Lay-ups and Long Shots by David Lubar Read Free Book Online

final score is one to one. Tie game. I know if the coach had put me out on the field, I would have helped score a goal.
    After the game, Coach says, “Coming to practice tomorrow?”
    “Yes,” I say.
    When I get home, I take off my cleats and leave them outside the door beside the new navy blue shoes I helped my mother buy last week. I told the man which ones she wanted to try on, what size she wore, which pair she finally decided to buy. I counted out the money and made sure she got the correct change.
    “How was game?” my mother asks. She is at the kitchen sink draining salted water from chopped cabbage for kim chi.
    “Okay. How was church?” I say.
    She never comes to the games. Sunday is church day. I go to church in the morning, but my mother stays all day. Everyone in church speaks Korean. Sunday is why after three years in the United States my mother has never learned to speak English. No more than a few words.
Hello. Yes, please. Thank you very much.
She makes do by smiling and nodding her head like a bouncy ball, pretending she understands.
    My mother, she doesn’t understand at all.
    I was in the sixth grade when we moved here for father’s job. “You get to learn English,” my grandmother said when she kissed me good-bye at the airport. “How lucky is that?”
    Not lucky at all. I wasn’t placed in a regular classroom. I was placed in a special class. No one else in the class spoke Korean. No one but the teacher spoke English. All day long we colored pictures. Pictures of houses. Pictures of family. Pictures of food. There were lines and loops printed beneath each picture. “These are letters,” the special teacher said. “These letters make words.”
    I didn’t learn English in the special class. I didn’t learn English from father who works long days and comes home too tired to speak even in Korean with me and mother.
    I learned English from watching TV. I learned that my last name, Song, is American word for music. I like American music. More than anything, I wanted to know what their songs said. So every day after school I sat in front of the TV. One day it clicked what all those words meant. Americans sing of love. They sing of heartbreak. They sing of hope. They don’t sing of obedience.
    My teacher was so proud. She moved me into the regular class. My mother was so happy. She no longer needed to point to what she wanted at the store. She had me to talk.
    At the sink my mother holds the cabbage under running water to rinse off the salt. She washes each piece three times. “Tomorrow I have errands to run,” she says in Korean.
    “Tomorrow I have soccer practice,” I say in same language.
    “Why always soccer practice?”
    “Coach say,” I tell her. I think she should understand such loyalty. But I forget. She gives me a look to help me remember. I am only child. I am also oldest daughter. Oldest daughter’s responsibility is first to mother.
    “Please, coach won’t let me play if I don’t go,” I say.
    “Is not so important, this game,” she says. She tightens her lips and goes to work mixing green onions with garlic, chiles, ginger and water. Then she pours the mixture over the cabbage and stirs everything up in a big crock. A scowl is etched into her face, and her eyes disappear beneath tiny folds of skin. She thinks I should play the violin or the cello and be in the school orchestra. Or twirl around in a leotard in front of a wall of mirrors at dancing school and be in a recital on stage.
    But I am a big girl, not little like she. I am stocky girl, thickset like grandfather way back in father’s family. My fingers are too wide to press on one violin string without causing the one next to it to squawk like the geese we feed in the park, my feet too clumsy to stand long on toes for ballet. I topple over to one side. But I am a good soccer player. I run fast and have what Coach calls ‘a big foot’ that can kick the ball far up the field. He says I have a good chance of