They don’t. Marcus slips through their outstretched arms like a stick of butter, and he’s glossy and shiny too, I can see that from here, and he pulls back his arm like a sling and the ball goes flying and the crowd stands as one, everyone except my mother, who’s sitting with her hands over her eyes because she can’t stand to watch him play. My brother’s best friend, Aaron, jumps into the air like a gazelle, he’s all grace and power, and I get the little shiver I get watching him, a very different feeling I get from watching Marcus, and his hands grab the ball and he lands with it secure between his palms, and then the crowd really loses it.
Above the roar of the people around me I hear the announcer shouting “Touchdown!” as if we haven’t just seen what happened. The clock hits zero just as the scoreboard updates, showing that Marcus and Aaron’s touchdown has won them the game. The band starts up and the cheerleaders wave their pom-poms and all around me people are cheering, throwing their popcorn in the air, knocking over their cups of Coke, acting like they personally threw the ball or caught it or did anything at all other than stand here and watch. But Marcus says that’s all they need to do and if they didn’t he wouldn’t have a scholarship. Wouldn’t have a job playing professional football one day. So I guess the crowd is just as much a part of this moment, his moment, as anyone out there on the field.
Marcus and Aaron run at each other like long-lost lovers, their arms are tight around each other, and Aaron is ripping off Marcus’s helmet and rubbing his knuckles in his hair and their smiles are so bright, I swear they light up the field more than the floodlights.
My mother finally lowers her hands from her eyes and looks up. “It’s done?” she says, her Chinese accent heavier because she’s scared. “He didn’t get hurt?”
“He didn’t get hurt,” I assure her.
“And he won?” Now that she knows he’s OK, she can focus on the important things. Like the final score.
“They won,” I say, consciously changing the pronoun. Although Marcus once said that even though there’s no I in team, there is one in win. Aaron tackled him for that, right off the front porch.
My mom stands. “I knew he would win,” she says, voice confident. “Marcus always wins.”
“Of course he does!” My Granny Dee, my dad’s mom, sniffs. “He’s my grandson, ain’t he?”
LaoLao, my mom’s mom, gives a sniff of her own. “He my grandson!” she proclaims, her Chinese accent even more pronounced than my mother’s. Granny Dee and LaoLao have this argument at every game. As if one of them could have more claim to Marcus than the other. They look over at me at the same time, and I wonder if they notice how even when they bicker, they move like two parts of the same machine.
“Go get me a Coke,” barks Granny Dee.
“For me too!” says LaoLao. “We are celebrating Marcus’s win!”
I sigh but don’t argue. No point in arguing with Granny Dee and LaoLao. “Mom?”
My mom gives me a tired smile and shakes her head. She digs into her purse and pulls out a wrinkled five-dollar bill. “Get something for yourself, sweetie,” she says.
It might not seem like much, but that five dollars could be used for a lot of other things besides buying my grandmothers a couple of overpriced Cokes at a high school football game. I love my grandmothers, but I don’t love how much they love to boss me around. I sigh again, louder this time, more of a huff, and Granny Dee’s walnut face snaps up, her bright eyes narrowing.
“You got somethin’ you wanna complain about? You too busy to go get your Granny Dee a Coke?”
“Me too,” LaoLao adds, scooting her bulk closer to Granny Dee’s thin frame. “Too busy, little Wing? Too busy doing what?”
My grandmothers put their heads together, their old laughter wheezing out of them like air out of punctured tires, a most unlikely united front. Teasing me can always bring them together. It’s like when a cat and a dog forget they’re enemies to come together to chase a duck. I look at them, the women – one from Ghana, one from China – who have been the stalwart forces of my life since before I even took my first breath. Granny Dee, barely five feet, gray and brown all over. So thin she looks like a gust of wind could knock her over, but my money, if I had any, would be that the wind would break before Granny Dee would. And LaoLao, as round as a dumpling full to bursting, her sleek black hair still dark as my mother’s, tied in a tight bun at the back of her head. She looks like she could withstand a hurricane.
“Them Cokes ain’t gonna get themselves,” says Granny Dee as she fans herself with a flyer. “My Lord, it is hot tonight.”