basketball for two decades. The younger women who join our pickup games at the Y on Saturdays play a faster, meaner game than I ever did. Maybe one of those twenty-somethings has two afternoons a week to give you-I’ll talk to them this weekend.”
“There’s nothing to make one of those young gals come down to Ninetieth and Houston,” she snapped. “This is your neighborhood, these are your neighbors, not that tony Lakeview where you think you’re hiding out.”
That annoyed me enough that I was ready to end the conversation, until she added, “Just until the school finds someone else, Victoria. Or maybe a miracle will happen and I’ll get back there.”
That’s how I knew she was dying. That’s how I knew I was going to have to return once more to South Chicago, to make another journey into pain.
2 Homie
The noise was overwhelming. Balls pounded on the old yellow floor. They ricocheted from backboards and off the bleachers that crowded the court perimeter, creating a syncopated drumming as loud as a gale-force wind. The girls on the floor were practicing layups and free throws, rebounding, dribbling between their legs and behind their backs. They didn’t all have balls-the school budget didn’t run to that-but even ten balls make a stunning racket.
The room itself looked as though no one had painted, or even washed it, since I last played here. It smelled of old sweat, and two of the overhead lights were broken, so it seemed as though it was always February inside. The floor was scarred and warped; every now and then one of the girls would forget to watch her step at the three-second lane or the left corner-the two worst spots-and take a spill. Last week, one of our promising guards had sprained an ankle.
I tried not to let the daunting atmosphere get me down. After all, Bertha Palmer had sixteen girls who wanted to play, some even playing their hearts out. It was my job to help them until the school found a permanent coach. And to keep their spirits up after the season started, and they went against teams with better facilities, better depth-and much better coaches.
Those waiting a turn under the baskets were supposed to be running laps or stretching, but they tended to hover over the girls with balls, grabbing for them, or shouting hotly that April Czernin or Celine Jackman was hogging shooting time.
“Your mama didn’t spread her legs to pay for that ball-give it over here,” was a frequent taunt. I had to stay alert to squabbles that might erupt into full-scale war while correcting faults in shooting form. And not be bothered by the howling of the infant and toddler in the bleachers. The babies belonged to my center, Sancia, a gawky sixteen-year-old who-despite her six-foot-two body-looked practically like a baby herself. The kids were nominally under the care of her boyfriend, but he sat sullenly next to them, Discman in his ears, looking neither at his children nor at the action on the floor.