Chapter 4
Holland
I count the cones twice before the first girl arrives, pure routine.
I never knew why I do it. My daughter Lina says I’m a little obsessive.
I guess it’s because it’s one of the few things I can control at a practice with forty eleven- and twelve-year-olds, and because controlling a little is better than controlling nothing.
Natalia shows up late, like every Tuesday, but today she gets out of the car already in her cleats and the club tracksuit. She’s even taken off the sunglasses. Until today, she’d always arrived like someone serving out a sentence.
We agreed on one thing and, against all odds, we’re sticking to it.
She gives me her ideas before we start, low, away from the girls; then, on the field, there’s one voice, and it’s mine.
It works. That’s what truly matters. I see it in the small things: the kids reach the rondo and don’t just stand there waiting for someone to tell them where to go.
They laugh; one of the new girls, the one allergic to peanuts, who’d gone three sessions without opening her mouth, asks Natalia to teach her “the thing with your feet.”
“The thing with your feet” is a stepover.
Natalia does it for the four or five girls who’ve crowded in front of her.
First at a dizzying speed that leaves them open-mouthed.
Then slow, broken into pieces, like she’s taking apart a watch to show the gears.
The left leg first, the ball rolling outward, the weight dropping to the other side. Again and again.
Of course, not one of the girls manages to copy it, but I end up just as spellbound as they are while I watch her.
While we clean up, I suggest we split Thursday’s practice: she takes the new girls, I take the ones who’ve been around a bit longer.
She argues a little, she always wants to mix them, says that in Brazil kids grow up facing bigger and better players out in the street and that’s how they learn more.
In the end I give in. I shake her hand like we’re closing a business deal and, for some reason, I think it lasts longer than normal, but I don’t mind at all.
***
Thursday we don’t have a real game. It’s against another group of club girls, no certified ref, no standings, nothing to write down anywhere, just to have fun and learn.
I set it up myself because the girls love putting on the game jersey and, most of all, because playing against strangers is the only way to get them to stop always passing to their friends.
But way more parents than usual have shown up.
I don’t know if it’s because it’s sunny or because a player who’s on TV is on the sideline yelling like this is the World Cup final.
She cheers for both teams, corrects without making it obvious, promises a girl who’s blown three dribbles in a row that the fourth one is going to come off.
And again I catch myself spellbound watching her. So much that it worries me, because I don’t want to get spellbound watching anyone who’ll board a plane and vanish at the end of this very season.
After the game, the two of us pick up the cones alone.
The girls have left with their parents and the other group has disappeared into a couple of minivans.
Lina’s around somewhere, sitting on a taken-apart goal, telling her best friend that a pro player let her play a few minutes against much bigger girls.
Natalia stacks the pinnies by color the exact way I do, which tells me she’s been watching me too without my noticing, and then she asks the question I hate being asked.
“So where’s your partner?”
Most people don’t ask. The team parents know and don’t ask.
It’s the kind of thing that gets passed from mom to mom, everybody finds out and nobody has to ask me straight.
I usually keep three or four versions ready, depending on who’s in front of me and how much I care, though I almost always go with the shortest.
Today I don’t, and I don’t know why.
“She left when Lina was three,” I admit, letting out a resigned breath. “She lives in Virginia now, and she got remarried.”
Megan.
Her name catches in my throat and I don’t even say it.
Somehow I’ve got it into my head that saying it out loud gives it more power than it should have.
She left. Period. Being a mother fit her like a prison, in her own words, and she chose to be free, to fall for someone else and live her life. It was probably for the best.
Natalia doesn’t make any pitying gesture, and that’s the first thing I’m grateful for. She doesn’t tilt her head, doesn’t lower her voice or tell me she’s so sorry.
“I know that situation well,” she tells me. “Having someone who’s there, but who really isn’t.”
She doesn’t add anything else. She finishes rolling up the net, tucks it in the bag, and the thing I felt during the game while I watched her is still there, only sharper.
Iris is in the parking lot. She has no reason to be at the training-fields lot on a Thursday afternoon, because they don’t train here and she doesn’t live nearby, but there she is, next to her motorcycle, with a cup of coffee.
“Holland, boss lady. No, I was just passing by and figured I’d come say hi. Man, it’s cold for Seattle in March, huh? Anyway. One quick thing.”
Natalia rolls her eyes, puts her gym bag in the club car that’s waiting for her, and waves goodbye. Iris waits for it to pull off before she starts talking.
“This one’s staying, boss lady, you’ll see,” she says, with no further explanation.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“I’ve got a good eye. The last one we signed from outside, not Mireya, okay?
, the one from the year before. Showed up arguing with everybody, she’d argue with the grass.
It was a daily blowup. Unbearable, I swear, and you know I don’t exaggerate,” she adds, pausing almost for effect to take a sip of coffee.
“Well, two-time champ. And now she wouldn’t leave here for anything in the world.
So, yeah. Take the little boss home, you’ve got her over there shivering. Go on.”
And she’s gone. She hops on her motorcycle and doesn’t wait for me to answer.
Lina lets out a laugh and climbs into the back seat. She’s been buckling her own seatbelt since November and likes to be seen doing it.
“I like her. And Natalia too,” she says as I pull out of the parking lot.