December 25, 2013
On Christmas Day, Mia woke up before everyone else.
It was seven fifteen when Paola entered Aaron's room with the baby in her arms and the expression of someone who has been awake since six and has tried everything that can be tried to keep a one-year-old still on a Christmas morning.
"There's no way to keep her still anymore," she said in a low voice, although the way Mia pointed toward the living room with her index finger made it clear that she didn't need anything explained to her.
Aaron got up without complaining.
Melissa was already in the kitchen preparing coffee when the three of them came out. Héctor appeared five minutes later with the camera in hand, one of those compact Sonys that recorded in HD, which he had taken out of his backpack the night before and put on charge specifically for this morning.
"Nobody move yet," Héctor said, focusing toward the living room where the tree was still lit since someone had plugged it in upon arriving. "I want to record everything from the beginning."
"Babe, it's seven in the morning," Paola said.
"Moments don't wait."
Paola looked at him with the expression of someone who has been living with that kind of phrase for years and has decided that it's not worth arguing about.
They sat around the tree: Melissa on the sofa with coffee in hand, Paola on the floor next to Mia to keep her under control, Aaron on the arm of the sofa. Héctor remained standing with the camera, moving slowly to capture different angles with the seriousness of someone who has self-assigned an important responsibility.
Mia didn't know exactly what Christmas was, but she did know that there was colored paper and ribbons and boxes of different sizes, and that all of that was more interesting than anything else she had seen in her short life. She launched herself toward the first package she found with a determination that made everyone laugh before she even reached it.
"That's yours, my love," Paola told her, helping her tear the paper.
Mia didn't need much help. The paper flew in strips while Héctor followed every movement with the camera and Melissa observed with that expression of hers that needed no words.
The contents of the first package were a set of stackable colored blocks. Mia looked at them for two seconds, pushed them to the side, and went straight to the next package.
"The blocks are educational," Paola said.
"Clearly she doesn't care," Aaron responded.
The next package contained a stuffed gray elephant almost as big as she was. Mia remained completely still for a moment, looking at it, and then hugged it with both arms and her face buried in the animal's belly.
Héctor lowered the camera for a second.
"There it is," he said, with a voice different from before.
Paola said nothing, but placed her hand on his back.
At some point Mia decided that opening the packages was secondary and that what was really important was the paper. She spent several minutes crumpling strips of silver paper with absolute concentration while Paola tried to redirect her toward the remaining presents.
"Mia, the toy," Paola said.
Mia ignored her.
"The toy, my love."
Mia crumpled another strip.
Aaron observed all that from the arm of the sofa with the same attention with which he observed a game.
"Let her be," Melissa said from the sofa. "When she gets bored of the paper, she'll go to the toy."
She was right. Three minutes later Mia had abandoned the paper and was pulling on the packing tape of the next package with renewed determination.
They kept opening. Mia had six packages in total, which was approximately five more than she needed and exactly the number that Paola and Héctor had decided she was going to have. A cloth book with different textures. A set of colored rings. Tiny red sneakers that Aaron looked at for a moment before commenting that they were sharper than his.
"Everything on her is sharper than yours," Paola said.
"That's true."
Melissa distributed the presents for the rest of the group in the usual methodical order: others first, herself at the end. Paola opened a scarf that Melissa had bought her, which was exactly the color Paola had been pointing to for weeks every time they passed by the window of a store in the mall near home. This generated a brief discussion about whether Melissa had paid attention intentionally or if it had been a coincidence, which Melissa won by arguing that they had been friends for several years and that she already knew what she liked without needing her to point it out. Héctor received a compact toolbox that he thanked with the sincerity of someone who really needed it and doesn't hide those kinds of things.
When it was Aaron's turn, he took out the package he had kept in his backpack since he arrived from Kentucky and gave it to his mother.
It was small. A flat little box wrapped in navy blue paper.
Melissa unwrapped it slowly, with the care with which she opened everything, and opened the lid.
Inside was a necklace. A thin silver chain with a circular pendant in which there was a miniature photo: Aaron, around eight years old, sitting on Melissa's lap on the sofa of that same apartment, both looking toward the camera with the slightly forced expression of someone who knows they are having their picture taken but doesn't know exactly when.
Melissa said nothing for a moment.
"I had it made before leaving for Kentucky," Aaron said. "I found the photo in one of your boxes. I hope you don't mind that I took it."
Melissa raised her eyes from the necklace and looked at him.
"I don't mind."
She put it on right there, with Paola helping her with the clasp because her fingers weren't obeying her completely well at that moment, and then looked at it in the small mirror above the table by the entryway.
"It's perfect," she said.
Aaron nodded.
Héctor had continued recording the whole moment. When Melissa realized it, she looked at him with an expression that in another context would have been one of irritation, but that morning had nothing of that.
"Delete that part," she said.
"I'm not deleting it."
"Héctor."
"I'm not deleting it, Melissa."
Melissa considered insisting and decided not to.
Then it was Aaron's turn. Melissa's package was large, rectangular, wrapped with more paper than necessary in the clumsy and generous way she had always wrapped her Christmas presents.
He opened it.
Inside the box, on top of white tissue paper, was a pair of Nike Hyperdunks. Black with white accents, size thirteen. Aaron took them out of the box one by one and held them in his hands for a moment.
"Ma," he said.
"The girl at the store told me they were the best for indoors," Melissa responded, with the tone of someone who has researched a purchase for weeks and wants that to be on the record. "She also told me that not many people reached your size and that I was lucky there was a pair left."
Aaron examined them slowly. The sole. The heel design. The weight in his hand.
"I'm going to debut them in the first game after the break."
"I hope so," Melissa said.
Héctor recorded it all.
The rest of the morning passed without further protocol: a long breakfast in the kitchen with Melissa's scrambled eggs, which were the same as always and which Aaron had never managed to replicate well in the dorm microwave; Mia alternating between the elephant and the blocks she had initially rejected and that now seemed more interesting to her; the television in the background with Christmas programming that nobody really watched but nobody turned off.
Paola called her mother in Colombia and had a twenty-minute conversation in which she repeated three times that yes, Mia was fine; yes, she ate well; no, she wasn't too skinny. Héctor reviewed the photos and videos from the morning with the concentration of a professional editor, discarding the ones that were blurry and saving the ones that were not.
Aaron stayed on the sofa with Mia sleeping on his chest for almost an hour without moving so as not to wake her.
Melissa saw him from the kitchen and said nothing.
It was a good day.
December 26, 2013
The flight left at ten in the morning. Aaron woke up at seven, ate breakfast quickly, and left his suitcase packed in twenty minutes.
Melissa walked him to the door.
"Eat well over there," she said.
"Always."
"And call more."
"I try."
"Try harder."
Aaron hugged her in the hallway with the suitcase by his side and the noise of the building around him—the same noise as always, the same pipes and the same neighbors and the same elevator that still didn't work.
"I love you, Ma."
"I love you more, son."
Paola and Héctor were still asleep. Mia as well, which was a miracle considering the energy she had displayed throughout the entire day yesterday. Aaron went down the stairs alone, stepped out into the street cold, and walked to the subway station with his hands in his coat pockets.
He took the subway to the airport.
In the subway car there were few people for eight in the morning on the day after Christmas: a couple of workers with their uniforms on, a woman with a large suitcase, a man asleep with his beanie pulled down over his face. Aaron put on his headphones and looked out the window at the dark tunnels of the New York subway.
The flight was smooth. He arrived in Lexington at twelve fifteen, caught the shuttle bus to campus, and walked up the dorm stairs with his suitcase wheels up because the hallway was too narrow to carry it any other way. On each floor he came across the same silence. The dorm was almost empty. Only a couple of closed doors with light filtering under them.
He opened the room door with his shoulder because his hands were full with his suitcase and duffel bag.
It was empty. Julius's bed was unmade, with the blanket pushed to one side and the pillow on the floor. The phone charger plugged into the wall. A half-empty bottle of water on the nightstand. The Kobe poster that Julius had hung up on the first day and that Aaron had learned to ignore after weeks of living with it.
It was the first time since September that Aaron was alone in that room. It was strange. Not unpleasant, just strange—the kind of silence that feels odd when you're used to someone else's noise.
He sat on his bed for a moment.
Then he picked up his phone and texted his mother.
Aaron: Arrived safe.
The reply came in less than a minute.
Ma: Thanks for letting me know. Eat something.
Aaron smiled and left the phone on the nightstand.
He changed his clothes, put the new Hyperdunks in his duffel bag, and went down to the gym.
It was empty too, with the emergency lights on and the silence of a space that has been without people for days. Aaron turned on the main lights, grabbed a ball from the rack, and went straight to the low post.
Fadeaway jumper from the left. It went in.
Sky hook from the right. It went in.
Short hook with a pivot. It went in.
Nobody was watching. There was no scoreboard, no commentators, no crowd. Only the sound of the ball against the backboard and the new soles of the Hyperdunks on the hardwood of the Joe Craft Center.
He spent time working on the sky hook from both sides until the mechanics were where he wanted them to be. Then the short hook with a pivot, which was less elegant but more effective in tight spaces. Then the step-back from the high post, which was the move he had used the most against Providence and that he wanted to be even more automatic than it already was.
Each repetition identical to the last. Without thinking too much, letting his body do the work it had been learning for months.
He kept going like that for an hour.
When he turned off the lights and stepped out into the hallway, the campus was in complete silence. No footsteps, no voices, without the usual background noise of a dorm full of people. Only the hum of the hallway lights and his own footsteps on the linoleum.
He took a shower, put on comfortable clothes, warmed up what he had left in the fridge before leaving, and lay on the bed with his phone on his chest.
Messages arrived throughout the afternoon: Julius confirming that he was returning on the 27th, James asking if the gym would be open that same day, Andrew sending a photo of a Christmas table in Texas that was the size of the entire dorm room.
Aaron replied to everyone in order, without rushing, lying on the bed with the dorm ceiling above him and the campus silence outside. It was the first time in days that he had nothing to do and nowhere to go, and he didn't feel bad about it.
Tomorrow the others would arrive. For him, practice. And on the twenty-eighth, the first game after the break was just around the corner.
For now, it was enough.
He closed his eyes.
The campus silence in December was different from any other time of the year. More complete. Cleaner.
Authors thought
What did you think of today's chapter? Give me your opinions and thoughts.
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