Bat 6

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

  I will be able to get my glove with my money I earn from Miss James. I have helped her every school day, I even went over there on a Christmas vacation day to clean her floor for her. She was playing on her violin sitting down. Lucky I didn’t get the chicken pox, I had them last year.

  Thank You God.

  Next. Thank You for making me do good in playing Mary in the Christmas play. I was honored to be chose and I rode the donkey quite good and did not slide off. And the donkey did not poop even one time in the church, it has been Mary’s donkey so many Christmases. Thank You for that. When we had the manger scene I stayed very still with the baby Jesus. I did not notice Shazam just plain walked out of the play till later when the others told me she did so. How come she did that God? How could a shepherd just walk right off the hillside when Jesus was born in a manger?

  But it was a very good Christmas play anyway.

  Thank You for listening to my prayers all the time God. I appreciate it.

  Next. There is my ma and dad, I told You about before. Could You please help my dad get that tractor job he needs? And my ma’s missing tooth over on the side where she laughs, could You help my dad get that job so she can go to the dentist? It is so embarrassing, other mothers do not have a missing tooth. During good weather when my dad is logging we get along fine, but in the winter the woods is all snowed in up there. So he needs that job.

  I know my ma had Your guidance and everlasting help to sew that pretty pink comforter for my Christmas present, doing it when I was gone or asleep so I never did know she was making me it. I am grateful for it.

  “Leaning on the everlasting arms,” it is such a good church song, and I know exactly how it means in my heart. Thank You God.

  Would You maybe help Shazam not be so strange? I am just asking.

  Thy will be done, Amen.

  But just think. Her dad would not be in heaven, would he? For stealing a car and doing pregnancy to her mother Floy? But he would be in heaven for dying for his country. So what would be fair and where is her dad’s soul?

  Your friend,

  Alva

  Shazam, center field

  I left that Christmas play in the church I couldnt breathe in there.

  Kate and Little Peggy

  Kate, second base

  I was never so excited in my entire whole life before, it was a real refrigerator. Right in our kitchen.

  It plugs into the new electric we got. That Christmas was the first time we ever had automatic light with switches on the wall. No more kerosene lamps. I could turn on my light beside my bed in the middle of the night if I woke up. It is called rural electrification.

  It was the most excitement of my life, even more than every time my mother had another little brother.

  The refrigerator makes cubes of ice in the top. You pour water into the metal tray and there’s a part with squares, well, cubes, really, cube shapes. It’s a rack thing. You put it in the tray. You put the tray full of water in the freezer box in the top of the refrigerator and you take it out the next morning and the water is completely frozen, and you pull up a lever on the tray and lift out ice in cubes.

  We gave our old icebox to the church.

  My folks were so proud we got this new refrigerator, my mom kept cooking things and putting them in the fridge, we call it. Macaroni and cheese. Salmon loaf. And the tomato aspic does not go bad.

  No more blocks of ice for us, I hated when we had to bring it up from River Bend or even just down to the crick in winter. The ice dripped all over and I always had to be the one to mop the puddles off the floor.

  I wondered why my dad was so different about getting the ice from the crick on Christmas Eve day before we had to go up to the church. He was saying, “I just love hauling this ice up from the crick, I just love hauling it. Don’t you just love hauling it?” He said to two of my brothers which were holding the sheets of ice on the sled going up the hill.

  “No no no no no,” my brothers complained the whole trip up the hill. “How come we have to do it on Christmas Eve?” went my one brother, and my other brother said swear words, I heard him through the trees.

  And then on Christmas morning we were having our presents and I wondered how come our presents were so small ones, like only socks and no pretty sweater like I wanted. I was almost getting how my mom calls pouty, and my dad said, “Let’s see if Santa left anything on the back porch,” on account of my littlest brother still believes in Santa. He made us go out there in our slippers and pajamas and sure enough. The huge enormous box with a red ribbon bow on top.

  And inside it our fridge. Our very own.

  It seemed to be a miracle.

  We made fudge on the day after Christmas and we didn’t even have to let it harden up on the porch. The next day we made Kool-Aid ice cubes.

  It was the most amazing thing, we never had anything like it.

  It made me more like the others. Susannah has a fridge because her dad is a doctor and her mother is a nurse and they have to keep medicines in it. And they are a little bit rich, besides, they have somebody completely outside their family to come and clean their house. And Shadean has a fridge because her dad has two orchards. And Ellen has one on account of the G.I. Bill from the government. And Little Peggy too and Daisy and Tootie. Even Lorelei’s poor family has one.

  So there was only Aki, their poor house looked so decrepitated on the outside. After they were gone for so long and the McHenrys rented it out, Aki’s family didn’t have hardly anything, I doubted they had a fridge. I would never ask her, it was too embarrassing. And back then we never went over to Aki’s house, she never invited us.

  And Vernell does not have one, they are so poor down there in the swale with their scrawny goats.

  Our new refrigerator. I loved saying it. Refrigerator.

  My mom was the most thrilled of anybody. I have always gotten real tired of my mom and dad making sure we count our blessings every day on account of how poor they were when they were kids. My mom always reminds me which I do not need reminding of her not even having one dress when she was little. And only shoes that got too small for her brothers. And she did not get to finish her eighth grade of school. Whenever I complain about anything — about honestly anything — my mom says, “Quit your bellyaching and count your dresses.”

  Even when she went with the Ladies Aid to help pack up the 11 boxes of Christmas food for the poor, she said how they weren’t as poor like she was when she was little. She is so proud of Dad he is a logger and there is many advantages on account of many house builders needing wood all the time.

  Well, that Christmas, with our new electrical lights and specially our refrigerator I was sure I would count my blessings forever. My mom made the prettiest orange layered fruit cocktail Jell-O salad I ever saw to take to the church potluck and pageant. It was the favorite salad of anybody’s. I ate a ton of food so I was almost too full to be a good angel in the pageant.

  Christmas was good in many ways. When the pond behind McHenrys’ froze and they rigged up a light on the back of the store for night skating, we all went there and I saw Mr. and Mrs. Porter holding hands on the ice, it was so romantic. They met each other in the war, I would love to meet a soldier and have him love me. They are good skaters together, like a movie. Mrs. Porter skated over to Daisy and me and said, “Are you girls at least thinking about hitting, catching, and throwing?” Me and Daisy got embarrassed. Then she said, “Well, are you at least thinking about arithmetic?” I confess I didn’t think very much about playing ball or doing school. The whole ball field was 2 foot deep under snow.

  And when school started again after New Year’s, there was Tuesdays when I didn’t get to do the indoor drills on account of it being my milking day.

  The point is: I thought that refrigerator was the most important thing of the year I was 11. It was not the most important thing. The most important thing was still invisible but it was right close by and I didn’t even suspect.

  Little Peggy, righ
t field

  Beginning in sixth grade I had a best friend; I had not exactly had one before. Aki came here, and we turned into best friends, it just happened. It might have been partly because we’re both short and we got to be fire drill partners, partly because Mrs. Porter arranged our seats together, and partly because it was OK with me that she was so quiet about things. We felt like best friends, being together. We fitted. The only really odd thing about her was that she wouldn’t eat potatoes. Even the cook at school would always let her know the day before she was making potato soup, so Aki would bring her lunch.

  Aki has eyes shaped like petals of a daisy.

  In the class picture we two are standing right behind Jerry McHenry and Piper, who are kneeling on their knees with their hair uncombed. Aki had slept over with me the night before, and we were wearing each other’s blouses.

  We always slept over at my house, never at Aki’s. She never invited me. Her house couldn’t get fixed up all at once, with harvest and everything. We never talked about it, it was just the way it was.

  Aki was kind of a mystery in that way. In the things she didn’t say. We all told about our childhoods, things like that. She hardly ever told anything.

  And she wouldn’t say a word about the bad things that happened to her and her family all those years. Not even to me. In fact, when somebody wrote the nasty words about Japanese people on McHenrys’ Store window with soap in the night, and Mr. McHenry himself was out there washing them off in the morning when our school bus went past, Aki acted like she didn’t see the writing. How could she not see it? It was huge.

  Some of the boys on the bus said, “Look over there at McHenrys’ window.” Aki could not have not seen it.

  But she turned her head completely away and put her books in her arms, ready to get off the bus across the road at the school.

  If my parents didn’t tell me all what terrible things happened to Aki and her whole family, I wouldn’t even know about how they got sent away from their home and everything.

  We were going to be shepherds together in the Christmas play. But when I had to miss it because of having chicken pox, Aki was able to keep my sheep calm during the whole manger scene, everybody said so. She had some special whispers she whispered to it and it just stood there being respectful to Jesus, that’s how well she was able to gentle it.

  I had to miss the whole church potluck and pageant and everything. But both Vernell and Aki volunteered to save my Christmas bag, so I got it eventually. Every bag is always the same: McHenrys’ Store gives the candy cane and the orange; the filberts and walnuts come from the trees behind the church; and our school principal’s husband makes his Christmas fudge and wraps a piece for everybody’s bag. The Christmas bags are only for kids under twelve, so we will never get them again.

  And then there was what happened with the Valentine cookies.

  It was Shadean’s idea to bake Valentine cookies for our whole grade and also for the old men gathered around the woodstove at McHenrys’ Store.

  Not only does Shadean’s dad have a new tractor, her mother has a new electric stove. So naturally we did the baking at her house.

  We baked all day Sunday afternoon after church, because Valentine’s Day happened on a Monday this year. Daisy came over after her Catholic church down at River Bend, and Lorelei’s father brought Vernell from down at her house in the swale, so everybody was there.

  It was that Sunday afternoon when Kate and Vernell were playing band director with their knives dipped in frosting and the red frosting splashed on Aki’s skirt that they realized they had gone too far. Shadean tried washing it off with Ivory Flakes, but it just smeared worse.

  Aki couldn’t just have a new skirt any time her old one got messed up. And when we saw what that reckless playing had done to Aki’s skirt, we were all ashamed that we let it happen. Aki’s skirt was white and gray stripes like you’d see in a man’s suit for church. I think her mother or grandmother made it, but Aki did not say so. Shadean’s mother told Aki to take off the skirt and she’d soap it up, and we all went to Shadean’s room to find another skirt for Aki to wear.

  Shadean pulled open her closet door; it sounded whishy over the new carpet she has in her room. The carpet is blue and it looks so good with her ruffle curtains that she and her mother sewed on their new Singer machine. Shadean lives in a house of luxury.

  We looked in her closet and Aki said, “Oh, you have so much clothes,” in that soft, exact voice of hers. Shadean has 8 skirts that fit her, we counted. We found one for Aki that was not too much too big. It is a brown one.

  “You can have that skirt if you want it,” Shadean said. “I don’t care.”

  “Oh, no, I’ll bring it back,” Aki said, and she put it on.

  Aki always said no to things; it was her way. No, I’m not such a good ball player (she was too), No, I don’t always get a hundred on my spelling tests (she did too), No, I don’t draw birds best in our grade (she did too). Now it was no to having Shadean’s skirt. Everybody knew Shadean had too many skirts and Aki didn’t have enough.

  We got all the Valentines decorated with faces and hearts and some birds and flowers, and our final count was 68 cookies.

  We all moaned with our stomachs too full of the frosting.

  The next day when Mrs. Porter let us go across the road and take Valentine’s cookies to the old men at the woodstove in McHenrys’ Store, those old men were so thankful, two of them said they would take us home and have us cook for them. Mr. McHenry himself walked us back across the road to school because the snowplow had heaped the piles so high he was worried we couldn’t see if a car might be coming.

  And then Susannah’s mother had the greatest idea, which Susannah told when Aki was home with chicken pox. Aki still had no first baseman’s glove of her own and the only one for a lefty in the sports cupboard was old and raggedy. Susannah’s mother suggested why don’t we all chip in and get Aki a nifty glove for her birthday? As a surprise. Everybody in the class. This would include Jerry McHenry, Darrell and Donald, Piper, Herby, and everybody.

  It was a unanimous vote. I guess Aki was the only girl in the class that every single boy would vote for. She never did anything to make any of them mad. In fact, she never did anything to make anybody mad.

  They elected me treasurer of the collection for Aki’s glove. Shadean and Mrs. Porter chose the perfect one, a Spalding Trapper.

  Everybody was supposed to bring in 50¢ for the glove. There were some who wouldn’t remember, like Donald or Vernell, and Mrs. Porter put in whatever money was missing. It had to be a secret till Aki’s birthday in April.

  The terrible thing is that I didn’t read the invisible signs. I should have. The skirt, the writing on McHenrys’ window. Even Aki’s niceness all the time. Even that. The way she never made a fuss about anything. If anybody could have read the signs, it should have been me.

  Instead, I would wake in the middle of the night sometimes, worrying that I wouldn’t play well enough in our Bat 6. I would lie in bed and concentrate on being able to throw over to first or second. Or I’d worry that somebody might spill the beans about Aki’s mitt before her birthday. I would lie there and listen to fir-tree branches unloading their heavy snow. It sounded like a comforter falling off a bed.

  Lola and Lila, Shazam, and Wink

  Lola and Lila, managers and general subs

  It was so much fun at Wink’s birthday party on January 1st, New Year’s Day. We all had pretty dresses and there was such good games. Her mom makes excellent birthday parties, and the cake is always the BEST. Wink shoveled the path from the driveway to their porch by herself, all the 8 inches of new snow from the night before. It was that big heavy wet snow that breaks fruit tree branches. Manny and Alva rode with us due to both of their cars were stuck in the snow that day.

  Wink invited Shazam because she would feel bad leaving her out. Shazam’s mother came to visit her for Christmas from over in Idaho where she got a job. Darlene’s parents went to pick h
er up at the Greyhound. She brought Shazam a fancy green satin dress for Christmas, and that was a goofy gift because Shazam didn’t even have good boots to wear in the snow till the Gospel Church ladies bought her a pair. A fancy green shiny dress with puffed sleeves was ridiculous.

  Shazam came to Wink’s party wearing that bright fancy dress and we all just stood there not knowing what to say and Wink’s mother said, “Oh, Shirley, your dress is real pretty, you look real pretty, doesn’t she?” And of course we were birthday party visitors so we had to make pretend, and we all said Yes your dress is real pretty. It was a pretty dress, but for in a movie, not for in real life.

  Everybody was over the chicken pox for Wink’s party. We did not get the chicken pox till January 4 (Lola) and then January 11 (Lila).

  Shazam didn’t get chicken pox. She promised she never had them in her life. Her grandmother told the principal she didn’t know if Shazam ever had the pox or not. “Not know?” we said. “How could you not know if somebody ever had them?”

  Our mom said, “Somebody should know. That girl’s mother should know.”

  But when Shazam’s mother came to visit her own daughter for Christmas, she didn’t even remember. That’s what Shazam said, “My mom don’t remember if I had them.”

  Wink was so in love with Hank Greenberg, her baseball hero of the Detroit Tigers, she made a pin the bat on the ball game instead of pin the tail on the donkey. It was going too far, but we went along with it.

  Shazam tilted her head way back so she could see under the blindfold. And Wink’s mother said at the very start of the game, “Now, we don’t want no peekers,” she said it to everybody. But Shazam peeked and she got the prize, a snow globe, a shaker-thing with water inside a glass ball and Santa Claus and a house, and you shake it and the snow falls down.