See No Color

by Shannon Gibney

  Worn pictures of Reggie playing baseball in elementary and middle school hung in cheap frames at awkward angles on the hallway walls. He was even cuter as a kid, I thought to myself as I hurried to the bathroom. With a big dimple in his right cheek and bright bursting eyes he must have been a favorite of the girls since kindergarten. I turned to the right and faced a door with a large wooden placard with “Family Makes a Home” plastered across it in cursive with long wildflower stems winding through each letter. I stifled a laugh and pushed open the door. The bathroom was perhaps the tiniest I’d ever seen, with an aging toilet and sink almost mashed together on the other side of the room. I put my hand over my mouth and nose as a sickly rose scent flooded my senses. It was like being in Grandma Kirtridge’s bathroom—everything was spotless but almost funereal. I opened the door quickly and sat down on the toilet before I had time to follow this line of thought further. The truth was that I liked the Carters; really liked them, in fact. And I felt guilty for judging them. They had never been anything but nice to me. But at the same time, there was a part of me that couldn’t turn it off.

  Looking up at the cracked ceiling, I began to hiccup, and I cursed each one as it left my mouth. This was what always happened when I got too nervous, or when my anxiety got the better of me. This is all there is, said the voice in my head, the same voice that had said it for years, mostly lying in bed in the dead of night while the rest my family slept, but also occasionally in moments like this. Moments in daily life that felt out of whack for some reason I couldn’t pinpoint. This is all there is, and this is all there will ever be, the voice said again, louder. I knew in a moment it would be screaming in my ears if I couldn’t get control of myself. I balled my hands into fists and rested them on my forehead, rocking. No, this can’t be it. There has to be something more.

  I willed myself to think of something different, something concrete, in order to distract myself. Images of baseball games and laying out for fly balls came into my head, but they were fleeting. Instead, what came to mind was sledding on the huge hill at McKnight Park, sixth grade, two black kids from another school snickering at me, We ain’t got all day! while I fiddled with my sled in line at the top of the hill. Make it snappy, nappy! They and some white kids laughing at me and my disheveled hair. My stomach churning, my face coloring. Now more hiccups coming. This is all there will ever be. I rocked my collapsed legs back and forth on the toilet lid, and pressed my palms into my eyes, pushing my brain to envision something—anything—else.

  You a real mess, you know that? You muthafucking Oreo wanna-be white girl. A brash mass of black bodies huddled in hallway corners at West High, always somehow finding me, even when I did my best to blend in and avoid them. They always found me. What the hell is going on with your hair, anyway? A hand pulling one of my curls. My head yanked back, then snapping forward. The endless search for words, a rebuttal, anything to make them leave me alone. Nothing coming. Just my legs moving me along as fast as possible, to get away from that blackness that would engulf me otherwise—and then what would I be? I’m not black anyway, my mind would scream, but the phrase would never make its way to my mouth. I’m mixed. Dad’s answer. I hiccupped now, disappointed that that was still all I had on them. And at least I’ll be going to college, unlike you idiots.

  I bowed my head in shame and tried to come back to the present—even if it was a present in which I realized that Reggie would never want me if he knew how the black kids really saw me, and how I saw myself. The truth was, I wasn’t black at all. Not by objective assessment, and certainly not by choice. I opened my eyes again and looked up at the ceiling, counting the cracks that radiated from the dingy fluorescent fixture. When I got up to fourteen, the hiccups had almost subsided. Then a knock at the door.

  “Alex, you okay in there?” Mrs. Carter’s voice was warm with concern on the other side of the door. “You just been in there a minute, so I thought I’d check.”

  I thrust my feet down to the ground—probably a little too forcefully—and tried to make my voice as level as possible. “I’m fine, Mrs. Carter. Sorry. Almost done in here.” I stood up and turned on the sink, letting the water fall into the drain as my dry hands gripped the basin.

  “No problem at all,” she said. “Take as long as you need.” She sounded a little embarrassed now. “I was just checking.”

  I opened the door abruptly and faced her. She wore a simple blazer and matching beige skirt, her hair straight but curled inwards at the ends. She had given Reggie her bright eyes, which I suspected and feared could see as much as his could.

  “All set,” I said, stepping toward her. “Let’s eat.”

  She put her hand on my back and lightly directed me toward the kitchen table.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In 2009, when I was ten and Jason was nine, Hank Aaron came up to Madison to scout out some local talent and visit friends. At the time, Hank was director of player development for the Brewers and was always traveling somewhere to look at a prospect. Dad had somehow convinced Hank’s personal assistant that it would be worth his time to stop by batting practice of the number-three-ranked Little League team in the country that afternoon, since he would be in the area anyway.

  At 3:35, twenty of us were hot, sweaty, and ready for a water break. We had been swinging at pitches with all our might on the off chance that Hank Aaron would walk in at the exact moment we were up and see us slam one out of the park.

  “Alex, you’re up,” Dad said, from behind the cage.

  I sighed; my right wrist ached from snapping it so hard during all the previous at bats. I knew better than to mention this to Dad, however.

  “This sucks,” Jason whispered in my ear.

  I wiped my dirty hand across my forehead, which ended up only making my sweat dirty as it dripped into my eyes.

  Logan, my teammate then and now, is this pasty, pale-faced white boy who was thin as a rail then. He could throw anything and everything at any speed, and at any location, even the pitches that weren’t allowed in the league for our age group (like curve balls). It hurt my head to swing against him in the middle of the afternoon like this; I had to think too much, and my temple was already throbbing.

  He hid his face from me behind the mitt. I sighed, lifting my bat higher over my right shoulder. The sun felt like it was burning a hole in my skull. He went through the windup and then delivered. All of it happened so fast that I barely had time to think, and then the ball was in the catcher’s mitt, and I was still standing there, waiting, staring into the sky.

  “You can’t wait for the pitcher to make up his mind. You have make up yours,” a deep voice said behind me. I turned around and found myself face to face with Hank Aaron. He was wearing an old Brewer’s cap that was torn along the brim, a T-shirt, and lightweight khaki pants. His smile was broad and sincere, and it paralyzed me.

  “You just let him dictate the terms of the at bat, and you can never afford to do that,” he told me. “I’m not going to talk to you about where your hips should be, or the right way to hold the bat. I leave the mechanics to other people, who know better.”

  Dad snorted. He knew, like we did, that there was no one who knew better than Hank Aaron.

  Aaron leaned forward, so that he could look me straight in the eyes. “All you need to know is what kind of pitch he’s likely to throw, what his release point will be, its location, and the speed.” He laughed. “That sounds like a lot, I know, but all I’m really saying is study him. He’s on your own team, right?”

  I nodded, though what I really wanted to do was reach out and touch his hand. That’s Hank Aaron’s hand.

  “So, you know him, and what he’s likely to throw,” he said.

  I nodded again. Then I looked out at Logan, still perched on the mound, watching all of us in confusion. I felt sorry for him, out there all by himself.

  “He throws me lots of fastballs,” I said. “High and inside.”

  Hank Aaron stood up and crossed his arms over his che
st.

  I cleared my throat. “I think he likes to throw one fast, to get me swinging, and then he tends to make the next ones off-speed.”

  Hank Aaron nodded. “Because he’s a good pitcher. But even good pitchers have to give up a few hits when they face good hitters.”

  “Yeah,” I said. He had a face that made me want to tell him everything: how I was the only girl on the team, how I was Jason’s sister and Dad’s daughter, and how I was going up to the show someday.

  “Try again,” he said, gently. “Think about what’s next, where it will be, and when.” Then he stepped away from the plate and walked behind the cage.

  I took a deep breath and looked for Jason in the group of teammates gathered beside the cage. I finally found his Derek Jeter T-shirt and ecstatic grin. He gave me the thumbs-up and winked. I tried to smile, but the sides of my mouth would not move. I didn’t even want to look at Dad. I turned my attention back to the plate and dug my feet deep into the dirt.

  Logan went into his windup and then released the ball when it was well over his shoulder. I anticipated, swung, and connected, pulling the ball toward third base. I dropped the bat and began to run toward first, Hank Aaron’s eyes on my back pushing me forward.

  A few strides into my run, the first baseman’s face appeared before me, red and blurry. “Foul ball!” he yelled, and my chest tightened. Hank Aaron had told me how to hit it, and I hadn’t listened well enough, because the ball hadn’t stayed between the foul lines. I stopped running and turned around. I didn’t want to look at Dad, Jason, or Hank Aaron, so I deliberately stared at my cleats on the long walk back to the cage.

  “You did good, Alex,” Hank Aaron said as I finally reached him. There was nothing sarcastic about his tone; he was telling me the truth. “I hope you don’t mind, your brother told me your name,” he said, his arm around Jason, who looked like he might implode from all the excitement.

  “That’s a good start, a real good start,” Hank Aaron continued. “You just need to work some to perfect your swing a little, so that you swing just a little earlier on a pitch like that. But the important thing is that you’re making up your mind to hit on him,” he said. “Once you do that, it’s only a matter of time.”

  My face was starting to burn: Hank Aaron thought that it was only a matter of time before I would become a great hitter. Hank Aaron had instructed me, Alexandra Lynn Kirtridge, and I had begun to learn.

  “But you know, that ball almost didn’t roll foul, though, third baseman,” he shouted up the field. “And you really weren’t in the correct position to field it in case it was fair. You need to position yourself on the field according to each hitter. For Alex, I’d say you probably need to move in and to the left a bit, so you can be in prime position to field the ball and then throw to first for the out. Here, I’ll show you. Let me play third for a minute. Alex, you go back to the plate and hit again. I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Dad threw him a mitt, and he jogged toward third.

  Jason and I locked eyes. We were going to play with Hank Aaron, who hit 755 home runs and had 6,856 bases. Hank Aaron, the all-time leader in total bases and runs batted in.

  “Mr. Aaron!” a high-pitched female voice yelled onto the field. I whipped around to see who it belonged to and spotted a thin, white woman, dressed in a light blue business suit, in the stands. “I’m sorry, but we may have to cut this short. We’re already going to be late for your four thirty.”

  My stomach sank; there was a certain kind of authority to her tone that would be hard for anyone, even Hank Aaron, to ignore. I knew that he would be leaving us.

  Hank Aaron paused in mid-stride, considering her words. A minute ago, he had been smiling, but now his face was serious, almost inaccessible. “I forgot about that,” he said. He laughed. “Guess I was having too much fun out here with you guys.” He started walking toward the stands. “Just have too many appointments in one day.”

  We almost played ball with Hank Aaron. We were ready to pull the long ball.

  He was shaking Dad’s hand, thanking him for the opportunity to meet each of us. “They’re a great group, I can see why you’ve gone so far with them,” he said. “I’ll be watching for them, especially that little girl. She’s got something. Smarts and tenacity.”

  Dad’s face was positively glowing. He thanked Hank Aaron for taking the time out of his busy schedule to work with us.

  Tenacity. It was a strange and awkward-sounding word, and I had no idea what it meant, though I could tell from the way Hank Aaron said it that it was a good thing.

  He turned and waved to us one last time before he disappeared into the darkness of the stadium corridor.

  “Goodbye, Hank Aaron,” I said under my breath. It seemed like he was gone right after he arrived.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  At some level, I knew this was going to happen—I was a likely valedictorian, not a moron. But it still caught me by surprise.

  .285/.355/.399. A slash line in decline was what I was. Two weeks before the state tournament, I found myself in an extended batting slump. Dad now had me batting seventh—or worse, he’d taken to keeping me out of the starting lineup “to rest” and then pinch running me—if we had a lead. And that wasn’t all, either. These strange, ever-moving blobs on my chest were growing bigger by the day and making things tight everywhere. Lying in bed at night, I could almost feel my hips starting to spread, and my sense of balance was off at the plate. I knew that things could change rapidly in my body, but I had no idea it would happen so fast. Meanwhile, Jason’s hands were growing, his knuckles bulbous and pink—like Dad’s. When he talked, he stretched out his fingers and moved them around in circles, which was something I had never seen him do before; that was how Dad talked. My hands were still small, my fingers stubby. They weren’t growing, and when I talked I moved them a little, but they mostly remained still, controlled, at my side.

  Jason and Dad pretended not to notice what was going on. At dinner or on their way to a game, they made extra efforts to include me in discussion and strategizing. And they would both compliment me excessively when I got a hit or made a great play, things they would not have even mentioned back when I was playing well.

  But I wasn’t going to give up so easily. Early mornings after running, I spent hours in front of the mirror in my room. I knew a lot of girls at school who carefully monitored everything they ate, mortified that they might add an extra pound to their hips or ass. But that wasn’t my problem; if anything, I would have welcomed the extra weight on my frame. Next to the guys, I looked like I might blow away in the wind. I would turn my arms back and forth in front of the mirror, analyzing the flex of a bicep, wishing it thicker. The guys were all developing six-packs on their stomachs, but a small mound of flesh remained stubbornly attached to my abdomen no matter how many sit-ups I did. My thighs were, perhaps, my biggest disappointment: they were as malleable as Play-Doh. Dad had always told us that strong legs were what really generated power, so all of us were constantly striving to shape them. Jason adopted a strict exercise, weight, and diet regimen, which was yielding incredible results. No such luck for me.

  This can’t be it. That was the thought that usually visited me those mornings, in front of the mirror. There has to be something I can do. I vowed to improve somehow, improve to the point where Dad would know he was a fool to ever doubt who I was and what I was capable of. There was no good reason why it couldn’t be done; I just had to focus. Focus. Focus. I began running twice as far as everyone else. I lifted less weight than the guys but did more reps and sets. I strictly monitored everything I consumed. Sweets and fried foods were the first things to go, followed by salty snacks with saturated fat and high carbohydrate content. One night Reggie cooked me a high-protein tofu and organic vegetable stir-fry, adamant that it would slowly but inevitably build my stamina and muscle.

  But a few days into the regimen, my body let me down again. We were up four in the seventh during the regional championship game wh
en Dad had me pinch run. The batter had failed to move me over, but Dad kept me in at center. I knew that this was my chance to show him and everybody that I was still the old Alex, the best player on the field, who wasn’t scared of anything and who was going to be the first girl to make it.

  As he headed toward number 715, it had become more and more difficult for Hank, I remembered. Dear Nigger, You black animal, I hope you never live long enough to hit more home runs than the great Babe Ruth. The hate mail had increased as he approached the record, but he put it back somewhere outside of his sight. Somewhere he couldn’t see it every time he had come up to bat.

  The umpire signaled the end of a time-out, and the batter stepped up to the plate. I licked my lips; they were as dry and cracked as my throat. I looked over at the guys on the bench, who were trading sips from a bright green water bottle. A streak of silver on the water bottle threw the bright sunlight back in my eyes and I winced. It suddenly felt like I hadn’t had a drink in a very, very long time. The batter took his stance, and I crouched down. Focus. Focus. I wanted him to drive it straight into center field, maybe a bit to my right so that I would have to run and then make a sliding catch. Something dramatic. Our pitcher stretched and delivered. My eyes fixed on the ball as it left his hand. It was like it was carving a tunnel through the air, turning it violet and yellow and light blue as it shattered into pieces. I was conscious that I was waiting for the pieces to come back together, and then I was conscious that my eyes were actually shut, not open. What I was watching was occurring in a different world, on a different plane. I was here, but I was not here. I was lying in the grass, my feet buckled beneath me, arms splayed out at my sides.