Episode One: “Failure Has Many Fathers, but You Only Get One Mom.”
Charlotte raised the big, bright, pink-and-purple Spalding Street basketball to eye-level and took a deep pensive breath. The key here was confidence, certainty, and conviction. She could only push with her little right nub (called Nubby in the Hood household). She had to aim with her little left hand. She couldn’t snap her wrist as the ball left her hand. She always did that, even without thinking. That’s why it was impossible for her to stop.
She needed to stop.
She had to be smooth. She had to be sure. She had to see it in her mind before she could make it true with her body.
Charlotte blinked hard and squeezed her baby blues shut tight. She shook her head and muttered an anachronistic and prophetic Sabrina Carpenter Please, Please, Please. Then she opened her eyes quickly and, without further hesitation she shot her shot—aiming all her intent and might toward the backboard of the hoop.
*SCHMACK!*
Too much dip on her chip, too much juice on lil’ ol’ Nubby.
The ball hit the backboard with a large smack and then bounced out from the Hood driveway to the Hood front lawn. As Charlotte spat, stomped, and swore, the ball’s bounce was stopped at the heel of a Converse All-Star and a devil in a red tracksuit. Her mother, Betty Hood, stood with her hair pulled back into a high blonde ponytail, a pink lemonade cotton candy flavored nicotine vape resting on her thick red lipsticked lips.
“Got that out of your system, young lady?”
“No,” Charlotte pouted in embarrassment.
“Good,” her mother exhaled her saccharine smoke. “Because anything worth some anger is worth some effort. We’ll work it out together.”
She hated her mother’s little sayings—how she never seemed to run out of them. It was always a lesson—it was always a mystery for Charlotte to solve and a code for her to break. She liked hanging out with her dad more because Daddy was always simple and Daddy was always fun. Mommy was sometimes hard, sometimes kind, but also sometimes scary. She didn’t talk to her children like they were children and took this malicious inclusion as her grandest intellectual virtue. “I don’t baby my babies,” she would tell other mothers, dripping with WASPy condescension.
But we’re your babies, aren’t we? What else were you supposed to do with babies?
Elizabeth obviously had some ideas.
Her mother placed her vape in the patch of grass closest to the edge of the driveway and then boldly put Converse to pavement. She dribbled the ball confidently with her left hand while she kept her right hand in her pocket. Her mother made every movement seem natural, incidental, and accidental. Even at Charlotte’s young age she knew better. Everything Elizabeth Hood did was intentional. There was a message behind every movement.
Right to the pre-negotiated and imagined driveway free throw line. Hand out her pocket, left hand and pink-purple ball raised to her eye level. The perfect fundamental form, something that was taught to Betty as a teen and something that had stayed with her into her thirties. She could shoot this shot in her sleep and she might as well have. When the ball left her hand, it looked like a dream.
It bounced off the backboard cleanly and then fell right into the net with an expected and subdued swish.
“That’s how you do it! Don’t sleep on your mother—I shot 90% on free throws all four years of high school!” Her mother cackled and laughed, “I’m the reason they call them free.”
“Hil-larious Momma,” Charlotte responded dryly. “But it’s not classy to gloat.”
“What loser told you that lie? You can’t talk about class when you’re about to get schooled.”
Her mother stuck her tongue out at her and Charlotte grimaced. Carolina was with Daddy at the dentist. Mom and Dad hadn’t explained it well, but for some stupid reason, they couldn’t book the same day. Something about a single hygienist and her schedule being packed until 2020—so honestly, they were lucky. That scheduling snafu meant a Momma and Charlotte Day. That meant some Saturday morning cartoon shenanigans and whatever Mr. Miyagi lessons Betty saw fit to put her through. It meant Charlotte was on the most dangerous of solo missions. It meant Carolina got to go to Cold Stone while Charlotte had to deal with this cold, stoned killer in tube socks.
It had to violate the Godiva Convention or something. It definitely wasn’t justice.
“Remember that tournament game a few weeks back?” Betty asked in between dribbles. “Against that team from Carson?”
It might as well have been a rhetorical question. The game had been close until the last three minutes. They had been down seven and so it was in reach, but it was the second game of a one-day travel basketball tournament and Carolina had carried the team to the point of personal exhaustion. In the game’s final minute, she passed the ball to Charlotte on three straight possessions and Charlotte threw up three straight bricks. They lost by nearly twenty and the final score looked uglier than the game had been close. Carolina had taken the blame for not taking those shots herself, but Charlotte knew better. Carolina had to do everything on the court; Charlotte just had to do one thing.
“I hate Carson,” she finally said.
“You’ve never been to Carson, sweetie,” Betty corrected. “But that game did show me something…”
“It did?”
“It showed me your big weakness.”
“My hand?”
Her mother shook her head. Then, she poked Charlotte’s chest.
Betty’s voice softened. “Your heart, that’s your problem and it’s obvious when you play.”
“And how’s that?”
“You can’t handle missing a shot. It breaks your confidence, it breaks your spirit and when that happens, you begin just going through the motions. You slack on defense, you become desperate, not to win the game—but for the game to end.”
“So how do I fix it Momma?”
“It’s good that you want to fix it. Want is a big part of it. You have to want it.”
“I want it Momma! I swear I want it!”
“You do? You want to win?” Betty studied her daughter expectantly.
“I do! More than anything!”
"Well, baby, wanting to win is important—but it’s not enough." She nodded sagely. "The most important thing isn’t wanting to win, it’s hating to lose. And so today"—her mother’s eyes twinkled—"you’re going to lose a lot."
And boy, was she telling the truth.
What immediately followed was a complete and total dismantling that would go down in Hood family lore for a generation. Elizabeth Hood was a stone-cold killer and Charlotte Hood was melting like Cold Stone on a Nevada summer day. What began as a simple one-on-one game to twenty-one soon developed into something different. Betty played her daughter like she was a full-grown opponent at her local gym. She put Charlotte in a blender, sending her spinning and stumbling to the ground more than once off quick crossovers. She refused to let her daughter get a shot off, smothering her on defense and blocking or stealing whatever Charlotte managed to desperately heave up.
But the worst part was the talking, the taunting. Momma didn’t trash-talk in sentences, Betty Hood trash talked in phrases.
5-0 off a 3-pointer right in her face.
“Oooh.”
8-0 off a cut, dash and layup.
“Almost.”
Charlotte going up for a layup and then the ball getting smacked to Reno.
“Nice try.”
20-0, another three-pointer.
“Baby wanna cry?”
30-0.
“Wah-wah”
31-0
“Boo.”
32-0.
“Hoo-hoo.”
On and on and on and on. The pristine slice of suburbia that housed the Hoods soon became a crime scene. Charlotte’s knees shook like a Chicago leaf. She burned from her eyelashes to her toenails. Every inhale felt like one thousand needles. And worse yet? Her mother was right. She did want to cry. She was crying. Charlotte wanted to rage-quit and kick her pink-purple basketball to the moon. But her mom refused to stop, the game kept going and going and going.
49-0.
“Soft.”
50-0.
“Charmin.”
51-0.
Charlotte knew her mother was teasing and trying to get in her head. She knew that it was just the way she played the game and it wasn’t real. She knew that. But it didn’t change how she felt. It didn’t change that it felt like somehow, someway that Betty was cheating. That life itself had cheated Charlotte.
75-0.
“Need a minute?”
“Would you shut—” Charlotte felt her mother immediately begin backing her down toward the basket once more.
“Now, now, daughter,” her mother scolded, “ball is life, but there’s no reason to lose yours over it.”
76-0.
Charlotte hated her mother more than she hated Carson, Nevada.
“This is stupid! I can’t beat you! Okay, big whoop! You’re a grown-up and I’m little!”
“Can’t beat me? You can’t make one teeny, tiny basket against me,” Betty chuckled condescendingly. “You aren’t a little girl; you’re a big baby.”
“I can’t make one teeny, tiny basket because I only have one teeny, tiny hand! You’re my mom—you should know that!”
Betty looked down at her little girl and sighed, but she never stopped dribbling the ball. She dribbled and walked to that patch of grass where her vape was, put the ball under her foot and put the metal tip to her lips.
“Everybody knows that Charlotte, but it cannot be your everything. You have to dig in and be a basketball player. You can’t deflate after every missed shot.” Betty inhaled sweet smoke and sighed out her definition of real talk. “Charlotte, I don’t care about your missed shots, I care about how you act when you miss them. Where is your toughness? This is not who you are. This is not who you have ever been.”
Charlotte hiccupped and sobbed. She wiped her snot with her left hand and her eyes with Nubby. She slowed her breath and she tried her best to listen.
“Momma…”
“This isn’t the game of basketball; it’s the game of life, Char. Your whole life is going to be adversity, don’t you get that? You can’t give up when things go wrong—you have to dig in and get tough.” She inhaled and exhaled citrus cotton-candy quickly and sharply. “That’s the only thing you ever can do...”
Betty put down her vape, picked up the ball and walked toward her daughter before dragging her into a full embrace. She kissed her on the forehead and both her eyes. She didn’t baby her babies, but she did love them completely and totally.
“Never stop showing them who you are.” Who was them? “Never stop proving me right. I believe you can do anything—but right now making this shot is the only thing. Prove me right by shutting me up.”
She wiped tears from Charlotte’s face with soft, slick, sweaty fingers. They had been playing basketball for a long time, so long Char had lost track. She was so tired, her tank was completely on E. And by some miracle, the devil in the red tracksuit was also beginning to cool down. There was a chance—this was her chance! The opportunity that she had been waiting for, the shifting and merciless tide finally beginning to recede.
99-0 off that same backboard bank Betty could’ve prolly done after a stroke.
“So close!”
So much for shutting her up.
But Charlotte no longer cared about the score. Her sky-blue eyes saw nothing but blood-red fury as she focused not on Betty, but on the pink-purple Spalding Street ball. Her mother dribbled from one hand to another with a cocky theatricality and a dramatic flair usually only seen on a pageant stage. Charlotte could tell her mother was saying one of her little sayings, but Charlotte could hear nothing but the ball bouncing on pavement.
Then it happened. Maybe it was out of Betty’s control, maybe it was because they had been playing for so long and the score was so absurd—but her knee twitched and buckled slightly, she hesitated on a step back before beginning to drive in for a layup. It was a little slower than usual, a little less smooth, a little lacking in poise, a little messy.
And Charlotte punched forward with Nubby and knocked the ball directly from her mother’s hands. The ball fell to the ground, Charlotte fell on the ball like a grenade. She scrambled and scrapped and worked her way up dribbling one handedly. Her mother was on her like white on rice…
Or she would’ve been.
But she was a little slower, a little less smooth, a little less poised.
Charlotte saw it in her mind before she made it true with her body.
Before Betty could get her hand all the way into Charlotte’s face, Charlotte was launching the ball up in the air. It was a little closer than a free-throw and the ball hit the backboard, then the rim, then circled—and finally swished.
“Ohmygod…”
“You did it!”
Betty embraced Charlotte, lifted her in the air and spun her around. They both were crying and laughing loudly. This one basket feeling like a million breakthroughs…
Betty placed her back on the ground and then picked up the ball.
“Now do it again.”
That night Charlotte dreamed that her and her mother were wandering a magical forest together. It was bright and green and filled with squirrels and birds and pretty bugs, not ugly ones. As they walked through the forest, Charlotte felt the energy leave her body almost like water being squeezed out a sponge. She spilled and melted onto the forest floor. Her mother kept on walking and Charlotte kept on crawling toward her. Hand over nub. Over and over and over again. Forever and ever and ever. She knew her mother was not going to stop to lift her up. The only way Charlotte was ever going to catch up was if she never, ever stopped crawling.
And even as she slept soundly, she felt exhausted.