by Alessandra Nolan
The season after my father died, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918. Being born in Rhode Island and from prudent Irish blood, he was a Red Sox loyalist from childhood on. But I, in what must’ve been a disappointing turn of events for him, was born a Jersey girl with a penchant for being contrary. Thus, I turned out a Yankees fan. So in the games leading to the 2004 World Series, when the Red Sox came back from a three game deficit to defeat my beloved Yankees and then stormed the Cardinals in a straight series win, I felt him smile from beyond the grave. I remember buying a pack of smokes and a Coke Slurpee at the 7-11 when I heard the Sox won. I hadn’t watched a single game of the series. Really, I hardly watched baseball at all. Stepping outside, I looked past the light pollution in my coastal Jersey town and up towards the stars. I imagined my father’s head floating up there, the way they teach you God floats around in Catholic CCD. I pointed a finger towards the sky. Boston, I thought, still sucks. But if a World Series was Chuck Nolan’s dying wish then, Amen, let the curse be undone.
Making that connection was easy. Memorializing is easy. After he died, my father became a mythical creature with a few concise tall tales. I’d recall favorite memories on cue, laughing through stories of him weaving dental floss around the necks of mine and my sister’s Barbie dolls and then hanging them from the ceiling fan. “Barbie suicide” I would parrot, repeating what he called his deed, his apparent punishment for us leaving their naked bodies strewn across the shower floor. There were other easy facts. My dad loved golf. He liked Motown, enjoyed baking pies, smoked like a chimney. He was a Red Sox fan, a Giants fan, a Larry Bird-era basketball fan. These tiny preferences built a laudable memory of a man I hardly knew. For 17 years I loved, cherished and resented my dad for his whole self. In death, I drew him as a stark caricature and carried that with me, remembering what was easy to remember in an attempt to keep the sorrow at bay.
It was only natural then, nine years later, for grief to finally appear. Destruction and regression happened quickly. First, I quit my job. Immediately after, I quit trying to leave the house at all. It was my second November living in North Carolina and being what the blessed folks in these parts know to be a stubborn Yankee, I figured I was destined to melt in this strange autumn heat. I trudged to my graduate classes in sweat-soaked sun dresses, turned down bourbon in lieu of unsweetened iced tea and made no effort to find joy in the quaint and confederate town of Wilmington, North Carolina. I missed my friends, my home, my family and I missed knowing what missing my dad felt like. In the hours outside of class, I moped around the air-conditioned comfort of the one bedroom apartment I shared with my fiancé. On good days, I wrote. Otherwise, I watched TV.
Inside the television, sports stories from my father’s era lived. The Netflix-Gods offered a series of sports documentaries and athlete biographies — every sport and every human condition — Greek tragedies played against the backdrop of infields and metal bleachers. I settled into my couch and barely moved for weeks.
Croot, my fiancé, worked long and late hours. He would return and humor me if I was awake. He’d pick the popcorn out of my hair and answer questions I’d written down about various sports technicalities I was too lazy to look up. Usually though, he’d come home to half-eaten frozen pizzas, a glowing box and a sleeping wife-to-be. Our couch sagged. I felt the pillows soften and redistribute themselves under the weight of my body. Often, I was lulled to sleep by a series of halftime whistles, shot clock buzzers and the sound of a roaring crowd.
The documentary cycle lasted longer than I think both of us expected. I was determined to make it through every sports-related program Netflix had to offer. Within three weeks, I was down to two and saving the best for last. The first: a three hour and 50 minute PBS special on boxer, Jack Johnson. The other: a seemingly lighthearted account of Michael Jordan’s foray in baseball.
In a ritualistic manner, I planned and scheduled the viewings. I would save Jack Johnson’s for last as I placed more value on the historic relevance of its subject matter. I would force Croot to sit through that one with me. But until then, I would watch Michael Jordan’s disastrous attempt at baseball. To prolong the expectancy, I decided to ceremoniously clean. I dragged myself and a vacuum around the house, stripped the couch of cushions and cleaned the crevices of a month’s worth of popcorn and cat fur. I made the bed. I washed some dishes. I scrubbed my hair. And then, I opened a window and unlocked my door. Holding the remote with authority, I pressed play.
The 1994 Jordan baseball debacle, to my father, was nothing more than a publicity stunt. I remember hearing sportscasters lament about the idiocy of the White Sox for giving him a shot. I was in second grade, and a Bulls fan, since the Bulls were a winning team and red seemed an acceptable enough color. Michael’s retirement did little to my 8-year-old psyche. I simply switched teams. The Knicks, after all, had Ewing.
But now, at 26, I sit crying for the Michael Jordan of 1993-94. The documentary paints his baseball attempt as an epic battle. Athletic egotism had nothing to do with it. Listen, pleads the Sports Illustrated journalist who initially wrote that Michael was ruining baseball; this is a tale of a loving son. He’s sorry for writing that original story now. Spellbound, I sob, becoming too involved in the story of Michael as a grief-stricken child, who upon losing his father loses his will to play basketball. In his loss, he gains the desire to pick up a baseball bat. Baseball, we learn, was his father’s dream for him.
The documentary opens with a crime scene. Cameras flash signs of 74 West and the I-95 ramps in Lumberton, NC. That, I acknowledge, is where I am. Lumberton is just over an hour away in a part of North Carolina that I’ve never been to, but that seems so close now. The director’s voiceover tells the story of James Jordan’s murder. Travelling from Wilmington to Charlotte one night, Mr. Jordan allegedly pulled over to rest just south of Lumberton. According to highly debatable court testimony, Mr. Jordan was victim to a random theft. The perpetrators shot him in his sleep, dumped his body in a South Carolina swamp and took his $43,000 cherry-red Lexus. A fisherman found the body, though it was so badly decomposed that at the time of its discovery, no one knew it was him. He was hastily cremated before being identified — apparently standard practice for strange bodies found on the South Carolina side of Gum Swamp Creek. Two weeks later, a comparison between his dental records and impressions taken by the South Carolina authorities confirmed his identity.
With the documentary paused on the still frame of the funeral, I call Croot to relay my new knowledge.
“Oh?” he replies, distracted, when I finish going through the facts. He is not nearly as excited as I want him to be. “Yeah,” he responds to my silence. “I think I remember that story now.”
“Oh.” I feel a little deflated. I feel as though I was maybe the only person who knew the whole story of Michael Jordan’s father. Or at least, the only person who earned a right to know. “Did you know it happened around here?”
He tells me he thinks he remembers hearing something about it and it occurs to me that he was holding onto highly sensitive information that should’ve been shared. I resist the urge to tell him so. I’m sitting upright, eyes still fastened to the television. On the screen, Michael Jordan wears Ray Bans.
“Okay, babe. I gotta get back to work. I’ll see-“
“Oh, and um, Croot.” I inhale and pause. “Mr. Jordan. His gravesite is like 40 minutes from here.” I’ve pressed play again. I watch Michael and the other pallbearers carry a casket out the church’s front door. I assume the casket contains his father’s ashes. If not, I assume the casket certainly houses his father’s spirit.
“I think we should go.”
We hang up after our “I love you’s” and “see you soon’s.” He assures me he’s game for the gravesite adventure and so I print directions from Wilmington to the burial site in Teachey. Just the idea of visiting the grave is delightful to me. I come to think of the trip as a means to seek closure. In class the next day, I tell some of my more sports-savvy friends about Mr. Jordan’s location. I tell them I want to bring an Ouija board to get help with my March Madness bracket and ask his spirit about Oklahoma City’s chances for the season. Some laugh. A few look concerned.
For years during which my father was both alive and dead, I operated under the assumption that he would’ve preferred me to be a boy. He had three girls, but I was the daughter charged with playing sports and eating Triscuits with him during Sunday night football. In childhood, I pleased him by executing a white girl’s version of a layup and by resisting the temptation to pick flowers during recreational soccer games. By high school, I was a decent enough tennis player to make the varsity team as a freshman. My father was smitten. I was more interested in the post-practice activities; long hours spent at the track smoking cigarettes in my tennis skirt and drinking beers with the boys from detention. Oblivious and clearly deluded, my father invited scouts from D-1 schools to see me play. Two weeks to season’s end, I stopped showing up at practice. Shortly after, I stopped going to school. By that time, my Dad and I were only talking through shouting. He was disappointed. He shouted words like “potential” and “promise” and “wasted talent.”
I spent most of my 15th year sleeping in a cocoon of clothes on my bed that I never bothered to put away. One rare day, when I was away from my nest, my father — drunk and annoyed by the mess — decided to rip apart the content of my dresser drawers. He tossed desk drawers too, broke perfume bottles. Tiny glass animal figurines — shattered. Old youth soccer trophies were snapped in two. I held the two pieces of a broken giraffe and stared at my bare wall. Mere days later, a fight between us grew cold and loud. Something animal growled inside me and I lunged toward him, arms flailing. His fist stopped me. I felt the slow lumps of his four knuckles against my right temple. We were both stunned submissive.
Ultimately, my parents did what you would do to a bad puppy — at 16, they sent me away to obedience school. Time apart mended wounds, but we were strangers when we talked. For the six-month period of peace before the brain-tumor-removal-gone-wrong, we talked on the phone about Tiger Woods and Sammy Sosa. We chatted lightly about cross-country season, our genetic predisposition to weak ankles. At the end of seven minutes or so, the line would grow quiet. I would wrap the phone cord around my finger over and over until he would cough vaguely and with relief, hand the phone to my mother.
After the surgery, as he lay dying for a month in a hospital bed, we talked about my upcoming basketball season. He never let the phone go during those conversations and I didn’t mind. I’d wrap the cord around my arms and listen to him breathing into the receiver. The morphine drip worked on him, as it does many tough men, and he was loose enough to speak his love and say his goodbyes. I responded appropriately, but couldn’t bring myself to believe in his love or his death. In my first basketball game immediately after he passed, I fouled out hard within the first seven minutes.
Croot and I set a date. We didn’t have a date for our wedding, but we set a date to visit Mr. Jordan’s grave. We scheduled our trip for a Saturday morning in December, bright and early, before Croot’s work. We would visit. With every day I crossed off the calendar, Croot tried to understand. He asked the question I dreaded: why? He asked it over and over.
“It’s not like he’s not really famous or anything.”
I told him I just needed to. “To get a feeling,” I’d say. Really, I had adopted Mr. Jordan as my surrogate, southern father.
I read more about Mr. Jordan’s murder. I read about conspiracy theories, mishandling of evidence, the blame the media put on Michael’s gambling. It was all old news. One of his alleged killers sought an appeal and thought he would walk out a free man. He claims only to have been a part of the robbery, not the killing. He’s still in jail. I made a mental note to ask Mr. Jordan about his attackers when we go.
Mr. Jordan’s grave is at Rockfish African Methodist Episcopal Church cemetery in Teachey, North Carolina. We venture inland, down route 40 West. Leaving Wilmington, we pass route 74, the highway Mr. Jordan was driving on when he was shot. I begin to ask Croot if we would have a better chance at finding his spirit if we go to the crime scene instead, but stop myself. I have directions to the grave and feel uneasy enough already venturing out of Wilmington — into what I can only assume is deliverance country — with New Jersey plates. We don’t need to risk getting lost.
Croot drives, talking at length about the coastal resort he works at. They have two parrots there, Gabby and Abby. The birds love him. He tells me about guests and his boss and how busy they are for the slow season. I fixate on the birds and the fact that they’re male parrots with female names. Gabby is slightly neurotic and has plucked out most of his colorful feathers leaving tufts of gray regrowth in their place. I tell him I think the bird is going through a gender identity crisis. I threaten to set them free. Croot sighs.
We travel in neutral silence then for a long time. The air is 40, but the sun is hot. Croot keeps opening and closing the window. We pass some road kill — a gray mangled, decapitated mess. I strain for the opportunity to stare at the mounds of pink insides spilling out of what was his neck. His blood is water splashed from a fountain, shiny and reflective on the hot pavement.
“I think that was a coyote.” Croot says.
“Hm…” I say
He rolls the window down, lets the air out.
We exit into the town of Wallace. It’s a rundown, nothing town with a landscape similar to any mid-American place. We pass a gas station, a five and dime, rows of rainbow-colored trailer homes, the dump. Just out of town, we drive past abandoned farm homes with crumbling foundations. Something in me has always loved the bones of houses. I look at them like modern day ruins. My favorite of this lot is a dilapidated two-story beauty with land for miles and boots by the mailbox. The porch is collapsed and every window but one is burst into jagged glass fireworks. Grass grows through the wheelchair ramp leading to the front screen door. On the lawn, three decent looking vehicles are parked in varying positions. A clothesline with clean sheets hangs out back. It’s inhabited. A skeleton house with a family inside; a true oddity.
I navigate us down a road I suspect was just recently paved and into the empty parking lot of the church. In the documentary, the funeral procession poured from the church’s front doors with Michael Jordan at the lead. The video footage captured him in a suit and dark sunglasses. Mourners gathered at the bottom of the church’s stairs. Today, there is not a soul for miles. The announcement board has no words posted. Croot reads the lengthy name of the church aloud. I stare at my palms. He parks, I feel, too close to the road and I ask him to reverse to hide the car and the license plates against the church’s side wall.
The parking lot backs up to 12 old, old grave stones; the kind that look like Halloween decorations that could fall over with a cold breath. I walk over them to the newer section, glancing from memorial to memorial. In the graveyard, the sun seems to touch everything. We look pale in this exposing light. I don’t take my eyes off the ground. Most graves have bouquets of fake flowers placed at the head. At the tree line, green plastic stems poke out from a pile of real, brown leaves — a makeshift grave for polyester blossoms.
“Everyone here is named Wallace.” Croot announces.
He’s walking through the old section still. The air is thick with the smell of decomposition. I try to reason that it’s just trash — the humid smell of the south without orange blossoms — but I swear it’s coming from the ground. I stop, briefly, at what looks like a misplaced, unfinished piece of sidewalk. The name James Jr. Jefferson scrawled by hand — the words carved out by someone’s finger.
Since we planned our trip to the grave, I’ve been daydreaming about introducing my father’s floating head to Mr. Jordan’s floating head. I’ve been imagining how pleased my father will be to meet him. Being here now, it feels all wrong. I’m not a stupid person. I recognize the connection I’ve been artificially trying to forge. In the unsettling weeks of homesickness and despair, I looked for comfort in the arms of a connection I was never able to foster with my late father. I wonder though, in attempting to resurrect our connections to the dead, are we — the living — merely distracting ourselves from the suffering we feel at the pit of our own mortality?
I think of a dear friend who at 18, suffered from kidney failure, faced death and by the grace of God received a transplant. When he told me about it, I asked if it still affected his life now, nearly seven years later. I was wondering about his general health, the technicalities of the procedure, and the lifespan of an alien organ. Instead he told me about the night terrors he has — of waking up in from a deep sleep to the sound of his own screams.
“From the memory of pain?” I asked
“No, not at all.” He explained, “From being so close to dying.”
His answer stunned me. He lived on the edge, in a limbo between life and death, in constant physical pain. And yet what rattles his subconscious still, nearly 10 years later, is the memory of his proximity to death. I think of my father’s labored breathing — the hollow rise and fall of his collapsing chest after we pulled the plug. It went on for an hour.
Could he see the other side? I asked. No. He said in the moments he thought he was slipping away, he saw nothing. I wonder about the fairytales I’ve told myself — heaven, God, floating spirit-heads, life after death. I’ve honored my father by trying to please a spirit that may or may not be there. Michael Jordan played baseball. I watch documentaries. Someone cared enough about James Jr. Jefferson to stick their finger in wet cement and mark his grave. And for what?
My memory of my father was nothing more than a myth. I wove imaginings of happy times spent together, made calculated lists of his dreams and goals for me from thin strands of idealized memories. And when, nine years later, I sought to make yet another flimsy connection, reaching out to a headstone and gravesite of a sports legend’s relative — thinking in a stream: sports, story, myth, father, expectations, grief — and was left dissatisfied with the outcome, there was no denying that this grief was not the fabricated kind I’d been using to compensate all these years, but the grief for a man I could no longer construct, whose figures and likes and memories were so few that there was no longer any new stories to tell. I was grieving now, not for the death of the father I knew, but for a father I imagined and never even had. The real man rests in a grave I haven’t visited in nine years.
I watch Croot’s thin legs maneuver around the graves. He takes delicate steps, careful not to disturb anything. He looks back at me with the everything sun shining over his head and smiles. I tell him I’ve found Mr. Jordan’s grave, though it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
“Well this is it.”
We stare down. It’s a concrete twin bed cut in half and buried shallowly. Mr. Jordan’s fake carnations are a faded, Technicolor red. For many moments we don’t say anything. I fold my hands together in front of my stomach because I don’t know what else to do with them and they glue themselves to each other. I can see myself in the reflection of his mirrored grave cover. I look at the grave, then at myself, then around the yard, and back again at my own sunlit reflection mangled in the fiberglass. My head and neck float around the perimeter of the body length monument as I shuffle around his resting place, taking desperate inventory. Beside my reflection, I can see shadows of twisted, leafless trees far above me. I stop and settle at a spot directly above his nameplate. It is a concrete square, in light gray, and rests on top of where his shins would be, if there was a body down there. James R. Jordan, it reads. And just underneath: 1936-1993.
“Strange.” It’s the first words either of us has spoken since we found him. I untangle my palms from one another and point down at exposed handles on the left side of the grave cover. “Those are supposed to be buried, right?” I’m barely audible. Croot crosses the grave. “Ground must’ve settled.” He whispers too loud in my direction. Crouching down, I brush some pine needles and a prickly burr away. The reflective plastic isn’t as cold as I expected it to be, just slightly warmed, slightly unsettling and so I stand. With the ground so soft, I think I can feel myself sinking.
“Okay” I announce, breathless.
“Okay.” Croot agrees. He snaps a few pictures as I charge towards the car. I call orders for him to get a picture of the concrete slab with the handwritten name. I don’t know why exactly, the words just come out of my mouth. When Croot settles into the driver’s seat he looks over at me. He looks as though he can’t contain himself, as though a thought has just occurred to him that must be let out.
“I wonder when the last time Michael Jordan was here,” he bursts like a star struck 10 year old. I shake my head and shape my lips into something of a smile. I love him. I can’t handle my own brooding at that moment. I will myself to lighten up, but pulling out of the parking lot I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve been disrespectful somehow. Mr. Jordan, after all, is not my father.
Miles from the graveyard, I see my inhabited skeleton house again.
“Slow down,” I tell Croot who slows just enough to view the home in a single mind’s frame. I study its rotting wood, crooked shutters. I’m sure it was once a color, but now it is just the color of dust. On the second story, the only intact window is now fully raised, open wide. There’s a curtain hanging in that window space, ivory with age, but wholly intact; it is a beautiful antique lace. It flaps in and out, the wind tossing it across the windowpane until, for a single moment, it stays billowing inward. A pocket of air pushes in toward the middle of the room. The fabric on either side of the window adheres to the sill, capturing a semi-circle of outside air. The trapped wind reminds me of my father’s final inhalation; the swollen breath inside his risen chest. I feel Croot looking at me and turn to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. When I look back at the house, the curtain snaps back tight against the window frame.
Alessandra Nolan earned her MFA at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She is now freezing in Ithaca, New York, where she works as an assistant editor at Momentum Media Sports Publishing. She has received honors from Gulf Coast and recently completed artist residencies at Norton Island and Wildacres. Although she should be spending her time finishing her book (a memoir about her experience in a controversial therapeutic boarding school), she requests that anyone who’d like to discuss sports documentaries ad nauseam, please contact her.