Then one day I came home early on a rest day and there was Noa at the counter going through Mom’s purse. I asked what he was doing and he said he wasn’t doing nothing and so I was all, “You need to get it together.” He didn’t say nothing at first, which is how I could tell I was right. Me and him both standing there thinking about how there’s something going on with him, his abilities. How we know he’s not living up to what everyone thinks he should be. Then he was all, “You take her money all the time.”
That wasn’t fully true. Because yeah, sometimes I’d take from her purse, but it was only when I needed small-kind for important things—a little more to pay back Roland if my sales was slow, maybe some McDonald’s for after practice—and I could always make it back four or five times over in a day, once me and Roland got good again. So that’s nothing like taking money just to take it.
I said to Noa, “It’s not like you need it.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes I just want a little something, you know?” he said. “Like one of the Limited Edition Quiksilver board shorts. I mean, even just a Coke from the store, without having to ask anyone.”
Of course I knew what he meant.
“Besides,” he said, “I’ve been making us money, from the people visiting for help. It seems like I can have a little bit of it. Not like you.”
“You’re not making shit anymore,” I said. “Not for a while.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “I guess I’ll just have to try for your C average and study hall, right?” We were standing close and he’d dropped his hand from Mom’s purse, then tried to push past me for our room. But I put a hand on his chest.
“Stay straight,” I said. “You don’t want this.”
“Get out of my way,” he said. But it wasn’t the words that set me off. His eyes was louder than his mouth, and I could see he was fully thinking down about me, like if family was a tree he knew which one of us was the rot.
So I hit him. Full-on false crack—my knuckles, his nose. When he went down I put my knee on his chest bone and got ready for lump him more. But he was yelling and just like that Mom was there, out from the shower I guess. We’d fully forgot about her. Towel-wrapped and her dark Hawaiian skin all slick and still soaped, long hair kinked and shiny, and she tried for hold her towel up with her armpits but also tried for get me off Noa.
The more she pulled at me and hollered to stop the more her hands said who her favorite was—all these years—so I turned and hit her, too. Hard. I’d maybe been in one or two scraps at school and then mostly in like seventh grade or something so even hitting Noa with real heat was something I never done. But no one in our family ever hit each other like I hit Mom right then. I mean when I hit her—when I felt the meaty spark of bone hitting skin—I knew I was turning myself into something ugly and new.
Mom’s strong, though. She stood up straight-backed, didn’t even touch her cheek, and asked, “What are you doing?” and I tried for say, Fixing him, but then Mom’s towel coasted off her body. I didn’t want to, but still I saw the stretch marks, the woolly fan of her urumut, and when she bent, her tits lolling down like goat udders. My stomach all spinning with shame. I was still straddling Noa’s chest.
“Get off me,” Noa said.
“Never,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Like you do?” he asked.
Normally Mom’d be, like, I don’t need to keep you boys, I know just where to hide a few dead bodies and me and your dad can make more kids, only this time they’ll all be girls, thank God. But she didn’t say none of that this time.
I let Noa push me off. He made like he was going to the garage, then changed his mind and slammed out the front door. The screen door wobbled, then the creak of the hinges and the crack of the frame after.
“All right, okay,” I said to Mom’s stare. “All right, okay, okay, okay, all right,” all the way to my room.
* * *
THERE WAS THE REST OF THAT NIGHT, then the morning after. We had an away game, and most game days I’d start my morning slow, dream about what I was going for do on the court, like this: me bringing the ball up the floor, all AND1 Mixtape at the top of the key, my shoes chirping and the other team scrambling, they bring the double team but I got a sick crossover that breaks their ankles, mongoosing between two chumps as I spin to the rim, and when I finger-roll for two the net goes swish like a air kiss to the crowd, and the crowd comes back at me with that roar.
But not this time. No daydreams. This time I hid away at home, then hopped the city bus to school without breakfast. School was school, something happened in my classes I guess, but might as well I was standing in a Laundromat, teachers like a bunch of stupid machines churning around me, making noise.
When the game finally came that night, I played like limp dick: passing out of bounds, air balls from inside and outside the arc, crossover bouncing off my knees, turnovers turnovers turnovers. I couldn’t feel nothing of my flow. Nobody from my family was at the game, too. It was an away game anyway, and sometimes Mom and Dad had late shifts or whatever, but something felt like no one being there was maybe on purpose.
When the team rode back to Lincoln after, I couldn’t say nothing. Normally, I’d get Nic up on my lap, let her put her ass on my legs, her mynah bird laugh, but instead this time it was me just thinking, over and over, Anyone can have one bad game. Looking at my hands. But even then I knew this wasn’t just gonna be one time.
When I got home it was only Mom and Dad sitting on the couch. I figured I’d see the same bruise on Mom’s face that had been growing the night before but her face was brown and unswollen. Dad kissed her on that same cheek, stood and looked at me like Later, later, we’re gonna catch up on this, and then when he’d passed I heard the fridge opening and closing. The spit and clatter of a beer bottle being opened. Then the wood creaks of him moving down the hall. Whole time Mom looking through me with funeral eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Mom.
She shrugged. “You hit like a flight attendant,” she said. “I was in tougher scraps at Walmart Black Friday.”
“I don’t know why I did it,” I said.
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “I think you know why.”
She was right. That punch was how many years in my heart and knowing she knew? Might as well I was hitting myself, too.
“He’s getting stupid,” I said. “I was trying for fix it.”
“Trying to fix it,” she said. “Dean, seriously. Speak the way you were raised.”
“The hell is this,” I said. “Why won’t you let me say I’m sorry?”
“Because you’re not,” she said, and we stood there, staring at each other until I stopped.
* * *
AFTER, THERE’S A Monday-night game against Saint Christopher and I went three for fifteen and brick four from the foul line. Might as well I was a pregnant whale, how I handled the ball. Was a home game but not feeling like home with our crowd quiet as a pop quiz. I tried for shake the feeling I still had, something bruised and queasy every time I thought of Noa, of Mom, of family. But nothing worked, the feeling just clamped on me all the same, all over the court.