Other Side of the Tracks

Capri

IT’S FUNNY HOW A PERSON can live in new york their whole lives and never travel to the city. I’ve only been there once, when I was eight years old.

The night sky was painted with dark oil and hid the glittering stars I usually saw shining in Hamilton. My grandmother, who we called Ma, held my hand tight, and Justin, my older brother, held the other. Our mama, who we called by her first name, Essie, was making her way quickly ahead of us in her white peacoat with a matching fur band wrapped around her cropped hair. She seemed to dance with the crowds, weaving in and out of them expertly, with a careless smile, making sure not to shove nobody, gracefully leaping and spinning around each person she passed. She was like a young child, giggling and laughing the whole way to the theatre.

"Come on, slowpokes, this is the city. You have to move," she called to us over her shoulder. Ma, hushing her, mumbled things under her breath that I couldn’t hear over the noise of the traffic, but even she was smirking the whole while. Essie was a real beauty.

Careless.

I wanted to be just like her.

Essie had Justin when she was fifteen and me, just one year later. We all lived with Ma in Hamilton at first, but after Essie started her acting career, she was almost never home. Now, Essie was bringing us into her adopted home. Broadway didn’t smell like magic and new opportunities as Essie described; it was more like hot pretzels and perfume wrapped in a cloud of stale cigarette smoke. She said New York’s streets was paved with gold that glimmered brighter than the stones on the yellow brick road. I only found graying sidewalks with blackened gum and a few people wrapped in old blankets.

But the lights—the lights she didn’t get wrong. They did outshine the fireflies we caught behind Ma’s house in the summertime. Each theatre was playing, as Essie said, a different world for us to peek into; worlds of sadness turned happy, stories of love, music, and dancing. Essie said it was like visiting a magical library that opened its books for us to travel through, and it was. Each book lined the streets, illuminated with bright lights. Something Rotten!, The King and I, Hamilton, and Wicked!

Some of the names from the shows wasn’t familiar; others I’d already watched Essie act out for me in her bedroom, putting on different hats for the characters, singing their songs and proclaiming their lines like she was born into them. Even though I never been on the streets of Broadway before, I felt like I knew just as much about theatre as anyone else, including the old women I overheard talking about the different versions of Essie’s show they’d seen when Ma, Justin, and me sat in the theatre. They said they couldn’t wait to judge and see if it was better than the one in London that they’d saw that summer. That night, I didn’t need to see no show in London to compare to Essie’s.

I knew hers would be the greatest of all.

Essie told us we had great seats, but she didn’t tell us how great they actually were. We didn’t have nobody sitting in front of us but the orchestra. Ma even smiled when she saw the three reserved seats with our names written on them. It made me feel real important, like a star on television or something.

The conductor of the orchestra winked at me and told me my dress was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. I did feel beautiful in the bright blue dress Ma got from the charity store downtown. It was used, but Essie said used dresses wasn’t ever really old. My dress was new because it was the first time I wore it. She said it was my turn to create an adventure in the dress—that new adventures for an old dress was like retellings of old stories to ears that never heard them.

When the curtain lifted and the lights dimmed, Essie ran across the stage in tears, and I wanted to run up on stage and hug her. Ma could tell I was agitated and assured me Essie was only doing her job to entertain. Still, I believed everything Essie was saying under them bright lights. I believed her when she cried after burying her lover in the play, when she danced across the stage with the chorus, when she fell in love again, and when she died in the end. I believed it all and stood with the audience when they clapped. I agreed when the old ladies said this was the best version of the show they’d seen, even though I didn’t see no other one.

My Essie truly was a star.

Only three months later, when I found out Essie’s heart stopped onstage, I assured Ma that she was probably just acting. When her open casket sat in front of me at the church on Sixth Street later that week, I told Essie it wasn’t funny anymore. I told her she had to wake up now. Her skin was blotchy and the blush they put on her was too bright. She always told me the right shade of blush for her complexion was hard for people to find. That’s why she always did her own makeup before her performances.

They forced her eyes shut; no one was able to see the light that flew from them when she acted, sang, danced, or told her stories. Her lips were glued shut, hiding the smile that kept my heart believing in miracles. Her hands that once brushed my hair were frozen and stiffly folded over her thin body. I couldn’t look away.

The show is over. Wake up, I whispered, nudging her rock-hard shoulder.

She’s dead, Justin said, standing next to me. He was staring at her too, frozen just like me. She not coming back, Capri.

I looked around the church. It was small and cold. The sweater Ma made me wear was tight around my shoulders and didn’t shield my arms from the goose bumps that ran up and down them in waves. The pale gray paint on the walls was peeling, and the Black Jesus on the stained-glass windows turned ashy with dust. It smelled like mold. Flower spreads were scattered around with condolence messages on them, and everyone was wearing black, even Essie. This wasn’t the way her shows were. The theatre always had beautiful gold lights above. The seats were burgundy and comfortable, not hard like the brown pews we sat on. I looked again at Essie. How could someone who had so much life look so… imprisoned?

Ma didn’t think it was a good idea for Justin and me to ever go back to the city. It was because Essie was everywhere. The pictures from the shows she was in still littered the walls of almost all the theatres. A theatre in New York City decided to keep a billboard of Essie plastered to their side wall, in her memory. I only saw it that one time we went. Essie rushed us to look at what they’d done for her. In the picture, she was wearing a white dress with a crown of many colors, her legs stretched into a split leap. She was smiling wide, soaring across the sky like a rainbow.

Essie lived her life the way she wanted and died doing what she loved.

I always vowed somewhere inside of me, to do the same.

Justin (Present)

WHEN MAMA DIED, I DON’T think i got a chance to feel it. Not like Capri did. Her death came out of nowhere like those sticky things that used to cling to my socks after running in the grass all day as a kid. I had to pull them off my ankles before the blood spotted my white socks and the pain distracted me from getting up and running again.

I was eleven years old when her heart stopped. Her sudden absence was the sticky pain that pricked me around the ankles, almost knocking me off my balance for good.

At Mama’s homegoing, our whole world laid before us, lifeless. I watched Capri stare at the knockoff corpse faking like my mama lying in that casket. She touched its cheeks, its hands, and even whispered for it to wake up.

If I ever fell and couldn’t get up outside, Ma was always there running toward me with a warm rag, a bandage, and an embrace that let me know she’d take care of everything. She didn’t do any of those things that day. Just stood behind us, wailing on Pa’s shoulder. Went through dozens of tissue boxes, eyes fixed on my bootleg mama under the spotlight that they clipped to the casket. I watched people after service run up to Capri before they did me. Hug her tight, tell her she looked just like Mama. Watched them give her flowers to carry and lay on the casket. I watched them cover her wounds with little bandages, slowly, carefully, one at a time. Told me I had to take care of Capri. That I had to be a man now. Never say no, and help Ma and Pa more since they were old. Even told me that God gave me the shoulders to carry it all, like I was some kid bodybuilder. What they didn’t know is all the while, I was there, lying on the ground, covered in the prickly needles of a dead dad I was too young to remember and a mama whose face I’d have to fight to never forget, needing help with ripping the prickly stickiness off, before my world was covered in crimson. But no one was running toward me with a warm rag, bandage, or hug. I didn’t even get a chance to cry about it.

Sometimes I wish I could hit the replay on that day. Tell the funeral director that they did so bad on Mama that she didn’t even look like herself, instead of telling them she looked good when they asked me. What if I wouldn’t have read that poem on the back of her obituary about God picking another flower for his garden, and instead cursed the heavens so loud into that microphone that the rafters on the old church shook and the ground underneath me quaked? Until it pulled the old church mothers out their assigned pews to drench me with anointing oil meant to drive anger out my being and back to the lake of fire it swam out of.

Maybe if I did, I wouldn’t have spent my whole life trying to walk a tightrope threaded with all their expectations. Hands tied tight behind my back, eyes forward, ignoring the dragging of the chains they wrapped around my ankles while they was watching to see what I’d do. No one in Hamilton would’ve saw me as the Justin Collins either. The responsible orphan boy who stepped up when the last of his irresponsibly, flighty, dream-chasing parents died off.

So, on that tightrope I walk slowly, carefully. One foot in front of the other, willing myself to never slip and fall where they can see me.

Right foot.

Remember to never move on the whim of emotion but think logically, study hard, and never say no to picking up somebody’s groceries even when I’m tired.

Left foot.

Paint that neighbor’s fence, or tutor on a Friday night instead of hanging out with friends.

Right foot.

Wake up at five in the morning and run before walking Capri to school, so I can bring my A game as captain of Hamilton High’s basketball team to the courts.

Left foot.

"You’re a great example, Justin!"

"Keep it up, Collins!"

But when the curtain closes, and the lights dim, I can be like my flighty irresponsible parents. I can use those early-morning runs as a cover to get by myself and lie on the dirt beneath the trees that surround this town. I can scream so loud that even the cicadas and crickets have a hard time singing over me. I can scream until I remember that I can be angry. I can laugh until I remember that I can be happy. I can cry until I remember that weeping still exists in my soul. But when the curtains come back up, I take my place on that tightrope again.

I’d like to say that’s why I like literature so much. Heck, if I wasn’t so good at playing basketball, I’d probably be a writer. I mean, look, Langston Hughes didn’t care about looking soft when he wrote his poems. He wrote how he felt and now we get to read it and somehow understand emotions we didn’t even know we had. You know Jo from Little Women or Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? They knew that they had to leave where they grew up to grow. It’s the same with me and Hamilton. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s where my roots are; my ancestors built this town from practically nothing. I’m proud of it. My friends, my family, my little sister, they’re all here.

But I’m sure of one thing: this town’s not it for me. Hamilton wasn’t it for my parents. If I’m gonna die young, I’ll be buried here, just like them. But if I’m gonna live, I won’t be.

So, I always tell myself, I’ll be golden boy Justin for another year, ’cause as soon as I get that scholarship, when I get out, I’ll be whoever I want.

Capri (Present)

MY BUTT FELT NUMB. TINGLES scurried all through my feet and up my legs. The pews never got softer. Gosh, they could have at least invested in cushions. The second Thursday of every February was Hamilton’s annual Black History Revival Service and like every year it lasted four hours too long. Luckily when the musty smell began to rise from the dampened underarms of church mothers and deacons who shouted and danced up and down the aisles while the musicians got it in, it was my secret sign that things were about to end. Everybody had their workout and couldn’t ignore the knocking of their stomachs to go home and eat, they said amen and go on less and less, which let our Reverend know when to stop preaching. The organist played The Blood of Jesus while they passed around the gold offering plates filled to the brim with communion cups. I watched John Watson in front of me grab two and stuff one in his pocket.

This boy always said he believed that over time the grape juice fermented and swore it got him drunk when he swallowed some of his stash after church. His ma, Sister Wynona, would kill him if she found out what he was doing. About everyone in Hamilton went to church or considered themselves some type of religious, but Sister Wynona even believed nail polish was the devil and bought her own stash of white gloves to church. She’d sit by the door passing them out to the heathen girls whose nails were, as she said, dipped in Lust’s spit.

Reverend Sails directed communion in his thundering voice behind the altar. And He said drink, for this is the blood, the blood which was shed for you.

In unison, the congregation dipped their heads back and took down the shots of sour grape juice. My jaw tingled at its bitter taste. I stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth to clean off the stale bread. Maybe they gave us the old grape juice cups and waited for the bread to get hard so we would actually feel like we was drinking Jesus’ two-thousand-year-old blood and eating his torn-up body.

Now, church, Reverend drawled on, flashing a faux, pearl-white smile, we’ll have a selection from my daughter, Rosamae Anne.

Rose stood up from her seat in the front row and walked up the two steps to where the mic sat. She removed it from the stand and bought it to her glossed lips.

"Are you washed in the blood?

In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?"

Her voice and the organ seemed to dance together. It was always my favorite part of any service and made the long hours worth while, hearing Rose sing. Her voice was soft sounding but contained a strength unlike any I heard. She carried it almost effortlessly through valley and mountain notes, through riffs and rolls, and I was happy to take that journey with her. I clapped loudest when she finished.

I didn’t believe my older brother Justin when he came home one night after school and told me he asked Rose out and she’d said yes. Rose wasn’t just beautiful on the outside with her glowing black skin and dark hair, but on the inside as well. She was the senior class president at Hamilton High and taught this class every Friday at the church that she named Find Your Voice. It was a class where she gave free singing lessons to whoever was interested. It was honestly a privilege to have someone like her so close to us. I told Justin all the time he better not mess that up.

Great job, Rose, I complimented after church when I caught up with her. She smiled, like she always did when someone complimented her voice, little dimples serving up the perfect accent to the amber blush powdered on her cheeks.

Thanks, Capri. Are you coming by for dinner tonight?

I shook my head.

Nah, Ma would go off if me and Justin both missed dinner. She already had a fit when Justin missed on Sunday night. When I said this, she looked confused. One of her thin-but-well-sculpted eyebrows rose and the other stayed leveled.

I thought Justin was eating dinner with y’all after church Sunday. That’s what he told me. He said this week he’d be eating with y’all too.

I blinked.

"Right, that’s what I meant to say, he was with us last week, I…"

She lifted her white glove–covered hand. Didn’t anyone tell you it’s bad to lie in church? I’ll be seeing you, Capri. Before I could say another word, she rambled away, on the prowl for Justin.

Oops.

While I watched Rose walk away, a large woman in an all-white suit dress took her place in front of me. It was Sister Geraldine Billings, the gossip of the church. She always waddled her big self down the aisles and positioned herself by large groups so she could ear-hustle talk about someone’s family issue, pregnant daughter, rebellious son, or new car they couldn’t afford to keep. Everyone knew whatever Sister Billings heard would be reported on the phone that night, like she was a newsboy on the street. But still we all kept her around—for her cooking.

Sister Billings could cook the mess out of anything, better than anyone on those cooking shows Essie always watched. I remember Essie sitting by the couch with a pencil in her hand, copying the TV cooks’ instructions. Her duck would always come out overly seared and she’d always use carrots instead of celery because she didn’t like eating green things, unless it was gelatin. But Sister Billings, she could burn.

Sister Billings smiled through that large gap of hers. Will you tell your grandmother to call me, please? She’s had my casserole dish for the past three weeks now and I need it back. Sis Sands wants me to make her my famous sweet potato casserole for the Black History celebration dinner. She folded her hands over her bulging chest. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the buttons she tried closing; they looked like they was gonna burst and pop an eye out. That’s probably why her husband was half blind.

I’m sure Ma will get it to you soon. She’s been busy, I half lied. I really needed to work on this lying-in-church thing. I silently asked for forgiveness. Again.

Truth was, Ma hated Sister Billings ever since she spread a rumor about her being pregnant so she could go to prom with Vandor Hutchins, this guy apparently evvveryone went crazy over when they was teenagers. When Sister Billings randomly gave Ma a dish of her famous vegetarian lasagna not too long ago, Ma said Sister Billings was probably trying to poison her. She threw it away immediately, and made my grandpa take out the trash.

Sister Billings lowered her gaze and leaned real close. Her breath smelled like a mix of butterscotch candy and stale communion juice.

Busy doing what? I saw her walking real quick downtown yesterday. Looked like she was in a hurry, wouldn’t even stop to say hello to me. I waved and everything. I bet it’s because its nearing that time of year… you know the month of February was when your mother died.

I know, I responded quickly. I actually have to go. I’ll tell Ma you asked about her.

But Capri—

Bye, Sister Billings. Before she could say another word, I pushed through the crowd and out the peeling green door in the back on the church.

Revival nights and Sunday afternoons were the only days I had the Sunlight all to myself. My friend Easy closed down the Sunlight Record Shop and Café on those days because he believed everybody in Hamilton should be at revival and no one should work on Sundays, ’cause of God’s law and all. He gave me the key though—knew I’d want to sneak in and get some dancing in. He was about the only person in town that knew I still did it. Well, him, Justin, and my best friend, Perry.

Dancing is like breathing; it’s something I have to do to survive. I love how it feels when my feet lift from the ground, like they’re dancing on the orchestra’s chords. How my hips move with the sound of the drum, and my body floats on the air when the song reaches its climax. Dancing peels the sticky emotions that cling to my heart and my soul and brings ’em out real slow. It sticks them to some wall far away, I’m sure—far enough away that if someone tried to clean it up and bring it back to me, they wouldn’t be able to.

I grew up always watching Essie cut it up onstage at the theatre in Hamilton before it was turned into the Sunlight Record Store and Café. She’d push me in the white stroller with the blue lace that she got from Ty’s Thrift downtown and would park me in front of the stage. They let her have the theatre to herself after closing for some extra practice time and I’d watch her perfect her routines. Essie was a star to everyone in Hamilton. They gave her so much support; anything she needed to shine, as long as she followed the rules by staying Hamilton’s star only. But that never worked with my Essie. Pretty soon, she became the whole world’s star too. They couldn’t keep a lid on her. Someone would always spot Essie sneaking her way over to New York City for auditions and, the next day, coming back here to perform. Truth is, not everyone was happy with her leaving so much, but the people on the outside couldn’t get enough of her.

At her homegoing, Reverend Sails said she turned the nativity story they held every year at the church into a ballet, directed and choreographed by herself. Justin played baby Jesus and I wasn’t born yet. Ma has the tape and I watch it every Christmas Eve. Essie played the Virgin Mary, gracefully dancing across the little stage in the theatre for three hundred people, like she did on Broadway. She made me want to leap like she did, and spin, and stretch my arms above me as if my fingertips were grazing the stars. Now Essie’s just a forgotten memory buried deep inside a grave next to my daddy’s, behind the church whose walls were the last to hear anyone say her name. No one speaks about her anymore, unless it’s used as one of the countless examples of why it’s dangerous to leave Hamilton because everyone who does either dies or almost dies. They tell us that everything we need is here and that if we abandon this place, we abandon our history, only to rot away into nothingness. That this town and all who built it would fade away. But that’s the thing. I don’t believe our ancestors built this place with the intention for us to stay forever or wrap the shackles that fell from their bodies back around our ankles. They came here fearless of the unknown. With their dreams leading the way, they embraced the future they couldn’t even see yet and made a new place their own. Why couldn’t we do the same? Why was anyone else who ever dared to leave treated like they never mattered if they didn’t solely exist under Hamilton’s gray skies? My Essie’s memory is still honored and respected on the outside. A few years after Essie passed, a famous award show even called, saying they were presenting a memorial to Essie. They told me they hired a body double to perform one of her famous jazz routines and everything. I passed the phone to Ma, making sure to keep it on speaker so I could hear all of what was being said, clapping and spinning around as Ma listened to the person talk. They asked Ma if we could come and accept the award, maybe say a few words about my Essie. Ma hung up on them before they could even finish saying that they’d fly us out for free and get us a place to stay for the night. She told me if I picked up the phone again, it would be my behind. The ringing that carried on the next few days felt like I was ignoring my own mama, back from the dead, calling out for me to remember her.

I don’t remember much more about her than the little things, like how her favorite band was Ambient Light. She’d always play their records, even though they were available as CDs. She liked the light crackle she’d hear when the record spun on the player, and lead singer Granite Michael’s voice rang out. Her favorite band became my own after she passed on. Listening to Ambient Light made me feel as if she were still here, singing along. To this day, in the Sunlight, that’s the only music I’ll dance to.

I remember Essie putting one of her crimson-colored skirts on me, and pulling it above my chest, like one of those strapless dresses. My little legs stretched out from the bottom and she smiled her huge grin, the one that could light the night.

"Mm-mm sweet pea, you have the legs of a dancer."

It made me believe that having dancer’s legs was something I couldn’t control. It was something I was born with, and that meant it was something I was meant to do. For my sixth birthday, Essie enrolled me in Pepper’s Dancing Studio across from the grocery store. She signed me up for jazz, tap, and ballet. I needed the ballet part for the basics; it’s always good to be trained classically, she said. Tap was for my rhythm, but jazz is my favorite.

Jazz can be improv; it affords me a chance to dance how I feel. I can stretch my joints to the music without anybody telling me I’m off the beat or my timing is bad. It’s not rehearsed, the instruments tell their own story, and they don’t care what nobody thinks about them. At my first recital, Essie gave me this bright pink dress to dance in. We all had costumes but somehow Essie talked my instructor into letting me wear the dress she bought for me. The song was short, but I’ll never forget that performance. I felt so free, so beautiful. So much like Essie.

After she died, Ma took me out of dancing. She said it wasn’t good for nobody because dancing made people think they could survive off of they looks and body, not off they brains and book knowledge, the latter of which she insisted was more important. She said people like Essie lived in their dreams and plucked reality from their lives, then died because of them. She couldn’t stand watching me follow in Essie’s footsteps, especially since I was good at it.

It’s funny, sometimes I watch Ma pull out a magazine with Essie on the front and just stare with this proud smile on her face, but whenever I bring her up, she chides Essie. Saying dancing made Essie lose her mind, made her think she was a child, being carefree and leaving us six months at a time to tour. Said the longest Essie was with Justin and me was a year and a half after we were born. The rest of the time she spent in New York or some other place, except for monthly visits here and there. That’s why I called Essie by her first name and Ma, Ma. She seemed to be more of a mother than Essie, but I’m not mad about that. Essie wasn’t really a mother; in my mind she was a shooting star. Constantly moving, here one weekend, gone for months; meeting new people, seeing new places outside of Hamilton. It was a blessing to get a glimpse of her shining. I know Ma would be disappointed if I chose Essie’s direction over the one she planned for me, especially after all she’s done for me and Justin, with raising us and all. Ma wants me to graduate from Hamilton Community College as a nurse, and work at the clinic she’s been a secretary at since before Essie was born. Maybe I won’t dance professionally and will go to school to be a nurse like she wants. But Ma won’t make my feet stop tapping and my fingers stop snapping, as Essie would say.

You see, being alone in the Sunlight, standing under the single spotlight onstage surrounded by all the records that lined the walls and aisles—my only audience being pictures of those who attained their dreams—helped me feel something I couldn’t feel being holed up in Hamilton all the time. Freedom. I let out a breath and closed my eyes, my hands stretched out above my head toward the stars, and let Granite’s low, slick voice take me away.

Justin

I TUNED THE GUYS AROUND me out and tucked myself into Francie’s world. Tried seeing it the way she saw it; innocent, like every day was one big adventure. This week’s read was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Francie was pulling me into childhood through her prose. When I turned the pages of that book, I was running beside her. Learning from her. Not the least bit worried about the weights that tacked themselves to my life. I found myself taken by her gospel, baptized with faith that every corner of the world could be explored.

I read a lot of books like this lately because I believed that these classics contained a key. A key that would open some ancient door where a wise old man rocking in a creaky chair would invite me in, sit me at his feet, and tell me exactly what I need to do. Like these books would solve all my problems and give me the escape I needed. Set me free from all the thoughts swimming around my mind, drowning every other thing under its current.

"So when you messin’ wit me, you messin’ wit my crew. That’s not somethin’ you be wantin’ to do, Foo! Cuz, I’ll mess wit ya girl and kiss ya mama too." Jay spun on his heels and made a motion like he’d dropped the imaginary mic he was pretending to hold in his hand. The guys around him stopped making the beats they invented with their basketballs and knees and clapped and whoo’d like the freestyle he came up with was the best rhyme since J. Cole or something.

Imma go down in rap history, y’all wait. As soon as I drop this single I’m working on, imma send it to one of those big producers in the city. They gonna go nuts over my rhymes. I told you I don’t play. Jay, who was standing on the sidelines of the courts, surrounded by his worshippers, started doing this dance to celebrate what he thought was something special, but it came out looking like he was having some sort of standing seizure.

Laughter crept up on me, but I snorted to keep it down from my spot on the bleachers. Our team had been at it since school got out, even though we were supposed to be at church with the rest of the town for revival service. Told our families we had to practice in order to keep our winning streak going. The only thing up there with church in Hamilton is sports, so they let it slide. What we said was half true. Ever since word hit that college scouts were coming to our games, we worked to get the attention of the white guys with the clipboards and golden tickets. Snow Fairies we called them because they granted the wish almost everyone had, the option to go to college and get the heck out of Hamilton. Some people just wanted to brag that they got recruited; they knew they wouldn’t follow through on the offer once the reality of leaving this place hit.

When a Snow Fairy from my dream university, Village U, contacted Coach Hill about a highlight video he saw of me, I knew everything my mama Essie said about dreams was true. If you believed in them long enough, you’d see them sparkle right before your eyes. All you had to do was reach out and grab them. The Snow Fairy told coach that if I kept up my game, grades, and behavior, I would be looking at a full ride offer come senior year. Room and board, classes, meals, books—all free. He sent a bunch of stuff in the mail too, pamphlets for the college and a gold and purple flag that I kept hidden in my desk drawer at home.

Coach warned me not to put all my stock in no verbal offer, not until I got a Letter of Intent, something solid from Village that I could sign to secure my spot on the team and the scholarship. He told me to look into the other colleges that contacted him about me, to keep my options open while I waited. But I didn’t pay them no mind. None of their campuses were as beautiful as Village’s. I didn’t see their colors when I closed my eyes. Couldn’t picture myself running up and down their courts, sporting their uniforms, no matter how hard I tried. Plus, none of them offered me a full ride. There was no way Ma was gonna help me with that part if it didn’t go her way. All the money my mama left to Capri and me had one condition: It would only be released to us after we graduated college. It was like she was forcing us to get out of Hamilton,