When We Were Animals(74)

On this particular day, Rose Lincoln was on the other team, and she played catcher when my turn at bat came.

I picked up the aluminum bat from the ground, which was muddy from the rain the night before. I stood sideways at home plate and lifted the bat into the air as I had observed the other girls do. But I must have been doing it wrong.

“I guess you can’t lean into it,” Rose Lincoln said in a voice that only I could hear. “The weight of the bat’ll topple you. Don’t worry—one day you’ll fill out. Maybe by menopause.”


The ball came at me. I closed my eyes and swung. The weight of the bat twisted my little body around, and I had to do a dance to stay upright on my feet. I hadn’t come anywhere near the ball.

Somebody called the first strike, and Rose Lincoln threw the ball back to the pitcher.

“Seriously,” she said. “How old are you?” Then she called behind her to the other girls on my team. “Should we bring out the T-ball thing?” The girls laughed. “It seems only fair.”

“Be quiet,” I said to Rose Lincoln.

“Sorry—am I breaking your concentration? Let’s try a slow one!” she shouted to the pitcher. “Right down the middle.”

I gripped the handle of the bat, liking the heft of it, liking the way it made my palms gristly with dirt. When the ball came, I pictured Rose Lincoln’s laughing face and swung hard.

Not even close. Strike two. Behind me, I could hear the moans of my teammates. “Come on,” they said to the universe, as though I were a small bit of lucklessness they had stumbled upon by pure happenstance.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Rose Lincoln said and tossed the ball back to the pitcher. “How do you carry anything with those arms? How do you open jars? How do you brush your teeth? Do you have to take breaks?”

“Be quiet,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“What was that?”

“I said be quiet.”

“Sorry—you need to speak up. Use your big-girl voice.”

“You’re pathetic,” I said, turning to her. “Pa-the-tic. Did you understand that?”

Her face changed. This was the confrontation she had been nurturing like a seedling between us. Now her fury had a purpose, a mission. She savored her own delicious rage.

I turned my back to her and raised the bat for the final pitch.

Behind me, in a whispery rage, she said, “I’m gonna get you. You’re done. Just wait till the full moon. Just—”

At that moment something was decided in me, like a door slammed shut by a wind.

“I’m not waiting,” I said.

“What?” she said, a quiver in her voice.

“I said…”

But I didn’t repeat it. Instead I turned full around and swung the aluminum bat as hard as I ever had.

She was quick, and it’s a good thing she was, because if she hadn’t gotten an arm up to block the blow, I would have smashed her head in. Instead the bat caught her in the forearm, and I felt a satisfying, liquid crack vibrate through the hollow instrument.

She screeched and fell to the ground.

I raised the bat over my head, prepared to bring it down again—but she shuffled backward, one arm limp and useless, until she was huddled against the chain-link fence.

I advanced and stood over her. She blubbered, and her face was wet with tears. Maybe she believed she would die there.

I dropped the bat, which made an empty-pipe sound, and I advanced until I stood over her.

She turned her face away from me, raised her good arm to ward me off.

Leaning down, I whispered in her ear.

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

She gurgled an animal howl of pain.

“Do you want to know how to get through it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“You have to deserve the hurt, Rosebush. Like love.”

When I reached out to her, she cringed her eyes closed, as though my touch were death, but I put my hand gently on her head and smoothed her hair.

Suffering is sometimes a boon. All the creatures of the world hold hands in pain.

So I touched her head, and I felt we were both alive together, both girls wriggling, hapless, in the rich loam of girlhood. You can be happy at the strangest moments.

Then the world around us, which had been holding its breath for a number of seconds, exhaled into commotion. The other girls rushed to Rose Lincoln’s aid. Mrs. McCandless, the gym teacher, was there. And Mr. Lloyd, the boys’ gym teacher. He’s the one who took me by the arm so that I could only walk trippingly, and he tripped me to the office, where my father was called and I was suspended from school for one week.

This was fair.

All things are fair.

The world is pretty, and it finds its own balance.

*



My father did not know how to express his disappointment in me. His daughter having become a mystery he was afraid to solve, he narrated what had happened rather than ask me about it.

“She provoked you,” he said. “The other girls heard. That’s why it’s just suspension—that and your good standing at the school. The girl’s parents aren’t bringing charges. I’m helping with the medical bills. You’ll apologize, in writing.”