The Shoes She Served In

That made her laugh, a little wet laugh. She put her feet up.

I laced the left shoe at the stop sign and at the next light, the way I used to lace her sneakers when she was five, two loops and a double knot.

We pulled into the high school lot at 7:24.

It was already full of minivans and pickups with team stickers on the back windows, and girls in sweats walking in with their mothers carrying bags and coolers and folding chairs.

The sun was well up over the fields by then. It was going to be one of those bright, raw March days where the wind comes across the fields with nothing to stop it.

We went in through the side doors. The gym smelled like floor wax and popcorn from the concession stand they were already getting going.

There were four courts set up with the nets up, and girls warming up on every one.

The light was coming in through those high windows they put in every school gym, long bars of morning sun across the floor.

I will remember that light for the rest of my life.

Our team was on the far court. June checked in at the table with three minutes to spare.

Then we went to the bottom row of the bleachers by our court, and she sat down, and I knelt on the gym floor in front of her.

I put the right shoe on her foot and laced it.

Then I tightened the left one, which I had done in a hurry at the light, and pulled the laces snug and tied them again.

Her hands were still shaking a little. She had them flat on the bleacher on either side of her, like she was holding on.

The tags on her new knee pads stuck out sideways like little flags.

“Double knot,” she said.

“Double knot,” I said. “Always.”

That was all we said. She looked out at the court, where the other girls were passing in pairs, and I sat back on my heels on that gym floor and looked at my daughter in her navy jersey with the number four on it and thought, there she is.

Coach Patrice came over a minute later. She is forty-four, a phys ed teacher in one of the towns north of us, and she has coached girls’ volleyball for twenty years. She does not waste words.

She looked at the shoe box on the bleacher and the store bag and the tags on the knee pads. She looked at me on my knees. She looked at June’s face.

Then she reached in her jacket pocket and handed me a little pair of scissors, the folding kind, and squeezed June’s shoulder, and said, “Ten minutes, Krumm. Get loose.” And she walked back to the court.

I cut the tags off the knee pads. June stood up and bounced on the new shoes and the gym floor squeaked, and she ran out to join her team.

I sat down on the bottom bleacher next to the empty shoe box.