1 When I was six years old I loved basketball and hated church. I dreamed in Spalding orange. Traffic cones and life vests, reflective spray paint and plastic pieces of fruit. I had an orange bike, orange bunk bed, orange crayons worn to their nubs from the orange drawings made during Mass. When I asked my mother what to pray for while others went for Communion, she said to talk to grandpa (who died before I knew him). Tell him what your life is like, she said. Tell him about your new bike. Tell him about your friends. Ask him to watch over you. I knelt in church and remembered the one memory I had. Repeated it until it was fake: My grandfather in a chair. A Frisbee. He is too sick to play; I go outside and throw the Frisbee in the air to myself. Orange on blue. Like a basketball. My goldfish. My bunkbed and bike. What was his favorite color? It felt like talking to a stranger, and so I asked God to help me play basketball for the Chicago Bulls. I prayed to be like Michael Jordan. I want to be like Mike, I strained, and clenched my hands together against the pew in front.
