Wait
You lick your lips, thirsting for the salt that drips off your upper lip. In that time your opponent’s hand has dropped down brushing past the skirt—an eye-popping fuchsia contrasting the neon green of the tennis ball that is being tossed upwards. Pulse, pounding in your ears, screams at you. You don't dare give it any of your attention, all of it is focused on the ball rising upwards rotating slowly through the air.
Wait.
Mary spots the scout the moment he settles down next to the court. He tried to be incognito, wearing a generic grey Wilson Tennis shirt and a pale blue tennis cap, but his demeanor gave him away. He sat in the middle of the stands, giving him an equal view of both sides of the court. She wondered if he was watching her daughter or the opponent. Both were likely answers. He placed his feet casually on top of the bench below him, and in the angle between his knees and his body he held a small notebook. His phone lay in easy reach on the bench to his left, he had no fear of theft. Mary found it amusing that a man who was so clearly a coach: athletic, present, and commanding, would try to hide his identity. His eyes were watching the match as sharply as a hawk, and like a hawk he had no notice that he was being watched as well.
Wait.
Her weight is shifting forward as your anxiety mounts. Your body knows this dance—how many days, weeks, years have you practiced the subtle art of shifting your weight back and forth, waiting for your opponent to serve? The nervous system is complex and layered, the nerves in your legs are conditioned to react to the nerves in your eyes, which take another trillion years to blink open and closed. Your pupils are dilated, a lens that needs just one picture to react. The ball rises into the air, your legs become springs, the restless pattern of side-to-side motion coiling into potential energy.
Wait.
Your lungs expand, air pressure thrumming against your rib cage. They will not exhale until you send the ball screaming back onto the other side.
Watch.
I always like to arrive a little bit late for a match. It’s better that way. If I show up at the beginning the girls feel too pressured. They do silly things like grunt louder, fist-pump harder, swing faster. I understand their anxiety. They see me sitting here with my little notebook, keeping tabs on their performance, and I represent the ticket to all their desires. I used to feel awkward about that until I discovered that it was better to see the match when it is already in motion. They act more naturally, are already in the rhythm of their game, and are focused on the ball and their opponent. I’m not interested in performative action, but results. And if they notice me and become nervous then I don’t want them. There are hundreds of other girls, and I only have a few spots for this year. I don’t want to waste them on subpar players. Either I can try and get a star—difficult when they know how good they are and that everyone wants them—or I can get someone with potential. Someone who fits a hole in my team, who can work hard and improve. Someone I can shape into a star. The server has noticed me, and she’s tensing up. I make sure to note that on my paper, tallying up their strengths and weaknesses until I can decide which I like better.
Wait.
Your opponent aborts their motion. They catch the ball and step back from the line. They shake their head, gather themselves. Your strained lungs sigh, releasing the pent-up breath gently. You stand up, aware of the ache in your lower back. In the space of time your opponent gives you as they collect themselves again, you hop. It’s critical to keep your legs and body in motion even as you relax. Expand your strained senses briefly and let them hear the rustling of leaves in the wind, smell the grass from the park. Unclench your jaw, uncoil your muscles. Let the stored potential energy flow away before the tension rattles you apart.
Watch.
Her husband sits down next to her, his weight thumping onto the bench, along with the food he brought. “What did I miss?” he whispered, conscious of the quiet in the park. She jerked her head over in the scout’s direction, and her husband stared blankly. She leaned over his shoulder to put her lips closer to his ear.
“We have a scout,” she murmured, her breath barely giving voice to her words. Her eyes were on the match, where her daughter’s opponent was now serving. Her husband twisted around to look again, squinting harder at the coach. There was no flash of enlightenment, but he accepted her words. She stifled her irritation; therapy had helped her realize she hadn’t married him for his powers of observation.
Watch.
There is a small itch on my nose that I scratch, watching the server try to regain her composure. Maybe she can pull herself together. At least she’s not screaming and smashing her racket like that last girl I watched. The server should win, she comes from a family of tennis players and always gets decent results. But the receiver—something about her is appealing. I watch her staring at her opponent, completely tuned in to the server’s body language. She was the lower-ranked player coming in, so I had dismissed her. No other schools seem to be scouting her so she could be an easy buy. I’ll wait a bit more to see her potential.
Wait.
Your ears, the most receptive of your senses, register the soft thud of your opponent bouncing the ball. You focus on them again, shifting your weight between your bent legs, feeling the ground beneath the balls of your feet. Your hands are loose on the grip, the nerves on your palms feeling the bevels on the handle, the weight of the head, how gravity drags it down. Your eyes are on the ball that is inching upwards through the air, but in the picture your nerves paint of your body, you are hyperaware of the angle of your racket face, the sweat slowly inching down the side of your face, the ache of a tight hamstring.
Their arm swings back, bending at the elbow. Your coiled legs take one step, then another into the court. You settle your weight more forward, back straightening up, your eyes capture a snapshot—their racket strikes the ball, arm outstretched, wrist pronating, you split step, levitating briefly in the air, and as you become weightless your eyes convey another snapshot to your brain. The ball is moving over to your forehand. You land, push off with your left foot, torso twisting, hands rising together, right knee pulled up ready to slam down, become the pivot-
Fault.
A fault at this level doesn’t make or break my decision, but I tally it anyway. I look at the server, reading her body language. Head down, shaking, a frustrated swing of the hand, as if she is about to—no she doesn’t smash her racket, but she had considered it. Yet the receiver had a perfect set-up for a return. The server is more concerned with her fault. She should be, she can’t do it again, but she doesn’t seem to realize her body language had been read by her opponent. It’s one thing for me to be able to tell where she was hitting it, but her opponent was already moving in that direction. I note this on the opposite side of the page, where I am analyzing the receiver. She’s smaller and not as tall as her opponent but has better focus and energy. She seems to be reading her opponent’s game and is more composed, in the zone even. I can work with that.
Watch.
“For us for her?”
Mary considered the coach, pen in hand, scribbling on the paper and watching the match. Saw how his eyes lingered on her daughter, who was at the height of her game. Her husband could have been screaming and dancing naked courtside and it wouldn’t have broken her concentration. She saw the glance he gave to her opponent, the tightening of the skin around the eyes as she tossed the ball then caught it again. The nod of his head as he scribbled something down as her daughter collected herself like a pro. The dismissive headshake when her opponent faulted.
“Both at first,” she whispered with a smile. “But I think we have a good chance.”
Wait.
The ball catches on the cord. Dribbles back onto the court, then slowly rolls into the middle of your opponent’s side. You jog to the baseline as your opponent walks in to pick it up—no one wants to risk a twisted ankle. You grab the bottom of your shirt, finally wiping the sweat off your face. Twisting the racket towards you, you examine the grid of strings, noticing dispassionately that they are starting to fray. You stick your fingers into the grid, feeling the crack under the pads as you fix them into neat squares. Your opponent is back on the baseline. You settle into the ready position.
They call out, “15-30, second serve.” You inhale. Exhale. Begin again the restless building of coiled energy.
Wait.
Her husband unwraps the sandwich he bought. The crinkle of the paper grates on her ears. Mary wishes he would be quiet, wishes her daughter would win, wishes all the time spent invested will come to fruition. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him take a big bite of the sandwich, the noise attracting the attention of the coach who glances over at them. She sees the moment he recognizes that they are her daughter’s parents. Mary bottles up her wishes inside, does not let her desire show in the small nod she gives to him. Her husband waves at the coach.
“Well,” he said, as the opponent called out the score and went to serve again. “The game is just getting started.”
*
Two hours later it’s done. I watch the lefty go out with a whimper, an unforced error into the net. She looks shocked, mouth trembling, shoulders tight. I write in my notebook the final verdict for her: no. Too emotional, not enough potential strengths, no creativity and limited problem-solving attempts. The winning girl has more positive notes. I look over them one more time, noting who her opponent will be next and when I can watch her again. My phone buzzes with a text from my assistant coach, telling me about an interesting match on court three.
I see the girls start to head towards the net to shake hands and get up to leave. I’ll see at least one of them again soon.
Mary watches the coach leave and feels anxiety clawing in her throat, eating away at her esophagus like acid. She thought he seemed to like her daughter. He had ended up watching the whole match even though there were others going on in the tournament. But he hadn’t stuck around to speak to Mary, or her daughter. She watched him walk away fixing his hat and committed his form to memory. She would see him again.
Her husband whistled under his breath nudging her with his elbow. “She’s mad,” he muttered, gesturing towards the court. Mary drew herself out of her dreams of the future and looked at the court, wondering what she had missed.
Something unspooled in your chest when the opponent hit the ball into the net. The racket’s weight became heavy, and it dragged your hand down to your side. Your eyes closed for a moment. One match won, which meant another opportunity for you to play tomorrow. Sometimes your life felt like a series of matches you were trying to string together, a continuous rally with no end. Your eyes opened again and you saw the despondent look on your opponent’s face, which was looking off court. Your gaze followed hers, alighted on a man standing up from the bench wearing a generic grey Wilson Tennis shirt.
Oh.
You watch the head coach of your top choice university smile at you briefly and walk away. Your stomach does a light flip, but you get it under control and walk up to the net. You can panic about that incident later, surely your mom will be able to tell you when exactly he snuck in. Reaching the net, you raise your hand waiting to shake your opponent’s. She steps up and grasps yours and you notice how clammy her skin feels, the way it adheres to your palm.
She lets go. Turns to walk back to her bench and you do the same. You see her pause, noticing the ball that sits innocuously by the net. The ball she lost the match with. Her racket drops, trapping the ball between its edge and her foot, she flicks it up and catches it. You hold out your hand. As the winner, you are to report back to the tournament desk with the can of balls, so they can be recycled for lessons later. She looks at the ball, looks at you, then turns away.
“Fuck!” she screams, whaling on the ball and sending it soaring high into the air, out of the court and into the park. You watch it hit the ground and begin to roll away. Haley sits on the bench, puts her face in her hands and begins to cry.
You would not call what you feel sympathy. The lump in your throat is more akin to fear. That could have been you today and it could be you tomorrow. You look up into the stands where your parents are watching and your dad waves at you. Waving back, you begin your hunt around the court for the last two balls, so that you can bring something back to the desk. You let Haley sob quietly into her parents’ shoulder. You’re the lucky one.
You get to play tomorrow.
GABRIELLA CONTRATTO just received her MA in English (Creative Writing) from UH Mānoa. She favors prose writing, and is particularly fond of speculative fiction, but her interests include Filipino culture/diasporic writing, LGBT+ communities, sports and Angeleno communities. When she is not working on her manuscript, you can find her riding her bike or playing tennis in the LA area. “Wait” is her first publication.