Cover

Also by Jacqueline Woodson

After Tupac and D Foster

Behind You

Beneath a Meth Moon

Between Madison and Palmetto

Brown Girl Dreaming

The Dear One

Feathers

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

Harbor Me

The House You Pass on the Way

Hush

If You Come Softly

I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This

Last Summer with Maizon

Lena

Locomotion

Maizon at Blue Hill

Miracle’s Boys

Peace, Locomotion

Dedication

for Toshi Reagon and everyone else
who ever once loved
the game

Part 1

1999

Memory like a Movie

The memory goes like this:

Ollie’s got the ball and he’s running across my yard when

Dad comes out of nowhere,

soft tackles him to the ground.

Then everyone is cheering and laughing because

we didn’t even know my dad was home.

I thought you had a game, I say, grabbing him.

It’s a half hug, half tackle, but

the other guys—Darry and Daniel—hop on too

and Ollie’s escaped, so he jumps

on top of all of us jumping on my dad.

Yeah, Mr. J., Darry says. I thought we’d be watching you on TV tonight.

Coach giving me a break, my daddy says. He climbs out from under,

shaking us off like we’re feathers, not boys.

Ah man! Darry says.

Yeah, we all say. Ah man!

Sometimes a player needs to rest, Daddy says.

He looks at each of us for a long time.

A strange look. Like he’s just now seeing us.

Then he tosses the ball so far, we can’t even see it anymore.

And my boys say Ah man, you threw it too far!

while I go back behind the garage where

we have a whole bunch of footballs

waiting and ready

for when my daddy sends one into the abyss.

Everybody’s Looking for a Hero

Once, when I was a little kid,

this newscaster guy asked me if

my dad was my biggest hero.

No, I said. My dad’s just my dad.

There was a crowd of newscasters circling around me,

all of them with their microphones aimed

at my face. Maybe I was nervous, I don’t remember now.

Maybe it was after his first Super Bowl win, his ring

new and shining on his finger. Me just a little kid,

so the ring was this whole glittering world,

gold and black and diamonds against

my daddy’s brown hand.

I remember hearing the reporter say

Listen to those fans! Looks like everybody’s

found their next great hero.

And now I’m thinking back to those times

when the cold wind whipped around me and Mom

as we sat wrapped in blankets, yelling Dad’s name,

so close to the game, we could see the angry spit

spraying from the other team’s coach’s lips.

So close, we could see the sweat on my daddy’s neck.

And all the people around us cheering,

all the people going around calling out his number,

calling out his name.

Zachariah 44! Zachariah 44!

Is your daddy your hero? the newscaster had asked me.

And all these years later, just like that day, I know

he’s not my hero,

he’s my dad, which means

he’s my every single thing.

Day after the Game

Day after the game

and Daddy gets out of bed slow.

His whole body, he says,

is 223 pounds of pain

from toes to knees, from knees to ribs,

every single hit he took yesterday

remembered in the morning.

Before the Ever After

Before the ever after, there was Daddy driving

to Village Ice Cream

on a Saturday night in July before preseason training.

Before the ever after, there was Mom in the back seat

letting me ride up front, me and Daddy

having Man Time together

waving to everyone

who pointed at our car and said That’s him!

Before the ever after, the way people said

That’s him! sounded like a cheer.

Before the ever after, the people pointing

were always smiling.

Before the ever after, Daddy’s hands didn’t always tremble

and his voice didn’t shake

and his head didn’t hurt all the time.

Before the ever after, there were picnics

on Sunday afternoons in Central Park

driving through the tunnel to get to the city

me and Daddy making up songs.

Before the ever after, there were sandwiches

on the grass near Strawberry Fields

chicken salad and barbecue beef

and ham with apples and Brie

there were dark chocolates with almonds and

milk chocolates with coconut

and fruit and us just laughing and laughing.

Before the ever after, there was the three of us

and we lived happily

before the ever after.

Daniel

In second grade, Daniel walked over to me, Ollie and Darry,

said You guys want to race from here to the tree?

When he lost, he laughed and didn’t even care,

just high-fived Darry, who always wins

every race every time and said

You got feet like wings, bruh.

Then he got on his bike and we knew

he wasn’t regular. He was fearless.

Even back then, he could already

do things on a bike that a bike wasn’t made for doing—

popping wheelies and spinning and standing up on the seat

while holding on to the handlebars and speeding

down the steepest hills in town.

Me, Darry and Ollie used to call ourselves Tripod

cuz the three us came together like that.

But when we met Daniel, we became the Fantastic Four.

And even after he broke his arm

when he jumped a skate park ramp right into a wall,

he didn’t stop riding.

He said My cast is like a second helmet,

held it high in the air

with the unbroken arm holding the handlebars

and then not holding them and Daniel flying

around the park like some kid

gravity couldn’t mess with.

While me and Darry and Ollie watched him amazed.

And terrified.

ZJ

I used to wonder who I’d be if “Zachariah 44” Johnson wasn’t my daddy.

First time people who know

even a little bit about football meet me,

it’s like they know him, not me. To them,

I’m Zachariah’s son.

The tight end guy’s kid.

I’m Zachariah Johnson Jr. ZJ. I’m the one

whose daddy plays pro ball. I’m the tall kid

with my daddy’s same broad shoulders. I’m the one

who doesn’t dream of going pro.

Music maybe.

But not football.

Still, even at school, feels like my dad’s in two places

at once—dropping me off out front, saying

Learn lots, little man, then

walking into the classroom ahead of me.

I mean, not him but

his shadow. And me almost invisible

inside it.

Except to my boys

who see me walking into the classroom and say

What’s up, ZJ?

Your mom throw any cookies in your lunch?

Then all three of them open their hands

beneath their desks so that when

the teacher’s back is turned

I can sneak them one.

You Love a Thing?

Ever since I was a little kid,

I’ve loved football, my daddy told me.

Through every broken toe and cracked rib

and jammed finger

and slam to the shoulder

and slam to the head, I still

loved it.

You got something you love, little man?

Then you good.

You love food? You cook.

You love clothes? You design.

You love the wind and water? You sail.

Me, my daddy said,

I love everything about the game.

Even the smell of the ball.

Then he laughed, said

Imagine loving something so much, you love

the smell of it?

It smells like leather and dirt and sweat and new snow.

I love football with all

of my senses. Love the taste and feel

of the air in my mouth

running with the ball on a cold day. Love the smell

of the ball when I press it to my face

and the smell of the field right after it rains.

I love the way the sky looks as we stare up at it

while some celebrity sings “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Love the sound of the crowd cheering us on.

When you love a thing, little man, my dad said,

you gotta love it with everything you got.

Till you can’t even tell where that thing you love begins

and where you end.

Who We Are & What We Love

Ollie divides fractions in his head,

can multiply them too—gives you the answer while

you’re still trying to write down the problem, knows

so much about so much but doesn’t show off

about knowing.

Darry—besides running fast, he can dance. Get the music

going and my boy moves like water flowing.

All smooth like that.

Daniel’s super chill, says stuff like

You okay, my man? You need to talk?

And really means it. And really listens.

Calls his bike a Magic Broom, spins it in so many circles

we all get dizzy, but not Daniel,

who bounces the front tire back to earth

without even blinking,

says That was for all of y’all who are stuck on the ground.

Me, I play the guitar. Mostly songs

that come into my head. Music

is always circling my brain. Hard to explain

how songs do that.

But when I play them, everything

makes some kind of strange sense like

my guitar has all the answers.

When I sing, the songs feel

as magic as Daniel’s bike

as brilliant as Ollie’s numbers

as smooth as Darry’s moves

as good as the four of us hanging out

on a bright cold Saturday afternoon.

It feels right

and clear

and always.

Ollie

Ollie says he doesn’t really remember the beginning

of his story.

Says he’s glad about that.

It was a tragedy, he says.

And when things like that happen, your mind blanks out.

It’s like your mind knows, he says, how to take care of itself.

Before he was one of my best friends, he was a baby

with green eyes and a bright red Afro

left outside a Texas church in a basket

with a note pinned to his blanket

Please take care of this baby. And love him like crazy too.

He used to take the note out of his pocket all the time.

Too delicate, Ollie says, to show anybody anymore.

We all know what came next in the story Ollie says

he can’t remember.

A preacher and his wife found

and kept him.

Loved Ollie just like the note asked them to do.

Then the preacher died and it was only his wife—

Bernadette, who’s Ollie’s mom.

Bernadette, who comes over sometimes to drink coffee with my own mama

and sometimes, if it’s a Friday night, one glass of wine.

Any more than that, Bernadette says,

and I forget my own name.

Even though she’s said that a hundred times,

she and Mama laugh anyway.

Ollie looks at my dad sometimes

with those bright green eyes like he’s deep

in a dream of remembering his own father living.

Ollie, who my dad used to call my son from another

father and mother,

which always made Ollie duck his head to hide

how red his face got

to hide how big his smile got.

Ollie says he doesn’t really remember the story of being a baby in a basket

but sometimes the story lives inside his eyes when kids ask

What are you?

You Black or white or Spanish or mixed?

And Ollie has to shrug and say

Maybe I’m all those things.

And maybe I’m something else too.

Once, when Ollie told my dad about

kids always asking him this,

my dad just gave Ollie a fist bump and said

You know what you are, Ollie?

You’re a hundred percent YOU.

Rap Song

Make me a rhyme, little man.

First day of school, first grade,

Beastie Boys blasting from the car radio.

We’re driving home, me with my lunch

box open on my lap cuz my after-school snack was always

what I didn’t eat at school—grapes, carrot sticks,

apples and peanut butter, whatever,

I dug it out, sitting in the back seat of my dad’s car.

September sun shining in on us,

Mama home or maybe visiting the grandmas, so much

I don’t remember. So many places where there’s white

space where memory should be, and some days I wonder

if my own mind is going like my dad’s. But that year,

he was still Daddy. Still playing ball and driving me from school

whenever he was home.

Make me a rhyme, little man, my daddy said, glancing

through the rearview at me with my mouth full

but my head moving to the Beastie Boys.

And then I must have swallowed. Must have said

My name is Zachariah

and I’m on fire.

Can’t go no higher

than Zachariah.

You got skills, son, my dad said.

Yeah, I said back.

Yo

I know

I think I got ’em from you.

Cuz you’re Zachariah too!

Unbelievable

The first time my dad heard one of my songs, he asked

Who wrote that?

We were in the kitchen and it was pizza night with

extra cheese, extra sausage and lots of olives.

I was singing because of that.

And I was singing because it was summer

and because the pizza smelled so good and the whole

day was only for us—no coaches calling,

no practice, no game to study, no fans

just me and my daddy—Mama in Arizona

visiting the grandmas. So it was

just us men and our pizza and all the rest

of the takeout we were planning to have

with Mama gone.

So I was singing about all of it—the summer,

our bright yellow kitchen, the good food

and me and my daddy alone

together.

I don’t remember how old I was, but

I remember my daddy’s smile.

You wrote that?

And me with a slice almost to my mouth, stopping

and saying Yep, it was all made up by me.

Then going back to singing, a song

about pizza and summertime,

a song about all the good things

already here

and the good things coming too.

On My Daddy’s Shoulders

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when

crowds gathered around us

pushing autograph books, T-shirts and

scraps of paper into his hands.

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when

a band marched through Maplewood

playing a song someone wrote

about the speed in his step

and the power in his hands.

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when

the TV ran their interviews

with him recounting the plays

of the Super Bowl game when the guy

on the other team let the ball

fly right through his hands.

I was on my daddy’s shoulders when

the crowds grew smaller and the coach said

Maybe next game—you need some rest,

then looked up at me and smiled,

trying not to stare too hard

at my daddy’s shaking hands.

The First Time, Again

I used to be a tight end, my daddy says, laughing.

But what I really wanted to be was a wide receiver.

Now I’m just wide.

The first time he said it, we all laughed

even Mama

and she usually just smiles when something is funny.

The second time he said it, I said

It was funny the first time, Dad.

The third time he said it, I said You always say that.

No I don’t, this is my first time, he said.

Stop messing with me, Daddy.

No, YOU, my daddy said, stop messing with me!

My daddy never shouts. But he was shouting.

My daddy never cries. But he started crying then.

Tears

My daddy cried every day the year his father died.

He tells me this each time I scrape a knee

or stub my toe or watch a really sad movie

and try to hold back my tears.

I cried the whole year, my dad says.

Three hundred and sixty-five days.

But I wasn’t born yet, so I didn’t see it.

And two years later when his mom

lost her leg because of a disease called diabetes,

my dad said, he cried because he didn’t have the money

to make life comfortable for her. You know, he said,

a fancy wheelchair, ramps, a new house

where she didn’t have to pull herself up on her crutches

to reach for everything.

And two more years later, when he signed his first contract,

my daddy said he cried because

now he could buy that wheelchair

and that house and help his mother and his sister

move into it together

and see them cry happy tears.

But some days now, my dad sits at the window,

silent tears slowly moving down his face.

I don’t even know when his tears started.

I don’t even know when they’re going to end.

Real Fiction

On Saturday mornings

I read novels about stuff like guys running

or playing ball or just being with their friends.

“Realistic fiction.” I don’t know why

it’s not just called “real fiction” or why

I don’t want to read anything else anymore.

I like that it’s real people,

real stuff happening to them

in real time. In my books, nobody

jumps off a mountain, then bounces

back up to the top. Nobody can fly or

cast a lifesaving web

across the city. I wish.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Today I’m reading a novel about these kids

who live in Harlem

and get in some trouble over a science project.

Something about their faraway life and

different kind of problems makes the stuff

happening around here seem like—

I don’t know. Feels like anything can

be kinda okay in the end. Maybe

that’s why I like realistic fiction. Real

problems that real people could have

and the stories not always ending

with some happily ever after. But still

most people seem to end up

okay.

Race Day

Yo, ZJ! It’s race day!

I’m lying in bed watching the snow come down

but jump up quick

when I hear my daddy.

Yo, ZJ! It’s race day!

Throw on my track pants, sneaks and hoodie before I even

brush my teeth.

Used to be me in a jogging stroller, my daddy

pushing me all over Maplewood.

Then me on my scooter, trying to keep up with him.

But now we mostly run together.

And one day a year, we race!

It’s Sunday and this is the year I’ll beat him. I know it.

This is the year, I yell down the stairs to him. You ain’t ready!

Don’t say ain’t, my daddy yells back.

And I already am ready.

You the one up there still getting dressed.

I run down the stairs and he’s standing in the doorway,

bending over to touch his toes,

then stretching his arms up and over.

I stand behind him and do the same thing, bending

left with him

and right with him and

over and up with him.

The two of us, the way we’ve always done.

And then we run!

Down Valley to Baker Street, Baker to Ridgewood Road,

then Cypress with him only a little bit ahead of me and the air leaving my lungs, coming back in cold,

the snow turning to beads

on our faces, mixing in with the sweat.

I can hear my daddy’s own breath coming

hard as we turn at the golf course,

make our way back, and that’s when

I kick a sprint at him, take off

with the air stinging my cheeks,

my smile as wide as anything until I hear him

coming up behind me,

his size fourteen shoes crunching in the snow,

his laughter the soft sound

I’ve always known.

You thought you had me, he says between breaths, and then he’s gone,

kicking dusty snow up and yelling back over his shoulder

One day, ZJ.

But today is not that day!

I keep running, though, because the day feels regular

and regular feels cold and good.

I keep running fast and hard,

just a little bit behind him, already

thinking I’m gonna win this race

next year.

Tackle

One time, me and Ollie were in my yard playing tackle while his mom, Bernadette,

talked with my mom inside.

Ollie tackled me so hard, my head hit the ground

and my nose bled.

I ran inside with the blood all down the front

of my shirt, Ollie

running beside me saying I’m sorry, ZJ.

I didn’t mean to bust your nose like that. I’m sorry.

After that, both my mom and Bernadette said

if they ever saw us playing tackle without helmets again . . .

That’s all they said, but we knew the rest.

My dad probably holds the Football Hall of Fame record

for the most concussions. Even with a helmet on.

I don’t think Mama really likes football,

but she won’t say that,

just says I better never see you playing without a helmet

just says Why don’t you and Ollie find another game to play

just says Be careful

just says I love you, ZJ—body, brain and soul.

Maplewood, 2000

This guy on the radio said the world was going to end

when we got to the new millennium. That it was gonna explode—a whole nother big bang

but this time, instead of the earth being created,

it was just gonna bust into smithereens and all of us would be gone from here.

Forever.

December 31, 1999, came on a Friday. So

Ollie, Darry and Daniel were all staying at my house.

A little bit of snow was falling, and we were in my room

listening to a Prince CD, playing that song “1999”

over and over again.

Darry was dancing.

Maybe one day we’ll see him

dancing on TV.

He danced over to the window, looking up at the sky,

waiting for some sign.

I asked him if he saw anything that looked like

the end of time.

Nope, he said. Just snow.

And maybe we were a little bit scared that it was true.

That this was the last night of all of our lives.

And maybe we were a little bit excited for

some kind of explosion.

We were only ten then, and I guess

when you’re a little kid like that,

some part of you just believes

that no matter what happens, you’re gonna be safe.

If the end of time comes, Daniel said, we had us

some good years together. I’ll always remember y’all.

We didn’t know what was coming.

We didn’t even think it was strange that

my daddy was in his room with the door closed

instead of in his chair in the TV room, watching

videos of football games.

But when he came into our room and started yelling

about the loud music,

we all froze.

Who are these boys, anyway? he said, frowning

at Ollie, Darry and Daniel,

who he’d known practically forever.

At first we thought he was kidding. I said

Daddy. Stop playing.

Then he said Do I look like I’m playing?

and left the room,

slamming the door so hard,

the whole room shook.

After that, we all just went to bed.

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