Living Up the Street (6 page)

With a bullhorn the coach called for the girls to line up. Mothers bent to give hugs and whisper last-minute instructions to their daughters before they were pushed gently through the gate where the coach smiled, pinned numbers on the backs of their suits, and lined them up by height. When they were called out to walk around the pool, some of them looked scared as they searched for their mothers, who clung to the fence or took pictures; other girls looked down at their feet, with fingers in their mouths. They paraded around the pool until they had been sized up by the three women judges who scratched notes behind card tables. The girls were then asked to sit down on the lawn that outlined the pool as the boys were called through the bullhorn to make a line at the gate.

Jimmy and I ran to the gate. I reminded him what to do and, somewhat scared by it all, he nodded his head “yes” and tugged at his bathing suit. The coach called for the line to march in, and it moved slowly into the pool area with most of the boys looking down at the blue of the water, not at their mothers.

Because he was the smallest, Jimmy went out first and did as I had instructed: He looked left, then right; he smiled like he was going to eat chicken, pulling back his lips to show his tooth. He walked stiffly before the judges and took his place behind the tallest boy.

I clung to the fence, with Rosie and Caveman at my side, as one after another the boys marched around the
pool and past the judges who tapped their pencils and looked at one another before they scratched notes. Rosie touched my arm when one of the boys, just before he was called, put on a pair of sunglasses with pistols at the corners. As he started, I heard laughter from the elm tree and the words: “Sissy boy.”

When all the boys had circled the pool, they, too, were asked to sit on the lawn with the girls who were reddening like crabs from the warm weather. The judges craned their heads together, whispered seriously, and then whispered again.

With the bullhorn the coach asked for the boys and girls to join hands and parade around the pool. They looked at one another, unsure of what she was saying. The coach talked with the bullhorn again, but still they were confused at what to do. One kid stepped up to the edge of the pool and, looking up at the coach, asked: “Do you want us to jump in?”

The coach climbed down from her station, smiling and shaking her head as she passed the parents to go over to explain to the kids what they were supposed to do. Finally, hand in hand, they paraded awkwardly—the boys looking at the water and the girls waving at their mothers.

The judges converged behind the children who once again had lined up by height. One judge took control and waved a paper crown of glitter over the girls while the parents clung even harder to the fence. When the crown dropped softly on a little girl with curlicues, moans were let out. One mother squeaked, clapped her hands like a loud rain, and looked around for someone to share her excitement. The other mothers looked away and tapped the cameras in their palms. When another crown dropped on a boy’s head, there were more moans. Another mother smiled but contained her happiness as the boy was given a trophy and tickets to see the Fresno Giants. Raymond, who was lost in the green leaves of the elm, called down
at the winner: “You’re a sissy.” A mother searched the tree, with a sour and disgusted look, but couldn’t spot his brown legs.

I was disappointed. Rosie and Caveman ran away to play on the swings without saying anything as I stepped away from the fence and sat under the elm. Raymond dropped a piece of bark on my head and made the sound of a bomb exploding. Without looking up, I told him to leave me alone, and he did. The tree shook as he moved to a higher limb.

The Prince and Princess again went around the pool while a reporter from the
Fresno Bee
on one knee took pictures. At the ceremony’s end, the gate was swung open and the losers were handed ice cream sandwiches as they left to join the onlookers. The coach spoke through the bullhorn, thanking everyone for coming. From a top branch Raymond called his own thanks through cupped hands: “See you later, alligator; after awhile, crocodile.” He laughed at his joke and the tree shook again as he moved to another branch. The coach, Karen, walked over and, shading her eyes, squinted into the branches. Raymond dropped a piece of bark on her and made the sound of a bomb exploding.

“Raymond, is that you?” she shouted. “Raymond, is that you?” he mimicked. “Get down here right this minute,” she warned. “Get down here right this minute,” a branch said. More bombs fell, followed by explosions.

Karen shook her head at the mothers who were gathering chairs and lugging ice chests back to their station wagons. “These kids are so terrible.” She shook her head, tsssked “Is he in trouble,” and sent me to the game room for a football to knock Raymond from the tree.

F
or three springs my brother and I walked to Romain playground to try out for Little League, and year after year we failed to impress the coaches. The night of the last year we tried out, we sat in our bedroom listening to the radio and pounding our fists into gloves, and talked of how we would bend to pick up grounders, stand at the plate, wave off another player to say you got the pop-up. “This is the year,” Rick said with confidence as he pretended to back hand a ball and throw out the man racing to first. He pounded his glove and looked at me, “How’d you like that?”

At the tryouts there were a hundred kids. After asking around, we were pointed to lines by age group: nine, ten, and eleven. Rick and I stood in our respective lines, gloves limp as dead animals hanging from our hands, and waited to have a large paper number pinned to our back so that field coaches with clipboards propped on their stomachs would know who we were.

Nervous, I chewed at my palm as I moved up in the line, but when my number was called I ran out onto the field to the sound of my sneakers smacking against the clay. I looked at the kids still in line, then at my brother who was nodding his head yes. The first grounder—a three-bouncer that spun off my glove into center field. Another grounder cracked off the bat, and I bent down to
gobble it up: The ball fell from my glove like food from a sloppy mouth. I stared at the ball before I picked it up to hurl it to first base. The next one I managed to pick up cleanly, but my throw made the first baseman leap into the air with an exaggerated grunt that had him looking good while I looked bad. Three more balls were hit to me, and I came up with one.

So it went for me, my number flapping like a single, broken wing as I ran off the field to sit in the bleachers and wait for Rick to trot onto the field.

He was a star that day. With the first grounder he raced for it and threw on the run. With the next ball he lowered himself on one knee and threw nonchalantly to first. His number flapped on his back, a crooked seventeen, and I saw a coach make a check on his board. He then looked serious as he wet his lips and wrote something that demanded thought, for his brow furrowed and darkened.

Rick lunged at the next hit and missed it as it skidded into center field. With the next hit he shaded his eyes for it was a high pop-up, something that he was good at, even graceful, and when the ball fell earthward he slapped it with his toe and looked pleased as his mouth grew fat from trying to hold back a smile. Again the coach wet his lips and made a check on his clipboard.

Rick did well at fielding. When the next number was called, he jogged off the field with his head high and both of us sat in the bleachers, dark and serious as we watched the others trot on and off the field.

Finally the coaches told us to return after lunch to take batting practice. Rick and I ran home to fix sandwiches and talk about the morning, then what to expect in the afternoon.

“Don’t be scared,” he said with his mouth full of sandwich. He was thinking of my batting. He demonstrated how to stand. He spread his legs, worked his left foot into the carpet as if he were putting out a cigarette, and
looked angrily at where the ball would be delivered, some twenty feet in front of him at the kitchen table. He swung an invisible bat; choked up and swung again.

He turned to me. “You got it?” I told him I thought I did and imitated his motion as I stepped where he was standing to swing once, then again and then again, until he said, “Yeah, you got it.”

We returned to the playground, and I felt proud walking to the diamond because smaller kids were watching us in awe, some of them staring at the paper number on my back. It was as if we were soldiers going off to war.

“Where you goin’?” asked Rosie, sister of Johnnie Serna, the playground terrorist. She was squeezing the throat of a large bag of sunflower seeds, her mouth rolling with shells.

“Tryouts,” I said, barely looking at her as I kept stride with Rick.

At the diamond I once again grew scared and apprehensive. I got into the line of nine-year-olds to wait for my turn at bat. Fathers clung to the fence, chattering last minute instructions to their kids who answered with, “OK, yes, all right, OK, OK,” because they were also wide-eyed and scared when the kid in the batter’s box swung and missed.

By the time it was my turn I was shivering unnoticeably and trying to catch Rick’s eyes for reassurance. When my number was called I walked to the plate, tapped the bat on the ground—something I had seen many times on television—and waited. The first pitch was outside and over my head. The coach who was on the mound laughed at his sorry pitch.

At the next pitch I swung hard, spinning the ball foul. I tapped my bat again, kicked at the dirt, and stepped into the batter’s box. I swung stupidly at a low ball; I wound up again and sliced the ball foul, just at the edge of the
infield grass, which surprised me because I didn’t know I had the strength to send it that far.

I was given ten pitches and managed to get three hits, all of them grounders on the right side. One of them kicked up into the face of a kid trying to field; he tried to hang tough as he walked off the field, head bowed and quiet, but I knew tears were welling up in his eyes.

I handed the bat to the next kid and went to sit in the bleachers to wait for the ten-year-olds to come up to bat. I was feeling better after that morning’s tryout at fielding because I had three hits. I also thought I looked good standing cocky at the plate, bat high over my shoulder.

Rick came up to the plate and hit the first pitch on the third base side. He sent the next pitch into left field. He talked to himself as he stood in the box, slightly bouncing before each swing. Again the coaches made checks on their clipboards, heads following the ball each time it was smacked to the outfield.

When the ten hits were up he jogged off the field and joined me in the bleachers. His mouth was again fat from holding back a smile, and I was jealous of his athletic display. I thought to myself, Yeah, he’ll make the team and I’ll just watch him from the bleachers. I felt bad—empty as a Coke bottle—as I imagined Rick running home with a uniform under his arm.

We watched other kids come to the plate and whack, foul, chop, slice, dribble, bee line, and hook balls to every part of the field. One high foul ball bounced in the bleachers and several kids raced to get it, but I was the first to latch a hand onto it. I weighed the ball in my palm, like a pound of baloney, and then hurled it back onto the field. A coach watched it roll by his feet, disinterested.

After tryouts were finished we were told—or retold, because it had been announced in the morning—that we would be contacted by phone late in the week.

We went home and by Monday afternoon we were already
waiting for the phone to ring. We slouched in the living room after school, with the TV turned on and loud as a roomful of people:
Superman
at three o’clock and
The Three Stooges
at three-thirty. Every time I left the living room for the kitchen, I stole a glance at the telephone and once when no one was looking I picked it up to see if it was working: a long buzz.

By Friday when it was clear that the call would never come, we went outside to the front yard to play catch and practice bunting.

“I should have made the team,” Rick said as he made a stab at my bunt. He was particularly troubled because if anyone should have made the team it was him, since he was better than most that day.

We threw grounders at one another; a few of them popped off my chest while most of them disappeared neatly into my glove. Why couldn’t I do it like this last Saturday, I thought? I was mad at myself, then sad and self-pitying. We stopped playing and returned inside to watch
The Three Stooges
. Moe was reading from a children’s story book, his finger following the words with deliberation.

“Does the doe have a deer?” read Moe.

“Yeah, two bucks,” laughed Larry.

Moe pounded him on top of the head and called him a “knuckle-head.” Larry rolled his eyes and looked dizzy.

We didn’t make Little League that year, but we did join a team of school chums that practiced at Hobo Park near downtown Fresno. Pete, the brother of Mary Palacio, a girl who was head-over-heels for me, told us about the team, and after school Rick and I raced our bicycles to the park. We threw our bikes aside and hit the field. While Rick went to the outfield, I took second base to practice grounders.

“Give me a baby roller,” Danny Lopez, the third baseman,
called. I sidearmed a roller and he picked it up on the third bounce. “Good pickup,” we told him. He looked pleased, slapping his glove against his pants as he hustled back to third, a smile cutting across his face.

Rick practiced pop-ups with Billy Reeves. They looked skyward with each throw in the air, mouths hanging open as if God were making a face between clouds.

When Manuel, the coach, arrived in his pickup, most of the kids ran to meet him and chatter that they wanted to play first, to play second, to hit first, to hit third. Rick and I went quiet and stood back from the racket.

Manuel shouldered a duffle bag from the back of his pickup and walked over to the palm tree that served as the backstop. He let the bag drop with a grunt, clapped his hands, and pointed kids to positions. We were still quiet, and when Pete told Manuel that we wanted to play, I stiffened up and tried to look tough. I popped my glove with my fist and looked about me as if I were readying to cross a road. Because he was older, Rick stood with his arms crossed over his chest, glove at his feet. “You guys in the outfield,” he pointed as he turned to pull a bat and ball from the bag.