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Church called me a pussy six weeks before tryouts. That’s what I tell his granddaughter, Raquel, who’s sitting across from me in the apartment above my supermarket in northeast Denver on a Saturday morning. She is young, had not even been born when Church called me out my name twenty-six years ago. I don’t expect her to know about South Africa, Tiananmen Square, or Reaganomics. It’s a Black man in the White House now and a racist with orange hair campaigning to take his place. September 11, social media, and Beyoncé. These are the touchstones of her generation. It’s all about context. Hers. Mine. Whatever lies in between. Heat pulses from a lamp hovering above. Two large white umbrellas stand behind Raquel. They catch light, cast it my way, cause sweat to bead up along my neck and forehead. A tall man, Neil, operates a camera beside her. His face is done up like a woman and the reckless length of his earrings calls to mind Bowlegged Lou—minus the Jheri curl and bulging muscles masquerading as self-esteem. When in doubt, ask about pronouns. Xiomara, my ex-wife, often reminds me of this, on account that there are more than two genders. I’m not sure how that works, but Raquel knows. She signals for Neil to stop recording, sighs, and stares at me through thick-framed glasses that are too big for her serious face. She wrinkles her nose, like someone who’s discovered piss in her soy latte.

“Mr. Michaels…”

I ask her to call me Davyon. “Put a mister in front, if it makes you feel better.”

“Mr. Michaels, I’m trying to honor the memory of a queer Black man who played twelve seasons in the NBA.”

“And I’m just telling you what happened.” What I don’t say is that she the one tracked me down after Church died in January. Said she came across a video he and I made at the King Center way back when. I was playing ball in that footage, but what Raquel asked of me was different. The thought of answering questions in front of a camera made my ass itch. Cameras always washout my khaki complexion, making me appear lighter than I am. Plus, I’m not much of a talking head. One-on-one, in everyday life? Cool. In front of a camera? Naw. Too public, too impersonal. I almost told Raquel no. Then Pops texted he would be in town in a week and wanted to see me. Suddenly, the idea of talking about Church, how he put me on game, felt like the right play. Anything to avoid Pops. I told Raquel I’d do the interview, but we had to do it the second weekend in November. That was a week ago. Now, here she is, all the way up from New Orleans, trying to police how I tell my story. Raquel removes them big-boned glasses, uses the hem of her NYU Film T-shirt to clean the lenses. Could be weighing my words—or getting ready to tell me to kick rocks.

“Okay,” she says. “When did all this happen?”

“Friday before Labor Day,” I say. “1989.” How I know is a month earlier my old man hit Moms for using too much paprika in the potato salad. I went upside his head with a bottle of Seagram’s. Pops put a foot in my ass. Moms put me on a bus to Uncle Junior’s place here in Denver. Then Church up and called me out my name. Not that he knew my name. Nobody did. I was just some skinny, light-skinned kid in a Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt and a pair of beat-up Nikes. I didn’t know his name either. In my head, I called him Jheri Curl. Activator made his hair glow, but it never dripped onto the back of his T-shirt. The one he wore that day was white with black block letters that spelled Volunteer, MLK Center on the front and Parks and Recreation on the back. He stood on the sideline, beeper clipped to the waistband of his warmups, watching us play like he Doug Moe and we in McNichols Arena and not some rec center in Park Hill. I did my best Fat Lever impersonation and kissed a shot off the glass. Stole an inbound pass next. Ain’t had no Alex English to dish it off to, so I drove the lane, steady clocking the basket. Then here come Tyree. Six-five. Solid, too. Like he ate Wheaties. All day, every day. I picked-up my dribble, took my steps, and aimed for the top of the glass. Tyree trapped the ball against the backboard with one hand, dribbled coast-to-coast, cuffed the ball like Dr. J, then rocked the rim. Game over.

“Pussy,” Jheri Curl said to me when I walked off the court. 

My first instinct was to run up on him. It was one thing to take shit from Pops. It was another thing for this buster to call me out my name. Still, unlike Pops, he had some size on him. Like even if he couldn’t squab, he’d have no problem dealing with me.

“Air and opportunity, baby,” he said. “Air and opportunity.”

“Run it back,” I called out, not looking away from him. But brothers were already unlacing kicks, packing up bags, staring at beepers. 

Tyree and his homeboys walked my direction. They sported Jackson High practice jerseys, a red ram against a black and gray background. Tyree stopped by the chalkboard to give Jheri Curl some dap.

Jheri Curl looked reserved, like maybe it was someone else he’d rather have standing in front of him. His pager buzzed and he checked it.

Tyree and his boys headed my way next. I held out my hand, ready to say Nice game. Woot-di-woot-di-woot. But the brother shoulder-checked me, knocked me into a wall. His homeboys laughed and taunted me.

Yo, you see them dusty-ass kicks?

Dorothy, you ain’t in Kansas no more!

Mark-ass nigga!

I cut across the court to an exit. A weight room stood on the other side of the door. It was small with red walls and black rubber flooring. Jheri Curl’s words reverberated in my mind. Pussy. I played varsity my freshman year back in Kansas City. If I’d been back home, I’d be competing for a starting spot, not trying to make the team at a new school in a new city. But I ain’t had no time for ifs, so I bench pressed and imagined myself in a Jackson High jersey, bringing the ball up court, splitting the defense, dropping a no-look pass on my wingman. I busted out squats and pictured myself exploding toward the basket, hands reaching for the rim. I peeped the time and realized I was already half an hour late for work. I imagined Uncle Junior up in my face, breath stinking of cigarettes and Diet Coke.

I was more than an hour late by the time I reached Junior’s Grocery Store in the Dahlia Square. Someone had tagged CMG Blood on the wall next to the door. Inside, Junior stood bent over a box, wheezing. Sweat sprouted along the edge of his receding hairline. More boxes stood on either side of him. They clogged the aisle. A cart full of broken-down boxes sat near the meat counter. Junior stood with a grunt. He had this way of looking through me, like he saw me but wasn’t really seeing me. At least, that’s how it felt back then. It ain’t occur to me until later, that this was a holdover from his days as an all-city point guard for Jackson High—a million Twinkies ago. 

“It ain’t my fault,” I said.

“I’m docking your check,” Junior said.

“Check?” I’d been working for three weeks and had yet to see a dime.

“Excuse me?” a customer called from the register. 

Junior nodded and I flattened myself against the shelves, knocking over cans of Spaghetti-Os, so I could slide by him and get to the register. A girl my age stood on the other side of the counter. She wore a hairstyle that swept down the back of her neck and erupted into a riot of stiff curls up top. It made her look like MC Lyte, only darker. She smiled when I greeted her. White teeth. Smooth, brown skin. I tried not to stare while I rang up her items—five pounds of ground beef, four packs of hot links, three slabs of ribs, a few loaves of white bread, several bags of chips, and ten packs of Kool-Aid. The kind of things Moms would buy for Labor Day. I thought about Pops firing up the grill, Frankie Beverly and Maze flowing from speakers, a glass of gin in one hand, a pair of tongs in the other.

“That’s my mama’s favorite song.” 

I looked up from bagging her groceries. “Say what, now?”

“‘Before I Let Go,’” she said. “You were just humming it.”

Heat flashed across my face.

“You’re cute when you blush,” she said. It was something Moms would have said and that made me smile.

“And dimples, too!”

I ain’t know what to say to that, so I took the cash she held out to me, made change, and handed it to her with a receipt. Junior kept a cup of pens on the counter for customers to write checks. The girl plucked one up, wrote something on the back of the receipt, and handed it to me.

“You should come by my house for Labor Day,” she said with a wink.

I watched her walk away.

Junior slapped the back of my neck. “Quit eye-hoeing my customers, boy.”

The back of the receipt read Gigi. Her phone number and address were there too.

It was nearly ten o’clock when we climbed the stairs to Junior’s apartment above the store, our arms filled with canned pasta, lunchmeat, and a loaf of bread. We ate on the sofa in front of the television, watching a VHS of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals, Game 5. It was the fourth time we’d seen it since I moved in. Junior liked the physical play between the Pistons and Celtics. Each time we watched it, it felt like he was seeing it for the first time. He even acted surprised when Larry Bird picked off Isiah Thomas’s inbound pass and dished it off to Dennis Johnson for the winning bucket.

“Your mama called today.” It was halftime and Junior stood in the kitchen, layering more lunchmeat and cheese between slices of bread. 

I sat on the sofa, watching a replay of Robert Parish going upside Bill Laimbeer’s head for a cheap shot to the throat. 

“They want you to come home.”

It shook me how Parish and Laimbeer could go after each other like that, and not pick up fouls.

“You hear what I said, boy?”

I paused the tape. “What about hoop?” It was what we discussed most back then, safer than processing my being there in his tiny apartment above a supermarket.

Junior made a show of putting his sandwich together, wiping his hands, and blowing out a long stream of air. “Too much competition. You got a better chance back in KC, where the coach knows you.”

He was right, but what he didn’t understand, or maybe what I hadn’t known myself, was that I would make the team at home, but I couldn’t make Pops give up gin. I can’t breathe. That’s what Santana, my older brother, said when he joined the marines that spring. My younger sisters, Aisha and Alisha, were in no hurry to leave. Pops loved the twins, never even raised his voice to them. But me? Why should I go back to that house? I could have asked Junior that question. Instead, I looked across the living room where his Jackson High jersey hung in a frame.

“Just let me try out,” I said. “If I don’t make it, I’ll go back next semester.”

He stood akimbo, which was what Moms would do when studying on her next move. 

“Fine,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll talk to your mama. But you work for me Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.”

I’d already worked one Saturday. Old folks from the Zion Senior Center filled the store with the creak of walkers and the scent of BENGAY. A few of them stood in front of the meat counter sorting through food stamps and haggling over the price of cold cuts. I thought the day would never end.

“Every Saturday?” I asked.

“You do for me, I do for you.” 

We shook hands, then he spooned the rest of the ravioli into his bowl.

“Yo, I was gonna get seconds.”

“Told you I was gonna tax that check.”

 

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VINCE OMNI is author of 1989, winner of the CRAFT 2025 Novelette Print Prize. Other awards include a PEN/Dau Short Story Prize, the Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction, and the Margaret Walker Memorial Prize in Creative Writing. His writing has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, The Best Debut Short Stories 2025, and is forthcoming in Virgin Islands Noir. Vince holds an MFA from the University of Kansas and a PhD from Florida State University, where he was a McKnight Doctoral Fellow. He teaches African American literature and creative writing at Lake Forest College and is cofounder of SoulClap: A Black Joy Journal.

 

Featured image by Emelie Mano, courtesy of Discover New Art.