At the end of your respectful explanation, the cop will slowly remove his hand from his gun. He’ll grab hold of your left elbow instead and steer you toward the front office of the factory. Your pop will be summoned, embarrassingly, over the loudspeaker. Two minutes later he’ll emerge from the back looking wildly stressed. This is not because you’ve done anything wrong. It’s because he has his own history with cops. Stuff that happened long before you were born. Stuff nobody ever talks about.
After the cop explains the situation, your pop will put on an uncomfortable smile and vouch for you. He’ll say you’re a good kid, that you’re just down here to play some ball at a gym in Balboa Park. He’ll shake hands with the cop enthusiastically, thanking him for his service and apologizing for any trouble you may have caused.
Soon as the cop leaves, though, your pops will transform back into himself. “Don’t worry about that power-happy pendejo,” he’ll say, rubbing your shoulder. “You didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“I was just sleeping.”
“Mexicans are allowed to sleep, too.” He’ll look you straight in the eyes, nodding. And in this moment, you’ll feel closer to your old man than ever before.
Fortunately, that’s the only morning you’ll be woken up by a nightstick. Every other morning it’ll be the alarm on your phone, and you’ll be free to climb out of the Bug at your leisure. Stretch your stiff arms and legs. Breathe in the warm Hillcrest air and remove your rock from your bag. It’s time to get a move on.
It won’t take but three days to know all the shortcuts to Muni.
Dribble through the middle school playground where summer camp kids play double Dutch and hopscotch and dodgeball. Dribble in and out of sleeping cars in the massive San Diego Zoo parking lot. Dribble through crowds of camera-toting tourists shuffling toward the front gates of the zoo. Dribble past the various hot dog stands, the ice cream truck with the two flat tires, the leather-faced man selling raspas who looks like your late abuelito. By the end of the summer these vendors will all recognize you and wave.
It will take a little more than an hour for you to arrive at the large, dilapidated building with two locked green doors. Butterflies will dance inside your chest. That first time and every time following. Even years from now. And that’s how it should be.
Because you can sense it…
Here is where you will learn the world.
Sentenced to the Bleachers
While you wait for gym manager Jimmy to arrive by bicycle with his massive ring of rattling keys, listen to the grown men around you. To the uninitiated they are uneducated. They’re poor. Black. Crass. Shifty. Steely-eyed. A reason to cross the street.
But over the course of the summer you will soak up everything around you. And you will hear the brilliance. The poetry. The philosophy. The verbal dance of on-court banter. They will laugh harder and more often than anyone you’ve ever known. And you will laugh, too. Especially a few weeks into the summer, when they turn their wrath on you.
They’ll begin by calling you Mexico (even though your Spanish is suspect at best). They will ask why you’re inside a gym, and not crouched in a field somewhere, picking strawberries. Or kicking around a soccer ball. They will tell you you’re too young to ball with them. Too skinny. Too light in the pocket. Too soft.
Come back in three years, they’ll say.
Or maybe ten.
You will laugh your way through all of this, sensing that their digs are some warped version of acceptance.
A week in, a guy everyone calls Mr. Unleaded (because he’s the night manager of a nearby gas station) will tear into you about your long, skinny, “no-muscle-having” arms, and without blinking you’ll fire back a dig about the ghetto Superman tat sketched into his right forearm, and “Why would you knowingly walk into a gym full of Kryptonite?” Everyone loitering outside the gym that morning, waiting for Jimmy, will roar in laughter and stomp their feet and bump fists, and to your surprise it’ll be Mr. Unleaded who laughs hardest of all.
But as much as you’ll begin to blend in off the court, on the court it will be a completely different story.
That first day you won’t get into a single game.
Not one.
You’ll follow everyone inside the dark gym, set down your stuff in the bleachers like they do, hit the court with everyone for a handful of warm-up jumpers, but when it comes time to select squads, you’ll find yourself on the outside looking in.
When you try to call next, they’ll ignore you.