Rooting for Rafael Rosales

by Kurtis Scaletta

  Rafael often spent the mornings in the gym at Romero’s academy. Cádiz didn’t allow guests, but he made an exception for Rafael once he learned he was working with Carlos. “You must be a good one,” he’d said. “Carlos can see through a wall of mierda a meter thick.”

  “Cádiz doesn’t like me,” Juan grumbled one afternoon.

  “Sure he likes you,” said Rafael.

  “He hardly spends any time coaching me,” said Juan.

  “It’s because you’re younger than the others,” Rafael suggested. “You have more time.”

  “No, it’s because he thinks I’m a waste of time.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Practically. He said he’s not seeing progress.”

  “Ouch. Does he know you’re used to playing in the outfield?”

  “Of course he does. Come on, let’s lift before the older boys get here.”

  “Sure.”

  Rafael did several slow, steady bench presses of half his weight, with Juan spotting him. When it was Juan’s turn, he slid on extra weights and lifted in quick bursts, grunting with effort.

  “Carlos told me to do your reps slowly and extend your arms all the way,” said Rafael. “That way you don’t lose flexibility.”

  “But this is how to pump up and look good for the girls!” Juan finished his reps, sat up, and admired himself in the full-length mirror on the wall. He had packed on muscles since he’d started at the academy.

  “Do you want to look good for girls or for major league scouts?” asked Rafael.

  “For girls, of course. What about you?”

  “I’ll look good to girls when my pockets are full of money!” said Rafael.

  “Matatán!” said Juan.

  Rafael laughed. He only acted that way around Juan, who would never be fooled.

  Hugo came in, looking dead serious. He chose a couple of light hand weights to do curls. Felipe came in a few minutes later but leaned against the wall instead of working out.

  “Still rehabbing your throwing arm?” he asked Hugo.

  “Cádiz wants me to take it very slow and easy,” said Hugo. “I’ll be fine.”

  “With me, it’s the opposite. I must have thrown two hundred pitches yesterday.”

  Juan now finished another round of lifts, so vigorously that he was sweating. He admired himself in the mirror some more. Hugo hurled a towel his way.

  “Wipe your sweat off the bench, Señor Musculoso.”

  “This towel smells like it hasn’t been washed since Cádiz used it as a diaper,” Juan complained.

  “This place is filthy,” Felipe agreed. “Pigs would have moved out by now.”

  “And all he ever has for lunch are tortillas and cold meat from the colmado,” Hugo added. “Cádiz knows a lot about baseball, but he needs a woman to cook and clean for us.”

  “You machistas need to clean up after yourselves!” Cádiz barked, coming into the room. “I’m your coach, not your mother.”

  “Tell Romero to part with some of those millions of US dollars,” said Juan. “We can have a maid each and a full-time cook.”

  “He hasn’t earned one peso off any of you,” Cádiz reminded him. “And he won’t until one of you gets a big league contract. I’d like to see the mansion you lived in before, so now you can demand a maid apiece. I’d like to hear more about the seven-course meals you’re used to eating.”

  “I was kidding about that,” said Juan sullenly.

  “We don’t need a maid each, but we can’t do laundry and cook while we’re training,” said Hugo.

  Cádiz nodded. “I’ll see what I can do about getting help.”

  ***

  Carlos was now coaching a second boy named Javier. He was from San Pedro too, but far enough away that Rafael had never seen him at the campo. He was a year younger than Rafael and a head taller. He was so tall and skinny he reminded Rafael of the sugarcane that grew on the farm where his father used to work.

  “Did you see my swing?” Javier asked after batting off a tee, hammering balls in the cage on the small field near Carlos’s home. “Did you see how I scooped up that ball?” he asked during fielding drills.

  “Sure,” Rafael said. “You’re doing great.”

  Javier always passed on Carlos’s offer of a ride home.

  “I like the walk,” he said.

  “You should come to my house,” he said to Rafael one day when they were done training. “We can practice some more.”

  Rafael was exhausted but didn’t want to be shown up by Javier, so he accepted the invitation. The walk wasn’t far and was back toward Rafael’s own neighborhood.

  They did not practice so much as talk about their futures while lobbing an old ball back and forth in the street near Javier’s house. Javier talked, almost to himself, about his elaborate plans for the United States. He would hire a filmmaker to make a movie about his own rise through to the majors. He would marry a Spanish-speaking American girl to translate for him. He wanted to play for the Marlins because he had family in Miami. He’d planned it all out. Rafael knew that Javier wasn’t all talk. He was eager to learn and seemed to remember everything he’d been told once.

  If a team had one more spot on signing day, and it was between him and Javier, Rafael wasn’t sure who would get it. In fact, he couldn’t think why they’d want him, since he was a bit older and a bit smaller than Javier. However, he chose not to worry. Five hundred players were signed every year in the Dominican Republic, so there was room for both of them when the time came.

  Grace and Maya signed in at the front desk of the TV station and were sent to the green room, which wasn’t green at all. Maybe it had been green once, and the staff never got out of the habit of calling it that. There were a couch and a few chairs, a refrigerator stocked with bottled water, and a wide-screen TV now showing the morning news. Maya was wearing the skirt and sweater Mom had bought for school picture day. They were too warm for the weather, but the studio was so over-air-conditioned that Maya hugged herself.

  Mom and Dad had wanted to come, but Grace had begged them not to.

  “I don’t want to be seen as a kid,” she’d said. “Besides, you’ll make me more nervous.”

  Maya agreed. This felt like something they needed to do alone, like the road trip and blog post that led up to it.

  Grace looked at the bulletin board covered with signed photographs of people who had been through the studio. She tapped one of a very young Prince, the most famous person who ever came from Minneapolis.

  “Wonder how much this would get on eBay?”

  “Nineteen ninety-nine,” Maya suggested.

  “More than that—” Grace started, until she got the joke. “Good one,” she said.

  Maya sat down and felt the butterflies swirling in her stomach. She tried to visualize herself being calm and clear-spoken. Other guests came into the room: a tall leather-jacketed woman with a guitar; a gray-haired man who tried to make small talk with the musician; another man carrying a big box.

  “Chef,” he explained.

  “Music,” said the woman, holding up her guitar case. “Like you couldn’t guess.”

  “Children’s book author and illustrator,” said the gray-haired man. “Patty the Pigeon?” He looked hopefully at Maya because she was the youngest one in the room.

  “Oh yeah!” she said with faked recognition.

  “You’re the kids with the blog,” said the chef.

  “It’s my blog,” said Grace.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

  “They don’t look nervous,” said the musician. “They’re a couple of cucumbers.” Maya liked her.

  They were on after the chef, who showed the shiny-haired woman how to make a perfect omelet. Maya and Grace talked to Colin, the super-smiley blond guy, in the fake living room set. He laughed long and hard when Grace said she didn’t know for a week that her blog was an Internet sensation because she was grounded.

  “So how do things go viral?” he as
ked. “For example, there are billions of cat photos on the Internet, and then Grumpy Cat becomes as famous as Elvis. How does that happen?”

  Grace shrugged. “If anybody knew, everybody would do it.”

  “And why Rafael Rosales?” he said. “Of all the minor leaguers out there, why is he your favorite?”

  “Maya better answer that,” said Grace, giving her a nudge. Besides smiling and saying “Hi,” she hadn’t said one word so far.

  “He was nice to my sister,” she said, barely getting her voice above a whisper. “And I felt sorry for him.”

  The host laughed again.

  “That’s my baby sister,” said Grace. “Lost kittens and slumping baseball players…”

  “And bees,” said Maya.

  “Excuse me?” The host leaned in to hear her better.

  Maya found her voice and told him about the bees.

  ***

  “Well, I guess we don’t have to be worried about getting invited back,” Grace said as they drove home.

  “Nope,” said Maya. “Sorry.” She hadn’t planned on talking about bees, but what was the point of being on TV if you couldn’t talk about what mattered?

  Grace took a long, scenic route home instead of the highway, along the same streets where Maya rode her bike.

  “Dad is going to be so ticked off,” she said. “You went off on his company.”

  “Colin asked what was killing the bees, and I told him,” said Maya. “I had to answer the question.” It had been a couple of minutes before the host realized the segment had lurched away from “cute kids who blog” to a frank discussion of impending environmental doom.

  “The neonicotinoids are meant to make the crops pest-resistant, but they also affect beneficial insects,” Maya had explained. The words had come to her easily, even the big ones. “You can’t poison the leaves without poisoning the pollen. Companies like Alceria invested a lot of money in making the neonicotinoids and deny their impact because it would be…well, because it would cost a lot of money to stop making them.” She’d almost forgotten where she was, until she noticed the anchor staring at her, blank-faced and slack-jawed.

  “Bees, baseball…” Colin had stammered, trying to find a path back to the lighthearted segment he’d expected. Maya felt bad and tried to help. “It’s scary to be a kid right now, but Rafael Rosales gives me hope!” she’d said quickly. “That’s all.” The segment ended, and Colin left the set shaking his head and muttering. The shiny-haired woman swept them away.

  “That was interesting,” she’d said. She was using the Minnesota meaning of “interesting,” which was “bad, but I’m too polite to say so.” Cora the musician had been off to the side, playing her guitar between segments. When Maya glanced at her, Cora pumped her fist.

  “Dad is going to be so ticked off,” said Grace again.

  “I know,” said Maya. Until Dad came home, at least, she could savor that fist pump and feel like a troublemaker instead of a kid in trouble.

  She jumped on the computer as soon as they were home, knowing Grace would hog it most of the day and she might be banned from screens after Dad got home. She was happy to see an email from Bijou until she read it.

  Dear Maya,

  Wow, you made more money babysitting than my father makes working. More in a week, not even the same number of hours.

  Back in Haiti, there is much poverty and no work. Here in La Republica Dominicana there is also poverty, but some work at least. Before the academy, my father never had a job for long & we traveled a lot. Haitians are not loved here.

  Things are better now. I went to school and even learned English. But we are still not wanted by most people.

  I am sad about your bees and don’t want to make you feel bad. Life is different for me, that is all. I wanted to tell you my own sad story. Thank you for sharing yours.

  Bijou

  Maya felt short of breath. Even though Bijou had ended her email on a nice note, Maya sensed that her new friend was upset with her. Well, Maya was privileged and she knew it. She didn’t know why she had mentioned how much she made babysitting. She couldn’t seem to open her mouth these days without hurting somebody.

  She wrote a quick reply:

  Sorry, Bijou! I didn’t mean to brag. And you can tell me anything anytime. It didn’t make me feel bad.

  The last part wasn’t completely true, but she didn’t want Bijou to think she had any hard feelings. She hoped Bijou would write back immediately to say “Of course I’m not mad” or maybe even “I’m sorry.” Maya paged back through the earlier emails and looked again at the photo of Rafael as a boy. He was standing in the background while the older boy with the tight-lipped smile posed with Bijou. She studied the shadows in Bijou’s face and tried to guess at the hardships in that little girl’s life.

  “Haitians are not loved here,” she had written. What secrets lurked behind that simple sentence?

  Maya clicked to write another reply and typed:

  I don’t understand, but I want to.

  After she sent it, she felt like she was trying too hard.

  Bijou did not write back.

  Dad came into the house with heavy footsteps and no words, the way he did when he was in a bad mood. He hung up his keys on the hook by the door and took off his shoes with brusque movements. Maya was waiting at the kitchen table. She knew she owed him an explanation and had spent time preparing herself.

  “How was work?” she asked, just to break the silence and get it over with.

  “I saw your interview,” he said. His eyes met hers. “I watched it with my whole work group, including my supervisor.” The last two words hung heavily in the air.

  “Oh,” said Maya. She had thought about Dad getting mad at her, but not about her dad’s boss getting mad at him. “Are you in trouble?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head and opened the fridge for ice water, taking forever to fill the glass. “I don’t think I can get fired for something my daughter said on television,” he said after taking a drink, “but I’m not looking forward to the next staff meeting.”

  “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” said Maya.

  “You said things that haven’t been proven.”

  “Yes they have,” said Maya. “An entomologist at the University of Minnesota says…”

  “You mean that Jenkins woman,” her father said dismissively.

  “Yes,” she said. Maya was surprised her dad knew who Dr. Jenkins was. But of course he did. Dr. Jenkins must be public enemy number one at Alceria.

  “We’re not the big, evil company she says we are,” he said. “Yes, we want to make a profit. But we also feed millions of people. Millions. To do that, we need to protect crops from pests. And we developed neonicotinoids to help the environment. That way, farmers don’t have to drench everything in chemicals.”

  “But the insecticides kill the good bugs too,” Maya argued.

  “We did our own studies,” he said. “They were inconclusive.”

  “And tobacco companies do studies that show cigarettes don’t cause cancer,” said Maya. She’d prepared the comeback in advance, knowing what Dad would say.

  “I work for Alceria. I think I know more about what’s going on with our products.”

  “Dr. Jenkins is a scientist. She knows what’s going on with bees.”

  “I’m a scientist! Agriculture is an applied science!” He dropped his empty glass in the sink with a clatter.

  “But you’re not a bee scientist!”

  He stood there, speechless for a moment. Maya realized she’d actually won the argument. Dad had no comeback.

  “You put me in an awkward position at work,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Maya said meekly. “I didn’t even plan on talking about the bees, but it kind of came out. I sure didn’t know you’d be watching it with your boss.”

  “Well, what’s done is done.” He held his arms out, and she stepped into his hug. She still loved him even if he
was working for a big, evil bee-killing corporation.

  “Am I grounded?”

  “No, I don’t think that would teach the right lesson,” her father said. “I want you to feel safe speaking your mind. But, you know…think about everybody that it affects. And make sure you know the whole truth.”

  Like Alceria thinks about everybody they affect, Maya thought, but she swallowed the words because she didn’t want to argue anymore.

  ***

  Dad was quiet at dinner, shoveling food into his mouth without making eye contact and chewing every bite too long.

  “I put gas in the car,” Grace said. “I refilled the windshield washer fluid.”

  “Good,” said Dad.

  Grace gave up on sparking conversation, pushed her plate away, and left the table. Dad soon left himself, marching through the family room and out the back door. Maya was left alone with her mother, who was done eating but lingering.

  “He’s super mad at me,” Maya said.

  “I think he felt a little blindsided,” said Mom. She put her hand on Maya’s. “We both love you.”

  “I know.”

  Maya heard the lawn mower starting up outside. The lawn did not need mowing.

  ***

  There was still no reply from Bijou the next morning. Maya started another email of her own, apologizing more profusely, but deleted it. She didn’t want to seem too desperate.

  She went to the garage and unlocked her bicycle. Last summer, her parents had decided she was old enough to go on rides alone, as long as she stuck to the paths, wore a helmet, and was careful at the few busy intersections. But last summer she had been slightly afraid to do so.

  Today she took the bike to the bike path and headed south, out of the neighborhood. She rode past the hospital and memories of Claire, past the golf course where Dad once gave her putting lessons, past the lake where she learned how to swim so many years ago. She entered new neighborhoods, stretches of the city where she’d never been before or done anything. The path wound around the lakes of south Minneapolis and eventually crossed the river into Saint Paul, but Maya stopped there at the river, in sight of Fort Snelling.