Keeping Score

by Linda Sue Park

  And she would pray for the Dodgers the night before each game.

  Okay, so her praying hadn't worked last year, but maybe saying prayers was like collecting something. Maggie thought of Treecie's shells.

  Years ago, when Treecie had first announced that she was collecting shells, she had only three. It was not a very impressive collection, although of course Maggie didn't tell her that.

  Now on a shelf in Treecie's room, there was a big pickle jar full of shells. She had found them on the beach near her uncle's farm. "I like thinking how they could have come from really far away," Treecie had said.

  Maybe saying prayers was like collecting shells—maybe you had to say a whole lot of them before they added up to something. Maggie pictured her prayers as a string of words trailing upwards. Maybe she had to say a bunch more prayers before the string was long enough to reach Heaven.

  So she had stuck to her plan fiercely. The praying part was easy: Bedtime prayers were a habit, automatic. The scoring part was sometimes harder: It took a lot of concentration to score pitches and set the table at the same time, especially with Mom snapping at her to put the scorebook down before she broke a glass.

  Now it was late September, the end of the regular season. And her plan was working!

  Brooklyn had won the pennant. They would play the Yankees in the World Series. Maggie could hardly wait.

  Seven games. The Series went the full seven games, back and forth, up and down, wins and losses, until Maggie felt positively seasick. The Dodgers won Games 1, 3, and 5 but lost Games 2, 4, and 6.

  By unspoken agreement, Dad was never around when the games were on. He was at work during the week, of course, and for the weekend games he went to Uncle Leo's house. Maggie was grateful for his tact; she didn't think she could have stood listening to the games with him cheering for the Yankees in the same room.

  Along with probably two-thirds of the school kids in Brooklyn, Joey-Mick and Maggie stayed home after lunch on the day of Game 7. It was like the whole Series smushed into one game. First the Yankees scored, then the Dodgers tied the game; in the next inning the Yankees scored another run, and the Dodgers tied it again. Two more runs for the Yankees; they were ahead, 4–2. Joey-Mick paced the room like a big cat in a small cage, thunking the ball into his glove almost constantly. Maggie swung her leg furiously and chewed her nails and twisted her hair and kept score all at the same time.

  Bottom of the seventh, Yankees still ahead, 4–2. The bases were F.O.B.—"full of Brooklyns," Red Barber's famous phrase, and with two out Jackie Robinson came to the plate. Maggie made her tiny cross gesture, forefinger against her thumb.

  Jackie fouled off the first two pitches. Then he swung and made contact. The sound of the bat on the ball was wrong—a weak tock rather than a solid crack.

  An infield pop-up. Maggie froze, all except for her heart, which felt like it was falling somewhere south of her toes.

  But Jackie was Jackie, and this was no ordinary pop-up. It went high ... then higher ... the pitcher and the first baseman lost it in the sun ... the Dodgers were running like mad around the bases ... the ball was still in the air ... one runner scored, then two, and the third was heading for the plate with the lead run ... Joey-Mick was hopping up and down now ... the Dodgers would be ahead, 5-4, with only two innings left to play...

  Then stupid Yankee second baseman Billy Martin charged across the infield and made a stupid miracle catch, his glove just inches off the ground. With that catch, something inside Maggie seemed to give up, roll over, and die. Sure enough, the Yankees went on to win the game, and the Series, and all the glory.

  Maggie had been so sure that this would be Brooklyn's year. After the pain they had suffered last year, losing to the Giants on that awful Thomson home run, it had felt like the Dodgers flat-out deserved to win if there was any justice in the world. It was so unfair—the Yankees always, always, always won. Would it ever be the Bums' turn? Would she ever get to stop thinking "Wait till next year"?

  Part of her wanted to kick and scream and swear and break things, but it was as if all the life had been sucked out of her. She couldn't summon the energy for even a single tear. She got up from the armchair, went up to her room, and buried her scorebook at the bottom of the closet.

  It wasn't alone: the two books from last year—regular season and playoff series against the Giants— were there, too. I'm never going to look at them again as long as I live, Maggie vowed silently.

  At dinner, Dad was telling Mom about something that had happened at work. It had nothing to do with baseball, and Maggie thought she was listening, but in the next moment her head was down on the table and she was sobbing into her napkin.

  Dad stopped talking and put down his forkful of mash—it was a Tuesday, potatoes night—which he had been waving in the air as he spoke.

  "Hey," he said, in what for him was a soft voice. He reached out and touched the back of Maggie's head. "Hey there."

  Maggie sobbed a little louder.

  Joey-Mick spoke up. "It's the Dodgers, Dad. She's mad about the Series."

  "I know, I know," Dad said. "It's okay, princess. They did great, didn't they? The full seven games. That hardly ever happens to the Yanks. You know the last team that did it?"

  "Yeah, we know, Dad," Joey-Mick said angrily. "The Dodgers, in forty-seven. We lost then, too!"

  "I'm just sayin'," Dad said, "that the Dodgers got nothing to be ashamed of."

  Then Maggie lifted her head. "E-easy for y-you to say," she said, her words snagging on each sob, "you—you're a Yankees fan!" She spat out the last words like a curse, jumped up from her chair, and fled toward the stairs.

  "Margaret Olivia!" Mom said, standing up so fast that her chair fell backward and hit the floor with a loud thump. "You do not talk to your father like that—"

  Maggie pounded up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door to cut off the rest of her mother's words. Now she'd really be in for it—talking back to Dad and slamming the door on Mom. She held her breath for a moment, listening. Dad's voice was too low for her to make out what he was saying, but he must have been telling Mom to stay cool and leave her alone, because nobody came after her. Then his voice rose a little, and she heard him say, "Son, pick up your mother's chair."

  Maggie sat on the edge of her bed, trembling. She had thought she was ready for a good long cry, but her tears had dried up suddenly. She tried to swallow the dry lump in her throat, which almost made her gag.

  Stupid Dodgers. How could they do this to her? She didn't feel one bit sorry for them. They had let her down, her and Joey-Mick and Mom and Treece and the guys at the firehouse ... the whole neighborhood—the whole city.

  Maybe she would become a Yankees fan—it would be nice to cheer for a team that won all the time. But the thought was hardly formed in her mind before she shook it off with a shudder. She could never be a Yankees fan. Or a Giants fan, either, except for cheering for Willie Mays. It was impossible—like saying she should be a dog instead of a girl.

  That would be much better, come to think of it. Charky never really cared who won the games. The guys at the firehouse said he was a Dodgers fan, but that was because they were happy when the Dodgers won, and when they were happy, Charky was happy.

  It was stupid saying that a dog was a fan of a certain team.

  Maggie slammed herself back onto the bed and put the pillow over her face. Everything was stupid. Especially her.

  All that scoring, all those times she hadn't gone to the bathroom when she needed to, so she wouldn't miss a pitch. And how many times had she prayed! One hundred fifty-four games in the season, plus the seven games of the Series—that made 161 prayers for the Dodgers. Surely enough to reach up to Heaven, and they still hadn't won the Series.

  She took the pillow off so she could take a deep breath and swallow again. Above the bed on the wall were the two pictures, one of Willie, the other of Jim and Jay-Hey.

  Jim.

  He was stupid, too. Why wasn't he writing
to her anymore? What was going on over there in Korea? Maggie realized that Jim had never written anything about the war in his letters. Not one single thing. Nothing about any bombs or guns or battles. How could she possibly even guess what was happening to him? And to Willie Mays too, who had been in the army for almost the entire season...

  She glared at Jim's face in the photo for a long moment. He was smiling, and because he had been looking right into the camera's lens when the photo was snapped, it looked as though he was smiling at her.

  Maggie felt her cheeks redden. It wasn't his fault, not really. But since he wasn't telling her anything about the war, she would just have to learn about it herself somehow.

  And it wasn't Dad's fault that the Dodgers had lost.

  Maggie stood up slowly, then headed back downstairs.

  Dad and Mom and Joey-Mick were still at the dinner table. They stared at her as she came into the room.

  Joey-Mick said, "Your turn to clear! I thought you were trying to get out of it."

  "Joseph Michael, that's enough," Mom said.

  Maggie looked at Dad. "I'm sorry I shouted," she mumbled. Then, "I didn't mean to slam the door" to Mom.

  A brief silence. Mom nodded, then shrugged. "So," she said, "next year starts again."

  Maggie tried to smile and almost managed it, but not quite. Every year was next year, and next year never came.

  TERRITORY

  It was not easy to figure out what was happening in the war.

  Maggie had bought a new notebook, thinking that she would write down things about the war. She had been reading war stories in the newspaper for almost a month now. There were usually at least two articles on the front page: one about the fighting and another about the talking. The soldiers were doing the fighting, and the government people were doing the talking—endless meetings, where they tried to make a deal to end the war.

  The articles about the fighting were hard enough. "U.N. troops withdraw ... foe in possession of strategic hill ... consolidation of position..." Maggie read and reread the stories, but she still couldn't "see" what was happening.

  And the articles about the talking—they were downright impossible! "Repatriation of prisoners"? "Stalemate on non-aggression clause"? "Regional economic impact"? No wonder those government men couldn't agree on anything—they were too busy looking up all the words in the dictionary!

  She put the paper down and picked up her notebook again. On the first spread, she had written S.K. / U.S. / U.N. at the top of one page, and N.K. / COMM. on the opposite page.

  South Korea, the United States, and the United Nations against North Korea and the Communists. Those were the two teams. Well, not teams, but sides.

  She looked at the two headings, then made all the letters into block letters, fatter and darker than before.

  There. That was better.

  But there was nothing else written on either page. No matter how much she read, she couldn't figure out what to write down.

  The almost-empty pages reminded her of the times she had come running home from school in time for the last inning of a game. For those games, there were only a few plays recorded.

  Maggie took a breath and sat very still for a moment.

  It's because I've come in at the end of the game—I mean, the war. Well, maybe not the end, but at least in the middle. I don't have any idea what happened before, so nothing makes sense.

  She nodded slowly. Even though she still didn't have the solution, at least she knew what part of the problem was: How did the war start, and what had happened between then and now?

  ***

  "Library," Dad said. "They keep newspapers from a ways back. Why do you wanna know?"

  "I need to learn about how the war got started," Maggie said. She had asked him how she could see newspapers from 1950, when the war began. "I thought maybe then I could sort of figure out what might be happening to Jim."

  "Oh" Dad was quiet for a moment, started to speak, stopped. He pulled at one side of his mustache, which he often did when he was thinking.

  "You'll probably need Mom's help," he said at last. "I don't think it's as easy as checking out a book."

  Mom was always the one who took Maggie to the library. But it was a busy time of year: school, Treecie's birthday, Thanksgiving, Maggie's birthday, Christmas. Maggie kept asking, and finally, one day during Christmas break, Mom found the time to go with her.

  The library at Grand Army Plaza was one of Maggie's favorite places. Mom had taken her there ever since she was a baby; the library had opened the same year Maggie was born. One of their regular outings, with Maggie in the baby carriage and Joey-Mick toddling alongside, had been a walk through Prospect Park to the enormous building at the north end, its entry flanked by huge columns and framed with gilded ironwork. They would walk through the big doors and pick out books and read and have a nice rest until it was time to go home again.

  When Maggie was older, Mom explained to her that the library had been built to resemble a book. The entry area was the spine, and the two big wings of the building fanned out to either side, like a book that was partly open. For Maggie, that was the clincher: It was surely the most wonderful building in the world.

  Even now she loved walking through those big doors, from the traffic and clamor of the busy plaza into the sudden peace of the lobby.

  "Through here," Mom said and led the way to the periodicals room.

  Finding the articles turned out to be a lot of work. The desk clerk helped them. First they had to look up "Korean conflict" in a big thick book that listed articles by subject. Then on little slips of paper they wrote down the dates and page numbers given in the book. They gave the slips to the clerk, who went off somewhere and brought back cardboard boxes labeled with the matching dates.

  The boxes contained reels of microfilm. The clerk led them to the area where the large microfilm viewers were kept. He showed them how to wind one end of the film through the viewer's lens and onto an empty takeup reel.

  Finally, Maggie pressed a switch to turn on the viewer's lamp, and there on the screen was the front page of an old newspaper. Magnified, so the almost invisible print on the film was blown up enough to read easily. It was like magic.

  To get to another page, you turned a handle that moved the film along. Maggie had to keep looking back and forth from the slips of paper to the screen, reeling past pages and pages of articles that had nothing to do with the war.

  The first articles she looked at were from the summer of 1950, almost three years earlier. The war had begun when she was only eight years old!

  At first Maggie found it interesting to look at articles from so far back, but as she reeled through the yards and yards of microfilm, her disappointment grew. It felt like more of what she had already been doing—reading stuff about the war that she couldn't really understand.

  And it certainly wasn't helping her one bit with figuring out what might be happening to Jim.

  On another viewer, Mom was reeling through other articles. For a while it was quiet, the two of them reeling and reading.... Maggie began to get dizzy from the words sliding by in front of her eyes.

  Then Mom made a little clicking noise with her tongue. "Come here and have a look now," she said.

  Maggie scooted her chair over so she could look at the screen of Mom's viewer.

  "Land," Mom said. "War is about land, territory. One side trying to control more than the other. Before World War II, Germany was taking over Europe a wee bit at a time, and the fighting was all about trying to get it back from them."

  On the viewer was a map of Korea. Part of it was shaded with diagonal lines.

  "See those lines?" Mom said. "That's showing you how much territory one side has. Now then. You'll be needing maps like this right from the beginning of the war. Here, give us a piece of paper."

  Mom held the sheet of paper right up to the screen. Very lightly, she traced the outline of Korea and then the diagonal lines.

  "April 1951," sh
e said. "You'll be going back further and then forward again."

  Instead of spooling randomly for articles about the war, Maggie was now looking for something specific. It made the search go much more quickly.

  I'm on a treasure hunt, she thought. And the treasure is maps.

  By the time they left the library three long hours later, Maggie had torn out the first two pages of her notebook and started over. On the way home she made plans: She would need to draw over the light tracings to make them darker, add captions, make more copies of the maps....

  As soon as they got home, Maggie went right to the dining table and started working.

  Joey-Mick plopped himself down next to her, glove on one hand, ball in the other. Thunk—thunk— "Whatcha doin'?"—thunk—thunk.

  "What's it look like I'm doing?"

  He watched her for a few moments, then frowned. "We didn't have no project like that in fifth grade."

  "It's not for school."

  The thunking stopped. "It's not? What's it for, then?"

  "It's not for anything. I mean, it's just for me. I'm trying to learn more about the war."

  "We're learning about World War II right now. I'd like to have been one of them parachute-jumpers. They got dropped behind the enemy lines, and then they had to do some special mission and get back to the other side. Without getting caught by the Nazis."

  Maggie angled the sheet of paper in front of her toward him, so he could see it better. "See those diagonal lines there? That's the enemy. The Communists. The plain space, that's South Korea and the U.S."

  Joey-Mick looked at the map. "It's almost exactly half and half."

  "On that one, yeah. But"—she sorted through the pile of maps she had traced at the library—"look at this one. And this one here."

  "Wow," he said. "That musta been a lot of fighting."

  Maggie began working again. She needed to make copies of the outline of Korea. Her plan was to make a new map at least once a month, or whenever there was a change in territory.