Black Maps (7 page)

In bed, he started to touch me. I wanted to say no, but I couldn't. I had already said yes. Such a simple word, almost a hiss. I wanted to say I was too tired, too…something, but I didn't dare, not now. I let him take my panties off, and I let him enter me bare, without a rubber, for the first time.

“I love you,” he was saying, as he rocked on top of me. I thought about all those nights Roy and I tried to make a child, all those nights he came in me again and again. And I thought of the bread rising in the kitchen, rising over the lip of the crockery bowl, huge, and then Lenny kissed me and I tasted smoke and beer in his mustache and I thought
The smell of coffee and sunlight. The quiet music of the sparrows. Torremolinos
.

And suddenly I felt bloated, not with child, but with
clay
, and I saw myself lying there, on the banks of the beautiful Ohio, my mouth and hands smeared with clay. I shut my eyes on that vision, and Lenny arched over me, holding himself at arms' length above me, and moved in me faster and faster until finally he came. “Oh,” he said then, and it could have been a word in a foreign language: I didn't know what it meant, whether happiness or discovery or pain or surprise. And then he lowered his weight down on me.

I am a baseball player. I come here from the Dominican Republic the home of Juan Marichal because baseball can't make you the same much of money in the Dominican League. That is why I live in the U S of A and play baseball for the Arkansas Travelers which are a team in the Texas League but live in Arkansas. The Arkansas Travelers are a team which is called a Double A team, meaning not so good as Triple A or Major Leagues—what everybody call The Bigs. Everybody here want to make it to The Bigs. There is no Bigs in the Dominican Republic and that is why I am living here so miserable and now that my family leave me I am more miserable ever than before. The only time I smile is after when I win a big game or if I forget for some minute and think my little Angelita is waiting at home for me to kiss her for goodnight. But tonight I am more miserable than I think a dead man because Coach he suspend me off the team and all because they leave me.

I love baseball. I love to pitch the ball. When I am the pitcher everybody depend of me, if I just stand there and hold the ball nobody do nothing. When I throw the ball everything happen. It is a good feeling but not the same as love which is something I have too much of I think. My heart it feel like it is in shreds each time when I think about Angelita and her black braids. And Pilar. I can not even say her name now without wanting to cry. Pilar is so beautiful, sometimes when I was in her I could not breathe right. When I think about her gone and Angelita with her I want to be on the mound throwing hard like Juan Marichal who come from Santo Domingo the same like me. I am a starter so I pitch the ball each four days, no more, and the rest of the time it go by so slow. I want I could pitch the ball each night if I will not tear my shoulder which is what I do at St. Peterburg my year of being a rookie when I try to show off I have stuff. Now my shoulder it hurt when I think about Pilar and Angelita so I try not to think about them when I am pitching the ball. But most of the time it is of no use because I think about them anyway. That is why I get in such big trouble tonight, I think of them when I should be thinking curve ball or slider, down or up.

The nights they are the most bad. I have dreams. Jackie say I grind my teeth when my dreams get so bad and when I wake up I am all wet with sweating and scared. Jackie try to make me all right then but it never work. She hug me and kiss me and say it only is a dream. Then I tell her what I dream and she say what it mean like a
curandera
. Some times I dream Pilar is opening her legs for Antonio who was sent back to Santo Domingo for weak field and no hit. Other times I dream I am pitching the ball when Angelita run out on the field with her arms reaching out for me but I don't see her before it is too late and I have already throw the ball and it hit her in the face and make her be dead. To me the dreams mean I love Pilar and Angelita so much my heart want to die. Twice I almost buy a gun and shoot my head. But Jackie say a gun is dumb, she say my dreams mean I should get married again and show Pilar some thing or two. She tell me to stop being a Mr. Sadface. That's what she call me when she try to make me smile. I know she want to marry with me by these signs but I don't want to marry with her, I want her to go away and leave me to be alone.

Pilar take Angelita back to the Dominican Republic because she don't care about The Bigs. She don't care about Juan Marichal or the Hall of Fame or driving a car with electric windows. She miss her mama and papa and the pacaya grove in her yard in Santo Domingo. When she look at the photographs of home that was when she would start crying and then a minute later yell at me for taking her to the U S of A. She don't understand English so good and no one except Antonio who play second base like a hole in his glove also speak Spanish. And she don't understand baseball too. To her it make no sense, to her it is crazy to pitch a ball that no one can hit it. She say to watch a game if no one hit the ball is no fun so I should make the batter to hit some home runs. She say Why you keep everybody from having fun, you think the fans pay so much of money to see pop-ups. She is a woman and she think like a woman. Still I did not suspect her to leave me. The trouble I am in tonight is all because she leave me. I try to tell Coach so he understand but still he suspend me off the team maybe for good. He have a wife who never leave and no kids.

The day Pilar go I pitch six and two-third no-score innings against the Shreveport Captains which are a team too in the Texas League, East Division. Then my arm it get sore and Coach say to get a shower and ice my shoulder up. I think now my shoulder ache because Pilar and Angelita are going that same minute. It was a sign but I don't see it then because I am wondering if Parisi will lose my win for me like usual, the rag arm. But this time he is lucky and I don't lose my win but because I am worrying so hard I miss the sign. God give all of us signs like a manager so we know what He want us to do. But now I don't know what to do. I don't see any signs. I think maybe God is mad with me and I am scared.

The night Pilar and Angelita leave I am halfway to almost home when all of a sudden I know what my sore arm mean and I drive fast with my foot down on the floor and run through red lights one after each other and squeal into the parking lot like a madman. I go up the curb and almost into the swimming pool next by the apartment manager's office I am so much scared they have left me. And when I open the door Pilar and Angelita are gone and I can not find them everywhere. I look in the kitchen and living room and both bedrooms even behind the shower curtain but they are so gone I can feel how they are not there. I sit down on the bathroom floor and look at the shower curtain which Pilar buy when Angelita pull the other one down. She buy it because there is parrots on it like in our country and palm trees. I am so much sad I want to hold this curtain against me tight.

I did not think she would leave, I think only she talk about it. But now I see she mean what she say. After when I get up from the bathroom floor I go back in the kitchen and find what I did not see at first, a note sticked on the refrigerator door with a yellow smiling face magnet. It say in Spanish If you don't make The Bigs come to home and be a family again. I sit down then and put my big dumb head in my hands and cry. Mr. Sadface.

I don't know why I stayed in Little Rock. I should have went to Santo Domingo that same minute. Maybe there is something wrong with inside of me that make me stay. Maybe I don't love Pilar and Angelita like I think so. Maybe I want to hurt them like they do me. Or maybe I don't want to be like Antonio and go back to home the same I left, a worthless nothing. When I go back I want to be like Juan Marichal who is a Hall of Fame pitcher with more strikeouts than dogs in Santo Domingo. I want World Series rings on all my fingers and a car so big it have a TV in it and a bar. But I want more my Pilar and Angelita I think. Why I did not go back I am not sure but maybe I should have went before all this happen, before I become this disgrace to my country and my family. Before I have to go back with no choice of my own.

Jackie she think I stay because of her but that is not right. Jackie mean almost nothing to me. She was Willie Williams' girl last year and after he dump her still she come around and ask to go for a ride in his car which he call his Love Chariot. But he always say No and Get lost and one night I am so lonely I get mad and say Manny you don't have to take this shit off of Pilar that bitch you can have some fun too. So when Jackie come around at The Press Box to drink beers and shoot pool after we lose the doubleheader to Tulsa I say Willie that's no way to hurt a lady and make him say he is sorry so I don't hit him. After that she have her hands all over me. Now she stay here and sleep on Pilar's side of the bed but I want her to go because she is not Pilar. She wear a blonde wig and laugh like she is underneath angry. But she love me and go crazy with crying when I say some things like I don't want you to hang your wig on the doorknob. I can't say anything mad or she will cry and want to be dead so how can I tell her to get lost. She laugh a lot but she have a scar on both wrists from when Willie first tell her to go away. The scars look like X's cut so careful and neat, I can see her trying to make them pretty, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth while she do it, concentrating. I am scared she will kill herself dead so I make sex with her but I wish she would go away. She scare me with her crazy too much of love, like I scare myself.

Now I don't know what to do. Each day that pass I wait for a sign. But nothing happen. I want one minute to go home, I want that Pilar will lay on top of me and kiss me so I am lost in the dark cave of her so beautiful black hair. And I want to kiss Angelita for goodnight on her little nose and say to her like before the joke about the bed bugs biting. But another minute I want hard to be a baseball pitcher in The Bigs and hear everybody even the white people cheering my name. I want everybody to know I make the money they don't. I want a house with chandeliers and shag carpet everywhere and a swimming pool in the backyard with color lights under the water. I want all these things but I don't want Jackie with her blonde wig and eye makeup and crying. But more than this I don't want her to bleed to death because I leave her like she always threaten without saying. So I want to go and I want to stay. And that make me not want anything anymore.

That is why I don't finish the game tonight. I am pitching the ball so good they swing and grunt at my curve ball which break in the dirt and my slider low and away. It is already inning eight and still I have no hits on me. Only six more outs to a no-hitter which would make Whitey Herzog to see I am ready for The Bigs. My palm it is sweating so I turn to pick up the bag of resin and then I see on the scoreboard all the zeros and somehow it take the breath out of me it all look so perfect. I am so proud because I do it, I make all the zeros. And then I think about Pilar leaving and Jackie's scars and my dream with Angelita running on the field and my pitch hitting her dead. Why I think these things then I do not know but I think them and it make my heart to beat so hard.

When I turn back to the plate my legs they are shaking like in my first game for los Azucareros del Este when Pilar was in the stands to cheer for me and I imagine she is out there now watching me and knowing if I do good I will make The Bigs and marry with Jackie because I am scared to find her in my bathtub, the water turning red. So I look down at Gene my catcher and nod and then I throw the ball and it sail over everybody's head and up the screen, a wild pitch. Gene he signal time and run out to the mound and say Jesus Christ Manny I give you the sign for change-up not fastball what are you thinking of. I can not remember what I say but Gene he go back to behind the plate and thump his mitt and give me another sign. I nod and throw the ball and it hit the batter in the shoulder and he spin around like he want to fight but I stand there only and look at him. Then he go down to first holding his shoulder and swearing at me and Gene he say Don't worry about it kid. You'll get ‘em, he say. Just take it easy.

All this time I am thinking If I throw a no-hitter I will never see my Pilar and Angelita again. Not forever. So when Gene throw the ball back to me I am not watching close and it hit the top of my glove and don't go in. I look around quick and it isn't there. Gene he jump up then and yell Second! Second! but by the time when I find the ball and turn around to throw it to Peachy, already the runner he is standing up and brushing the dirt off his uniform. I hear Coach swear loud but somehow I don't care like I should.

Settle down, Gene say then and give me a sign. I start to wind up but then I forget what pitch he ask for and I stop, a balk. The runner he walk down to third laughing. I don't look at him. Gene come out to the mound then. Calm down for Chrissakes, Gene say. If they get a hit they get a hit the main thing is win. So just rare back and hump that ball in there. Okay I say and he go back. Then he give me a sign maybe for fastball or could be slider. But I just stand there and hold the ball. He give me another sign I think for curve but I just stand there. Then Gene come out to the mound again and Coach too this time and Coach he say What's the problem Manny your arm getting sore again. I shake my head no. Then what gives, he say. What the fuck is going on. I almost can not talk the words are so far down inside of me but somehow I say Nothing but I say it in Spanish—
Nada
. I never talk on the team in Spanish because in The Bigs they want that you always talk American. But I say
Nada
. Then he look at me foreign and ask You all right. I say Fine in American and he say Good let's set ‘em down, then he trot back to the dugout and Gene go behind the plate and give me one more time again the sign and this time too I do nothing. If I do nothing nothing happen because I am the pitcher, I am the one who hold the ball. I want then everything to stop, I want time to stop, I want Jackie to stop, I want being alone and sad to stop, so I hold the ball for one minute. For that one minute the world stand still, nothing change, and I can breathe.