Can't Get Enough of Your Love Read Free

not a “dime” (Who thought up that shit? You can’t get anything with a dime now!), yet I get these looks from my teammates, even while we run through drills at practice. Imagine seeing a big white woman wearing shoulder pads, elbow pads, and knee pads, and with black grease marks under her eyes. That’s scary enough. Now imagine those grease-painted eyes making eyes at
you
during a tackling drill. I take these looks as compliments, and then I take my butt
home
completelyclothed and sweaty instead of hitting the showers after a practice or a game. I’ve seen those women-in-prison movies. I know what could happen.
    Izzie wants me to hang around after practice, just to see what
might
happen.
    Izzie’s such a perv.
    I don’t think I’m that pretty. For one thing, I have big feet and long toes, and you know what they say about women who have big feet and long toes—they go through lots of socks and hose. I’m well proportioned, not ripped, with long fingers, too.
    Most people who look at me see a basketball player, but I cannot stand an orange ball that bounces straight up. I need the brown ball that bounces funny. Sure, coaches in high school tried to recruit me to play basketball for them, but basketball isn’t for me. I once fouled out of a pickup game in gym class in only
two
minutes. And they play basketball indoors for the most part.
    I need grass, dirt, and chalk lines.
    I also need a struggle. Basketball isn’t much of a struggle. If you break it down, basketball is all about five people playing keep-away against five other people who are trying
not
to touch them. I can’t play a sport in which I can’t physically abuse the enemy, grinding, grunting, and grabbing, trash talking, cussing, scratching, gouging, poking, plucking, chasing, diving, and crunching. Football to me is a human symphony involving lots of percussion, while basketball is more like a squeaky dance with an occasional “swish.” I mean, in basketball you actually get to score without any interference when you shoot a free throw.
    There isn’t anything free in football.
    You have to earn every inch with blood, sweat, andguts. So instead of popping a J or making a breakaway layup, I grab me some dirt, and as soon as the center moves the ball, I’m going to turn the player in front of me into a human bruise, sack me a lesbian with bad hair and worse skin, and make bowlegged women limp worse.
    So, after tackling other women and not catching
any
passes (football or otherwise) from other women, I go home to my little plot of paradise on a tiny little pond in Bedford County just east of Roanoke, Virginia. The pond is so tiny it doesn’t even have a name.
    I just call it “Mine.”

Chapter 3
    W hen Mama and I first came to Roanoke fifteen years ago so she could take a job with First Virginia (which became First Union, then Wachovia), I thought the real reason we came was so she could steal me away from my daddy, one-on-one tackle football, and easy trips to the beach. I also thought Roanoke was a boring city in the mountains.
    Now, I think Roanoke is a boring, small-minded
town
masquerading as a city full of folks who occasionally notice that, indeed, there are mountains all around them. And the only beaches around here are the sons-of-beaches driving to and through the parking lots of Valley View Mall, which is a
stupid
name for a mall
surrounded
by mountains. They should have called it Mountain View Mall, but since folks around here don’t see the mountains anymore …
    We lived near Towers Mall on Colonial Avenue, an extremely busy street, in a three-bedroom ranch with a huge basement, decent backyard for Mama’s flowers, and a deck out back. We weren’t in the ‘hood, so I went to elementary and middle school with a bunch of whitekids before getting to Patrick Henry High School, where I finally was allowed to be black.
    I earned an associate’s degree