In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle Read online

  It was during junior year that Jen had grappled with the sensation that her friendship with Jamila was slipping away. It was hard not to feel the blade of resentment when Jamila’s picture showed up in the Gazette, surrounded by a tumble of paper. SCHOOLS ARE LINING UP FOR WIDEMAN, said the headline, and the caption under her photo read, “The recruiting mail addressed to Jamila Wideman pours in at the rate of about a dozen pieces a day.” Jamila had more than 150 recruitment letters from colleges. The Blue Star Index, a ratings guide of athletes, said she was the nation’s second best guard. She was a Parade magazine first team all-American, a USA Today first team all-American, a Converse, Nike, and Kodak all-American.

  The two girls were used to each other’s company. On occasion, Jamila had joined the Pariseaus on Cape Cod during their two weeks there every summer. Jen’s father, who supervises the reservoirs and water supply for the town of Amherst, has a habit on these vacations of pointing out even the most unpromising puddle and gushing about “primordial swamps.”

  The Widemans had taken Jen on several family trips to Maine and to Pittsburgh, John Wideman’s hometown and the setting of his semiautobiographical Homewood Trilogy, a scruffy, steep-hilled, no-nonsense, hard-labor kind of town filled with the memory of smoke and sweat. Jen remembered sitting on the porch of Jamila’s grandmother’s house with her extended family and watching people in the neighborhood do a double take at the sight of her small grinning white face: “You could almost hear them say, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’” There the two girls sometimes slipped away to one of the local hoops where, pretending to be novices, they would ask, innocently, if they could join a group of guys in a game.

  Once they’d gone to a fancy literary gathering in Florida where Jamila’s father was a featured speaker, along with Tracy Kidder and Jane Smiley. Jen and Jamila never recovered from the hostesses who prattled about the gold-plated plumbing on their yachts. John Wideman was introduced as having just returned “from meeting Nelson Mandela with Reggie Jackson in South Africa.” To smooth over the gaffe (all Jacksons are the same), he added his own humor.

  “Are you sure you don’t mean Michael?” Jamila’s father had said with a grin, knowing of course it had been Jesse.

  Now, it felt to Jen as if just getting to see her old friend was difficult. It was like being one of the masses at the deli at Stop & Shop: Take a number, stand in line.

  Two skinny dark-haired girls, all bones and ponytails, they were easily twinned. In Amherst the names of JennyandJamila were often spoken of in just one word. There was euphony in the sound, it had lilt, it sang, but in some ways it obscured the differences in their styles both on and off the court. Jamila was the “gown” kid, the one whose father was the force at the university, who led a life international in its scope. On court she was the breadwinner who always drove the basket home.

  Jen was the “town” kid. Sitting outdoors at the tables in front of Bonducci’s coffee shop next to Hastings, drinking the ritual juice or water favored by the Hurricanes, she would keep one eye out for the town trucks to see if she knew any of the drivers through her father and his work. Often she would fling her arm up and give a big wave and a smile, gestures always returned in kind. With her teammates she had unerring radar for the kid who needed a successful bucket, for the kid who needed a shoulder to cry on.

  Jen dreaded the fall, and the return to school and to everyone else’s excited forecasts about this year’s Hurricanes:

  Hey, maybe this could be the big year, at last.

  People had been predicting that for the past couple of years.

  The bountiful blue balmy days at the end of summer in New England are tender because they are so short-lived, and she was feeling that tenderness within herself as if it had physical reality, a sore that would not heal. What if she felt as bad this year as she had the last? She was, with luck, coming up soon on her thousand-point milestone. She recalled with sickening ease the wave of emptiness she’d felt where there should have been joy on the day Jamila had reached her thousandth point. Instead of being excited that her friend was so good, Jen had castigated herself for not being good enough. Would Jamila feel the same mix of would-be goodwill and actual discomfort that Jen had experienced?

  Sometimes at the end of a long day, she would stretch out on the water bed in her room. Jen prided herself on her efficiency; she had an engineer’s creativity when it came to objects and space. Once, on a long trip with her teammate Emily “Jonesbones” Jones and Emily’s mother, Bernadette, when everyone was sure there was way too much stuff, she’d figured out which book bags could be foot rests, which sleeping bags could be unfurled as seat cushions and which could be used as blankets.

  As for the most efficient way to store her own huge assortment of T-shirts, this was her trick:

  “You could stack them in big piles in drawers that are never big enough, or you could lay them flat on the floor, fold them lengthwise into thirds, then take the remaining panel and fold that into thirds, then roll the fabric into cylinders with the logo showing, saving space and eventually time, because it’s now so much easier to find what you’re looking for, such as the one Lucia designed for us that says, WE’RE BUSTING OURS . . . SO WE CAN KICK YOURS, or how about this one: REAL MEN MARRY ATHLETES.”

  She recently saw one that she would like to add to her wardrobe: FEMINISM IS THE CRAZY NOTION THAT WOMEN ARE PEOPLE.

  On the wall she had a picture of a basketball hoop drawn by Lucia with a poem written by another Hurricane, Rita Powell. Above her head was her aforementioned “strong women” wall, including pictures of Texas governor Ann Richards, writers Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, actress Candice Bergen, and singer Bonnie Raitt. She also had copies of the Nike inspirational ads: JUST DO IT!

  And from Jamila’s father, who had interviewed Michael Jordan for a cover story in Esquire (“Is He Our New DiMaggio?”), she had the autograph of the former Bulls’ starring guard. She knew the first lines of Jamila’s father’s article by heart: “When it’s played the way it’s spozed to be played, basketball happens in the air, the pure air.”

  By her bedside she kept a clothbound book—given to her by her teammate Rita—in which she wrote her favorite quotes, a customized Bartlett’s.

  MARILYN MONROE: “If I’m going to be alone, I’d rather be by myself.”

  COLETTE: “You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”

  LILY TOMLIN: “Just remember. We’re all in this alone.”

  ZORA NEALE HURSTON: “The Dream is the Truth.”

  Jen was a girl who had Definite Opinions, such as that spandex is a sin against society, and so are hair spray, cats, and the Beatles. Teva sandals are ostentatious, when plain old thongs are just as good. The person who invented mesh was a genius. Jen liked to manufacture her own aphorisms, and one time she gave Rita a list of eight of “life’s little instructions according to Jen.” The final bit of advice was set apart from the others in large aching capital letters:

  Don’t sweat the small stuff.

  Everything is small stuff.

  Fix what’s broken.

  Don’t put on deodorant when you need to take a shower.

  A day without laughter is a day wasted.

  Always check the toilet before you sit down to make sure no one left the plunger in it.

  No amount of pain is insignificant except a pain in the ass.

  NEVER GIVE ALL OF YOURSELF TO ANYONE.

  Most adolescents tend to one or the other of two emotional styles, surly insurrection or, as in the case of Jen, brooding self-definition. On a birthday card to Rita she offered “Jen’s Philosophy 101”:

  The first time a bird flies into a window, he didn’t see it.

  The second time, he didn’t know it was there.

  Third time, then Jen walks away, because that bird is an idiot.

  Jen liked to make people laugh
. She had set pieces about commercials that got on her nerves, like the one with the Energizer Bunny. She told dumb jokes about how diarrhea runs in the genes, and then she would say, “That’s my opinion, and everyone is entitled to my opinion.” She would tell her friends: “These are just some of the things I think about while the teacher’s talking.’’

  Lying on her back on her bed, with her row of stuffed Gummi Bears staring outward on the shelf above, she would drift into that space where you’re not really awake but you’re not really asleep either.

  She was helping out a lot at Coach Moyer’s summer camps. Under town supervision, these sessions in which young children were treated like future Hurricanes were a popular activity in Amherst. Although there had been all-boy camps and coed camps, this was the first summer a girls-only session had been offered.

  Many of Ron Moyer’s current and past players were hired to work at the camps, but Jen stood out as the most hospitable to the very young kids, treating them as equals, or as equal as it is possible for someone half her size to actually be.

  She applauded their moves on the court, she let them shoot with her, she laughed at their riddles as if they were funny and as if she’d never heard them before.

  During such moments the feelings of alienation from the previous season would vanish. For three hours in the morning five days a week, the ball in her hand would assume a familiar reassuring heft, and out of her hands it would move with a fluidity missing from that final game with Hamp. Sometimes at the end of a session the little kids would ask if she would consider dropping by their birthday party as a special guest, and at first she thought it was strange, but then it started to occur to her that the difference between a role model and an idol was that a role model was someone you could touch. Sometimes they asked if they could write papers about her for school. “Please be my pen pal,” asked one little girl. “You don’t even have to write back.”

  “What kind of pen pal is that? Of course I’ll write back to you!”

  She would tease the small girls and ask them if she could write papers about them, and she called them goddesses. She had a theory that every female could be a goddess of something, whether lowly or exalted. If you were little and never sure of what to say, you could be the goddess of giggling. If you wore braces, you could be the goddess of shackled teeth. If you were smart and nice and wore size-fourteen shoes, like Jonesbones, then you qualified for a triple crown as the goddess of advanced calculus and of kindness and of really big feet. Jen’s own ability to put up a three with enough air to graze the gym rafters or touch the sky had earned her the nickname of “Cloudy.” She would like to be known as the goddess of the three-point shot, the home run of basketball.

  A scent of celebrity now followed Jen, that unseen but palpable buzz whenever she popped into town to pick up the paper at Hastings or indulge in a piece of pizza. She was always running into some little kid whose eyes lit up at the sight of her. She and Jamila had volunteered as peer counselors at Wildwood Elementary School; children who lived up to their behavior-management contracts (basically innocent documents in which fidgety children made a pledge to fidget less) were rewarded with the chance to play pickup ball with the co-captains. Even if Jen couldn’t place the child or summon the right name instantly, she had a politician’s instinct for working a crowd. To the little boys she would say, “How’s it going, big guy?”; to the girls, “You go, girl.” And if they found themselves speechless in the presence of such a glittering personage, Jen would say, “Come on, you can talk to me. What’s the matter? Do you have constipation of articulation?’’

  And so it was that after a typically busy summer day, at around midnight, Jen’s seventeen-year-old self tired from coaching, lifting, running, and reflecting, the phone rang.

  “Hi.”

  Jen recognized Jamila’s voice right away. Still, it was a surprise. She knew Jamila was in Maine, and Jamila had that way of living in the present: When she was out of town, you knew better than to count on a phone call or a letter. That quality, of being there for the moment and squeezing the life out of it, could sometimes be a trial during a friendship but was probably one of her biggest assets on the floor. When Jamila was there, she was there.

  “I’m up here in Maine, and I’ve been thinking a lot about you. We have to talk.”

  The pause that followed was almost imperceptible, but in its infinitesimal nature hung the balance of a friendship.

  Jen glanced at the receiver, and then twisted her head backward to see the eyes of all those strong women bearing down upon her.

  When she found her voice, it was clear and strong: “You’re right. We do.”

  “I wish you were up here too.”

  Jen listened, coiled as a telephone cord.

  “I’m here with a couple of friends, and my mom wouldn’t let me bring more than two people.”

  Jen knew the absence of an invitation had to do with more than mere maternal edict, even if Jamila’s mom was known for a certain control over her daughter’s schedule and whereabouts.

  Jamila went on, “I want things to be better between us next year. . . .”

  The inner terrain of teenage girls tends to change every thirty seconds or so, but on this occasion Jen became Totally Serious, and she stayed that way a long time.

  When Jen got serious, her entire face, her whole body, every fiber and sinew, showed it. As Jamila continued, in her pleasant even voice with its deeply American, almost geographically generic, pilotlike use of dropped endings and expressions like y’all, Jen got very still, except for the eyes, as lively as two small gray animals.

  When teenagers communicate on the phone, it’s not always the content of the conversation but the fact of its having occurred that carries the deepest meaning. They are at an age and in an economic bracket where a long-distance call still carries cachet.

  Two hours later, a feeling of relief combined with the heavy weight of fatigue, that cumbersome sagging force, was the only reason they both hung up.

  3

  Onions and Metal Nets

  The gods of hoop had been kind to Coach Moyer.

  In a small town it’s always a thrill to have athletes of the quality of a Jamila Wideman or a Jen Pariseau, but to have both of them on one team was a kind of miracle, like some new and rare hybrid discovered by the research scientists at the university creating a two-headed stalk of corn. Their presence on the Hurricanes, their continuous struggle to maintain excellence and to diminish the lash of rivalry that rises up naturally between two talented people, had a curious and ameliorating effect on the rest of the girls in town who aspired to play high school hoop.

  That summer, they all made an individual decision to improve, to excel, to push themselves to the limit, and beyond.

  Their crusade had, in many ways, a cheerful component. The image used by one local townsperson was of the dog alert at the end of 101 Dalmatians, but instead of warning one another of danger, they were alerting one another to opportunity:

  “Just do it!” they seemed to croon and bark to one another and to the Holyoke mountain range that embraces Amherst at its south border and the Pelham hills to the east.

  If you did not live in Amherst and you were just passing through, the sight of the individual girls would be simple and unmemorable, a girl with a ponytail running, a girl with a ponytail lifting weights, a girl with a ponytail running up and down the steps at the U Mass stadium. But if you knew them, knew these girls, knew their parents and their brothers and their sisters, knew about their secret goal, it became a kind of subtext in the town, a way of reading reality that might be lost on those not yet literate in the alphabet of a certain kind of young, female, athletic ambition.

  The girls who were working so hard were not necessarily going to be the starters; some, like Rita Powell, would be grateful to return to the junior varsity.

  Rita had a plan.

 
As one of the younger girls on the junior varsity, a sort of diva in waiting, she had listened carefully to Coach’s final talk in March 1992, taking his words as a kind of spiritual injunction:

  Dedicate some time . . . get yourself ready . . . challenges next year.

  Like Lucia and the other young players—Jan Klenowski and Carrie Tharp and Jessi Denis—she had studied the older girls on the Hurricanes as if they were a painting or some kind of fascinating rock formation. Also a freshman, she wished that she, like Lucia, had been moved up for the postseason from junior varsity to varsity. Of course she was not the equal of Jen and Jamila (“No way!”). Her goal for the coming 1992–93 season was to be moved up to varsity in the postseason. She was appalled by that final game with Hamp; it made her shudder to recall the image of Jamila racing back and forth on the court, coast to coast, a human boomerang, going it all alone, looking, in Rita’s eyes, “insane.” Jamila had given up on her team ever coming to life, and so she had tried to do it all herself. Rita wanted powerfully to avenge that memory, to expunge it forever. And Jen was just as significant a figure as Jamila. Why, in her own journals, Rita had called the dark-haired senior with the light eyes beneath the thick bushy brows the “most dynamic person I have ever met.” Rita listened to Jen carefully and often recorded her remarks. To Jen they may have been mere asides; to Rita they shimmered with intimacy: “Jen is such a giving person. ‘If I can make five people smile every day, I’m happy. That’s what floats my boat,’ she told me. Another time she said, ‘My problems aren’t me. I don’t let them define me.’”

  An only child, Rita lived with her mother and father and several cats in a cozy house in which she had a choice of two rooms to call her own. One was spacious but dark. The other was minuscule, with not even enough floor space left over after the bed and bureau and a couple of bookshelves were in position for a friend to camp out in a sleeping bag. But it had two windows, facing south and west, so that the room often filled up with the sun or the moon. The window to the south looked out on a large field. She chose the room with the light.