She tells Bernadette about Sarah’s husband, Mike,

who used to throw me so high in the air,

it felt like flying. Mike ran through

their glass door and kept on running, Mama says.

I hear Bernadette take a deep breath.

Harrison can’t say his alphabet, Mama tells her.

And he was premed in college.

Linebacker, wasn’t he? Bernadette asks. Even

before she met my father, Bernadette

could tell you the position of every player on

most of the teams in the NFL. She follows

football like astronomers follow stars.

Too many of them, Mama says,

are going through some kind of thing.

Headaches and rages, memory loss

and fainting spells. Zachariah isn’t the only one

suffering. And yet, Mama says,

setting her coffee cup down hard,

the doctors act like this is new.

I’m not the only football wife out here, Mama says,

who thinks they’re lying.

Over Breakfast

Friday night, Mama and I eat alone

while Daddy lies in his room with the lights off,

the door closed.

Light’s too much for him, my mom says.

We’re eating breakfast for dinner

pancakes and bacon and scrambled eggs

because Mama knows it’s my favorite.

We don’t say much, just eat in the quiet kitchen,

watch out the window as the sky goes from blue to black.

The headaches, my mom says. Then for a long time

she just looks at me like she’s trying to figure out

if I can take the news.

One of the new doctors thinks the headaches

have something to do

with all the times your dad got banged around, she says.

I stop eating.

So they know what it is and now they can fix him.

And he can go back to playing ball and

we can all be regular again!

The happiness in my stomach takes the place of everything else.

My dad’s going to be well again. I don’t need food tonight.

Just this moment right here. This right now,

over dinner-breakfast,

with the doctors finally knowing.

But my mother shakes her head. Her eyes,

usually a gray-blue, are dark now.

There are even darker circles beneath them.

She takes a deep breath,

lets it out slowly. For the first time, I see how tired she looks.

And how sad.

I wish it was that simple, ZJ, she finally says to me.

He needs more tests. Some experimental drugs—

But Daddy doesn’t like drugs.

These might help him, Mama says.

Might? But how come they don’t know?

I push my plate away. Still not hungry but

a different full feeling now. A lamer one.

How come they can’t just fix him?

I’m remembering all the times over the years

I watched my dad get rammed.

All the times I saw his helmet

bang into another player’s helmet.

I’m remembering all the times I saw him go down.

How it felt like my heart stopped