Characterization Jess

Ex­tract from Bend It Like Be­ck­ham by Na­rin­der Dhami (2002)



It’ll be your turn soon, Jes­min­der,’ one of them said glee­ful­ly. ‘Do you want a clean-​shaven boy like your sis­ter, or a pro­per Sikh with full beard and tur­ban?’

I didn’t want to ans­wer that. Not that I’d even thought about it. I don’t want to get mar­ri­ed, I said si­lent­ly. Not until I’ve done so­me­thing with my life, an­y­way. I didn’t want what Pinky wan­ted. I was loo­king for so­me­thing dif­fe­rent, alt­hough I didn’t know what. And an­y­way, there was more to life than get­ting mar­ri­ed.

Like foot­ball, for in­s­tance.

[…]

I stood at the side of the pitch, try­ing to take it all in. Houn­slow Har­ri­ers had a real ground. A pro­per pitch with lights and cor­ner flags and changing-​rooms and stands for the crowd. In­s­tead of Taz and Sonny and Gary and the others ta­king the mick and foo­ling about, there were women doing some se­rious trai­ning on the pitch in front of me. They were all dif­fe­rent. Some of them were slim and lean, like Jules, and some of them were more powerfully-​built, like ath­le­tes. There were a couple of black girls, but no In­di­ans. No sur­pri­se there, then.

My heart thum­ped with ex­ci­te­ment. Those were the girls I’d be play­ing with if I got into the side, I told mys­elf. No, when I got into the side. I wasn’t going to throw this chan­ce away. But I had to meet the coach first. That was why I was here.

Jules had told me that the coach was cal­led Joe. I wat­ched him run­ning up and down the pitch, yel­ling at the play­ers. Some of them were prac­ti­sing ball con­trol, and some of them were ban­ging the ball into the net, one after the other. I won­de­red how Joe felt, being the only guy out there. He didn’t seem to mind, though. He see­med pret­ty much at home … And kind of good-​looking – if you’re in­te­res­ted in that sort of thing.“

[…]

My heart sank. I sta­red at the shorts. They loo­ked tiny – my scar would be to­tal­ly vi­si­ble. I couldn’t be­lie­ve he was ma­king me do this. I sig­hed and hea­ded to­wards the changing-​rooms.

I ne­ar­ly died when I wal­ked in­si­de. The changing-​room was pa­cked – and most of the girls had half their clo­thes off. One was ac­tu­al­ly wal­king round in her bra and kni­ckers, wit­hout a care in the world. I gul­ped, clut­ching my kit. I wasn’t used to un­dres­sing in pu­blic. It just wasn’t so­me­thing we did in my fa­mi­ly.“

At my scar didn’t help. But I was just going to have to get on with it. This was a whole new world I was jum­ping into.

‘Hey, Jess.’ Jules cal­led to me from across the room. ‘Get chan­ged over here with me.’

I hur­ried over gra­te­ful­ly. She loo­ked re­al­ly plea­sed to see me, which was re­as­su­ring. ‘You’ve met our cap­tain, Mel, haven’t you?’ she went on.

A pret­ty black girl was get­ting chan­ged next to Jules. ‘Yeah,’ I smiled. ‘Hi.