The Last Karankawas(15)
On those days I hated her, and she knew it. I would run to Luis’s house and throw baseballs at his plywood fence until my arm gave out, until the balls ran out and I was just picking up rocks and chunks of dirt and flinging them. He patted me on the back when I cried.
My uncles tried, too. They tinkered with our car and the pipes that acted up. They found my mother jobs at the convenience store and cleaning the houses of some faculty at UTB. On Sundays, we’d gather at Tía Medora’s, and while I washed dishes, they’d recline in front of the TV and watch ball games for hours, all of us shouting praise and curses at the screen by turns. As Luis earned starting spots on the junior high team, then Hanna, then UTB, we watched the games in real life. They sat with me in the stands. They bought me chili dogs and snuck me beer. They pounded Luis on the back after a win and reminded him to ice that arm, winked at me and said, Don’t you aggravate it too much, mija, that’s the money right there, Mercedes, that’s your ticket.
I kissed their cheeks when I wanted to say, Jesus Christ, don’t I know that already. I’d known since freshman year that on game nights I sleep on the left side, the blistering scent of IcyHot drawing tears from my eyes. I know to place a towel beneath the right half of him to catch the runoff from ice packs, the clumsy way his left fingers will part through my hair, that if we want to fuck that night I’ll have to be on top.
And I know he’ll never give up that goddamn number he wears: 11. No matter how much I beg him to change it. He’s worn it since grade school. It’s lucky, he says. Come on, M. Just because it was your dad’s doesn’t mean it’s bad for me.
Maybe he’s right. Luis is my ticket to many things. To my uncles, he’s fame, small fortunes, a paycheck with our non-MLB league now but a few good seasons away from getting noticed, from that call over to the minors. To my aunts, he’s citizenship, a ticket printed in green. But my mother, she looks at him and sees my father. I can tell by the way her eyes gleam when he bears the number 11 on the field, when he walks into our house all shoulder and leg at six foot four. He could hurt me is what she’s thinking. He doesn’t—I don’t think he ever would—but he could. The could is enough to both please and frighten her.
I wonder about the life we’ll lead, about the engagement ring he put on my finger a few months ago that I sometimes stare at for hours, trying to read shapes in the cubic zirconia like a crystal ball. In my mind the number 11 has never been his; it belongs to my father, it’s the one he wore through school and his time in the Mexican minors, it’s the one he insisted I wear in our own city club. I hate it, but sometimes I wonder what my father would think about the space I occupy now—in a city like Matamoros, in a ballpark, but not on the field or in a center-section row, rather behind the dugout between girls named Anita and Jessica and Teresa, all of us like gloves and bats and caps, another piece that belongs to the players. Like my mother, a piece of a man who exists across a river, both of them incomplete.
Most nights when Luis and I lie in bed, these thoughts drift through my mind, fragile as the dandelion threads Celia blows in the backyard. I shouldn’t think them, should I. I should be happy, content with what I have. Shouldn’t imagine reversing my life, starting in Mexico and doing it over again, only this time I cross the river into a New World rather than more of the same.
Before we drift off, Luis will tell me he loves me, and he’ll mean it. He never means it so much as win nights. And I never mean it so much as when he loses. Tell me what to think about that.
* * *
The air has cooled slightly. Sixth inning, and Luis stays on the mound. Not too many pitches thrown, so his arm is still loose. His changeup’s got brakes on it, his curve dropping like it’s falling off a table. He could put more heat on the two-seamer, but his coach doesn’t want his arm to give, and neither do I, not yet, not so early in the series. He shakes off José’s first sign and then sees the one he wants; his shoulders straighten, then bunch as he rises into the windup. Lifts his left leg. Snaps it down as the right arm comes around to pronate—it’s both his fault and my father’s that I know this fucking word—and hurls.
Fastball on the inside corner. Swing and a miss, batter goes down. Vaqueros, 4–0, heading to the bottom of the sixth.
We hoot and clap. With a great play, some girls, like Anita or Teresa, shout their guys’ numbers, shit like Way to go, 14 and Attaway, three-oh. Not me. I clap and whoop his name. I call out no numbers. I don’t like the taste of that number in my mouth.
Luis trots back from the mound, and the rest of the guys spill out of the dugout, gloved hands ready to pound Luis’s back. Someone hands him a jacket, and he drapes it over his right arm. In our bullpen there is no reliever in sight, not even Henry or Martín stretching out. Three more innings and he’ll have thrown a complete game, and if he keeps it scoreless, a shutout—his first of the season. A big deal for the scouts I’ve spotted behind home plate with their clipboards, crisp ball caps, radar guns.
Luis turns slightly toward me on his way back to the dugout. I smile and wave, trying to catch his eye, but he is fixed on the guys around him, on the brotherhood. The brothers come first. I know this, by now I swear I know this. I put my hand down.
* * *
He didn’t like when I brought up Galveston again. For a place I’ve never been—it’s halfway up the coast, a good six hours away—I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Some of my family is around Houston, and one of my tías lives on the island with her kids. My cousin is there, too, working a fishing boat. We’ve kept in touch. Jess invites me out to stay with them. He says it’s good money, a good town. The ocean for miles; well, the Gulf, en serio, but still an ocean. There’s a diner he knows on the bay that turns a blind eye to the proper papers. And his neighborhood is safe, he says. Mojados from many countries, as I think of us, filling homes in a place called Fish Village.