A Different Kind of Normal

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . .” I stumbled about. “The kids aren’t nice to you during the games.”

  “So what?” His eyes were innocent, inquiring.

  “So what?”

  “Yeah. So what? They’re not nice to me. It hurts my feelings for about a millisecond, but I have Bert and Ernie block it out and I keep playing.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what? But for butt? But for bottoms? You could say buttocks. Or ass. Or bum or fanny. Hmmm. Buttocks and brains. Do they have anything in common?”

  “Aren’t you funny, Tate? I don’t want you to get hurt—”

  “Mom, I live with General Noggin and we’re good friends. I’ve got Billy and Bob to help me when kids want to knock me out. Plus, I’m huge. They say mean things because they want to scare me. I’m not going to let anybody scare me or push me off the court or get rid of me. No way. I ain’t no wimp.”

  I was, once more, humbled by his courage. I had always been humbled by his courage. “You are one stud of a brainiac, Tate.”

  “I’m not a stud. Okay to the brainiac part. But this is the way I am. They can deal with it, not me. I’ve already dealt with it. General Noggin and I have a lot of brains, and I needed more room to put them in, right?” He smiled at me, then snuck out a Skittles bag, tossed three into the air at one time, and caught two. “Darn it. I almost have that down.” He picked up the one on the floor and ate it.

  “No Skittles at breakfast.”

  He put the bag in his pocket.

  “You’re going to play through the noise and I’m going to sit in the bleachers wanting to pound some of those kids into dust.”

  “Don’t, Mom.” He became serious. “You know, you’ve always been way more mad about this stuff than me. Always. You’re ten times angrier than me about it. I let it go most of the time. I don’t like getting hit, but it does give me a chance to hit back and get rid of some of my energy. I imagine smashing my fist into a molecule. I picture the molecule, then I set the molecule on fire or sandblast it and it’s incinerated. You gotta do that, too.”

  “I’ll try. But I’m your mom, so it hurts me—”

  “Mom, you and I are Tate and Boss Mom. We have Nana Bird, Uncle Caden, Damini, and the triplets who dress way weird.” He grinned. “I have everything I want. I even get to play basketball with real live people now. Nothing, not one thing on the surface of this continually moving, shifting, volcanically erupting, heating-up earth is going to make me quit playing.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. You’ve never quit anything.”

  “As Nana Bird says, balls and tarnation, hell no. I don’t quit and I’m not quitting now.” He tossed three more Skittles up. Caught all three. “Ha! Did it! Now I have something worthwhile to put on my college résumé: Multiple Skittle Catcher.”

  “I am proud of your Skittle eating skills.”

  “Yup. Can I have scrambled eggs with cheese, green onions, and mushrooms and the Special Bruxelle Gold Sauce? I’m starving.”

  “Okay. I put your lunch sacks by the front door.”

  “Did you put in one of those cinnamon rolls from last night? How about two? I’m sooo hungry at lunch.”

  Sometimes seeing a family member you haven’t seen for a while brings to mind another family member who is long gone.

  That’s how it felt when I saw Brooke. I thought of my father, Shel Bruxelle. He called me Aquamarine, because of my blue and green eyes. When I was younger, I grew interested in cooking with lots of spices, so he bought me cookbooks with lots of spices in the recipes, which I still use. When I was interested in roller-skating, he bought us all roller skates. When I was interested in tea, we went tea shopping together. He bought me a pink tea set, which I still have. I loved walking around our ten acres, watching how the seasons changed it, and he would come walking with me.

  “The best way to figure out life is to walk in nature daily,” he told me. “Seasons are like life. Some seasons are better than others. Some have more sun and rainbows. Others have storms and tornadoes. Some have both. You have to accept that, bring color and light to the season you’re in as best you can, and always look forward to the next season.”

  He had not come from any money; in fact, he always struggled for the basics growing up. His parents were potato farmers in a small town in Idaho.

  His father drank himself to death and his mother married four times after that, each husband worse. He had a front-row seat to all kinds of pain and barren loneliness. That pain and loneliness morphed into his scripts. Humor often comes from loss and aloneness, from not belonging, and it did for him. That’s why people laughed at his shows and movies: He got it. He got the full spectrum of the human experience.

  “I could let my childhood crush me or I could get the heck out of Idaho,” he told me once. “That’s what it came down to when I was eighteen. I opted for getting the heck out of Idaho. I met your mother in Hollywood the first month we were both there, and that was it. She was it for me. I loved her on sight.”

  My parents played the Hollywood game because they loved what they did. He loved to write stories, she loved to take part in them and transform herself.

  But they never bought in to it. Never bought in to Hollywood. Their first priority was our family, and they stuck hard and high to it.

  If you knew my dad you loved him. My mother, Brooke, Caden, and I loved him most of all.

  It was shocking when he died that night.

  I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the shock.

  Tate’s third game, initially, was another mess.

  The game was at our home gym, which made me feel a bit better.

  Caden had taken it upon himself to make orange T-shirts. There was a picture of our team on the front. To advertise his floral business, there was a snapdragon with a fierce face curling around the team. It was hilarious. Printed on the back were the words MID COURT MOB.

  “We’re the Mid Court Mob,” Caden told Tate and me. “Ha! We’re going to deafen the competition, deafen them, my boy!” I knew why he wanted to deafen the competition. He wanted to deafen the effects of the heckling on Tate.

  He is such an excellent older brother I became a tad emotional.

  My mother and I passed out hundreds of Mid Court Mob T-shirts that my mother had insisted on paying for. “We’re going to support our Tate and his teammates, and if they’re mean to my Tate, I might toss a snake down their throats.” She smiled a toothy, pleasant smile as if she’d said, “I love tea and crumpets!”

  Caden led the cheers from the floor to the parents in the bleachers. Damini was next to him, as were the triplets who were dressed, for once, the same. They were ladybugs.

  Tate did not start the game. Coach Boynton told me later that he regretted that decision. “I could not have foreseen what would happen, Jaden.” He wiped sweat off his brow. “No one, no one, could have foreseen that except the basketball gods.”

  The whistle blew, the band played, the cheerleaders jumped about, and we quickly fell far behind. The opponent had fifteen points within a few minutes. Our team was not together, our passes intercepted, the ball stolen, shots air-balling, and the defense was poor. The team was off.

  My brother, he of a wide chest and bellowing voice, started leading the parents in a cheer.

  Coach Boynton signaled Tate to go in the game. He headed out at the next buzzer. I tensed, waiting for whatever was going to be yelled down, insultingly, at Tate. I felt tearful, angry, and scared as only a parent can feel when they know their child is going to get clobbered.

  I felt my mother tense, too.

  It didn’t take long.

  “Frankenstein’s son! Yeah, you! Frankenstein!”

  Soon it became a chant from the opposing team’s student section: “Frank-en-stein, Frank-en-stein, Frank-en-stein!”

  My stomach flipped and turned over. Honestly, I hated those kids, I did. I wrapped my fingers around the crystals that Tate had given me and tried to calm
down.

  My mother started wiggling her fingers. I didn’t stop her. “I’m spelling for a miracle to make them shut up. You wait. It’ll work.”

  “I don’t believe in spells.”

  “Tra la la. I do. I bet Faith and Grace used this spell to make things go their way.”

  Caden had made a tagboard sign that had Tate’s name on it. He flipped it over and held it up high. It said ASSHOLES on the other side. The kids from the opponents’ school saw it. It probably made things worse.

  “Frank-en-stein, Frank-en-stein, Frank-en-stein!”

  Not all the kids were doing it, but about thirty of them were, and their voices rose as Tate dribbled the ball down the court. He lost the ball. He grabbed it a minute later, lost it again.

  Tate seemed overwhelmed and awkward out there. He made another bad pass, missed a shot. He was pulled out of the game in two minutes.

  “I have to work harder on my spell,” my mother muttered. “Let me try again.”

  “Go for it, Witch Rowan.” I pulled on my ponytail and tapped my cowboy boots, my nerves on fire.

  Damini came up, sat close to me, and held my hand. I felt it tremble. With her other hand she fiddled with her cross, heart, and star charms. “Tate’s a pain in my keester, but I love him, and next time someone makes fun of him I’m going to hit him with my leg so hard his head will come off.”

  My mother nodded. “I love your violent retribution. Spill some blood.”

  Halftime came and went, and we were down by twenty points. Tate was not put back in until the middle of the third quarter. Again, he seemed befuddled and out-played. Milt passed him the ball and he actually ran the wrong way. The student section jeered and laughed, and I saw Tate’s face flush red in embarrassment. The chant “Frankenstein” started up again.

  That’s when the miracle happened. The opposing coach, a towering, bald, African American man, whom I later learned was named Traynor Watson, called a time-out, his voice booming. The refs stopped the game and the teams jogged to their sides. Traynor, however, stalked across the gym over to his own student section, head down, like a charging, truly pissed-off bull. The gym grew quiet.

  Traynor stood in front of that group and hollered, “Shut the hell up! Trachtenberg, Braustein, Sophie Elizabeth Smith, if you don’t close your trash mouths right now I will drag you out by the hair. Shut up! You’re a disgrace to all of us! You’re a disgrace to our school! You’re a disgrace to yourselves!”

  An Asian man, over six feet tall at least, whom I later learned was the principal of the school, stomped up into the student section, grabbed two huge, beefy boys by the arms, yanked them into the aisle, and pointed at the door. He grabbed two more boys, and two girls, and shoved them out, too. They were all red-faced with embarrassment.

  A mother, round and tall, strode across the court and grabbed her son, pulling him down the bleachers by his ear. When they were on the gym floor, she pulled her purse back and whopped him on the butt, then started shaking her finger at him, three inches from his face. She climbed two stairs and did it to two more kids. I do not know if they were her children.

  “Now you listen up!” Traynor yelled at his student section, all the kids now seated, cowering, and quiet. “I hear you making fun of Tate again, I hear one word out of your trashy mouths that shouldn’t be coming out of your trashy mouths, not only will I forfeit this game, I’m coming across the court again and it’s gonna get really ugly, you hear me? You hear me?”

  They nodded, chastened.

  “I’m embarrassed!” Traynor yelled, his words echoing off the gym walls. “You embarrass me! Do not embarrass me again! Is that clear? No embarrassment or you will regret it!”

  He turned around and the entire parent section gave him a standing ovation. He put his head down, the charging bull, and stalked back to the bleachers, face stormy. He did not go to his own bench. He charged over to Tate. Tate told me later what he said as he shook his hand.

  “I am sorry for the despicable treatment those kids are giving you.”

  “It’s okay.” Tate smiled at him. He told me later he couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that their coach had gone over and hollered.

  “No, son, it’s not okay. They’re gonna behave, those wild animals, and we’re gonna have a fair game and I apologize again. It’s an embarrassment to me. Embarrassment to my school.” He stomped back to his side but not before pointing at his student section and yelling, “Behave yourselves this instant!”

  My mother said, “Now do you believe in my spells, blue- and green-eyed daughter?”

  I grinned. What else could I do?

  The whistles blew again.

  The Mid Court Mob continued to yell and cheer.

  Though we made a few baskets, none by Tate, we were still down by twenty. Coach Boynton sat down beside Tate on the bench at the end of the third quarter. Two of our team had fouled out and one was hurt when he tripped over his own feet and landed on his face. Tate’s head was down, but he listened. I knew he was discouraged, deeply disappointed in his game.

  Coach Boynton was trying to build Tate up, encourage him. I glanced over at his wife, Letty, three seats over. She is a strong-willed, outspoken column writer for the paper. She nodded at me, I nodded back.

  The opponent scored again and Coach Boynton called a time-out. All the sweaty, dismayed players gathered around, including the one who fell on his face, their expressions defeated. The cheerleaders skipped out to the floor and did their thing. Coach Boynton, red-faced and eager, grabbed Tate’s uniform and pulled him to within three inches of his face, in the center of that group of boys. He said something fast and furious, Tate nodded, eyes down, and the coach yelled at him, not in a mean way, but in a Come on, son, get yourself together way. Tate nodded again. Coach Boynton yanked him up even closer and yelled again from, I swear, not more than an inch away.

  The whistle blew.

  Tate’s eyes cut up to me, his uncle Caden, the triplets in their ladybug outfits, Damini, and his Nana Bird. Caden yelled, “I believe in you, Tate!” which probably would have embarrassed any other kid, but not our Tate, and Damini yelled, “You need to use my leg!” and my mother yelled, “Fire up your balls, Tate!”

  “Really, Mother?”

  “What?” She opened up her eyes innocently.

  “Fire up your balls?”

  “He needs the heat, the burning heat!” She whistled super loud and I went back to whooping and hollering, as Tate ran out to the court with four other teammates.

  The basketball was in play, one of our guards caught it, and passed it to Tate. Tate dribbled in and shot. He missed it. It was rebounded and the other team scored. Coach Boynton buried his face for a second in his hands as the other student section went wild, then stood and yelled to Tate. He pointed beyond the three-point line. “Do it, Tate. Now! Do it!”

  The ball was back to us, Milt passed it to Tate, and Tate dribbled into the key and was blocked. We lost the ball.

  Coach Boynton ran both hands through his hair, then bent over and screamed at Tate, “Do it, Tate! Do it!”

  The other team had the ball, but lost it when Kendrick stole it.

  “I am not kidding, Tate Bruxelle! You do this right now!” Coach Boynton’s voice boomeranged around the walls of that gym.

  Kendrick lobbed it to Tate, who was two feet outside of the three-point line toward half court.

  Tate caught the ball. I saw the hesitation on his face, the fear.

  “Now, Tate, now!”

  He waited another second, looking this way and that for a teammate to pass it to.

  “Shoot the ball!” Coach Boynton screamed. “Shoot it!”

  Tate’s expression changed, from insecurity to determination, and he focused in, laser-like.

  He shot. The ball arched way, way up . . . and I held my breath.

  My mother gripped my arm.

  Damini gasped.

  The ball swirled around the rim.

  Swirl, swirl, swirl . . . r />
  Slow motion . . . so slow and then . . .

  It fell in.

  I could hardly breathe. My mother jumped up and down. Our whole parent section flew to their feet, cheering. Coach Boynton slammed a fist through the air. Both of the referees’ arms shot up, three-pointer. Our cheerleaders kicked. Our band blasted a victory note. Our student section about busted their spleens.

  Tate had made a three-point basket!

  The other team brought the ball down and, miraculously, Shandry stole the ball. Tate sprinted ahead, arm up for the pass. He parked himself outside of the three-point line. Shandry whipped the ball to him.

  Tate aimed.

  He arched his hands.

  He shot. It was a high arc, the ball spinning . . . spinning . . .

  Swoosh again.

  Three-pointer, refs’ arms flying up.

  Coach Boynton actually jumped in the air. Our student section about busted their spleens and their livers. Caden’s arms made a V for victory and I could tell he was crying. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, that’s my boy! That’s the way to do it!”

  My mother was euphoric. “You’re breaking their balls, Tate, keep breaking them!”

  The ladybugs hopped up and down.

  I will not bore you with a play-by-play. Here’s what happened the rest of the third and fourth quarters: Our team was revitalized by Tate’s shots. Our guards, our forward, our center, passed the ball to Tate, all shots outside of the three-point line. Tate missed only once.

  “He’s got a hold of his balls,” my mother yelled.

  Caden led more cheers. He had to wipe his eyes, those darn tears! The ladybugs flew around. Damini danced and said, “He’s a pain in my keester, but he can shoot!”

  It was deafening in that gym. Deafening. I could hardly hear my own self screaming, our band pounding it out during timeouts.

  Anthony and Milt put up two two-pointers. Ten seconds left and we were down by only one point. The other team had learned to guard Tate beyond the three-point line but it didn’t help. He moved lightning quick, he caught the pass, he put it up.