Game Day
My father always wanted me to be athletic. He never told me this outright, but it was implied by hints which he would drop all around me, in the hopes that I would, one morning, wake up the son he wanted me to be. He insisted I join him and his colleagues in our living room on Sundays. My momma would prepare a feast of various snacks for our company. The greasy, salty, options, would be devoured within seconds, while the vegetables were dismissed with repugnance. Week after week, my momma would prepare both the junky and the healthy snacks. When I questioned this routine she simply stated that eventually, our guests might grow weary of the greasy chips, and crave ants-on-a-log instead.
To please my father, I would watch the action packed field on television for what felt like hours. After feeling overwhelmed by the commentator’s rapid gibberish, I often retired to my bedroom to read Marvel comic books. My father never noticed my absence, he was busy relentlessly downing cans of Budweiser while hollering at the screen--a one-sided dispute that appeared futile to me. During dinner, he would review the contents of the game. My momma and I would listen patiently until he excused himself from the dinner table.
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After dinner, my momma and I would wash the dishes; a quiet tradition that I found myself looking forward to, every Sunday evening. I would do the washing. The repetitive scrubbing, the hot, sudsy water, and the presence of my momma drying dishes beside me, felt safe and comforting. Then, we would move into the living room and clean up the mess our guests had left behind. The Cheetos left orange stains on our couch, crushed up Fritos got tangled in the carpet’s synthetic strands, and french fries were glued to the ceiling--having been thrown upward at the mercy of an exciting touchdown. We would scrub, vacuum, and pick away at the clutter for hours. My momma never protested or refused to clean, so I did not either. I admired her unyielding composure and was determined to impress her by enduring my own share of obligations. My struggles were rewarded at bedtime, when she would slip into bed with me to share stories from her own childhood. Sometimes I noticed an unfamiliar quality in her eyes when she reflected upon her past. Later, I concluded that these simple moments made her happy.
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I rarely saw my momma happy. The happiest I saw her was last Christmas, following the biggest fight between my parents that I had ever witnessed. She had slipped into my bedroom after several hours of indistinct screams, with her face all puffy and red. She packed a suitcase with our clothes and carried me to a taxi waiting in front of our apartment building. The driver took us to the airport, where we flew to Michigan, just the two of us, to celebrate the holiday with her family. I met my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, and my cousins for the first time. While we ate dinner I watched her socialize with her siblings. She was laughing so hard her eyes were slits and her open mouth seemed to take over half her face. Her reserved personality back home had been mashed into the potatoes I was eating. I was watching a different woman with my momma’s face.
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After the holidays, we returned back home. My momma assumed her meek and quiet form once more. The fight that had occurred between my parents was not discussed again. They rarely spoke to each other, and when they did, it was awkward and formal. My father bought me a baseball mitt and a signed baseball for my late christmas present. I tossed these gifts into my closet where they remained until my momma donated them to Goodwill.
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When I turned nine, my father rented out a basketball court for my party. I did not have a say in the guest list. The only people invited were the fourth grade jocks. I spent the duration of the party drinking pink lemonade and devouring chocolate cake underneath the unstable wooden bleachers on the left side of the court. I scavenged through the endless pile of trash and lost items underneath the bleachers, hoping I might find a hidden treasure. Every so often I would peek through the cracks in the benches to watch my father engaging with my athletic peers, bouncing my brand new basketball (which was more his than mine) between his legs. I did not have the audacity to confess that he was fraternizing with my rivals: the same boys that would shower dodgeballs over the uncoordinated, academic losers during gym class, and then follow up the miserable game with insults. I was always the last to “die” in dodgeball. I used my teammates as human shields, until I was forced to get clobbered so that the game would finally end.
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I left my ninth birthday party early. The basketball court was an easy walk home and my momma offered to leave with me. We walked hand in hand on the sidewalk.
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“Honey, how’s your birthday? Do you feel any older?”
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“It’s good. I feel the same.” She looked down into my innocent eyes, shaking her head slowly. I think she knew that I was lying. In order to convince her that I was not, I said: “I really liked your cake!” I smiled hopefully. I wanted to make her happy, because I was happy when she was. I wanted to see her laugh again like she had with her siblings in Michigan. Her eyebrows curved upward, and she pursed her lips. She opened her mouth, but quickly closed it re-thinking her decision to respond. We walked several blocks.
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“It will be better next year.” She reassured me, squeezing my hand. And a part of me wanted to believe her.
Nina Berggren is fourteen years old and attend Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. Writing has always been a passion of hers and she's so happy to be able to cultivate it at an art high school. In her free time she enjoys drinking too much coffee, singing in the shower, taking photographs, and wandering aimlessly through San Francisco, the city she loves and lives in.
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