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Southern Hospitality

May

Three Months Later

I pull at the laces of my cleats, shifting on the turf to get the optimal angle to free my feet from the snug shoes. Somehow, even after a practice straight from hell, the knots I made at the beginning of the afternoon haven’t budged a bit. I bob my head in tune with the Mt. Joy song thrumming from someone’s portable speaker as the first lace slides loose.

Jordan is already packing her stuff up, having a wrestling match with her duffel bag to get the overflowing thing to close. ‘Chores?’ she grunts between shoves, a simple one-word question.

‘Yep,’ I reply. I pop my right cleat off my foot and toss it to the side, getting to work on the left. ‘Cattle.’

‘Same.’ She finally manages to get the zipper all the way around her bag and turns to me. ‘How are you feeling about this season?’

I make a dismissive psshh sound, to which my best friend raises an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘May. Be nice. I’m asking as a concerned citizen.’

I stop in my tracks and give her a look. ‘You sure about that?’

‘Asking as a concerned citizen who’s going to be playing alongside you this year and doesn’t want to be tanked for senior season,’ she adds with a snort.

‘Jordan!’

‘You asked!’

I got to know a lot of the girls through lacrosse, and I know all of them well now, but it’s different with Jordan. She’s the only one I’d allow to talk shit about my terrible junior year. We’ve been joined at the hip since we started playing in elementary, when Jordan Gutierrez-Hawkins walked up to me one day, tapped her stick against mine, gave me a partial-toothed grin, and told me we were going to be friends. We were the only two girls of colour on the team – we still are – but our connection went way deeper from the first game we played together. People confuse us not only because we look the same from the back (wavy black hair, exactly five foot six), but also because we’re more often found side by side than we are apart. They’re partially right, considering one word, sometimes even one look, is all we need to get our points across.

We grew up together in Eagle Rock, just outside Prosperity, bought our first crosses together, broke our first bones in the same game. When it came time to join the local branch of 4-H, affectionately ‘farm kid club’, meant to teach us the importance of agriculture and rearing animals, Jordan and I did every single cattle show right beside one another in the line-up. We match hairstyles every game, our braids so identical it looks like someone has copied and pasted them. In our freshman year of high school, when Tuck Decker called Jordan a disgusting slur in the middle of the hallway, we were totally ready to pummel his face in – together.

‘Fine,’ I give in with a hard roll of my eyes. ‘I feel … better. I was drilling alright today. It’s not gonna be like last year. I promise. I guess now we just have to see how far we go this time.’

‘Oh, we’ll go far. You know we’ll do whatever it takes,’ promises Jordan. She grins menacingly as ever at unassuming Maddie, who’s still trying to get her cleats off. Jordan’s hazel eyes glisten with a burgeoning joke. ‘Not more than you will, though, Mad Dog. Did you have to kiss a frog today?’

Festival queen Miss Bellmare herself sticks up a middle finger Jordan’s way. ‘That was once .’

‘One more time than I’d have put up with,’ I snort, chucking my shoes into my duffel bag and slipping my feet into a pair of Birkenstock sandals.

Maddie waves my quip away with a French-tip-nailed hand. It’s common for the girls to balance plates the way we do on this team. Sure, the school’s paying some of us good money to play for them, but we don’t get the kind of scholarships that the men’s team does – even at the Division One level we compete. Putting ‘Lady’ before ‘Riders’ diminishes our monetary value just like it does our spectator count, but we still play. A lot of us do whatever it takes: classes, study, lax, and then work, whether that’s waitressing at Moonie’s, nabbing extra hours in research, or playing Queen on the weekends, if you’re Maddie. Pageantry gets you good sponsorships, and Magdalena ‘Mad Dog’ Marrone is bringing in a stipend, too. Her new crosse, metallic silver with orange and white netting, does all the talking for her.

She releases her blonde hair from its bun atop her head and slings her bag over her shoulder. ‘Peace, ladies. See you tomorrow.’

Maddie, first to leave, announces her departure as any good festival queen would, and Lexi is next, executing a flawless Irish exit. Most of us don’t mess around with Lexi outside of lax – she is terrifying – but in here, we have a grudging respect for the chick. She’s been the most reliable goalie in the conference since we were freshmen. She gets it done. Jordan and I head out soon after, scoping out our respective vehicles in the parking lot riddled with cracks and potholes.

Jordan nods thoughtfully as she saunters easily towards her sedan. ‘Seriously? I think this one’s the year.’

I have to hide my laugh, and even then, it still creeps out. ‘Girl, you said that last year. And the year before. And—’

Jordan pulls a lacrosse ball from her bag and chucks it at me over my truck. I narrowly duck a shiner to the forehead. ‘It’s called optimism , Miss Gloom and Doom. You should try it. What’s your mom been saying?’

As a result of us being inseparable for years, Jordan and my mom have grown so close that Mumma considers her another daughter. I’m pretty close with Mrs Gutierrez-Hawkins, but nothing like Jordan and Mumma. It was one of those cases where you make a friend that your parents love so much that they adopt said friend. Jordan is now a regular at family gatherings, church, and gurdwara road trips alike.

‘My mom,’ I grumble, ‘thinks I’ve been given a “second chance”. Says this is “the family I chose”. She thinks I’ll come back harder than ever this season.’ I shrug, feigning indifference that clearly comes out not so indifferent. I think my mother needs to be pickier about how she thinks second chances are dealt, but in her eyes, I’m totally off-base. ‘I told her the road back from binning an entire season and missing more shots than you score isn’t an easy one.’

‘Lord, no,’ quips Jordan. ‘Of course it’s not easy. But neither was all the shit you guys went through last year.’

The mere mention of last year makes my throat feel as dry and ragged, as if I’ve just swallowed a whole saltine cracker. ‘Guess that’s fair.’

‘You know it’s fair.’ Jordan waves knowingly as she opens the door to her car. ‘As long as you lock in this season!’

I snort and wiggle my fingers in a goodbye before flinging myself into the driver’s seat of my truck. Maybe I’ll give optimism a go. But the way I move through life, it wouldn’t last me longer than a week before the truth catches up with me. Rarely in my life do things come up roses.

I was born in the aftermath of an EF-4 tornado that ripped the roof off a house in Saint Albert and dropped it on a frat at the University of Oklahoma City – almost twenty miles away. Mumma’s water broke mid-tornado. She had no idea she was in labour till the adrenaline of the disaster had come to pass. It was the shittiest birth story a person could ask for. But if you asked my mom what she thought about it, she’d call it a blessing. Lilavati Velasco, all silver linings and second chances, would tell you that – as much havoc as the storm wreaked – it spared us for the most part. Other than five of our cattle and a fence on the far end of the ranch, our entire house, property included, was intact. My grandmother called me a lucky charm. You could tell where Mumma got her painful positivity from, not to mention why she loves Jordan and her optimism so much.

Then there’s Adan Velasco, her polar opposite. My lovely papa, who is currently trying to form words about what Mumma deems a ‘second chance’.

‘Well … last season wasn’t great.’

‘It really wasn’t.’ I peer at him from under the brim of my hat, and I’m instantly glad he’s got the same look of nervousness on his face that I have. This shit isn’t easy. Sometimes, I just need someone to sit in the trenches with me, and that’s my Papa.

‘But May, listen,’ he hums unhappily. ‘You can’t let that indicate where you go this season. Junior year was …’

‘Papa.’

‘… not a great time …’

‘Go on.’

‘But it doesn’t mean you deserve to beat yourself up over it. Even though I think it wouldn’t have been half as bad if the refs hadn’t been playing for the other team every game you guys had last year.’ He has this little moment of fuming, which looks even funnier since he’s sitting on his horse swaying back and forth. He does the same thing I do, puckers his lips in upset thought. ‘But aside from that. You know it was hard. Lots of athletes have those hard seasons. Lots of the best athletes have those seasons.’

‘Did you ever?’ I ask him.

Papa, an ex-bull-rider, just throws his head back and laughs. ‘Mayday, I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t.’

‘God. What, were you just gettin’ thrashed around and stomped on for a year?’

‘Basically.’ He grins, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes from all his sassy smiling creasing. ‘Does a number on a guy.’

‘Yeesh.’ We cross a small bridge that goes up and over a tiny creek running through our crop, the horses’ hooves creating a dull clopping sound on the wood. ‘How’d you get out?’

‘Told myself no distractions for the next season. No flings, no booze, no parties. Just the sport.’

‘Got it. No flings, no booze, no parties.’

Where my mom would cluck her tongue and shake her head at me, my dad cracks up. ‘You got it, mija . Especially with …’

‘Money on the line,’ I finish for him. It’s been my biggest dread: scholarship. It’s not the most, but it’s been putting me through school all these years. Without the Riders, I don’t have my scholarship. And if I want my degree, I need every cent of it.

‘You don’t need to concern yourself with that, Mayday,’ Papa reassures me. Always trying to bring my worries upon himself. ‘We’ll take care of you, no matter what happens. You just play your best. Promise me that?’

‘Hmm.’ A moment of sheer silence passes between us, nothing to hear but the sound of the creek. ‘Mumma thinks it’s gonna be some kind of magical comeback, you know. A big second chance.’

‘I’ll tell you this.’ Papa beams warmly at me. ‘I agree with your mother on that. Lila may be unrealistic sometimes, but she’s right on this one. You’ve learned from last year. You’ve dealt with something difficult – we all did – and now you’ve got the defences to cope if it happens again. Right?’

‘Right,’ I echo.

‘You know the drill, mija . Southern hospitality ain’t always worth it. Open your door for two seconds, and next thing you know, a storm’s tearing through your house,’ my dad muses. ‘But when that house gets shredded up, you rebuild it stronger. So yeah, I do think that this is your big second chance.’

‘Jordan wanted it all last year.’ I adjust my hat on my head, shielding my eyes from the striking rays of the sunset. ‘Is it crazy to think that if I do enough of that no flings, no booze, no parties, we can have that? The championship?’

Papa and I trot together in thought for a moment as we approach the stables, slowing our horses down and hopping off.

‘Championship’s a high bar to clear,’ he says.

‘Exactly.’

‘But there isn’t anyone in this town I could see leading this team to one of those other than May Velasco.’ As I remove my helmet, Papa ruffles my hair. ‘I think if you put your mind to it, mija , you can have whatever your dreams desire.’