Carrie Soto Is Back(6)

He always won, day after day. But I kept trying. Match after match, every evening after school, sometimes twice on weekends.

Until one cloudy January afternoon, when the air was just a bit too crisp. All day it had been threatening to do the very thing the Southern California sky had promised to almost never do.

We were tied in the first set when I returned two serves in a row with cross-court forehands that were so fast, my father couldn’t get to them.

And for the first time in my young life, I broke his serve.

“?Excelente!” he said with his arms in the air, running over to my side of the court. He spun me in the air.

“I did it!” I said. “I broke your serve!”

“Yes, you did,” he told me. “Yes, you did.”

About two minutes after I won the set, the sky cracked open and the rain started pouring down. My father put his jacket over my head as we raced to the car.

After we got in and shut the doors, I looked over at him. His face was all lit up even as he shivered from the cold. “Excelente, pichoncita,” he said as he grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Muy pero muy bien.” He was still smiling as he turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the parking lot.

From that moment on, though I still couldn’t beat him in a match, I set my mind to breaking his serve at least once every day. And I did it.

At the end of every session, my father and I would drive home with two doggie bags of food from the dining room at the club staying warm in my lap. I’d watch the big houses go by as we made our way back to our apartment.

My father would park, and then, before we got out, he’d say, “We did well today. But what are we going to do better tomorrow?”

I’d give him the list I’d been working on the entire way home.

“Get my feet up faster,” I’d say. “And keep my wrist down.” Or “Make sure I don’t pull back too far before I hit the drop volley.”

Each night, he would add one more thing I didn’t think of. “And keep your eye on the ball, not on your racket.” “Follow through on the forehand groundstroke.”

Each night, I would nod. Of course. How could I forget?

Then we would go inside and eat dinner together in front of the TV. Most of the time it was just the evening news, but I always loved those rare nights when he’d let us watch The Lucy Show. Him in his recliner, me on the couch, a pair of TV trays. He would laugh so hard. And so I laughed too.

Later, after I brushed my teeth and put on my pajamas, my father would give me a kiss on the forehead and say, “Good night, my Achilles, the greatest warrior tennis has ever seen.”

When the light was off, I would put my hand under my pillow, searching for the photo of my mother that I had taken from my father’s dresser.

In it, my mother is lying in a hammock in our backyard, holding me and smiling at the camera. There is an orange tree above us. I am asleep in her arms, her chin is resting on my head, her hand is on my back. Her hair is long and her curls soft. I used to run my finger over the photo, the length of her dress, from her shoulders to her feet.

I would hold the photo to my chest and then tuck it back under my pillow and go to sleep.

One night when I was about eight years old, I went to find the photo and it was gone.

I threw my pillow onto the ground. I jumped off my bed and lifted the mattress onto its side. How could I have lost it, something so important? I started screaming, tears falling down my cheeks.

My father came in and saw me sitting there, red-faced, my eyes wet, my room torn apart. He calmly put my mattress back on the frame and took me in his arms.

“Pichoncita,” he said. “No te preocupés. The photo is fine. I put it back in my dresser. It’s time to stop looking at it every night.”

“Pero I want to look at it every night.”

He shook his head and held me tight. “Cari?o, put it out of your mind. It is too heavy of a weight for you to bear.”





1966


By my ninth birthday, I’d beaten every kid my age at the club. So my father recruited the son of one of the adults he taught to play me, a thirteen-year-old boy named Chris.

“I don’t understand why you’re allowed to play here,” Chris said to me. “You’re not a member.” We were standing by the net, waiting to start. Our fathers were talking, laughing.

“Neither are you,” I said.

“My dad is. Your dad works here. Your dad works for us.”

Our fathers headed in our direction, and Chris groaned. “Can we just get this over with? I don’t feel like playing a seven-year-old girl.”

I stared at him for a moment, feeling my shoulders tighten. “I’m nine, you moron.”

Chris looked at me with his eyes wide, but he didn’t say anything else. Something I learned early is that most assholes don’t have comebacks.

“All right, kids, best out of three,” my dad said.

Chris served first and I crouched, ready. He tossed the ball up and hit it in a slow curve. I smacked it back, cross-court. My point. Love–15.

Chris served again. I returned it with a passing shot. Love–30.

The next time, I feigned yawning. Love–40.

“Game for Carrie,” my father said.

Chris’s face grew slightly red. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or embarrassed. I smiled at him.