68th and Chappel, 1989 - Part 2

Anyway, one day the alley got a real hoop. I don’t know how it happened, but one day there it was, up about ten feet with a net and a backboard and the kids playing with a real ball. I watched them play, shooting from the chest and diving in piles after rebounds, hot dogging and hot dogging, shake and bake and the hustle, winner gets the ball again.

There were two kids sitting on the ground, watching the game. The girl was about two, sitting on her butt in the dirt, her hands covered with dust and her pink dress pathetically dirty. The boy was about six, and seemed to be the one in charge. “Come on Neri, don’t be eatin that dirt, you know momma gonna be mad”. But Neri’s mouth was a clownface brown and she was wearing the huge smile of a kid who knows she’s gotten away with something she shouldn’t have.

I’d gotten some peaches the day before, and I was eating one as I was talking to John. He asked me what I was eating, and I told him it was a peach, and he asked if he could have one too. He was amazed by the peach, the juice ran down his face and he couldn’t reach his tongue far enough to get it all. “This peach is good. I want to have a peach every day”.

It was almost dark, most of the kids had been called back inside, to eat and wait for the lurking hours. I asked John my he wasn’t playing with the other boys. “I got to mind Neri. That’s what my momma told me, so I got to mind her.” One of the previous tenants had left a basketball in the apartment. It was kind of flat, and you really had to pound it to dribble, but I went up and brought it outside.
“Come on, let’s play some hoops.”

He wasn’t very coordinated, but I showed him how to shoot the ball so it would get some backspin, and how to do a layup. He would do his thing and I brought the ball back to him, sometimes trying a really goofy shot that would make John laugh. And the weird thing was that those shots just kept going in, like when you are in the zone and you just can’t miss.

“You know, I met Michael Jordan once”
“For real?”
“Yeah. You know he doesn’t do drugs, or run with a gang, or anything like that.”
”Yeah?”
“Yeah. And he told me, when he was young, he always minded his momma. He wasn’t tall either, when he was growing up. He was short, and skinny, and nobody would let him play in the basketball games. But he kept practicing, and practicing, and then, when he finally started growing, he just kicked butt on all the people who used to think they were so much better than he was.”

John was silent, and looked for Neri, to make sure she wasn’t doing anything. She was still sitting on the ground, taking dirt and throwing it up in the air. Then he turned back, with a kind of suspicious look, and said “Did you ever see Michael dunk?” The look on his face seemed to say that this was the testing point, that somehow, everything I had said was contingent on this answer.

I’d never been able to dunk before, always hitting the rim or having the ball slide out of my hand, but I said
“Sure. Let me show you how Michael slammed on me. I was going with him, not giving him any room, like this”
I took up a defensive stand, and moved around a little
“But Michael, he was like this”
I turned around, and started dribbling, sticking my tongue way out.
“And all of a sudden he is by me”
I pushed the ball hard into my right hand, trying desperately to keep my fingers from slipping from the palm grip they had on the ball.
“And he went up”

I started to run, four steps, and on the fourth step I planted my left foot and prayed, and jumped as hard and as high as I could, hoping against hope that somehow, that little bit of magic that had made all my jumpers go in and the dribbles never go off my shoes would give me this final piece of credibility, that little extra to make me, instead of the Brothers of the Folks, a temporary hero.

I went up, I pushed every part of my body, stretching it as far as it would go. The ball didn’t slip out, and just as I felt myself at the top of my leap, that magic moment where there’s no gravity and no sound, I threw the ball down and slammed my hand onto the rim, holding on for dear life and to miss the telephone pole.

The ball flew through the net, bounced, went up about five feet, and came down. John caught it and brought it back to me. “Wow, Michael Jordan”.