filling up the room. “Is there anyone who’d like to give their life to Christ?”
After a few months of big church, I noticed my mother sneaking glances at me whenever Pastor John made his altar call. I knew what those glances meant, but I wasn’t ready for that long walk down to the altar, for the entire congregation to train their eyes on me, praying that Jesus take my sins away.
I still wanted my sins. I still wanted my childhood, my freedom to fall asleep in big church with little consequence. I didn’t know what would become of me once I crossed the line from sinner to saved.
* * *
—
Nana couldn’t decide on a school. He would often talk through his pro/cons list with me while our mother was at work. He wanted to stay in the South but he didn’t want to feel like he had barely left home. He wanted to go pro eventually, but he also wanted to have a good, normal college experience.
“Maybe you should call Daddy and see what he thinks,” I said.
Nana glared at me. The Chin Chin Man had recently called to tell us that he was remarrying, and since then Nana had stopped talking to him. It hadn’t occurred to either of us that he and my mother had gotten divorced. He was, until that day, our long-distance father, her long-distance husband. Now who would he be?
On the days when he called, which were fewer and further between, my mother would pass the phone to me and I would spend my requisite two minutes making small talk about the weather and school, until the Chin Chin Man asked if I would put Nana on the line.
“He has basketball,” I would say, as Nana stared at me, furiously shaking his head. After I hung up the phone, I would wait for our mother to chastise me for lying or Nana for refusing to talk, but she never did.
She had to work the day of Nana’s game against Ridgewood High. It wasn’t a big game. Ridgewood was ranked second to last in the state, and everyone was expecting an easy win for Nana’s team.
I made a quick snack for myself and then walked to the game. The stands were nearly empty and so I chose a seat in the middle and pulled out my homework. Nana and his teammates did their warm-ups, and occasionally he and I would make eye contact and shoot each other silly faces.
The first half of the game went as expected. Ridgewood was down fifteen and Nana’s team was taking it pretty easy, treating the game like it was practice. I finished my math homework right around when the buzzer rang for halftime. I waved at Nana as he and his team went to the locker room, and then I picked up my science homework.
I was in the fourth grade, and our science unit for that month was on the heart. For homework, we were to draw a picture of the human heart with all its ventricles and valves and pulmonary veins. While I enjoyed science, I was a horrible artist. I had brought along my pack of colored pencils and my textbook. I spread them out on the bleachers next to me and began to draw, staring from my blank sheet of paper to the example heart in my book. I started with the pulmonary veins, then the inferior vena cava. I messed up the right ventricle and started to erase, just as the second half of the game kicked off. I got frustrated with myself easily, even in those days, whenever I felt I wasn’t getting something exactly right. That frustration sometimes led to quitting, but something about being at Nana’s game, watching him and his teammates win so effortlessly, made me feel like I could draw the perfect heart if only I stuck with it.
I was staring at my heart when I heard a loud shout. I couldn’t see what happened at first, but then I spotted Nana on the ground, hugging his knee to his chest and motioning toward his ankle. I rushed down to the court and paced, unsure of how to make myself useful. The medic came onto the court and started asking Nana some questions, but I couldn’t hear anything. Finally, they decided to take him to the emergency room.
I rode with him in the back of the ambulance. We weren’t a family who held hands, but we were a family