She kept the wings steady, breathing in a way she couldn’t inside the house.
Up here she didn’t have to pretend.
Up here nobody expected her to be strong.
Up here she could admit, even if just to herself, that she was scared.
Not terrified…not giving up.
Just scared as hell that she couldn’t really carry all this shit. Couldn’t carry them.
This was her family.
This was her history.
This was her responsibility.
And she was doing her best with what she had.
When she circled back and prepared to land, she didn’t feel lighter, nor did she feel fixed. She just felt ready to try again because that was all she could do.
That was all she ever did.
Wake up, carry the weight, push through, find a little breath when she could, and do it again the next day.
For now, she was just a Black woman trying to save her family’s land one overdue bill at a time.
Zaire’s head wasn’t in the game all the way. He’d let the comments of the naysayers get to him. His swing was off so much that every time he swung his club, he cringed on the inside.
Golf was a quiet sport. It was different from the loud sounds of Crescent where he’d learned to swing on the old basketball court because Black kids didn’t deserve the green. And even with nothing but the wind whistling against his ear, he could still hear the crowd heckling him - could hear their doubt and elation at how bad he was playing. But still, he tried.
He didn’t quit, though. He would rather fail than throw in the towel and give them even more to talk about.
Zaire didn’t crash out when someone whispered, “washed up” loud enough for him to hear.
He didn’t show them they’d wore him thin, with their condescending words and their noses turned up, every time he stepped out dripped in jewels with his tats adorning his body and using swirly words that they swore they couldn’t understand.
They didn’t respect his Blackness or how his presence in their tournament made their TV viewership skyrocket. They hated how his people rooted for him…hated how they dapped him up when he ran into them while hanging out.
Zaire was everything the league didn’t deserve and everything they never thought they’d see.
He wasn’t the first Black man to claim wins, but he was the first one to be authentically him. He repped his set by wearing blue and spoke the words only his people could feel. So, yeah, he was having a bad day but would still try his hardest to come back. At the end of the day, eighteen million was on the line.
Zaire lined up at the tee box again, gripping his club tight enough to ground himself but loose enough not to show his frustration. The Sovereign Cup wasn’t just another tournament. It wasthetournament - prestige…history…old money…a place where they smiled at you on camera and whispered slurs in the locker room.
“Fuck,” Zaire whispered between gritted teeth.
His swing was off.
He could feel it in his wrists.
His stance was perfect and his grip was solid, but the follow-through just wasn’t landing like it should. The shit wasn’t connecting the way it usually did when he was locked in. And truth be told, he wasn’t locked into nothing but his own damn head.
He tried not to look at the scoreboard, but he already knew what it said.
Down four strokes…four.
That wasn’t just a bad game.
