Practice (Pt. 2)
I felt offensive, like a puke stain or something. The smell was crisp and rubbery, new tennis ball mixed with leather. White kids and their parents ambled about, trying on mitts or taking dry swings with jet black hockey sticks. Eager salesmen buttered them up, commenting on the kids’ height or features and inquiring about their team’s prospects for the upcoming season. I was afraid to touch anything and unsure of where to begin, so I stood just inside the doorway and breathed in shallow spurts.
“Can I help you?” one of the sales clerks said finally. His face performed a robotic shift into a smile, a traffic light turning green. He was college age with broad shoulders and a crew cut. His nose sat a little off-kilter, like it had been broken in the past.
“I-I need some baseball stuff.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Bat…? Gloves…?”
I took a glance around the cavernous space. I felt like I had intruded on a church service.
“All of it, I guess.” I said. Then I looked him in the eye and said with a little more conviction. “Yeah, all of it, please.”
“You here by yourself?” He asked. “Your folks joining?”
“Just me,” I said. “I can pay, it’s okay.”
He stared for a minute, sizing me up. The urge to run jittered through my stomach and I rubbed my sweaty fingers together. We stood in silence for a moment, that ‘I get knocked down’ song played lightly over the PA. Then he shrugged and said, “Cool. Well, let’s get you set up boss,” and motioned for me to follow him. I did and my breath came easier.
He asked me what position I played and I said I was an outfielder. I tried on about seven gloves and settled on a jet black Rawlings with red letters. The smell of the fresh leather was intoxicating and I couldn’t resist holding it up to my nose and inhaling when he had his back turned. I selected a yellow and black Louisville slugger with a hefty barrel. The wrap on the handle felt how I imagined the interior of a Porsche would. A pair of sleek cleats and some high socks like Preston’s, with the same red stripes up the sides, rounded out the ensemble.
“You’ll want to protect the crown jewels too,” the clerk said, and at my blank look gestured to the protective cup display. Sheepish, I selected one and followed him to the register. He scanned the items and the little beeps sounded like alarm bells. I produced the wad of small bills from both pockets, piling up the fives and tens like two abandoned birds’ nests on the counter. The clerk sighed but said nothing and began to count them up. My heart pounded as I watched the stacks shrink, snow melting at the start of spring.
“Just made it, boss.” He smiled, handing me back three crinkled dollar bills. He shut the cash drawer with a clink. I imagined a prison door slamming shut, then shoved that thought from my mind.
“Thanks,” I mumbled as I gathered my things and began to head for the exit.
“Hang on,” he said, stepping out from behind the counter. “Let’s see your stance!” He gave me a smile, his crooked nose drifting to the right. A mirror ran the length of the front wall and he motioned to it. I followed him over to it and took the bat in my hands, flicked it back and forth with my left hand as I zeroed in on the ghost pitcher somewhere behind the mirror. I cocked it back, lifted my hands alongside my ear and bobbed up and down slightly, ready. Breathing in, I shifted my weight to my back hip, locked and loaded.
“I like it!” The clerk said, nodding and grinning. “Fierce. Take a swing, let's see your cut.”
Without looking away from the mirror, I envisioned a fat pitch sailing down the middle, pictured the Twizzler red seams dancing through the humid air. Leading with my front hip, I took a nice big hack, taking care to keep it level through the zone, that moment all the great newspaper photos capture. The finish made me stumble a little, but I could feel the ball rocket over the wall, could see the outfielders taking a few mechanical steps back out of politeness to their pitcher, but knowing they had no shot to make the catch. The boys’ chants and the stamp of feet on the metal bleachers rang through my mind.
“I think you’re gonna have a great season, boss.” The clerk said.
I stared back into the mirror, resetting my stance. I thought, Yeah…yeah, I am gonna have a good season. They won’t know what hit them.
***
I got pretty good at it. All of it. Swinging the bat, catching flies, shepherding Solange and keeping her quiet with snack stand goodies. Making practice was easy enough - it was a stone’s throw from my window. The games were tougher: an undercover bus ride to Macy or another grade school. I made two more, and by the second one I’d earned a spot in the heart of the order, hitting right behind Preston. I stroked three into the gap that second game; one of them cleared the bases and I took home on a wild throw that ricocheted through the bleachers.
“The team’s coming over to my place to go for a swim and barbecue - wanna join? You can bring your little sister.” Mont said as we packed our gear. I wanted nothing more, but Solange kicked at my shoes and complained that she was tired and it was forty five minutes back to the house.
“Sorry, I gotta get home.” I said.
I watched the kids pile into Mont’s SUV while we stood at the bus stop, watched their dark forms bounce and play like popcorn against the tinted glass before they drove off.
Every evening when Mama returned my heart would pound as I waited for Solange to spill the beans, or for Mama to decide to tally up the contents of the Folgers can. If we were close a couple weeks ago…I didn’t like to think about it. The circles below her eyes were more defined, like someone had chiseled and painted, made them permanent.
“It’s no picnic out there,” she’d say as she plopped down into the one easy chair we owned. Solange would curl up on her lap. “Did you have a good day today?”
“Oh, yes.” Solange would say back. I would smile at her and think about the sleek Louisville slugger beneath my bed, now tarnished with impact scars along its thick barrel, the glove that had softened and shaped itself to my hand.
Nearly every night I dreamed that Mama had come to one of our games. She’d sit smiling alongside the other moms, no shadows under her eyes. She’d cheer when I dug my spikes into the gravely dirt off home plate. Then, after the game, she’d say, “Let’s go to the lake. It’s time for our vacation”, and my heart would sink and I’d wake up in a sweaty knot of sheets, blinking the sand from my eyes under the Halloween-orange street lights beyond my window.
One day, I set Solange up with a movie, grabbed my gear and trotted across the street to the park for practice. Mont shagged balls to the outfield, but I noticed the group was much smaller. At least half the guys were missing, maybe more.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Mont as I plunked down my bat alongside the equipment pile and began to lace up the spikes. He smiled and his bug eyes quivered against his lenses like he was about to cry.
“Ah…well, a recruiter from Temple, that’s a select team that just started up in the county, came to the school and did a presentation. Lots of the parents want their boys to get a chance to be seen so they can get on a good high school team. This new select league plays about eighty games, they’ll travel all around the state. Bunch of them decided to join up.”
“What kind of team are we?” I asked.
“Parochial. Catholic school team. We’re more for ‘fun’, I guess.” He shrugged and struck another ball into the air. I watched it arc out to left field where a kid named Craig made a snow-cone catch near the foul line. “Nice play, Craig!” Mont shouted. He turned back to me. “We can still have fun, okay? I’ll try and rally some more kids from the school. Plus a lot of other teams got looted too, not just us.”
I joined the others in the outfield, but I wanted to puke. Counting me, there were five guys there that day. Other than me, they were the weakest on the team, the guys that hit at the bottom of the order and who made you wince when a grounder came their way. They laughed a lot and talked about video games on the bench instead of watching the action. I liked being around them, but they played ‘for fun’.
I didn’t, I guess.
Next practice it was only four of us. “Craig quit,” one of the guys told me. “He got cast in the school play.”
“Oh,” I said. I chased after a hard grounder and flipped to first where it was flubbed and rolled past the dugout bench. Afterward, Mont looked forlorn and informed us that we’d need to take a break from games until we and the other schools could field full teams. “I’m undertaking a full-court press on this!” He said, pumping a fist. The guys chuckled but I just stood there tapping my slugger against the tips of my cleats. Mont didn’t believe himself.
I knew this for sure two days later when he didn’t show. Only me and a kid named Evan arrived. His mom sat in an idling Subaru along the curb, waiting to see if the others would arrive. Evan smiled, revealing braces that sparkled in the hazy afternoon sunlight. “Guess it’s just you and me, Sam. Toss me some flies?”
We lobbed the ball back and forth, practiced shielding our eyes from the sun with the webbing of the glove and shouting, “I got it!” We did this for about fifteen minutes, and when no one else arrived, Evan’s mom began to honk and he said, “Well - good run, huh?” and jogged to the car, his red curls bouncing beneath his cap. I popped the ball into my mitt and watched them disappear around the corner. I heard the engine whine for a moment longer, then that faded too.
As I trudged back to the house, I paused at the fire hydrant. I wanted to twist the cover off, to unleash the torrent that had summoned baseball to this shitty park and heralded summer’s arrival. Sturdy, like some kind of wizard, conjuring it all up out of nothing but a sweltering afternoon. I didn’t know which apartment was his, but I was tempted to pound on every door in every building on the block, to find him and beg him to work his magic again. Salt stung my lips and I realized I’d been leaking tears the whole way. I swiped my wrist across my cheeks and spat onto the sidewalk.
***
I returned to the field the next day. My hands shook and my stomach yearned to expel its breakfast pop tarts. I already knew what awaited, but - maybe it was the strings of fate or something - I needed to sit there and watch the empty field, note of the absence of Mont and his bucket of balls and his nervous eyes, Preston with his yellow bat and ripply forearms, needed to listen to the hum of insects and distant shouts instead of the potty mouthed ribbing of my teammates.
I rose from the gnarled wooden bench and threw popups to myself, hurled the ball a ways in front and charged in to make a basket catch. My blood boiled - what was a ‘select’ team? Who were these abductors who’d danced off with the kids, with Mont, with the stolen afternoon bus rides? I wished they’d been more thorough and lifted my bat and glove too.
An hour and a half - that was the length of our practice - I waited and tossed popups and took dry swings. It felt like a vigil. Then I returned to the house and slipped my gear beneath the bed, it’s normal hiding spot. I checked on Solange, occupied with a puzzle on the bedroom floor. Standing on a kitchen chair, I took down the Folgers can and popped off the flimsy plastic lid. A layer of fives and tens, but peeking through were the torn up scraps of newspaper and blue-lined notebook sheets. I pushed my hand through the froth and touched the pebbles and marbles at the bottom where the change had once hidden. I was crying without making noise, a light rain that would have barely tapped the windows.
Solange appeared beside me. She looked scared. She climbed up onto my lap and I held her and played with the beads in her hair. Then I set her down and retrieved the baseball gear from under the bed, set it on the table. I put a pizza in the oven and told Solange it was all okay. She inserted her tiny hand into the glove and struggled to lift her arm. We laughed together cause it looked ridiculous. She placed it on her head, a crown, and asserted that she was the queen. I agreed that, yes, she was.
Our bellies were full of pizza and I sat playing Don’t Break the Ice! with Solange at the kitchen table when Mama got home. Solange was laughing with the goofy hoots of a five year old as the little ice fisherman plummeted yet again into the arctic waters. I figured Mama probably heard it all the way down the hall and I pictured a little smile crossing her face, maybe feeling grateful for her kids. The feeling almost summoned the tears again.
There was a big smile on her face - it made her eyes look even more tired - when she entered and set her backpack on the floor. Solange ran to her and threw her arms around her knees and Mama wrapped the nappy little head in her arms. I recalled staring at the first baseball practice from afar, wondering from what sort of world it came.
Mama looked up at me, beaming and noticed the crowded kitchen table. She furrowed her brows. “What…?” she said. I didn’t respond. She picked up the bat, held it between her hands like a slugger. She even mean mugged an imaginary pitcher and Solange giggled. She set it down again and stared at the coffee can. The tears asserted themselves again. I scraped away the top layer of dough and revealed the lie beneath. For a moment she looked nauseous, then she scooped up the contents and let the marbles and stones fall like rain to the bottom where they made a metallic clink, every one false and accusing.
“Sam?”
I looked up at her. “The team, they were at the park, they stopped coming,” I managed.
She bit her lip. I could see the memories of cicada song and the gentle lake ripples under the moonlight running through her mind, dancing away. Her face had begun to reveal wrinkles and her tired skin glimmered under the kitchen light. I wanted to explain how it had felt to be on the team, to stroke a frozen rope into center field and bask in the cheers. I couldn’t put it into words.
She did it for me. “I bet you were good at it. Your dad was sporty”
I sniffed and stared at the dirty linoleum floor. My dad was also many other things. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think I was.”
“I love seeing things from the bus!” Solange piped up. Mama looked at her then back at me. I couldn’t meet her gaze.
“I’m exhausted,” she said - her voice was like long dead leaves - and picked up Solange. She didn’t look at me, but I felt a merciless spotlight raining down. I sat at the table and listened to her sing softly to Solange in our bedroom.
***
I didn’t expect to be spoken to again, and I certainly wouldn’t have held it against Mama. There was an uneasy silence the next morning as Solange and I sat eating cherry Pop Tarts at the table. A haze of half-formed dreams swirled around my head - I had lain and stared at the ceiling the whole night, no sleep. Mama busied herself prepping for work, her personal avalanche that never let up. I thought how it was bullshit that the law said I couldn’t work. I would have gladly signed up to scrub toilets, wax cars, or screw caps onto toothpaste tubes under ghostly industrial lights.
“Take good care of your sister, Sam.” Mama said - she told me this every morning - and wedged the Folgers can under her arm. The door clicked shut and Solange scurried over to latch the locks as she loved to do.
I made Solange my project for the day. Doing anything for myself seemed offensive. We put together puzzles, I read her books (and when we had gone through all her favorites I walked her the three blocks to the library to pick out more), and played Don’t Break the Ice! for hours. The sky clouded up as the afternoon wore on, and a ferocious thunderstorm arrived to rattle the windows and wash the room in harsh white light like an old movie. I hugged Solange and watched the rain lash the windows. It couldn’t flee the sky fast enough, like something awful had happened up there.
It cleared as quickly as it arrived and a soft, shy sun emerged to caress its subjects, to apologize for the rude interruption.
“Let’s go out and splash in the puddles,” I suggested.
“Hurray!” Squealed Solange.
The sidewalks in front of our house were basically rubble, and puddles riddled the walkways as far as we could see. I joined right in and soon my sneakers and socks were soaked with the ex-rain. The squelch felt good.
“You crazies!” A voice said and we turned to see Mama, smiling with the same soft light as the sun.
“You’re home!” Shouted Solange, sloshing over to her. “The storm - I thought it was gonna break the windows!”
It was far too early for Mama to return. This would be the dinner rush. A plastic bag dangled from her arm. The Folgers can was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s go over to the park.” She said, squeezing Solange’s chubby little cheeks. Solange nodded her head up and down vigorously. I stood there, hands in my pockets, feeling that to say something would be a bridge too far.
“Get your stuff, Sam.” Mama said.
“What?”
“Your baseball stuff.”
I winced at the words. Truth be told, I wanted to toss it down a storm drain.
“Meet us over there!” she said. She took Solange by the hand and began to cross the street.
I obeyed and walked to the park with an armload of stuff. Instinctively, I scanned the grass for Mont and the gang, but only there ghosts roamed through the grass which I could almost see getting longer after the downpour. Solange and Mama were splashing in the oceanic puddles on the baseball dirt. Mama was barefoot with her pants rolled up to her knees. She looked like what she must have when she was a young girl, the same girl who caught crawdads at the lake years ago. It’s weird to say your mom is beautiful, but that’s all I could think as I sloshed toward them.
“There you are!” she said. She tiptoed through the muck toward the bench and pulled a shoebox out of the bag, opened it. It was a mitt, light brown and stiff. Not a Rawlings. It was the kind you might find at K-Mart or something. She bent and squished it between her hands, loosening the imitation leather. “You have a ball, right?”
I nodded.
“Alright,” she slipped the glove onto her left hand and squelched through the mud again. “Fire it over here.”
I joined her on the diamond.
“Mama?” I said.
“Yes?”
I thought all the things I wanted to say. How sorry I was, how I hated the ‘select’ monsters who’d stolen it all, how somehow this would be different if that hadn’t happened. Did I deserve to be a son whose mom worked her bones into dust and her skin into early wrinkles? When I looked in the mirror, I knew I looked a lot like how I remember my dad. My eyes must have been speaking even though my tongue remained glued to the back of my teeth.
“Sam, toss me the ball.” she said.
I did and she caught it, a precarious snow cone atop the cheap mitt. She laughed and tossed it back. Her motion was all arm, no hips, but it made it back to me and I scooped it up into the webbing of the Rawlings.
She fired one high into the air. I tracked it, walking on twinkle toes through the mud and finding the grass. I put the squeeze on it and fired it back.
“Aren’t you supposed to say, ‘I got it’?” she asked.
I laughed. It was true. After all that practice, I forgot to say it.