Chapter 7
Natalia
For a soccer player, watching games from the stands is the worst punishment there is. Four games now, watching my teammates from a distance, dressed in street clothes, unable to help my team. Four games of suspension that end today.
And the first opponent I get on my way back is my old team.
Somebody had a very twisted sense of humor putting the schedule together. Or a very mean streak. I don’t know which of the two to go with.
When I step onto the field, I say hi to the assistant coach, to one of the equipment managers, the one who opened the field for me at six thirty in the morning on the days I couldn’t sleep and never once asked me why I couldn’t sleep.
I say hi to my old teammates, at least the ones who are left.
The one I don’t say hi to is the sporting director, the one who said I was “unsustainable for the club” and swapped me for a left back who barely played for my current team.
These were people who were supposed to know about soccer. People who just signed papers so the problem would leave the club along with me and stop being their problem.
Bianca’s gone now; she’s been in Belo Horizonte for six months, sleeping badly because of a lowlife I hope I don’t run into today.
“Man, Brazil, look at that face on you today, huh? That’s a face that scores a lot of goals, trust me. Today we beat your old team and we’re all friends,” Iris says, giving me a light elbow in the ribs as she passes.
When the game starts, I forget almost everything else.
Almost, because the anger doesn’t go away, it turns into extra fuel. I call for the ball on the wing and take on the fullback they’ve put in front of me; a new player, fresh out of college, who’s done nothing to me, but who I leave sitting on the grass with the first move.
Somewhere in the thirties, I get it near the line, pick up my head, and see Iris make her usual run for it. I slide the ball low to the near post, in behind the defenders, the one place only she can reach with her speed, and she pushes it into the net without breaking a sweat.
One to nothing. She comes running, points at me with both hands, and yells something I can’t make out.
My goal comes in the second half.
Zoe wins a ball in midfield and we break the other way. I cut inside because the center back is waiting for me out wide, and I make her think I’m going to cross. But I don’t cross, I curl it with my left to the far post, and the keeper doesn’t even dive.
I don’t run toward the stands where our fans are, I run toward the other team’s bench. It’s not that I planned it ahead of time; it comes out without thinking, and I kiss the crest on my jersey. My new team’s.
My teammates pile on before I can even turn around. Iris first, then three or four more, a heap of sweaty bodies in the middle of March, arms, knees, and somebody’s hair getting in my mouth.
***
After the game comes the moment I dreaded most. The cameras appear, the reporters, and a girl from a local station who shoves a mic in my face before I can get off the field.
“Natalia, great game, a goal and an assist in your return to the field,” she says, smiling. “After the four-game suspension and what happened last year with your incident with the reporter… what would you say to the people who still doubt you deserve to be on a big team?”
And there it is. The same old question dressed up in new words.
I guess I could say a lot of things. I could explain how reporter wasn’t doing journalism.
I could tell what really happened and who took the worst of the damage.
But it’s not my place to tell it, it never was, and it’s the one thing I’m sure of in this whole mess, even if it’s cost me a four-game suspension and a trade to another club.
So I do what I do best. I move the mic away, hand it back to the girl with care, because none of this is her fault, and I leave without answering. I’d rather come off as cold than say too much.
Some reporters follow me looking for comments that’ll get them a headline, or maybe for me to make another mistake and shove one of them. Lucky for me, Iris cuts me off in the tunnel. I don’t even know where she comes from.
“Man, Brazil, come here,” she says, catching me by the elbow and steering me away from the press.
“You know what you just did? You just handed that girl twenty golden seconds. Tomorrow it’s not your goal that runs, or mine.
It’s your back walking off down the locker-room tunnel without answering the press.
I’m telling you from experience, champ, I’ve walked out on more cameras than you’ve seen in your whole life.
Walking off in front of a camera looks worse than saying something dumb.
Saying something dumb is almost normal.”
“I’m not going to answer a single question about what happened last year,” I grumble.
“No, no… no need. You put on a dumb face, the same one I put on, and you tell them: ‘I’m really happy for the team and we’re taking it one game at a time, that’s what really matters.
’ And that’s it, it’s a magic line, I swear.
You say nothing and you walk off easy, but walking, not running.
You’ve got to try it, listen to me,” she insists.
I stand there looking at her. She says it almost like a joke, in that tumbling way she has of talking, but it’s one of the most sensible things I’ve heard her say.
***
Tuesday, at the training fields, my goal is the only thing that exists in the world for the girls I coach.
When I get there, they’re huddled around a phone watching it, over and over on a loop. The left-footed strike to the far post, in slow motion, with a filter that shoots stars out of my foot. I didn’t even know that filter existed.
“She’s here, she’s here!” one of them shouts, and they all run at me for photos.
Lina gets there a little later, once there are only a few girls left.
“I’ve watched it forty times,” she announces, very serious, like she’s giving a lesson at school. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. Better than Iris’s. Better than anything.”
“Thanks, Lina.”
I can’t think of anything better to say, so that’s all I say.
Holland is on the other side of the field, setting up the mini-goals like she does every Tuesday. These past weeks we’ve talked just enough. I’ve done my job well. Above all, I haven’t pushed. I don’t chase people who don’t want to be chased. I learned that a long time ago and the hard way.
I look up and catch her watching me. She doesn’t look away, which is what I would have done. She lifts her chin a little and waves. A small gesture, almost nothing.
I’d rather focus on other things, because otherwise I’m going to try to read something into that gesture that probably isn’t there, and that always ends badly.
***
That night I call Bianca.
She’s in bed, in the dark, her face lit only by the screen, and beside her, Julia waves.
“I saw your goal,” she says, smiling. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Okay for real, or one of your half-truths?”
Sometimes she talks to me like she’s my mother.
It’s been that way since day one, since she showed up in the locker room having just turned twenty, and I, who’d already been through a lot of teams, decided nobody was going to hurt that kid while I was around.
I decided it dead sure of myself, and look how well it turned out.
“It’s one of my half-truths,” I confess with a huff.
“You know something?” she says out of nowhere, very quietly. “Lately I’ve been turning over everything I didn’t say.”
I freeze. On every call, she’s the one who’s fine, the one who’s already moved on, the one who has Julia, the one who sends me off to rest. And tonight, in the dark, she comes out with this.
“Bianca…”
“No, it’s nothing. It’s late and we both need to rest. Good night, Natalinha.”
She’s herself again, the one who shuts the door before I can get my foot in.
She hangs up before I can say anything else.