Molina Page 7

IN COLLEGE, I was still self-conscious about how I looked. I had yet to go out on a date. But I kept running into the same girl from my dorm. She always looked at me and smiled. No girl had ever really looked at me. She had dark hair and light skin and lived on the girls’ side of the dorm. I had seen her around campus holding hands with a boy, so I knew she was off-limits. Not that I knew how to ask a girl for a date anyway. Still, whenever we crossed paths, she smiled at me, and I found myself scanning the campus walkways for her. One day I was with friends outside the dorm, just sitting and talking at a picnic table. And there she was walking by herself and coming my way.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I got up and walked toward her. She didn’t see me at first. I was twenty feet away when she noticed me. She smiled. Then I was ten feet away. I smiled back. Five feet. Our eyes locked. Time to say something. Hello. Hey. What’s up? Anything.

  I walked past her without a word. Now what? I continued for a few yards then turned and followed her back toward the dorm. She pushed open the door and disappeared. My friends were laughing when I returned to the picnic table. They had watched the whole thing.

  “What was that all about?” Kenny asked.

  “I don’t know!” I laughed, too. What an idiot. I was sixteen and had never talked to a girl I liked.

  A few weeks later, I saw her on a bench by herself. I was returning to the dorm from practice. My throat went dry.

  “Hi,” I managed.

  She looked up from her book. Her face brightened.

  “Hi,” she said. “I see you around all the time.”

  I was surprised to hear her speaking in Spanish. I had thought she was American.

  “I just wanted to say hi,” I said.

  “Oh! That’s nice.”

  She closed the book on her lap.

  It was my turn to say something. I knew that much. Her eyebrows arched. I sucked in a breath as if to speak. Nothing came out. Her brows arched higher and her chin tilted up, the picture of attentiveness.

  I was mute as a stump.

  “Okay,” she said, reopening her book. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you around,” I said, echoing her like a toddler learning to speak.

  The next time I saw her, she again was alone on the bench outside. I still burned with embarrassment from our last encounter. I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to talk to her again. As I drew closer, I saw she was crying.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She looked up. Her eyes were red. I sat next to her, then thought maybe I shouldn’t. “I don’t want to get you in trouble with your boyfriend,” I said.

  “We’re not together anymore.”

  She told me about the breakup and about herself. Her name was Josefa and she was from Mexico, just over the border from Yuma. Her father worked in an orchard in Yuma during the week and went home to Mexico on the weekends. I told her about myself. We talked so long I missed dinner.

  SIX WEEKS INTO the semester, Pai’s twenty dollars finally ran out. Monday through Thursday, I ate in the cafeteria twice a day. But Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we were allowed just one meal. So we’d go to the Circle K and buy four cans of soup for a dollar; microwave hamburgers for a dollar; bread, ham, cheese, and mayo for eight dollars. My teammates and I shared shampoo and laundry detergent. Now my cash was gone.

  I was trying to figure out what to do for money when a Mexican teammate offered me a job on his uncle’s Mexican baseball team. It paid forty-five dollars. The only problem: The games were on Sunday. Sunday was our day off from baseball, and the coach was adamant about using the day to rest. I didn’t want to defy him by playing on Sunday. But I didn’t want to ask Pai for money, either.

  So the following Sunday I climbed into the back of a pickup truck with a few other teammates. Yuma is in the far southwest corner of Arizona, on the border of both California and Mexico. We rode twenty-five miles down Route 95 to San Luis, Arizona, then across the border. The games were fun—lots of families and townspeople in the stands. And we got paid on the spot in cash. I played every week, so suddenly I was flush with money. Instead of just necessities, I splurged on bologna, Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos, 7-Up, fruit juice. Over time, I bought new sliding pants to replace my ripped ones and a new jock strap. I bought a pair of jeans, one T-shirt, and one collared shirt at Kmart. I was making my own way.

  TOWARD THE END of the semester, Mrs. El-Khayyat made the announcement I had been dreading.

  “On Monday and Tuesday, you’ll be making your presentations. So you have the weekend to prepare.”

  She gave us a two-page story in English, a different story for each of us. For our presentation, we had to read the entire story in front of the class, then explain it in Spanish to make sure we understood. ESL was my only class. Mrs. El-Khayyat was my only teacher. I was with her from seven thirty in the morning until two fifteen in the afternoon. She was kind and encouraging, nothing like the tough taskmaster she seemed the first day. She loved baseball and, after class, she’d ask my teammate Kenny Marrero and me about Puerto Rican baseball and what the fields looked like and how the fans were. She told us that her husband was from the Middle East and that she had a young son and daughter. Kenny and I even went to dinner at her home, a tiny house with lots of overseas newspapers and magazines. She picked us up at the dorm and made us baked chicken. She taught us to put our napkins on our laps and to say, “May I please have the salt?”

  She wasn’t like any teacher I’d ever had. She taught English the way Pai taught baseball, step by step, little by little, building competence in one small segment before moving on to the next one. She expected us to respect her and our fellow students by arriving on time. She addressed us courteously and trusted we would respond in kind. Like Pai, she drilled into us that failure was the price of progress. I endured the short readings in front of the class with the usual panic and cold sweat but with a growing realization I was improving at a faster clip than most of the other students. Pai’s advice to get an American roommate was paying off. Earlier in the semester, I had moved in with one of our pitchers, a big blond kid from Arizona. He’d point to everything in the room and teach me the English word. Bed. Sheet. Window. Floor. He taught me to say “Please” and “May I?” and “Excuse me.” He told me to listen to Garth Brooks, and I did. I picked through the words in the local newspaper. I watched American television.

  But now I had to read two full pages out loud. I thought about nothing else the entire weekend. I pictured myself at the front of the classroom. I’d be up there for an eternity, long enough for my self-doubt to slither out from under the floorboards of my brain and wrap itself around my vocal cords, rendering me mute. In my room, I practiced the story over and over, asking my roommate about pronunciations and definitions.

  In class on Monday, when it was my turn, I felt sick. Mrs. El-Khayyat smiled, welcoming me to the front of the class. There was no escaping this the way I did in high school. I read my two pages, then summarized them in Spanish. My voice never cracked. My classmates clapped, which they did after each reading.

  Then Mrs. El-Khayyat handed me the Arizona Republic, folded to a sports column. “Would you read this to us?”

  More? I hadn’t practiced these words. I began to protest, but Mrs. El-Khayyat nodded toward the paper, which was now in my hand.

  The words flowed, and most of the language made sense. I stumbled a little on the contractions: don’t, weren’t, isn’t. But I felt exhilarated. I spoke in front of people. And I liked it. It was like that movie about Helen Keller when she suddenly understands the word for water and the whole world opens up. That’s how miraculous it felt. I told Mrs. El-Khayyat after class that I felt like a different person.

  “I know,” she said. “I could tell. You know, there’s no rule you have to be shy just because you’ve always been shy. Or that you have to be anything just because you’ve always been that way. You get to decide for yourself what to be.”

  “I’ll be happy if I can be l
ike my father.”

  I had told her a lot about Pai, about how everyone respected him and how he gave all his time to us.

  “He sounds like a great man.”

  “He’s amazing.”

  “But you’re you,” she said

  I didn’t know what she meant.

  “You’re not your father.”

  “No, I know. But that’s why I work so hard. So I can try.”

  She had a look on her face like she wanted to stay something, but she didn’t.

  I COULDN’T WAIT to get home for winter break. I inhaled the air when I stepped off the plane in San Juan. I breathed in the pomerosa and fell asleep to the coqui frogs and the rain dancing on our roof. Yadier had a small bed in Mai and Pai’s room. Cheo and I still shared the second room. Mai cooked up shrimp asopao and fried steak with onions, my favorites. Pai wanted to know about the baseball. We had talked on the phone every two weeks, but the calls were short and now he wanted details. What were the drills like? What about the other players? How did I understand what the coach was saying? How was my English coming along? Cheo and Yadier wanted to hear everything, too. I told them about the coach and Kenny Marrero and the teammate who always made trouble, Roberto. I told them about Mrs. El-Khayyat.

  I wanted to return to Yuma bigger and stronger for the start of the spring college season. I worked out harder than ever. I lifted the soda-cracker barbell in the carport and pulled the tire through the sand on the field. I ran through Kuilan with my new accessory: a cassette-tape Walkman I bought from a guy at college. The headphones bobbed around, so I secured them with a white sanitary sock tied around my head. The neighbors called me El Caballo Loco. The Crazy Horse.

  I ate everything Mai put in front of me. Rice and beans. Chicken. Pork chops. Fried chicken. Onion steak. Corned beef. Liver. Fried eggs. Chef Boyardee spaghetti. Macaroni with Spam. More food meant more strength. I put on fifteen pounds in a month. My once-wiry body became thick and square. I was happy with the transformation. I was stronger and definitely bigger, if a little slower.

  I CALLED JOSEFA from the pay phone at the grocery store near La Número Dos: $1.25 for the initial connection, then twenty-five cents every two minutes. I talked to her for as long as my three dollars lasted.

  THE HATILLO TIGRES team in the Double A amateur league—where Pai had made his name—asked me to play outfield during the month I was home. Hatillo was about an hour from Espinosa. I’d hitchhike on La Número Dos. My workouts were having an impact. The league used wooden bats, but still I sent pitches into the outfield stands during batting practice. I ended up leading the team with a .400 average, and we went on to win the league championship.

  I didn’t mind boarding the plane back to the States. Unlike my arrival on campus in August, now I knew that Yuma was where I was supposed to be. I believed completely that it would deliver me to the pros.

  IN A GAME late in my first college season, we botched an easy bunt play. The batter reached first and eventually scored. We were going to lose a crucial game. We were fighting to reach the playoffs. When the inning ended, I was steamed. I ran in from my spot at shortstop and threw my glove on the bench. The words just came out.

  “C’mon, we can win this thing!” I said. “Good teams make the routine plays. We have to work hard and pick each other up. We can beat these guys and we’re wasting our chance! Let’s go! All out!”

  My teammates had not heard my voice all season. They stared at me for a second then started clapping. “Yeah, c’mon! Let’s go!” they said. We rallied to win.

  Mrs. El-Khayyat had helped me find my voice.

  Pai gave me the words.

  BY THIS TIME, Josefa and I were dating. She brought me to Mexico one weekend to meet her parents. They were poorer than we were. The house was mud bricks in a dirt yard on a dirt road. I slept on the sofa in the sitting room and decided I was in love.

  I PLAYED WELL enough that first college season to be voted the team’s Rookie of the Year from among the team’s fourteen freshmen. Scouts had been in the stands for a lot of our games. I was on their radar. I returned to Puerto Rico in late May, ready to find out which team would pick me in the draft the first week of June. In the meantime, I joined the Vega Alta Maceteros for the last few months of the Double A season, which ran from January to June, plus the playoffs in July. The teams counted on the college players to reinforce their rosters. I played shortstop, starting pitcher, and closer, whatever was needed.

  The amateur draft came and went again. No call.

  “Why isn’t anyone signing you?” friends and relatives asked.

  “I don’t know. I’d sign for a box of Twix bars.”

  I wondered if this was how it had happened for Pai, one small failure building on another until his hopes disappeared under the pile. It still made no sense that he didn’t make it, given everything I had heard about his talent and reputation. I wouldn’t ask. I thought it might churn up bad memories that had been safely buried. But maybe I didn’t ask because I really didn’t want to know. A failure of that magnitude—losing the biggest dream of his life—was too sad to think about.

  THE PRO SCOUTS began to take notice my second season at Arizona Western. I had a 2.90 ERA and a .385 batting average. Men in big straw hats and golf shirts ambled down from the bleachers and asked for my contact information. I gave them my grandmother’s address in Vega Alta because our neighborhood didn’t get mail delivery. The scouts didn’t make any promises, but I knew their presence meant I’d get drafted.

  “Get ready,” I told Mai and Pai. “This is the year.” I thought about the example I’d set for Cheo and Yadier, how I would be paving the way for them. I imagined how proud Pai would be sending a son into pro baseball in the States. I had no illusions about being signed for a lot of money. All I needed was a spot on a roster, a chance to prove myself.

  On the last day of school, I sat with Mrs. El-Khayyat on a bench outside her classroom. I thanked her for everything.

  “If baseball doesn’t work out,” she said, “you can still go to college and get an education. You’re a good student. There are a lot of things you could do.”

  “Baseball is all I want.”

  She hugged me, and I thanked her again.

  At home in Puerto Rico, Pai came into the bedroom as I unpacked. He noticed a Most Valuable Player plaque on my dresser.

  “What’s this?” he said. He couldn’t read the English words.

  “MVP,” I said. “The team voted.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  I shrugged. Of course I had wanted to tell him. But it would sound like bragging. There was no bragging in our house. No flaunting of awards. Pai didn’t put much stock into trophies and plaques. I learned this early. I was six years old when a flood crashed through our little clapboard house in Vega Alta. Mai and Pai had packed the car with clothes and family photos and whatever furniture would fit. We stayed at Mama’s house on higher ground for a few days.

  When the rain stopped, Pai maneuvered the car around downed branches and debris to reach our house. The front door was wide open, blasted in by the rushing water. We climbed the three front steps. Mai sucked in her breath. The floor was slick with mud. The back door was open, too. The kitchen table was on its side against the wall. The couch was black and soaked. Almost everything else was gone, out the back door and washed away.

  “Pai!” I said, stricken. “Your trophies!”

  Kids from all over the neighborhood would come to our house to look at his trophies. Nobody had as many trophies as Pai did.

  “We’re safe,” Pai said, surveying the room, hands on his hips. “That’s what matters.”

  While he and Mai shoveled mud from the sitting room and kitchen, Cheo and I made our way down a slight slope and into an open field, where other kids were already picking through the broken chairs, shower curtains, frying pans, Virgin Mary statues, televisions, T-shirts, baby strollers, trash cans, suitcases, dresser drawers, slippers.

  We root
ed through the piles.

  After a time, Cheo let out a cheer.

  “Found one!” He held up a grimy trophy with my father’s name on it.

  Awhile later, I found one, too.

  We wiped the trophies with our shirts and ran home, the treasures cradled in our arms. Pai was unscrewing a bent hinge on the back door.

  “Look, Pai!” Cheo said.

  “Mmmm,” he said, glancing at the trophy. “Anything else?”

  I held up mine. “We got two back for you!”

  “Hold this,” he said, handing me the screwdriver. Pai jiggered the door, trying to line it up in the jamb.

  “What was this one for?” I asked, hoping to draw a more enthusiastic response to the rescue of such prized possessions.

  “That was so long ago,” he said without looking up. “Put those away and go help your mother.”

  Cheo and I looked at each other. How could he care so little? They were tangible evidence of his success, like medals on an officer’s uniform. But he almost never spoke about his honors and awards, so years later when I won the MVP award, I didn’t speak of it.

  In the bedroom, as I continued to unpack, Pai studied the plaque, then set it back on the dresser. Nothing else was said the rest of the night. The next day, the plaque was gone.

  It reappeared when Pai returned from work.

  MAI KEPT ME company as I sat by the phone. It was June 1, 1992. Draft Day. The Major League Baseball amateur draft in the early 1990s didn’t have a set number of rounds. It lasted as long as teams kept picking players. A draft might go sixty, seventy, eighty rounds over four or five days, with upwards of sixteen hundred players chosen. This was my third draft. I was passed over in 1990 after high school, then again in 1991 after my first year at Arizona Western.

  I knew I was a much better hitter now and more versatile in the field than most players. I had played every position except catcher. There couldn’t be sixteen hundred young players better than I was. I’d be a late-round pick for sure, chosen on the third or fourth day when teams were taking anyone who could fill a spot on their farm teams. I didn’t care how I got on a roster. I could be the very last pick for all I cared.