It is compared to the life shit going on off the court, but it’s another thing I can’t say to him. Mama’s always saying I can’t project my problems onto other folks.
“No—I’m just say—”
“You know, that’s all I wanted this semester was to keep my starting position and to have fun in college with you.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You sure about that? We been best friends since the sandbox and this dude blows into town and all of a sudden you can’t even look me in my face anymore? I’msorry,a’ight?There.I’m sorry that he has the money and clout I don’t have. I’m sorry. You can tell him I finally said it so he can get off my head.”
I pinch my eyes shut, shaking my head.
“You still don’t get—”
A loud, nastythumpcuts right into the middle of our argument.
“What was that?” he asks, pulling the screen door from between my loose fingers.
Mama.
I thought I belted it out loud, but Bryson’s wrinkled face tells me it all came out in gibberish instead.
“Fuck.”
Thatword flies out of my mouth with all of its syllables shooting in different directions. It came out clear and crisp, with all the vowels and consonants floating through the air. I take off behind them.
“Phat! Wait!” Bryson yells from somewhere behind me, but I’m gone.
I can’t wait because all the floating vowels and consonants were beating me to Mama.
The hallway leading to her room is the longest it’s ever been. One foot in front of the other isn’t enough. I need to fly. I raise my feet as high as they’ll go, but it still doesn’t feel like I’m moving fast enough. The end of the hallway is the hardest part. The walls close in and push me closer to her bedroom door.
I try to prepare my eyes and brain for the worst, but I didn’t give Ace time to teach me that before I left him.
“Mama?” I cough out, scraping my fingers against the doorframe.
Her words come out in deep moans while I try to fly again, but it’s useless without wings. She’s there in a balled up heap on the floor with her nightgown tangled around her waist.
“Mama!” Bryson yells, knocking into my shoulder from behind.
He passes me up, running to her slumped body and crouching beside her.
He looks up with wet cheeks. “What do I do? Do I call Marcus or—or Ma? Mama, can you get up?”
Sometimes I forget he’s just a boy, like I’m just a girl. We ain’t lived enough to trust our own judgements and girls like me don’t need to fly. We need to trust.
I run to the bed and snatch my phone from the edge. I fumble over it until I get back to that text message while Marcus keeps bugging me in the back of my head, asking what I’m gonna do with all this newfound trust I have in a man.
“Lourdes?” Ace rasps into the phone when he answers. “What’s wrong?”
I let out garbled chokes between tears while I kneel beside Bryson and start rolling Mama’s soaked nightgown off her pale legs.
“Ason… I… Ason. I came in and she was… I know you have a game—”
“Slow down. Take a deep breath.Open your mouth.”
I suck in as much of the stale hot air in Mama’s room that I can muster and then it all pours out in embarrassing chunks like that night in the driveway.
“She fell. Mama told me she had to pee but Bryson was at the door so—so I went to answer it and I guess she got up to go by herself and—and she fell. I heard it.”
