We have just picked the kids up from school and have begun our house recreation period.  My teammates today are my buddy Mel, Toby, and Angelina who normally works at the unit next door, but is filling in as a sub for us.  She’s a great looking Italian; thick, long, dark hair, pleasantly plump in all the right areas.  Mel thought it would be a good idea to send her with the kids who were doing well down to the basketball courts while he and I watch a group of kids play horse with our portable hoop on the back porch.  Toby is inside with the rest of the kids who are either unwilling or have consequences which prevent them from leaving the house.  For them, it will be an afternoon of doing laundry and cleaning rooms.

Mel and I were quietly conversing about our substitute staff member while idly standing by the game of horse.

Mel said, “You gotta admit, that’s a fine looking woman right there,” nodding toward Angelina.  “She got some tig ol bitties!”

“Absolutely,” I agreed.   “I’m with you on that one.  I can go for a plus size woman every now and then.”

“Whatchu mean, ‘plus size’?” Mel cocked his head and squinted.

I said, “You know.  A little extra here and there.”

“Why you gotta call her fat?” asked Mel.

“I’m not calling her fat.  Don’t get me wrong, I like it, she’s a good looking girl.  I’m agreeing with you.”  I knew that Mel had a penchant for larger women, so I was surprised that he was taking this angle. 

He said, “But you’re saying she’s too fat for you?  Dude, that’s just wrong.”

“Damn, Mel, she’s not too fat at all!  If I met her at a bar or something, I’d totally do her.  I’m just saying she’s plus size.  Not skinny.  You know.”

“So you’d have to be drunk?”

“Mel, what the hell?”

Mel started smiling, “Dog, you just don’t know, do you?”

I asked, “What it’s like to be with a plus size girl?”

“Nah, man.”  He said, “Me and her, we’re together.  We be goin out and shit.”

I was embarrassed.  “Come on, Mel, give me fucking break!  You gotta let me know before I go off and call your girlfriend fat!  I would never have said she’s got a great big fat ass if you’d told me before.  Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Mel was laughing now.  “You know, that’s just not something you go around saying here.  The boys find out, you know they start freakin or talkin out loud about it.  But damn!  You know why I been volunteering for those overnights lately though, huh?”

“I know now.”  I said, “Getting a little late night action between units.”

Mel nodded, but was quiet for a minute.  I imagined that they secretly met each other while they were each doing overnights at the respective units.  I had heard of staff doing this before, but I didn’t really want to ask him about it.  That way, I don’t have to lie if I’m ever asked about it by Admin.

Mel stepped closer and said in a quiet voice, “Dude… You ever been with a girl who didn’t take care of her business… downtown?”

“Downtown?”

“You know,” he continued.  “Doesn’t trim or nothin?.”

I laughed.  “Oh man!  Do I need to know this?  So you’ve got a little issue going on, huh?”

“It’s not a little issue.”  Mel was still whispering. “It’s a big hairy issue.  I can see if she don’t wanna shave it clean, but man, maybe just a little trim here and there.”

“Well just ask her Mel, I’m sure she’d do it if she knows that’s what you like.”

“Damn dude, I did!  I keep on saying something about it.  You know that girl’s Italian.  They’re not foolin around down there!”

I was covering my mouth, not wanting to laugh out loud.  “Oh my god, Mel.  You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

He said, “I just don’t wanna be crawlin through the Amazon Jungle just to get to the river.”

Toby burst through the back door in his typical, latex glove-wearing, authoritative fashion.  “Gentlemen, we have a problem.”

I said, “What, did we run out of laundry soap?  What are you gonna do for the rest of the day?”

He was unfazed.  “Fuck you.  Chris doesn’t have any underwear.  Not one.  No clean or dirty.”

Toby was right, this was a situation.   But to understand why, you have to understand Chris.  Chris has anger issues.  He came to us 6 months ago at age 10 after enduring physical and emotional abuse from his single, heroin addled mother.  He had been prostituted out at times to her “associates.”  It would be natural for anyone who has been through this to feel extremely angry and to feel like you have no control over what’s going on around you.

But Chris doesn’t normally act out with violence, he takes his anger and control issues out internally.  It seems that he feels like the only thing he can control is his body, specifically what goes in and out of it.  Chris can hold on to his shit for days, refusing to let it out.  Apparently, taking a dump is something he sees as out of his control, so he refuses.

This has caused a few problems, some for him, some for us.  He’s hurt himself by holding so much shit in.  And when someone does that, the shit gets huge and hard, which damages the colon when it inevitably has to come out, and this is what happened to him.  So it’s imperative that we make sure he’s taking proper dumps.  The doctor has prescribed laxatives, so now it’s not a matter of IF he’s going to take a shit, it’s a matter of when and how he does it.

He’s  still in the refusal mode, so he’d rather shit his pants than ask to go to the bathroom.  I suppose there’s some feeling of power for him in this strategy, too.  When he shits his pants, he won’t admit it, and even goes to great lengths to hide his poopy undies.  We have numbered all ten pair of his underwear so that we can keep track of them at all times.  If we can’t find numbers 6 and 7, say, then we know he’s had an accident and we can record it.  It’s useless in asking him about it because he lies.

So when Toby says we have a situation, he is absolutely right.  Mel is Chris’s special counselor, so he took the lead in trying to get to the “bottom” of this.

I followed Mel into Chris’s room, where Chris was sitting on his bed in his jammies, seemingly indifferent.

Mel said, “Hey Chris, where’s all your underwear?”

“What underwear?”

“Chris, you know your program.”  I was happy that Mel was taking a matter of fact approach to this.  Some counselors get so frustrated with Chris, but I see that as a result of Chris being passive/aggressive.  “First of all, you know that if you have an accident, you’re supposed to tell us.  Then you’re supposed to give the underwear to Toby because he loves doing laundry.  That way we can keep track of your underwear and your accidents.  Cuz you have a hard time telling the truth sometimes, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.  But I need some underwear to get dressed.”

Mel went on.  “So we need you to tell us where you hid the underwear so that we can do some laundry.  That way you can get dressed.  So where are they?”

Chris said matter of factly, “My roommate always steals my underwear.  Can he have consequences?”

I said, “Nobody would want to steal your poopy underwear.  Now Toby says that all of them, 1-10 are missing, is that right?

“No.  I mean yeah.  I didn’t do it.”

I said, “Chris, I know you’re trying to make me feel your anger by being passive/aggressive…”

“You always say that!”

“…And I refuse to become angry over this.  If you’re feeling angry, you know you can talk about it with us or your therapist.  But don’t take it out on your undies.  Are you going to tell us where they are, or do we have to find them?”

“I don’t know.  They’re nowhere.”

Mel and I started our usual search; under the bed, in his closet, in his book shelf.  In the past, we’ve found them outside in the bushes, in the bike shed, jammed up the rain gutter.

Mel said, “I’ll look in the bathroom,” and opened the door and turned on the light.  “Damn, Chris, is your fan busted?  Not working.”  He was turning the lightswitch on and off, trying to get the fan started.

Chris said, “It never works.  It’s been busted for a long time.”

Mel got a chair and was looking up into the fan.  “Chris, did you break it?”

“No!”

Mel was pulling the grill off the fan housing, looking up into the darkness, mumbling, “The hell?  You broke it?  Something jammed up in there…”    He pulled the grill off and an explosion of shit covered underwear fell onto his face.  He was momentarily shocked, stunned that he had just endured a waterfall of shit falling onto his head and now stinking up the bathroom.  He recovered his wits and shouted,

Goddammit Chris, the fuck you thinking?  What the hell is this!”

Chris said calmly, “I didn’t know they were there.  I knew my roommate stole them.”

Mel was pissed.  “The hell he did!  You damn liar, I swear to God you gonna get some consequences!”

I said calmly to Chris, “Chris?  I refuse to let Mel get angry because you want to be passive/aggressive.  I’m going to switch off with him so that he can go take a shower, get something to eat or do whatever the hell else he wants to do for the rest of the day.  But I’m going to be your special counselor for the rest of the day.”

This upset Chris.  “No, Stokie!  I don’t want you to be my special counselor!  I want Mel to stay!”

I said, “And you know what we’re going to do for Special Time?  I’ll tell you.  We’re going to get some laundry soap and some latex, and we’re going to wash out each and every one of those underwears by hand right here in the toilet.   And when I say ‘we,’ I mean YOU.”

This pissed Chris off.  “No!  No!  I hate you!  You don’t care about kids!  You just want to torture them!!!”

I said, “I think we’re making progress, Chris.  You SHOULD be pissed, and you SHOULD be saying those things.  Only not to me.”

The rest of the day went smoothly for most of the kids.  Mel took a shower and calmed down.  I stayed with Chris and had him angrily clean out his dookie.  At final count, there were 10 of his own underwear, 3 of his roommate’s underwear and one shit covered sock.

That night, after the kids had gone to bed, I was quietly writing in the house communication log, while Toby, Angelina and Mel were writing in the kids’ daily logs.  The tv was on one of those damn Hollywood gossip shows.  It was getting late and we were all looking forward to the end of the shift.

The tv cut to a commercial and wouldn’t you know it, a bikini wax ad came on.  Mel exaggeratedly sat on the edge of his seat and put his fists under his chin.  I thought I noticed Angelina silently squirming in her seat.  Mel became more animated, sighing loudly, scooting his chair up closer to the tv.

Then he turned to me, cocked his head, squinted his eyes and sarcastically said, “Hey Stokie, what do you think that stuff’s for?”

Angelina jumped out of her chair and yelled, “Dammit Mel!  Why don’t you just tell the whole world? You can do the rest of my logs!”  She plopped her logs into Mel’s lap and stomped out the door, back to her regular unit.  I buckled over in laughter while Mel just shook his head.

Toby looked up and said, “Did I miss something?”

 

It was a fine Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock, time for the staff’s shift change.  I’ve been working all day and will be on until 10pm, as will Brady, the 7 foot tall ex-pro basketball player, and Ross, a very caring and very large white guy.  We had let Katrina leave already; Mel was due to arrive at 2 but he is always ten to fifteen minutes late.

 

Ross is in the kitchen.  He’s been in the kitchen all day.  Ross has been in the kitchen for the last three days.  Ross is a near chain-smoker, or at least he was until he made the decision to quit three days ago.  One of the better ways to avoid the kids if you’re having a bad day as staff is to volunteer to cook and take care of the kitchen.  You have the kitchen counter acting as a barrier between you and the kids and it wraps three-quarters the way around the kitchen.

 

For the past three days, there has been a bounty of wonderful foods available to us for meals and snacks: pies, casseroles, omelets, salads, lasagna, cakes, smoothies, enchiladas, pizza, teryaki…Ross has been preparing one dish after another, even when it’s not meal time in an effort to stay off the floor.  And as for cleanliness, the kitchen appeared to be downright sterilized.

 

I’m really trying hard to to support Ross here, but his being perpetually off the floor is starting to strain the other three staff on duty.  For instance, Apollo, Ross’ special kid, has been having a hard time lately with his phone contacts with his mom.  Apollo is a pretty infantilized black kid, and at 13, he’s tall and very skinny.  He comes from the depths of the inner-city and has suffered mostly from neglect, the victim of an absent father and a mother addicted to alcohol and drugs.  Apollo has recently brought up in his therapy sessions with Sam, that perhaps mom was drunk sometimes when they had phone contact. 

 

Apollo’s conversations with his mom are already monitored, that is, it’s been legally established that a staff member must listen in to the conversation on the office phone in case the conversation somehow goes awry.  Sam tells us that Apollo is too afraid to confront mom about being drunk during phone calls so they devised a system to let the monitoring staff know that Apollo wanted to end the conversation: Apollo would say, “Code Brown,” and hang up.  Why it wasn’t “Code Red,” Code Blue,” Code 40,” or “Code Shlitz,” I’ll never know.  So, “Code Brown,” it is.

 

As we were waiting for Mel’s arrival, Brady and I decided to take care of some house business by leading a community group.  We called “group!” and all the boys sat on the couches in the living room.

 

Brady began, “I’ve been walking around the house and noticed that a lot of you aren’t really taking care of your hygiene needs very well.  Specifically, when it comes to going to the bathroom.  Lotta those bathrooms are really nasty.  And as hard as it is to talk about, I think some of you need a little re-training when it comes to going to the bathroom.”

 

The boys were quiet.

 

Brady continued, “Ok, what Stokie and I are noticing is that there are some dookie stains in the bathroom in places they shouldn’t be.  Some be on the toilets, some be on the wall, some be on the floor.”

 

There were instantly 10 different accusations shouted out at the same time:

 

“It’s my roommate!”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Whoa!”

“I know who does it!”

 

Brady went on.  “I’m not looking for someone to blame, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble.  I’m just saying there shouldn’t be any dookie anywhere in those bathrooms except for in the toilet.  If you’re taking a dump, and the dookie comes out and you feel like you’re finished, what should you do?”

 

JD’s eyes lit up. “Flush!”

 

“Nope,” said Brady.  “You wipe.  With toilet paper.  And now I have an even trickier question. You ready?  How many times should you wipe?”

 

There were 10 different answers shouted out at the same time:

 

“3!”

“1!”

“4!”

“2!”

 

Brady’s demeanor was very calm.  “See?  I told you it was a tricky question.  The correct answer is: as many times as it takes to get all the brown off your butt.  If you wipe and you keep seeing brown on the toilet paper, you keep wiping til it’s gone.  And I’ll tell you something else.  If, for some reason you get some dookie on your fingers or hand, you sho as hell don’t wipe it on the walls or the floor.  You need to clean it up with soap and water.”  Brady chuckled and added, “And Ross is gonna be going around to check too.”

 

“Like Hell I am,” grumbled Ross from the kitchen.

 

I started my part of the group.  “Ok, I just want to let you know real quick that some of you need to work on your social skills.  When someone enters the house, like a staff or a therapist or whatever, I know you guys get excited and happy, and that’s ok.  What’s not ok is when half the house bum-rushes someone when they come in.  Ok?  Let that person enter the house, see what’s going on, and then come up to them in a calm manner and say something like, ‘Hello, it’s nice to see you.   How are you?’  That’s the way to start an appropriate conversation with appropriate boundaries.  And I’ll tell you this, those of you who are having dookie problems better have washed up with soap and water if you want that person to give you a handshake.”

 

I continued,  “Ok, that said this is what’s going on today.  I wanna say congratulations to those of you on the basketball team.  Apollo, Marcus, everyone’s real proud of you guys.  The team has done great this year and I think it’s awesome that you guys have made it to the championship game tomorrow. We have basketball practice in just a few, Ross will be taking you down there.”

 

“Not with a souffle in the oven I’m not,” grumbled Ross.

 

Indeed, we have made it to the championship game.  Every year, we field a team of 7^th graders from every unit to participate in the community basketball league and our guys have actually gone undefeated for the entire season.  This is a great source of pride for everybody in the organization and our guys will be going for the glory tomorrow evening.

 

I went on, “I know that Mel said he was going to organize a Nintendo tournament when he gets in, so we’ll wait for him for that.  Anything else you want to say Brady?”

 

Brady shook his head, “Let’s just have a good day.”

 

I turned to Ross in the kitchen, “How about you, Julia Child?”

 

“Just leave me alone,” he said.

 

“Ok then, looks like Mel is pulling up now, let’s end group and have a good day.” 

 

I went over to the kitchen counter to see if Ross really was making a souffle. 

 

Apollo walked up with me and whined, “I want call my mom.” 

 

Apollo has a very annoying habit of baby-talking and whining.  We sometimes call him the Praying Mantis because he walks on his tiptoes and puts his hands up like a begging puppy when he’s feeling needy.  He was doing this now.

 

I said, “Well Apollo, I think this is a perfect time for you and your special counselor Ross to talk.  Maybe you guys can go on a nice, long walk.  Whaddya say, Ross?”

 

Ross did a slow burn and said under his breath, “Fuckin Stokie…”

 

Apollo said to Ross in his nasally voice, “Can we have special time?  I want call my mom.  Will you come down to basketball?”

 

Ross was irritated, “Damn Apollo, stop whining!  You been whining all day.”

 

“No I haven’t,” said Apollo.  “I want special time.  Me and you need special time, can we have it?  Can I help you cook?  I want call my mom, we haven’t had special time in long time…”  Apollo was entering the kitchen.

 

“Get outta my damn kitchen, Apollo!” Ross pushed Apollo.

Apollo was undeterred, “We need call my mom, take me down to basketball, I want special time…”  He was fully invested in his praying mantis character.

 

Ross was losing it.  “Damn, get outta here, Mantis!  You think that shit is funny?  You look like an idiot!  Put your hands down.  I’m not in the mood for special time.  Maybe tomorrow.”  Ross pushed him again.

 

I said, “This isn’t really working for me,” and ran to the staff office, and pulled out the pack of Marlboro Reds I had been saving for three days.  I came back out to the kitchen where Ross was now shoving Apollo out of his way.  “Hey Ross, I’m proud of you man.  Three days, that’s great!  Next time, maybe four days.  Here!”

 

I tossed the cigarettes to him.  “Oh thank God, Stokie.  I was about to choke him.”  He immediately stepped outside and lit one up. 

 

Just then, Mel walked in.  JD very quickly, yet appropriately, walked up to Mel, extended his freshly washed hand and said, “Hello Mel!  How are you!”

 

Mel completely ignored JD and scrunched up his nose.  “Smells like shit in here.”

 

I turned to Apollo.  “I’ll monitor your phone call if you want.  Plus, I’m taking you guys down to basketball practice.  Ross just needs a minute to chill.  You want to get on the phone and I’ll go into the office?”

 

Apollo tippy-toed to the phone and whined, “K.”

 

I picked up the phone in the staff office.  Apollo had already dialed and his mom picked up.

 

“Hulla?”

 

“Hi.”

 

There was a long pause.  I could hear some tv talk show blaring in the background.  His mom said, “Who this?”

 

Apollo said, “It’s me.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Me.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Another long pause.  Apollo said, “Whatchu lookin at?”

 

“Huh?”

“Whatchu lookin at?”

 

“Oh.  Some kinda show.”  I thought I heard the clink of bottles, but wasn’t sure. 

 

Apollo went on, “We in the big game.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“We in the big game.”

 

“Oh.  What game?”

 

“Basketball, mama.  I tol’ you.  We in the big game.”

 

“You in the big game? When?”

 

“Tomorrow, mama.  I tol’ you.  You comin?”  Another long pause.  Apollo repeated, “You comin?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You comin?”

 

“Oh, you know I can’t get no ride.  I ain’t comin.”  Long pause.  Then she asked, “Whatchu lookin at?”

 

Apollo said, “Huh?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“We ain’t watchin tv, mama.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I’m point guard.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Point guard.”

 

“Who is?”

 

“I’m point guard, mama.  In the big game.  I’m point guard. Tomorrow we gon play the championship.  You comin?”  During the pause that came after that, I definitely did hear some bottles clinking.

 

Mama mumbled, “Shit…”

 

“What happened, mama?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Mama, is you Code Brown?”

 

“Shit…”

 

Apollo hung up the phone.

 

I came back out to talk to Apollo.  “Hey man, I’m sorry she was Code Brown.  But you did real good, you hung up when you were supposed to.  I’m sorry, dude”

 

“Okay,” he said with his nasally whine. “She jes doin what she always doin.”

 

I asked, “Apollo, why did you tell her you’re the point guard?  You’re not the point guard, Darnell is.”  Darnell is a big, mean strong kid from two units down.

 

Apollo said, “I SHOULD be point guard.  They say the best player always get to be point guard and I’m the best player.”

 

I can say with some confidence that Apollo is not the best player.  Darnell is the best player.

 

I said, “Well, you just play the position the coach tells you to play.  We gotta go anyway.  Get your gear and let’s go.”

 

                                               

 

We hopped in the van and I drove across campus to the gymnasium.  Practice had just begun and Marcus and Apollo joined the rest of the team who were doing their usual warm up drills.   The team’s head coach is Ricky Kinglsey, the Recreation Director of the organization and the two assistant coaches were staff from two other houses.  Sitting on the bleachers behind the team bench were a group of staff who had brought their kids down.  Practice is usually about 2 hours long and most staff will drop off the kids and come back to get them when practice is over.  But we liked to linger a little while to watch the kids and engage in some campus gossip.  I took a seat near Guru, who was wearing dark sunglasses and a hoodie sweatshirt under his buttoned up denim jacket, and Toby, who was doing a sub shift for another unit.

 

I said to Toby, “Hey man, you can’t be down here, who’s gonna clean up the house while the kids are acting out?”

 

He said, “Lemme tell you something.” He was using his authoritative, lecturing voice. “You might think it’s funny but they don’t know what they’re doing down there.  I’ve done 9 loads of laundry already.  If it wasn’t for me subbing down there, these kids would all be running around with stinky-ass clothes.  I bet YOUR lazy ass hasn’t even done one load.”

 

“Yeah, Tob,” I said, “you got me there.  But let me know if you need any extra latex gloves.  You’re probably single-handedly depleting the house’s reserve.”

 

Toby winced, “You think I’m gonna touch those foul-ass clothes with my bare hands?  Hell no!”

 

The boys had started a scrimmage and were running different plays.  Each time the ball was passed to the center, Randall, the tallest kid, he would immediately spin and heave the ball to the basket or backboard, miss, get the rebound and heave it again.  He would shoot and get his own rebound 5 or 6 times before he either made the shot or someone else got the rebound.  It was a wild display.

 

I turned to Guru, “Man, how can you stand the heat in those clothes?  It’s stifling in here.”

 

He slowly turned his head to me, pulled down his glasses and glared.  Then he slowly turned back to the scrimmage where Randall, once again was heaving and rebounding.

 

Guru said to no one in particular, “Right now I’ve got a problem with the coaching staff…”

He suddenly slammed down his hand on the bleachers, turned to me and yelled, “Never play a psychotic at center!”

 

Ricky Kingsley heard this, blew his whistle and called all the boys over to re-group.  They convened by the bleachers and drank some water while Ricky talked about tomorrows game.  I was more interested in the conversation that started up between Apollo and Darnell.

 

Apollo said to Darnell in his annoying drone, “Don’t you think I should be point guard?”

 

Darnell attempted to brush him off, “Oh please.  Get outta my face.”

 

The whine continued, “I want be point guard.  You gon’ see, I’m better.”

 

“Get the hell away from me ‘fo’ I beat yo ass.”

 

“What if I aks coach?”

 

“I’ll beat yo ass.”

 

“I mo aks him.”

 

“I’ll beat yo ass.”

 

“What if I’m better than you and I give you a shimmy and shake and then I get the ball?  Then I’ll be point guard.”

 

“You do that, I’ll beat yo ass.  Apollo.  You ain’t better.  There’s only one point guard and that’s me.  From now until forever.  Get outta my face ‘fo’ I beat you ass.”

 

That was the end of the conversation.  The boys resumed practice, with Darnell at point guard, and the rest of us staff slowly went back to the vans and up to our houses.

 

I walked in and JD immediately ran up to me, “Stokie!”  He was attempting to give me a hug and I could feel is dank, clammy hands rubbing on my arms.

 

I pushed him away, “Damn JD!  You think I want your nasty, unwashed hands all over me?  Come on, man, boundaries!  That’s nasty!”

 

Ross looked up from the game of paper football he was playing with a couple kids and laughed, “Hey Stokie, you need one?”  He held up his pack of smokes.

 

I said, “I see you took your medicine.  Now that’s the Ross I know!”

It was the night of the big game.

 

Mondays are my day off but there was no way I was going to miss this.  The gymnasium was absolutely packed.  On one side were the parents and supporters of the team from the community, sitting in neat, polite lines.  The other side was the group home side.  Bellowing, colorful, in constant movement, flowing with excitement.  I squeezed in to a space with the boys and staff from my house.  We did our usual high-fives and special handshakes.

 

The group home side of the gymnasium couldn’t be more proud.  We were already cheering and chanting, “We will, we will ROCK YOU!”  Thump, thump clap!  I looked around and saw that several of us had come on our day off.  Administrators, therapists, supervisors, all of the boys from every unit; we were all packed in the bleachers.  Some had brought food and snacks and were passing it around.  It was a community atmosphere, carnival-like in its excitement. Very rarely do we have these kinds of events when we can all be proud of the organization.  And yet, here we were, each of us feeling some sort of contribution to our team’s success.

 

It was time for the tip-off.  The two teams lined up in front of each other to shake hands and the contrasts were more than stark.  One of our boys had a mohawk.  Some had large and unusually shaped heads.  One was fat.  Most were about a head taller than the other team.  Any one of them could have poopy pants at any moment.  They looked like a battle-tested gang of rag-tags with sloppy, untucked uniforms.  What was really great to see is that they actually looked focused and ready to play. 

 

The other team?  Skinny little blond white kids, visibly frightened.  They knew they were about to get thumped, and hard.

 

The ref tossed the ball up, and Randall, being the tallest boy on the court, tipped it and the ball landed in Apollo’s hands.  Our team ran into position to set up the offense.  This is where Apollo should have passed the ball to Darnell, the point guard.

 

But he didn’t.  He dribbled the ball upcourt while Darnell was running behind him.

 

Darnell was yelling, “Here! Pass! I’m open!”

 

Apollo was ignoring Darnell, shimmying and shaking not only his defender, but Darnell too.  Apollo dribbled the ball around the perimeter of the 3 point line, not passing to anyone, and dribbled all the way around it again.

 

Darnell was screaming now, hands held out, “Gimme the damn ball!  The hell you doin?” 

 

Apollo’s defender had backed off now and it was just Apollo and Darnell at mid-court, at the 3-point line.  Darnell was now trying to steal the ball from Apollo.  Apollo just kept running in circles, eluding Darnell, keeping the ball away from him.  Darnell kept reaching, grabbing, flailing, leaping and missing Apollo and the ball.

Apollo was smiling all the while, “I tol’ you!  I tol’you!”

 

Darnell was in a panic of embarrassment and rage.  He knew he looked like a fool trying to steal the ball from his own teammate.

 

He screamed, “I mo beat yo muthafuckin ass!”  Darnell tackled Apollo and threw him to the floor.  There was a split second of jaw-dropping silence as Darnell proceeded to pummel Apollo in the face and chest while he was down.

 

The entire crowd emptied the bleachers, including myself.  There was complete mayhem as staff and administrators tried to break up the melee.  Some of the other boys who were in the bleachers began to fight too.  There was food, boys, members of the community, referees, staff – all seemingly flying through the air at once.  I saw some parents of the other team’s boys usher them out of the gym. 

 

All the staff including the ones who weren’t working that night went into their crisis management mode.  Some were proning boys, some pushing boys through the exits, everyone screaming.  The entire court was covered in riotous bodies.

 

I was trying to find Apollo.  I waded through the fights and the parents and the coaches to the middle of the court.  I saw four staff proning Darnell, who was bleeding from the lip and livid, screaming and raving mad.  Several staff had pulled Apollo, who was still holding the ball, toward the exit.

 

I said, “Apollo!  You almost got yourself killed!  You alright? What were you thinking?”

 

Apollo was hyper-ventillating and crying and smiling all at the same time.  His face was covered in tears and his nose was bleeding.

 

He said between sharp breaths, “I tol’ you, Stokie!  I tol’ you! I’m better.  I want go to the house.  I want call my mama.  I’m better and I proved it.  I jes want call my mama and tell her…jes want call my mama…”

 

Final score by forfeit: 0-1.