You Are My Heart and Other Stories (5 page)

I asked my father if he wanted a medal for his achievements, and he called me a snot-nose who was still wet behind the ears. My mother seemed to snap out of it then, and talked to me the way she usually did.

“Here,” she said, picking up the carving knife and leaning across the table, the knife pointed at me. “Why don't you just cut my heart out with this and get it over with now?”

My mother put the knife down, and my father, who was sitting between us, picked it up and placed it in front of me, after which he started yelling at my mother that it wouldn't help things for her to get so worked up and histrionic, and off they went again, arguing with each other about the best way to deal with me.

 

The big news around Erasmus—this happened less than a week later—was that Johnny Lee had chosen Yale, and would be going there on a full scholarship in the fall. By this time it was early April, when most seniors had heard from the colleges they'd applied to, and when it was warm enough for Karen and me to take long walks in the park together again. By this time, too, the park was the
only
place where we could be together by ourselves.

The reason for this was that on the night after my mother found Karen in the apartment with me, she had telephoned Karen's mother. The result was that I was no longer welcome in Karen's home—and when I went to choir practice, Mr. Pidgeon came up to me before rehearsal started and said that it was probably best if I didn't sing with the choir for a while.

Things were just as bad with Olen. Whenever I tried to talk with him, he became quiet and sullen the way he was with everyone else, and when I'd offer to go for a Coke and fries with him and ask if he wanted to get together over the weekend to play ball or do other stuff, he'd say he didn't have time to hang out with guys like me.

Karen said he was being the same with her, but that what was making him this way didn't have to do with her and me, but with what had happened between Olen and Mr. Ordover, and that what had happened was this: as soon as Olen learned about Johnny's decision to go to Yale, he'd gone straight in to see Mr. Ordover and had demanded to know what was going to happen to
him
next year. Despite the fact that Olen had good grades—a
solid B—and had made first team All-Brooklyn and third team All-City—Mr. Ordover told him that the only coaches who'd talked with him about scholarships for Olen were from two all-Negro colleges in the South.

Olen had exploded, it seemed, and said he would rot in hell before he'd go to one of those places. That was all Karen knew. She didn't know what else Olen said, or what his plans were, because, as had always been the case with her brother, the more enraged he was, the quieter he became.

The next time I saw Olen, I tried to get him to talk about what had happened with him and Mr. Ordover, but all he did was to snap at me that if I was so interested in his future, why didn't
I
go in and talk with Mr. Ordover.

So I did. During my free period after lunch the next day, I found Mr. Ordover in his office and asked him if it was true—that Olen's only choices were two Negro colleges.

“It's true,” Mr. Ordover said, “but what you have to realize is that when a college makes a commitment to a young athlete—the way Yale University has to Johnny—it has to be certain that the athlete will be capable, for his part, of honoring the commitment.”

“So?” I said. “So why would that stop any college from wanting Olen to play for them? He's a good student—a lot smarter than people think—and an incredible ballplayer…”

Mr. Ordover praised me for being such a loyal friend, and then, switching subjects, started in about
my
prospects for the following year. He told me that unless some new player came along to beat me out, I would be his starting point guard, and also—excellent news he'd been saving for an appropriate time—that he'd already had inquiries about me from coaches with whom he had good working relationships. Not from places like Yale or Princeton, to be sure, but from some fine Division Two schools like Union, Muhlenberg, and Tufts, all of which were in the market for a smart point guard.

“But what about Olen?” I persisted. “What's
he
going to do next year?”

Mr. Ordover had spoken with Olen's guidance counselor, he replied, and learned that mistakenly counting on an offer of an athletic scholarship, Olen had, unfortunately, neglected to apply to any colleges in the traditional way. That was why Mr. Ordover had been speaking with coaches from several Negro schools where admissions standards were a bit more lax, and where arrangements for the coming fall could still be made.

“But he was counting on
you
to get him in somewhere,” I protested. “The same as Johnny. Everybody knows that's how it works. The colleges contact you and you set up the rest the way you always have.”

Mr. Ordover responded by saying that Johnny, for one, had applied to colleges the way everyone else had, that he thought Olen would do well in one of the schools he'd found for him, and—he rose from his chair and looked at his watch—that he had an appointment. Our conversation, he declared, was over.

“No it's not,” I said. “You let him down, coach. He played his heart out for you for three years and you let him down.”

Mr. Ordover said again that our conversation was over.

“No it's not,” I repeated. “Because do you know what? If you don't get Olen into a regular college, then—” I searched for words “—then I won't be your point guard next year because I won't
be
on your team.”

Mr. Ordover laughed. “You're not being very intelligent,” he said. “Why forsake your chances because of your friend's obstinacy? That's just cutting off your nose to spite your face. The schools I can get Olen into, where he'll be with his own people, are good choices, and for Olen to allow his pride to destroy his future would be foolish beyond words.”

“But you can
do
it,” I said. “We all know it. If you want to, you can still get Olen into a place that isn't all-Negro. Coach Fisher got Sihugo Green into Duquense, didn't he? And Cal Ramsey's
going to play for N.Y.U. next year, and Tony Jackson's going to St. John's, so how can you say the only place for Olen is with other Negroes?”

Mr. Ordover sighed. “Please,” he said. “As a ballplayer, Olen is not in Green or Ramsay or Jackson's class—not by a long shot—and for you to think he is may indicate that you are less intelligent than I've been giving you credit for.”

The bell went off for changing classes then and when it did, Mr. Ordover took me by the arm, led me to the door, opened it, and told me to get to my next class. What he wanted, he said, was to prevent me from saying anything I might regret later on. For his part, he was going to try to forget that our conversation had taken place because he didn't want my passion and aggressiveness—qualities that served me well on the court—to endanger my opportunities. I was, he said, echoing my father, still a young man who was wet behind the ears.

I knew I should have stopped myself then, but it was as if he was daring me to answer back, and when I was out of his office and in the large room where the secretaries worked and the other coaches hung out, I spoke the words that came to me.

“Intelligence?” I said. “
Intelligence?!
Let me tell you something, Mr. Ordover—in my opinion Olen has more intelligence in his little finger than you have in that crap between your ears you call a brain.”

 

Word got around the school pretty fast about what had happened between me and Mr. Ordover, but it made no difference to Olen—whenever I saw him, he either evaded me or rejected my overtures—and it surely didn't help at home. As soon as my parents heard what happened, they demanded I give them a full and accurate accounting—which, in my righteous outrage at what had been done to Olen, I was happy to do—and then ordered me to send a letter of apology to Mr. Ordover. When I refused, they told me I was still the immature, selfish child I'd
always been, and told me that since I was so free and independent, I could take my meals by myself from now on. And after that, they pretty much stopped talking to me.

Things got worse for Karen too. Although her mother's style may have been gentler than my mother's, the results were basically the same. Karen wasn't banished from the dinner table, but when she was there, everybody—including her brothers and sisters—ignored her. In addition, her mother and her Uncle Joshua took to blaming
her
for Olen's situation. If she was so smart, and cared so much about her brother, why hadn't she been more watchful—why hadn't she seen to it that he applied to colleges in a proper way? She knew how busy Olen was with basketball, with his weekend job, and with keeping up with his classes. What kind of secretary was she going to be some day if she couldn't even help her own brother with sending for applications, filling them out, and seeing that they were delivered on time? Worse still, they accused her of having neglected her own family in favor of—their words—an
unhealthy infatuation
.

Karen kept trying to get Olen to talk with her, and even went to his guidance counselor to find out if anything could be done about getting him into college for the fall, but the guidance counselor said that the only choices left for him were to go to one of the schools Mr. Ordover had found, get a job and apply again for entrance a year from September, or make a late application to one of the city colleges. But Olen had no interest in attending a school where he couldn't play ball, and because of the point-shaving scandals three years before, when star players at C.C.N.Y. had taken money to fix games (this after C.C.N.Y. had won both the N.C.A.A.
and
N.I.T. post-season tournaments), the city colleges had all dropped big-time intercollegiate basketball.

From this point on, whenever Karen and I were together, we spent pretty much all our time trading stories of how lousy things were for us at home. We still made out—kind of desperately—when we could find a secluded place in the park or an unlocked
car, but although we didn't say it, it was as if we both began feeling doomed, and on walks or sitting next to each other in luncheonettes we'd go for long stretches without talking at all.

When I went down to the Holy Cross schoolyard on weekends for games of pick-up ball, the guys told me how brave and crazy they thought I was to have talked to Mr. Ordover the way I had. But when I suggested they join me—that if we all stuck together and we all refused to play, Mr. Ordover would have no choice
but
to make some calls and get Olen into a good school—I didn't get any takers.

Then, one Saturday morning in early May, for the first time since our season ended, Olen showed up at the schoolyard. He sat along the chainlink fence with the other guys, not saying much and nobody saying much to him, and when he got on the court to play against a team I was on—we'd won four in a row—he was at his best, scoring at will and jibing the guys on my team about how bad he was making them look. But then, his team up nine to two in a ten-baskets-wins game, when I was going in for an easy layup, he suddenly left his own man and instead of trying to block my shot, clotheslined me with a forearm to the chest that sent me skidding on the concrete, after which he just stood over me, smiling.

“What are you smiling about, you big ape?” I said when I got my wind back.

“I'm smiling at a guy who just doesn't have it,” he said.

“Well it takes one to know one,” I said back, and then, pain suddenly shooting through my arm, elbow to wrist—it was skinned raw—I felt tears rush to my eyes. I pressed my eyes closed, bit down on my lower lip, and when I opened my eyes, Olen was still standing there smiling.

“You're an idiot,” I said. “Do you know that? You're nothing but a big stupid black idiot. Correct that: You're nothing a big stupid black
fucking
idiot.”

The other guys crowded around, told us to go easy, and I saw
a few of them get on either side of Olen, moving in to keep him from doing any more damage.

“Shut your mouth,” Olen said. “You just shut your mouth.”

“Who's gonna make me?
You
?” I stood up and stepped toward him so that the toes of my sneakers were right up against his. “Come on, big man—show us how smart and tough you are—how you always pick on guys your own size and your own intelligence, because you know what? The only thing smaller than your dick is your brain.”

I saw fire flare briefly in his eyes, and then he just turned and walked out of the schoolyard. The guys came to me then, offering me their bandanas and handkerchiefs to wipe off the blood, and starting in praising me for how totally out of my mind I was to go at Olen the way I had.

“Fuck all of you too,” I said, and left the schoolyard.

I caught up with Olen and stayed by his side for a few blocks, neither of us saying anything. Before we turned the corner to his street, though, he stopped and looked down at me.

“How's the arm?” he asked.

“Still attached,” I said.

“But I mean it—I want you to just leave me be, okay?” he said. “I don't need you holding my hand or sucking around to do stuff for me. It only makes it worse, do you understand?”

“No,” I said.

“Then fuck you,” he said.

“You and what army?” I shot back.

“And don't always be such a wise-ass,” he said, and he grabbed me by the arm, hard, opened his mouth—he seemed on the verge of saying more—but then let go and shook his head sideways, the anger suddenly washing out of him. “Forget it, okay? Just forget the whole thing and leave me be, you
and
my stupid sister, or next time—”