The Importance of a Piece of Paper

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Runaway shuffled back and forth kicking listlessly at the dirt, singing, swatting his glove against his leg, and turning around in the outfield wishing a pop-up would come his way. He rapped hard and fast, then squinted at Coach Marcello at home plate, in his boots and cowboy hat, swinging the bat in front of the galvanized-pipe and chicken-wire backstop. Coach Marcello looked around, gave Runaway a vague gesture with his head as though he intended to hit the ball to him, then threw up the ball and smacked it. Runaway, singing and harmonizing with Tesco and Osca, spread his legs apart, leaned forward, and slapped his glove, ready to catch it.

  The ball arched over the infield but sailed left, to Clubfoot Tony. Runaway watched him quickly hop forward a few times to gain momentum before he threw the ball to second base. Big Noodle scooped it up and fired it to home plate. Again coach Marcello looked at Runaway as if he were going to hit him one. It could be that right-handed midget coaches couldn’t hit to right field, thought Runaway, as he smacked the inside of his glove. He liked hearing the pop it made when he punched the leather so he whacked the glove again, keeping beat with another rap song. He leaned forward on the balls of his feet to show Marcello he was ready and to urge him to hit a grounder, all the while singing to the rhythm of the song.

  Marcello hit a waist-high line drive to shortstop. Intending to cry out “It’s all yours” or “You got it baby,” Runaway instead yelled, “Runaway!” This word meant a kid had gone over the fence; it was like calling out, “Escape!” Maybe out of frustration at waiting so long for a ball, or from an unconscious yearning to see his grandma again, or simply from an urge to run away himself, he had shouted it. The kids around the baseball diamond glanced at Runaway, unsure why he had cried out the alarm.

  Tesco and Osca stopped rapping and asked Runaway, “Who ran?” He didn’t answer so they grinned and followed suit, yelling, “Runaway!” All three recognized the opportunity for an unplanned excursion through the free lands beyond the orphanage boundary lines.

  Kimo, realizing it was a hoax, screamed loud, “Runaway!,” hoping to incite the boys to dash for the ditch and over the fence to chase the supposed fugitive who had fled the premises unseen.

  “Don’t let him get away,” Marcello cried from the backstop as the boys broke for the fence line.

  Peanut Head, the shortstop, had taken his eyes off the ball, and it had grazed the upper part of his glove, bounced up, and hit him in the cheek. Peanut Head gave a pained look, shook off his glove, and knelt down on one knee holding his head. But even in pain, he quickly recovered, roused by cries from other kids: “Runaway! Runaway!”

  Marcello looked around in distress at the boys dropping their gloves and stampeding toward freedom. “Catch him! Bring him back to me,” he exhorted as he watched the stream of boys jumping and trampling the fence. The hesitant boys, as though first making sure it was okay with Marcello, searched the fence line with puzzled expressions on their faces before rushing headlong behind the others, over the fence, and into Mr. Scrip’s orchard. Scrip was a crabby alcoholic farmer who blasted buckshot at kids he caught stealing watermelons from his fields.

  Runaway’s mind drifted aimlessly as he sprinted, leaping over tumbleweeds, ducking under tree limbs, snapping an apple off a branch, and eating it as he raced on. He caught up to the kids in front of him, passing Clubfoot Tony and tossing the apple core to Flood, the fastest kid in school.

  “Yeah, who ran?” asked Cuckoo Clock, running up beside him.

  “Who knows,” Runaway replied, smiling at his own secret.

  They charged past the orchards and headed west across the open fields and past the KQEO radio towers with the red blinking lights—the same lights Runaway stared at through his dorm window before going to sleep each night.

  When they reached town they crossed the busy boulevard, Rio Grande, purposely slowing down enough to make the cars stop for them. They jammed into Wells Market and minutes later were chased out by Mr. Perez.

  “You don’t have money, don’t come in! Little thieves. Offspring of dogs,” Mr. Perez said, swatting them back through the door with his white apron.

  The boys laughed it off, their pockets already stuffed with candy and their mouths frothing with the bittersweet fizzies they had stolen.

  Kimo came out with a big bag of candy and soda pop and sat down on the street curb. He handed out portions to Tesco, Osca, and Runaway. They quickly finished the sweets and then stood up to leave. Runaway lingered on the sidewalk.

  “Come on,” Tesco said.

  There was a familiar expression on Runaway’s face.

  Hoping to dissuade his pal from running and getting into trouble again, Tesco said, “We need to practice our new songs and we can’t without you.”

  Osca said, “Ah, man, there ain’t no runaway.”

  “There is now,” Runaway said, his tone defiant.

  Kimo warned, “Homeboy, they’re going to beat you bad—”

  “I have to see if she’s okay,” Runaway said, staring to the south where his grandma lived. He threw his soda bottle into the weeds and nodded to his crew; as he started to jog, they commenced singing a rap song he had written. He turned when he heard them, waved, and then scrambled over a wall. He took off behind the store, climbed over a cinderblock fence, and disappeared.

  After a while, he fell into a runner’s trance, crossing fields, going along ditch banks through different barrios and ghettos, passing foul-smelling industrial yards, sneaking across municipal building parking lots, and cutting around city parks until he found himself on the outskirts of the city. He reminisced about his most recent visit with his grandmother, which bore no resemblance to the imaginative version he had described to his friends.

  * * *

  The journey from the orphanage to his grandma’s trailer was long and exhausting and took all day. He knew that he would arrive tired and hungry, but happy. His grandma would give him a big hug, and after having him get the cookies and milk, she’d sit him down next to her on the tattered couch and they’d flip through the old family photo album, with Runaway narrating as he had during his last visit.

  “In this one a man has suspenders on. He wears his pants high and shoves his cuffs into his boots...”

  “That was your uncle Louis. He was a sweet man.” Her stubby fingers went to the next photo, some of them so old they had serrated edges and were faded completely in places.

  She lifted her head and stared up blindly, recalling from memory which photo she had her finger on, and saying, “Ah, yes, this must be your uncle Max. Where is this photo? In front of a barn...”

  “Yes!” Runaway exclaimed. “How do you do that, Grandma?”

  “Oh, there’s more than one way to see things. I have them etched in my mind.” Runaway was impressed as she recounted the history of the photos he looked at.

  “Here is your uncle Tomas who died in World War II,” she recounted. And, “Your aunt Valentina—she was so beautiful, she had such a promising future. She went into the world with the brightest hopes and all of it ended with her living along interstates in squalid trailer parks with men who drank and abused her.”

  When she came to a photo of one of her own seven children, she wondered aloud why they had turned on her. She began to weep and she told Runaway how her kids had signed a paper saying she was incompetent to run her ranch and how, with the help of attorneys, they had been appointed executors of her estate. A short time later, sight unseen, they had some quack doctor diagnose her as mentally ill, and afterwards her kids sold the land, split up the cash, and bought themselves houses in the city. She looked down at Runaway with large brown eyes clouded with cataracts and asked, “How could my own kids label their mother mad, steal my land, put me in this old trailer on a dirt lot?”

  Runaway couldn’t answer her, and he carried a big grudge against his aunts and uncles. There wasn’t a thing wrong with his grandma except she was fat. Her blindness didn’t slow her down. After sitting on the couch a bit, she’d have to grab her
cane in one hand, place her other hand on Runaway’s shoulder, and push herself up.

  “Help me, sweet dove,” she would say.

  One time, he helped lift her as she leaned on him and walked the few steps to the toilet. She was so large she couldn’t fit her whole body in the toilet cubicle, so she sat on the toilet with one leg and arm sticking out into the small hallway.

  “I’m so sorry, my prairie dove, so sorry,” she said.

  And Runaway could see why she was sorry. While laboring to get to the toilet, she had peed down her leg. Pinching his nostrils so he wouldn’t gag, he told her, “It’s okay, Grandma,” and knelt down to wipe the floor clean.

  He cut across fields now, and it was cold enough that he could see his breath in the darkness against the moonlight. He sensed that his grandma needed him. He didn’t know the names of the paved streets or dirt roads that led to her house, but he could find the way. Like a bird that knows its nest is over there, Runaway knew, so he climbed over fences and stumbled down streets, heading to his grandma’s.

  Shivering, he crossed a wide parking lot and saw a nondescript, whitewashed brick building where second-hand clothes and used items, really used, were sold. He looked through the plate glass window and noticed that most of the stuff had to be fourth- and fifth-time hand-me-downs—on their last stop before the trash bin. Blowing on the glass and cleaning it with a hand, he caught sight of a stack of sweaters in a cardboard box. He went around the building, found a wrought-iron ladder that ran to the roof, and climbed it. Pushing aside the swamp cooler, he slid his legs down into the duct hole, kicked out the air vent grill, and leaped down into the store.

  At first he thought they might be real, but then he realized he was standing before two armless mannequins. He touched the plaster boobs, and then, spooked by their real-looking eyes, he turned them around and signed a cross over himself. Slipping out of his shoes, socks, shirt, and pants, he picked out a “new” outfit. He cuffed the pants and shirtsleeves, stuffed newspapers into a pair of Stacy Adams shoes, and looped a belt twice around his waist to hold his dress pants up. When Grandma felt the fine material he was wearing, he’d be like those men in the stories she told him, the men she had dated when she was young and voluptuous, working in a New Orleans river bar, one of the girls wearing a bunny costume, perched on a swing above the heads of the patrons who pushed her back and forth as she sang.

  Grabbing a paper bag with plastic handles, he started filling it with everything he could—big panties, voluminous bras, a couple pairs of black stockings, a fake pearl necklace, and two colored-bead wristbands. In another corner he found velvet paintings of Elvis and another of a bull charging at a bullfighter’s red cape. Setting the bag down, he silently imitated Elvis, singing into an invisible microphone in his fist, and then, using a huge pair of panties as a cape, he taunted an imaginary bull charging at him. In the midst of one of his whirls, his eye caught the glimmering cash register.

  The drawer was open and the change bins were brimming with pennies. He immediately filled his front and back pockets, which bulged and sagged so badly he had to retighten his belt. He was still adjusting his pants when headlights suddenly raked across the dark interior of the store. He ducked.

  Peeking out the window, he saw a cop car pulling in. He bolted for the vent, leaped up, grabbed the edge, swung his feet up, and hung upside down like a monkey from a tree branch. Just then the cops entered and swung their flashlights around.

  “I don’t see anything,” the Indian cop said.

  “We’ll come by in the morning and tell Mr. Chavez to put in an alarm. Third time this month someone’s called about prowlers here,” the Chicano cop said.

  They were leaving when they heard a sound. It grew louder. They turned, aimed their light beams at the sound on the floor, and saw pennies sprinkling down. Their light beams went up and followed the rain of pennies to Runaway, hanging upside down from the vent.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Runaway... we’re getting tired of you,” the cop complained and shook his head.

  They took Runaway to a holding facility for juveniles, where he slept on a concrete bench in a cell; a policeman would drive him back to the orphanage at dawn. They didn’t say much, having been through this several times; it was becoming a routine.

  The police cruiser drove under the St. Anthony’s Boy’s Home arch that spanned the entrance, supported by granite columns on each end. The policeman followed the circular gravel driveway and stopped at the entrance to the main building, where two nuns stood in immaculate white smocks.

  Runaway stared gloomily out the backseat window and marveled at the blooming rose bushes bundled against the base of the building. He gazed left at the grass encircled by the driveway. It was mowed and trimmed, and dew sparkled from the green blades in the bright sunlight. Sparrows chirped and shook their wings on window ledges. At the bell tower pigeons fluttered around, squeezing and squirming in and out of the slats.

  Having rolled down his window to smell the grass and roses, he heard the familiar hum of voices churning in the air from the playground and he yearned for the company of his friends. The image of his grandma in his mind, of her all alone in that small trailer, made him angry. He didn’t care how they punished him; the effort to see his grandma was worth it.

  The policeman was greeted by Sister Superior Pauline and Sister Anna Louise. They spoke with furtive expressions on their faces, glancing at him with conspiratorial concern. Runaway tried in vain to read their lips. His mouth and throat were dry and he swallowed hard. All he heard the policeman say when he took him out of the car was, “You’re going to have to do something about this, Sisters.” Runaway could see the nuns’ discomfort as they sheepishly apologized to the officer.

  Sister Superior Pauline, head of the nuns, hardly meddled in the boys’ affairs. She was nice but busy, and was always either in her office meeting officials or attending civic events. Short and stout with a kind, oval face, she looked at him with empathy, unlike Sister Anna Louise, whose eyes gleamed darkly and signaled his impending punishment.

  Something inside Sister Anna Louise had turned malignant, and whatever it was fixed its bitter blade-edged glare on him. Her eyes held his and told him he was in for a severe spanking. Runaway wondered which paddle she would use—they were lined up on the wall in room number 5. That was the room that instilled terror in every boy, and Runaway had made it his second home. She would probably use the big tennis racket paddle, twelve inches across, two and a half feet long. Put her weight into it too, because his running away and her order for him to stop opposed each other like fierce face-to-face combatants, neither taking a step back. As his runaways became more frequent, her spankings only became more brutal.

  About three months ago she had beat him so badly, for so long, that when he showered a few days later, he saw that his back, legs, and buttocks were black. He had gone out to the playground, searched everywhere for Flood, who was one of the few black kids in the orphanage, found him, and said, “Hey, I’m going to be black like you.”

  Flood didn’t know what he meant.

  “Look, I’m going to be black,” Runaway repeated. He drew up his shirt and turned around so Flood could view his back— bruised black, purple, and pale yellow.

  “Man, you can’t be black by getting beat black, you gotta be born black.”

  It had greatly disillusioned Runaway, because he was tired of being himself and having his same old life everyday. He fully believed that a deserving person could be transformed, if the divine powers willed it so. He secretly supposed that all one had to do was gain the favor of the angels and it would happen. He kept hoping to wake up one day as a butterfly, one of those big yellow monarchs, or as a grasshopper, a horny toad, or even one of the pigeons perched outside the stained glass window with white wings and black feathers running down the middle of its breast.

  After past runaways, what really hurt him was losing privileges. On Friday nights, when he had to scrub c
lassroom floors, the rest of the boys would be in the auditorium playing murder in the dark. The boys were split up into two sides at opposite ends of the auditorium and a balled up sock was placed on the floor between them. The object of the game was to bring the sock back to your side. When the lights were turned off, both sides moved toward the sock. Anyone caught moving when the lights came back on was out of the game. In the dark you could get another kid in a headlock and be ready to slam him to the floor, but when the lights came on, you had to freeze your position. And when the lights went out, you resumed your crazed destruction. The timing of the lights going on and off was random—sometimes they stayed off a long time and other times flicked on and off quickly, weeding out the players. Runaway missed punching, kicking, and wrestling with his friends.

  Sister Superior Pauline went up to her office, and after she left Sister Anna Louise, said, “Well, you’ve shamed us again, haven’t you.” Instead of to room number 5, she escorted Runaway to his dorm, saying on the way there, “Understand, young man, your grandmother is blind, she has health problems, and all you do is worry her.”

  “You don’t have to be able to see to love someone,” Runaway said.

  She slapped him, then pulled his ear, and lengthened her stride. “I’ll teach you to talk back!”

  In the dorm, she pulled a paddle from under her smock, had him lean over with his pants down, and delivered fifty smacks to his bare butt.

  The next day, Runaway was buffing the tiles in the chapel. The industrial buffer was twice his weight and he had trouble controlling it as it swung back and forth in wide arcs. Runaway turned off the buffer when he saw his crew stealthily creep in.

  Kimo, Tesco, and Osca smiled at him. Kimo held up a bottle of wine and then started swaying his hips and rapping impromptu. “No time to hear cheap talk, we got the priest’s best wine, prayers and blessings may be fine, but wine from his private stock we’ll take anytime.”