The Way Home Looks Now

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

  “I know, I know, but …” I gesture toward the field. “C’mon. That was … just …” I try to organize my thoughts as Martin trudges into the dugout.

  “Shoulda stayed on third,” gruffs Martin. He gives me the hairy eyeball. “Don’t know what you’re so slap-happy about.”

  “Martin,” I grab him by the shoulders. “You were going to score on a third strike. You had to try. I mean, it would have been great.”

  “But I didn’t, so it wasn’t.”

  “Well, scoring a run would have been better, but just trying was kind of …” I pause, trying to find the right word.

  “Spectacular,” suggests Erin.

  “Amazing,” agrees Coop.

  “Comical,” says Rickey.

  “It was interesting,” says Ba, who is standing by the dugout entrance. At the sound of his voice, we all freeze, wondering if Martin is going to get into trouble for not listening to Ba. Martin takes off his cap and coughs. There might have been a sorry buried in there.

  “I suppose we should work on baserunning” is all Ba says.

  “Let me guess,” says Martin. “Forty laps.”

  MARTIN WAS WRONG—WE DON’T RUN FORTY LAPS AT the next practice.

  Instead, we play Over the Line and Pepper, the games we had played at Folger’s Lot. We run relay races, with one team starting at home, and the other at second, holding bats over our heads as we run. Ba doesn’t know the names of the games, but when he tells us the rules for a game, we usually know the name.

  “We have one batter, one pitcher, and everyone else is the fielder. When you catch a fly ball, it is your turn to hit,” says Ba.

  “Hey—that’s Catch-a-Fly,” Rickey tells him.

  Maybe Ba knows the game by another name in Chinese, but he just isn’t telling us. At first, everyone kept looking at me, as if maybe I knew that my methodical Ba had been replaced by a fun-loving alien life-form, but after a few minutes, it’s clear that we are still practicing. To keep hitting in Catch-a-Fly, you either have to hit the ball on the ground, or try to hit the ball so hard and so far that no one can catch it.

  Instead of letting the ball drop between them, the players in the field vie to see who can make the most spectacular catch. When Erin makes an over-the-shoulder basket catch, everyone else tries to do it, too. Bobby dives for the ball, rolling over and over into the dirt. Coop lays himself out flat to snag a line drive in a play that’s worthy of any major leaguer.

  Sean hits a blooper toward Martin at first. Martin sets himself under the ball when, at the last second, the ball is snatched away.

  “Hey!” shouts Martin. “Give it.” Martin has been waiting for his turn at bat, and has not hidden his impatience.

  The rest of the field starts chuckling.

  Martin turns around to see who has stolen the ball, and finds himself staring into Ba’s face. Martin takes a step back and puts his hand on his chest in shock. “You can’t go around scaring a guy like that!” It is the first time I’ve ever seen Martin admit he is scared of anything.

  Ba flips Martin the ball. “You can still bat. But you should call for the ball.”

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” responds Martin. Then he bends over and puts his hands on his knees as Ba walks away. “I didn’t think the old guy had it in him,” he says to no one in particular. “He really surprised me.”

  That makes two of us.

  Ba and I are the last ones to leave because we need to rake the field and pick up the equipment. Just as we are getting ready to leave I see Ba raise his hand and begin waving. A blue car, kicking up dust, heads toward us.

  It’s Liao Su Su. He parks the car and gets out. “Hey!” he says. “I just saw you from the road.” He smiles widely and shakes Ba’s hand. Liao Su Su and Ba begin speaking in Chinese, trading the usual beginning-of-conversation pleasantries. How are you? Is this where you play baseball? How have you been?

  I am beginning to tune out when I hear the car door open and close again.

  It’s Clarissa.

  It’s Clarissa, who is the same, but not. She still has long hair, but now it’s really shiny and straight. Silky. She brushes her hair out of her face.

  “Hi, Peter,” she says, kind of shy.

  “Hi,” I say. My throat feels thick. “Clarissa.”

  Maybe it’s a trick of the low-lying sun that’s making her look this way. Kind of golden and lit up. Her eyes look different. Did she wear glasses before? I can’t remember. Or maybe it’s the dress she’s wearing, which is royal blue and short. Above-the-knee short.

  She doesn’t look like a stick anymore.

  “We were driving by, and my father saw you all and said we should stop,” says Clarissa. “I told him it looked like you were leaving, but he didn’t listen to me.”

  I look at the ground so I won’t keep staring at her. “That’s okay,” I mumble. Suddenly I have this weird thought that it would have been nice if Liao Su Su and Clarissa had come by earlier, when I was pitching really well.

  “You look different,” I say. “Did you used to have braces or something? Glasses?”

  “No-o-o.” She draws out the no so it goes up and down, like a musical note. I suppose she could have been insulted by my question, but she just looks amused. “I heard you were playing baseball,” she says. “And your dad was coaching.”

  I nod and try to think of something interesting to say. “We have a girl on the team. She’s really good.” I hear the words coming out of my mouth, though it feels like they bypassed my brain completely.

  “I heard that, too.” Clarissa turns her head, so that her hair spills over her shoulder. A vocabulary word pops into my head: cascade. “That’s cool. My dad says that your dad said that the team was going to break up over having a girl on the team, but you convinced them to stay.”

  What? Why would Ba say something like that? “Oh, no. It was my dad, really. He did that.”

  “Clarissa! We should go,” says Liao Su Su. “Your mother is expecting us.”

  Clarissa turns to go. And then she stops. “Maybe it wasn’t either one of you. That kept the team together, I mean.”

  “Huh? Then who was it?”

  A lot of people say that smiles go across, but with Clarissa, her smile also goes up, so that her eyes smile, too. “Maybe it was both of you,” she says, right before she gets into the car.

  I remember when Nelson told me that one day I would understand about girls, that I would understand what it meant to have a beautiful girl look at you and want to sit next to you. One day is here, and I wish Nelson were here. He would laugh and say I told you so. And then I would tell him that one day something else happened—that Ba and I worked on something together. I think that would have surprised him even more.

  When Ba and I get home from practice, Laney is riding her scooter on the sidewalk. She runs up to me as I get out of the car, and she smells like laundry that’s been dried outside—wind and sun and dirt all mixed up together.

  “I saw an oriole today. A Baltimore oriole,” she says.

  “That’s one more for your life list, huh?” I say.

  “Did you have a game today?”

  “Just a practice, but we had fun. Our next game is Saturday, I think.”

  Laney smiles. What I don’t tell her is I don’t know how many more games we’ll play. Maybe we’ll finish the season, or maybe someone will figure out Erin at the next game. But we’ll play, that much I know. As a team. We might play in the league, or maybe we’ll just play Catch-a-Fly and Pepper on a lot that hasn’t been mowed in two weeks. But we were meant to play.

  Ba gets out of the car. “Elaine, Peter—go inside and wash your hands. We should have dinner soon.”

  But none of us heads inside right away, not even Ba. Even though the sun is getting low, it’s still warm. It’s a spring evening. The birds are calling to each other and the trees and grass take on a soft glow.

  I grab Laney by the arm, and put a baseball in her hand. “Hey Laney, throw me
the ball.”

  Laney holds the ball awkwardly, bending her arm so that her hand is by her shoulder. “Why?”

  “Trust me. You’re gonna love this. It’s better than bird-watching,” I promise.

  Laney twists her lips and raises one eyebrow. “Better than bird-watching?” she asks skeptically.

  She’s stalling, so I go back over and show her what to do. How to bring her arms straight out, like a scarecrow, but with her head turned over one shoulder. The way Nelson showed me a long time ago.

  I walk about fifteen paces away, turn, and face her. “Just throw me the ball.” I don’t really expect her to get it to me exactly, but that’s what she does. A perfect chest-high toss.

  “Hey!” she says. Her face is a perfect O of surprise, her mouth and eyes wide open. “I did it!”

  We toss the ball a few more times. She catches the ball on her second try, putting her hand on top of the ball the way I told her to, so the ball won’t pop out.

  “This is kind of fun,” she says.

  Ba steps in, and we make a triangle. Since I’m the only one with a glove, I toss it gently to Laney, she throws it to Ba, and then he throws it harder back to me.

  Maybe baseball is in our blood. We’re just meant to love this game.

  Maybe, just maybe, it’s time. It’s time to stop waiting.

  I go to the living room doorway and take a deep breath. I want to ask now, before dinner, while it’s still daylight.

  “Mom,” I say.

  She is lying down on the sofa, covered by a blanket. She might have been sleeping, though the TV is on, set to a low hum. She turns her head slightly.

  I walk over and kneel down so that our heads are close together. No one else needs to know what I’m going to ask. It can be just the two of us.

  “Mom.”

  Her eyes flutter open. When they focus on me, she lets out a long breath.

  “My team, my baseball team,” I say.

  Mom slowly raises herself up. I keep talking because I think maybe my words are pulling her up.

  “We’re good, and we’re having fun, you know? We—me and Erin—we’re playing good ball,” When I say Erin I realize that Mom may not know about Erin and everything that went on, so I add, “Erin is a girl. Ba let a girl on the team. She’s a pitcher.”

  Mom nods slightly. “I know. I know about Erin.”

  If Mom knows about Erin, maybe she’s ready.

  I put my hand on her arm. “Mom, I’d really like you to come to one of my games.” Then I hold my breath after the last word, so I don’t miss anything she says.

  Mom looks past me, over my shoulder.

  “It’s really beautiful right now, too,” I say. “It’s great baseball weather.”

  Mom gets up and slowly walks until she is halfway across the room. She is staring through the doorway at the kitchen window. I get up, too, keeping a few steps back. If she takes half a dozen steps, she’ll be at the window. The window is open, and she might be able to smell the lemon-vanilla scent of the magnolia. If she takes a few steps beyond that, she’ll be at the back door.

  Maybe, she’ll remember. She’ll remember what it’s like.

  Mom lifts up one hand, and folds it over her mouth. Her head moves, just slightly, side to side.

  “You could come for part of a game. Just a little bit. You could see me pitch.” I hate begging, but I can’t help myself. “And have an at bat.”

  Mom shakes her head, harder this time. “I’m just not ready, Peter.”

  I’m not ready to give up. I put my hand on her arm. “What about just sitting outside, Mom? Can we just sit outside, on the step?”

  It’s hard to believe she’ll say no to such a beautiful evening. But maybe that’s exactly why she says no—it’s just too beautiful to bear.

  I AM SITTING ON THE BACK STEP, ALONE. FOLDED UP, chest against the tops of my thighs, because I am pretty sure that in any other position, I will fly apart. I am just holding together. Every breath I take tests how far I can go, the limits of how tightly each piece of me can hold on to the rest.

  I do not know how long I have been like that when I feel a hand on my back. It’s Ba.

  “Peter? Elaine told me you were here. Are you okay?”

  Out of reflex, I say yes. But then I shake my head. No. Ba wrinkles his forehead. He asks if something happened.

  I could tell him the whole story, my whole plan about playing, to make Mom feel better. But that doesn’t make sense, now that I know how it ends. So instead, I tell him the last thing that remains from this whole mess.

  “I wish Mom would come to one of the games,” I say. It’s such a simple statement, but I am laid bare by its honesty.

  “Mommy’s not feeling well,” said Ba. “You know that.” Ba is the only one left in the house who calls Mom Mommy.

  “But she should. She should come to a game. I’m pitching, I’m catching. We’re all hitting. You’re the coach. She loves baseball. What else does she want?” My voice rises until it cracks, and I bang my fist against the concrete step until it scrapes my skin. “Why do I even have to ask?”

  Ba lowers himself next to me. “I do not know, Peter.” There is an ache in his voice that I have not heard before, and I remember what he always said about Mom—he knew he wanted to marry her when he heard her laugh.

  And then I do tell him my plan. I tell him about the one good day. The best day. The day I’ve been living on for the last six weeks, and how I’m trying to get another one.

  “I mean, I’m just saying, I thought that if we had some really good things to talk about, she might feel better. And I thought one of those things would be baseball,” I say. “If we won a game. And I even thought, sometimes, it was working.”

  “It might be working,” says Ba, not unkindly. He presses his fingertips into the bridge of his nose. “I wish we could make her feel better.”

  I have never heard my father wish for anything. All things are supposed to be attainable through effort and hard work. But to him, I suppose, you wish for the things you cannot work for.

  “I don’t know what to do next,” I say.

  Ba lowers his head and clears his throat. “What you do is keep moving. Some days you will only do small things all day. You get up in the morning and you get dressed and you wash your face. You go to school. I go to work. We have baseball.”

  As he speaks, I realize this is exactly what my father does, what he has been doing for the last seven months. Small things, but the things that have kept us going.

  Then Ba adds, “And other days you can lift your head, and do great things.”

  “Like letting Erin play,” I say.

  “Like letting Erin play,” says Ba. “Or deciding to play at all.”

  Suddenly, a hummingbird, bright and red, hovers a few feet in front of us. It cocks its head toward Ba, and then me. I can feel a small breeze from the whir of its wings. Its bright black eyes make me think it knows something even humans don’t know.

  For a moment, the ache inside me subsides. Elaine would love to have a hummingbird on her life list. I turn to call to her, but then the hummingbird flits away.

  “What are we going to do? About Mom, I mean.”

  Ba stares out into the yard for a moment before speaking. “Peter,” he says. “Will you always be a Pittsburgh Pirates fan?”

  “What?” I am startled by his question. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Even if they have a very terrible season?”

  That is hard to imagine; the Pirates won the Series last year and the National League East two years ago. “I’m no fair-weather fan.”

  “What if they have many terrible seasons?”

  “I’m still a fan,” I say resolutely.

  “You will not give up?”

  “No.” Ba’s questions are beginning to annoy me. “I already said that.”

  “Why? Why won’t you stop?”

  I lift my hands for a moment, partly in frustration, partly because I’m searching for the righ
t words. “Well one, because that’s what a good fan does. You’re loyal to the team. And two, because there’s always next season. You can always hope they’ll do better the next season.”

  Ba looks at me and does not speak until I understand. I must wait. As long as I have waited for Mom, I must wait some more, even when it’s the last thing I want to do.

  Ba stands up. “Come,” he says. “Let’s go inside.”

  “No,” I say stubbornly. “I’m staying here. Maybe I’ll stay out here until she comes out.” I know the words are childish, even as I say them, but I don’t care.

  “That’s not reasonable,” says Ba.

  I stay on the step. Ba sits back down next to me and waits. In the Before, he would have ordered me inside. But not now.

  “It’s the Pirates’ first game of the season at home,” says Ba after a few minutes. “We could go inside and listen.”

  This is enough to jolt me.

  “You never listen to games,” I say. If anything, Ba had always made a point of reading his newspaper in the kitchen while Nelson, Mom, and I listened in the living room.

  “I will listen today,” said Ba. “We will listen to the game today—you, me, your mother, and Laney. We do not have to leave the house for that.”

  In this statement, I find just a little bit more patience. Enough to hang on to.

  Ba reaches over and unfolds my fist, placing something small and bumpy inside.

  It is a peanut.

  I stare at it for a moment, not quite believing what I’m seeing. A peanut. The radio. The Pirates. “Who told you?” I asked. “When did you know?” I rub my finger over the top, where the little bump for opening the shell is. Because you have to show that you believe.

  “Your brother told me,” said Ba. “And always.”

  Your brother. Always.

  Nelson once told me that baseball is different from other games because it has no time limit. You could go nine innings, but then you could go fifteen innings. Twenty innings. That’s when you find out what the team is made of, which ones have the stamina and the guts to hang in there.

  The ones that keep having hope. Always.