Game Seven

by Paul Volponi

  In a quiet voice, I asked my uncle, “Did I make a big enough impression today?”

  He stopped in his tracks. So I did, too.

  “This is what I overheard some powerful people say,” he answered in a tone even quieter than mine. “Senior defected. How do we know Junior won’t do the same his first trip outside of Cuba? Is he so good it’s worth the potential embarrassment?”

  Hearing that was like getting smacked across the teeth with a baseball bat.

  “So I have to pay for his freedom? For him abandoning his family?”

  “If some people get their way, yes,” Uncle Ramon said, nudging me forward to start walking again. “Nothing’s written in stone yet. I’m working on lots of solutions. You just concentrate on playing even better, nothing else.”

  I carried that heavy load out to the parking lot, where there were more beat-up bikes chained to fences than cars, including mine. Uncle Ramon suddenly veered off to the right to shake hands with an old friend of his named Gabriel, who’d been hanging around our games and practices for the past couple weeks. Luis told me that he’d even slept over at their house a few nights.

  Uncle Ramon had introduced Gabriel to us as somebody he used to play baseball with. Gabriel sort of nodded his head to that with an honest enough smile. But when a ball got away from some kids playing catch, I watched him toss it back. Gabriel’s form was awful, with a huge hitch in it. I would have believed he’d never thrown a ball before in his life. Besides, his hands were cracked and calloused. And the lines of his palms were embedded with grease, like he’d done more fishing than playing sports. I never mentioned it to anyone.

  “See you tomorrow, boys,” Gabriel called out, waving to me and my cousin after a short conversation with Uncle Ramon.

  “Really?” I asked. “You’re driving all the way to Cárdenas to watch us play?”

  “Not so far for me. That’s where I live,” he said, getting into an old Chevy. “I’m hitting the road right now. I’ll meet you there. Maybe show you around.”

  It all seemed strange. But I had too much on my mind to think any more about it as my cousin climbed into the passenger seat of my uncle’s car, and I unchained my bike.

  2

  I RODE STRAIGHT home to take a quick shower and change my clothes. Two old men in straw hats were sitting in the shade outside our building, playing dominoes and chewing raw sugarcane. I smiled at them as I slowed down enough to throw a leg over the seat of my bike, balancing myself on one pedal.

  Coming to a stop, I lifted the bike off the ground. Then I leaned back to get some momentum in my legs and started with it up the steep flight of stairs in our building.

  Opening our apartment door, I got hit with a blast of hot air, as if the walls had been absorbing every bit of heat from that day, refusing to let any of it go.

  Mama was at work, but my sister, Lola, was there, studying at the kitchen table. She was still dressed in her school uniform—a white blouse and yellow skirt—with textbooks spread out all around her. And every few seconds, a rotating floor fan from the living room would make it seem like a page from one of her open books was almost turning by itself.

  We had no air conditioner. We could barely afford our electric bill as it was.

  “How are your math calculations, Julio?” she asked, turning a pencil over and nearly rubbing a hole in her notebook paper with the pink eraser at the other end.

  Lola and I actually shared an old laptop, though we didn’t have a license to be on the Internet. We couldn’t come close to making the kind of payments needed to become connected.

  “Why aren’t you working on the computer?”

  “It just makes me feel even hotter. Never mind that,” she said, with a hint of impatience. “Now, how are your calculations?”

  “Okay, I thought, until they started mixing letters in with the numbers,” I answered, dropping my equipment bag to the floor and hearing the bats inside rattle. “But no matter what, two and two still equals four. Unless your father’s a defector; then they try to tell you it’s something different.”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked, sounding irritated, with a bead of sweat starting down her right temple. “Please. I can’t get distracted. I have nothing but exams for the next two weeks.”

  “Uncle Ramon told me I might not get picked to be a Nacional, because of Papi.”

  I suppose there was sympathy inside of Lola somewhere. But she didn’t seem interested in showing me any. Maybe it was the stifling heat or tension over her tests that put a charge into her voice.

  “That’s exactly why I’m going to a university one day, to become a teacher,” she said, burying her head inside a book. “I’m going to make my own history, not be stuck with his. You need to do the same.”

  “That’s good for you. But I’m not a student. I play baseball,” I snapped, heading toward the shower. “They’re always going to compare me and him.”

  “Then jump in the ocean and swim for Miami! Follow Papi!” Lola shouted after me, a second before I slammed the bathroom door shut.

  Turning the faucets up high, I caught a glimpse of my anger in the mirror. It made my eyebrows look even sharper, as they arched at an angle, and my thin lips pulled back at the corners. Only I didn’t want to face it. So I yanked the plastic curtain closed. Then I stood in the shower with my head down and the water rushing off the bridge of my nose, like it was a spout. The temperature changed from hot to cold a couple of times without warning. Lola had always said there were ghosts in the shower. But I knew it was just other tenants in our building running water at the same time.

  When I finished, I dried myself and wrapped a towel around my waist. The mirror had fogged over with steam. But I’d seen enough of myself and didn’t even consider wiping it clear.

  Stepping outside into the hall, I saw that Lola had walked away from her textbooks. She was standing by an open window, brushing her straight black hair.

  I guess we could both feel a little bit of breeze now.

  “Done with your swim?” she asked, behind a half smile.

  “For now,” I answered. “I’ll probably take another one after the game tomorrow in Cárdenas.”

  “Well, make sure you don’t drown,” she said. “I’d miss you. You’re my only big brother.”

  “Thanks, I won’t,” I said, letting her words sink in as I grabbed a fresh towel from the closet and began to dry my wet head.

  – – –

  I put on a white shirt, black pants, and a pair of Papi’s old leather shoes. Then I headed back down the stairs and walked the five blocks to the restaurant where I bussed tables. It’s part of the hotel where Mama cleans. It’s called El Puente—“The Bridge.” That’s because Matanzas is the City of Bridges, with seventeen of them crossing the three rivers surrounding us.

  My shift ran from five p.m. to midnight. I got there just a few minutes before it started. It’s my job to take away the dirty dishes from the tables, make sure all of the water glasses are kept full, and deliver any part of the meal the customer wants to take home wrapped in tinfoil. The pay by the hour isn’t good. But the waiters and waitresses give me and the other two busboys a small percentage of their tips every night. That adds up. The only problem I ever had was with a waiter named Horatio, who constantly hides his biggest tips by burying them in a different pocket. He gets away with it because he’s the nephew of the restaurant’s manager. Otherwise I’d grab him by his black bow tie, turn him upside down, and then shake him until it rained money.

  The customers are mostly tourists. Lots of them are from the US, even though there’s a travel ban from the States to Cuba. They go someplace like Canada first and then fly here. The US ban is because we’re not a democracy and don’t have any real human rights, just the ones our presidente and his soldiers decide to give us.

  Living in a country without freedom is like being stuck
at the birthday party of someone who believes he’s much better than you. It doesn’t matter that the party stinks and you’re having a bad time. You can’t leave because there are guys guarding the door with guns. And you’d better sing “Happy Birthday” with a smile when the cake comes out, even though you can’t have a piece, or else you could wind up in prison.

  During my shift, six or seven customers came in wearing New York Yankees caps or T-shirts. Every time I saw one, my stomach churned with acid over Papi and the World Series. Then, around nine o’clock, the manager called me over to a table and introduced me to a customer as El Fuego’s son.

  A man in a Yankees cap shook my hand. Then the manager translated his English for me, even though I understood some of what he was saying.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Julio. I’m normally a big fan of your father’s, just not right now. I’d rather see my team win. But you must be so proud of him,” he said.

  I nodded and said, “Si. Si.”

  The man stood next to me so his wife could take a photo. It was his idea for us each to make a fist. We lined them up, knuckles to knuckles, as if we were fighting over the Series. An instant before the camera’s click, I saw Mama standing in the doorway of the restaurant. She was dressed in her blue maid’s uniform and apron. Her tired eyes caught mine and I looked away from the lens.

  His wife wanted a better photo, so we posed again.

  Mama jutted her chin in the direction of our apartment and mouthed, See you at home. Then she walked out the door.

  After the second photo, the man smiled and stuffed ten pesos into my shirt pocket. That was more than two weeks’ salary for me.

  “Gracias,” I responded, feeling better about the whole encounter.

  A few minutes later, that river rat Horatio asked about the tip I got.

  “Shouldn’t that be for you and me to share?” he asked. “It happened in my section of tables.”

  I couldn’t believe his nerve.

  I looked Horatio square in the eye and said, “It’s in my shirt pocket. Why don’t you stick your hand in there and take it.”

  Only he never tried.

  That same couple had me wrap up a pork chop for them to take home. It was a beautiful one that neither of them had even touched. I brought it back to their table, but they forgot it and left the bag behind.

  Workers aren’t supposed to take food out of the restaurant for any reason. But I kept thinking how good that pork chop would taste on the bus ride to Cárdenas. So I hid it in a small alcove, beneath a wicker breadbasket. And when my shift was finally finished, I made sure no one was watching as I tucked it beneath my arm and headed out the kitchen door.

  – – –

  I turned the key in the lock. Then I stepped inside our apartment. Mama was sitting on the far end of the couch in her pink seashell bathrobe. There was a single lamp lit over her left shoulder. She had a newspaper spread open on her lap, reading it while she worked at her fingernails with a small file.

  I figured my sister was already asleep in the bedroom.

  “A pork chop from El Puente. No lecture, please,” I said, showing off the silver tinfoil like a prize before making a quick detour to put it into the fridge.

  When I circled back, Mama had a serious look on her face. But it didn’t have anything to do with taking food from my job.

  “Lola told me your name might stop you from becoming a Nacional.”

  “Maybe. But my name didn’t hurt me tonight,” I said, taking the ten-peso note from my shirt pocket, then pulling it tight from opposite ends with a snap. “That photo I was posing for.”

  I placed it on a small table beside some bills that needed to be paid, like rent and electricity. There was also a bill for the two cell phones the three of us shared, making calls only when it was something really important.

  “Your father lives like a king while we struggle,” Mama said. “Sometimes I think money was the reason he defected.”

  “Not baseball? Not a World Series ring?”

  “He wants a ring? How about this one?” she asked, pointing to her gold wedding band. “Know why I still wear this?”

  “No,” I answered, closing the distance between us.

  “It’s all I have left,” she said, as her temper began to flare. “This way, I’m the wife of a sports hero who gave this government the middle finger for the whole world to see.”

  “And without it?”

  “Then I’m just the woman he abandoned.”

  “He abandoned me and Lola, too.”

  “But he’ll always be your father, no matter what,” Mama said. The newspaper fell to the floor as she stood up. “He won’t always be my husband. I’m not stupid, Julio. You’re old enough to hear this. The great El Fuego has not been alone for six years, not without a woman by his side—one probably ten years younger than me.”

  I’d never heard her talk like that before, and now the shadows fell across her face.

  “See these fingernails?” she asked, holding her hands out. “Maybe I can’t tell you the name of the woman he’s with. But I’m sure her nails aren’t chipped from cleaning hotel rooms and scrubbing toilets. They’re probably perfect and polished at a salon.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I just knew that suddenly I was even angrier at Papi.

  “You need to make your own life now. Take that money. It’s yours,” Mama said, becoming calmer and kissing me good night on the forehead. “Treat yourself to something nice. His name owes you that, for having to carry it this long.”

  Then she went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  For almost a half hour, I paced the living room, cursing Papi to myself until I was too exhausted to keep going. Finally, I took the cushions off the couch and folded out the bed inside. Then I lay there for a while with the light on, staring up at every crack in the ceiling over my head.

  3

  BY SIX THIRTY a.m., I was on my feet again. The sunlight was just starting to push past the curtains as I packed up my baseball gear and got myself ready to go. Only I didn’t touch the tip money from the night before. And I didn’t go near the refrigerator either. Instead, I left that pork chop where it was, for my mother and sister, who were both still sleeping.

  The team was meeting in the parking lot outside our field. That was more than a mile away. So I lugged my bike down the stairs. Then I tied my equipment bag to the back before I rode out into the street.

  Almost all the cars on the road here are American, built in the 1950s—Chevrolet, Plymouth, Ford, and Dodge. They’re huge cars with wide bodies, fancy grilles, big headlights, and shining chrome everywhere. Some have windshields that wrap all the way around. Others have sleek fins or wings in the back, with long red taillights that make them look like rocket sleds ready to blast off.

  It’s been that way since the US stopped selling cars to Cuba in 1962, to protest our government. It’s like living in some kind of time warp. We see modern sports cars like Porsches, Jaguars, and BMWs in contraband magazines and pirated DVDs of movies. Everyone here knows about them, what they look like. But I guess we’re supposed to pretend they don’t really exist. We know about the Chevy Nova, too. In Spanish, no va means “doesn’t go,” so we all thought that was pretty funny. But I don’t think anybody here would turn down a new car, no matter how stupid its name.

  There aren’t any spare parts coming into Cuba either. That doesn’t matter. People here will use anything to keep their cars running, like leather belts that once held up pants and electric fuses from toasters. When cars break down totally, people keep them in their yards behind locked fences and make money selling off the parts one by one. And if I had known the police officers were going to confiscate Papi’s car, a 1958 Dodge Royal in good condition, I would have pulled out the brakes to sell and left those officers rolling off the road, straight into the surf.

 
Pedaling closer to the field, I saw a big yellow school bus parked in the lot. The morning sun was getting stronger, glistening off its roof. As I sped through the gate, I noticed the driver inside that bus walking the length of it, opening all the windows before it became a big metal hotbox. Lots of our players were already there, and more were arriving right behind me, by bike and on foot. Just one other vehicle was there. It was a Russian-made car and almost like new, maybe from the 1980s. There was no doubt it was for the top tier of the Junior Nacional coaches to ride in.

  Uncle Ramon was standing inside a small circle of those coaches, talking. His back was to me. Just to his right, I could see the bloated face of Coach Moyano, the one responsible for picking the players. Moyano was short and overweight, wearing pants that were baggy enough for two people to use as a tent on a camping trip. I’d seen him a dozen or more times. The bottom half of his eyelids were always puffed out, like he’d never had a good night’s sleep in his life. And except for the red Nacionales cap on his head, you probably would have figured him for a butcher or a sanitation worker before a baseball coach.

  I was getting off my bike and resting it against a fence when Moyano’s eyes settled sharply on mine. I felt like he was looking right through me, judging me inside and out, as he chomped away on an unlit cigar. From the corner of his mouth, he spit a stream of brown saliva onto the ground. Then he said something, and Uncle Ramon turned to look in my direction. That’s when I quickly turned away from them both.

  A few feet away from me, Luis was lying flat on his back on the paved asphalt. His eyes were closed, his bag beneath his head as a pillow. He was surrounded by six or seven of our teammates, looking equally exhausted after a night of partying. Only most of them were up on their feet.

  “Junior,” said one of our guys, reaching out to connect his fist with mine. “I’m glad our best player looks like he’s ready to swing for the fences right now.”