Nineteen

ON FRIDAYS, when they have a game, all the players wear jackets and ties to class. It’s a kind of uniform that shows they’re on the team. You can tell how proud they feel, just walking down the hallway or sitting at lunch. The worst player on the whole team is this kid called Blake in my social studies class. He’s tall and pimply and really skinny and everybody pushes him around—he falls down a lot. But none of this makes him a nice kid. He spends so much time staring at his reflection in the window that Mr. Tomski finally tells him “to quit messing around with your tie.”

When the bell rings, Mr. Tomski calls me aside while the rest of the kids file out. “You’re a part of this team, too,” he says. “The manager is an important part of the team. If you want to wear a jacket and tie, you can.”

But the other players will just make fun of me, especially Pete. I can’t say that, so I just say, “That’s all right. I don’t mind.”

“Well,” Mr. Tomski says. “It’s something you can think about. I’m not going to make you, Ben, but I’d rather you did. I’ll leave it at that.”

Maybe he said something to my mom, or maybe she noticed anyway, because next week, as she walks me to the bus stop, Mom asks, “How come some of the kids wear a jacket and tie to school on Fridays?”

“Because there’s a basketball game.”

“How come you don’t wear a jacket and tie?”

“Because I’m not on the team.”

“You are, too.”

“Mom, I’m not. I’m just the manager.” She looks at me and then I say, “I’m just the ball boy.”

“Who says that? Who calls you that?”

“Everybody does. It doesn’t matter. It’s what I am.”

But Mom pulls me by the arm and stops me on the sidewalk. “Now I want you to listen to me.” I keep hoping none of the other kids walk past. “There’s one thing I learned from your father,” she says. “You don’t have to let anybody push you around. You hear me?”

I don’t answer, and she pulls at my arm again. “You hear me, Ben?”

“I hear you.”

“Next Friday, I want to see you in a jacket and tie like the rest of them. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I say. She lets go.

As the weather warms up, Mabley starts playing outside again, after school and on the weekends, just jumping on the trampoline. On Saturday she sees me in the bamboo bushes and tells me to come over. So I wriggle through the hedge and into her backyard, a little scratched up and covered in leaves.

“There’s been—something—bothering me,” she says, still bouncing up and down.

“Can I come on?” I sit down to take off my shoes.

“Wait a second. I want to show you something.”

First, she starts jumping higher and higher. “To get some momentum going,” she says. I don’t know how high she gets, but she can see over the bamboo hedge into Granma’s yard. She tells me what she sees: my mom’s beach towel with a book lying on it, and a soccer ball in the grass. Her next trick is to touch her toes in the air, with straight legs. Mabley does that a couple of times and then sort of gathers herself again. She looks like she’s concentrating hard. Suddenly she pushes off just as her feet touch the trampoline, and shoots into the air. Her legs swing out in front of her, and for a second she seems to be hanging upside down. Her head points at the ground. But then she somersaults over and lands on her feet.