Game Seven (2 page)

1

M
Y NAME IS
Julio Ramirez Jr., and baseball is my whole life.

With two outs in the top of the ninth inning, we were ahead by just one run. It was an all-star game between the best junior players from here in Matanzas and the best from Colón. Winning meant getting on a bus the next morning and traveling to play a series against other all-star teams in the city of Cárdenas. And that's exactly what I wanted: a chance for the coaches of the Junior Nacional Team to see me play more.

The name
RAMIREZ JR.
across the back shoulders of my uniform already gets me a lot of attention. It opens people's eyes and it closes them on me, too—all because of Papi.

I turned sixteen this year. That means this is my last chance to make the team, to become a junior Nacional, representing Cuba against the best young players from other countries. For me, it's not about politics or national pride. It's strictly about baseball.

The team from Colón had a fast runner on first base. He was tall and lanky, like a baby giraffe, with knees that almost reached to his chest when he was in full stride.

I could tell by the way he was leaning that he was looking to steal second. That would put him in scoring position, to try and tie up the game. From shortstop, I used my glove to partly shield my face so the other team couldn't see. Then I turned toward our second baseman and closed my mouth. It was a signal, letting him know I'd be covering the bag on a steal attempt.

Our pitcher was working from the stretch instead of a full windup, determined not to give the runner a head start. He was a lefty, just like Papi. And he had copied all of Papi's moves on the mound—the way he snorts like a bull ready to do battle, the way he straddles the pitching rubber with his spikes, and the way he practically glares through a runner who thinks he can steal a base off him.

It doesn't matter that the government erased Papi's name from the baseball record books the day he defected. Kids from Matanzas still remember El Fuego. They talk about their hero all the time. They want to pitch like him. Most of them want to play in the major leagues like he does, collecting megachecks. And watching our pitcher work was like seeing a highlight film of Papi from twenty years ago, from before I was even born.

I kicked hard at the dirt beneath me. Then I pounded a fist into my glove, waiting for the next pitch. But after our pitcher came set with his hands, he hesitated for a few seconds, stopping the base runner from timing the rhythm of his pitches. Only that hesitation froze me in my tracks, too, with my feet nearly glued to the ground.

As our pitcher strode toward home plate with the ball, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the runner explode out of his shoes. I held my position as long as I could. Then I broke for the bag, leaving a huge hole behind me at shortstop.

The batter swung and missed.

Our catcher leaped out of his crouch, and the iron bars of his mask spun around his face as his shoulder flew forward.

He threw a perfect strike, just a few inches over the head of our ducked-down pitcher. I could feel the runner bearing down on me, going into his slide feet first, with his spikes pointed up.

There was a
pop
as the ball hit the center of my glove.

I swiped the tag at the runner's feet. His spikes caught leather, tearing at the glove's fingers. Then I pulled my glove away, showing the umpire that I still had control of the ball.

“Fuera!”
the umpire cried, punching the air with a closed fist.

The runner was out and the game over.

My cousin Luis raced in from center field, jumping on my shoulders to celebrate. I carried his weight for a few steps before we both tumbled onto the infield grass, laughing and smiling like little kids.

“Now we show those teams going to Cárdenas what hungry Crocodiles can do—take a bite out of their behinds,” said Luis, chomping at the grass with a big grin.

Luis is a year younger than me. He was still in school and probably wouldn't have been an all-star if his father, my uncle Ramon, hadn't been our hometown coach. But Luis already knew that and didn't have any crazy dreams that he could be chosen as a Nacional.

“A few more games in this uniform, off from classes—that's all I'm asking for. I don't even care if I ride the bench,” he said as we picked ourselves up off the ground and started toward the dugout, surrounded by our teammates. “But you were terrific today—three base hits and some slick plays in the field. You know those big coaches are making notes on you, and everything they're writing is good.”

“I just need to keep my mind straight. Stay focused on the game in front of me, not anywhere else,” I said, tossing my glove, end over end, into the dugout.

“Maybe you should forget about listening to that radio for a few days,” said Luis. “Let the Series go.”

I nodded my head to his advice, even though I knew that wasn't going to happen.

Over the last five years, Luis and I had become much closer, almost like brothers. His mama died of pneumonia about eleven months after Papi defected. That left us like two puzzle pieces that suddenly had a need to fit together—him without a mother and me without a father.

“The two of you, get your gear together. Let's go home,” said Uncle Ramon, his attention seemingly split between us and someone in the stands. “We've got traveling to do tomorrow. Get some rest. No partying.”

“I'll be at a party, but it's not for me. I have to work tonight at the restaurant,” I said, trying to give him a high five as I walked past.

Only I don't think Uncle Ramon even noticed, because he never took his hands from the pockets of his red Windbreaker. He just left me hanging.

Uncle Ramon is Papi's younger brother. They played together for the team in Matanzas for a while. Now Uncle Ramon works at one of the big sugar mills and coaches part-time at the school where Papi once did. He's tall and thin, with a pair of strong legs that are usually rooted to the ground. And when his brown hair blows around, Uncle Ramon reminds me of a palm tree that refuses to bend in the breeze.

I changed out of my cleats, packed away my glove and bats, and then slung my equipment bag over my shoulder.

On the walk out of the field house, our lefty pitcher threw an arm around me and said, “I can't believe the Marlins lost last night! Now the Series is tied one game apiece. They're not playing tonight, right? They're traveling to New York.”

“I know,” I said, trying to keep any emotion out of my response.

“Of course you know. Better than me,” he said. “I hope El Fuego gets into the next game, shuts down those damn Yankees. Imagine a pitcher from our town with a World Series ring!”

“That would be something,” I said.

“That's your genes, your blood,” he said, before patting my back and then turning me loose. “Be proud.”

“Without a doubt,” I said, slowing down and letting him go on ahead.

That's when Uncle Ramon nearly walked up on my heels from behind.

“Sorry, Julio,” he said. “My mind was somewhere else, thinking about things down the road.”

In a quiet voice, I asked my uncle, “Did I make a big enough impression today?”

He stopped in his tracks. So I did, too.

“This is what I overheard some powerful people say,” he answered in a tone even quieter than mine. “Senior defected. How do we know Junior won't do the same his first trip outside of Cuba? Is he so good it's worth the potential embarrassment?”

Hearing that was like getting smacked across the teeth with a baseball bat.

“So I have to pay for
his
freedom? For
him
abandoning his family?”

“If some people get their way, yes,” Uncle Ramon said, nudging me forward to start walking again. “Nothing's written in stone yet. I'm working on lots of solutions. You just concentrate on playing even better, nothing else.”

I carried that heavy load out to the parking lot, where there were more beat-up bikes chained to fences than cars, including mine. Uncle Ramon suddenly veered off to the right to shake hands with an old friend of his named Gabriel, who'd been hanging around our games and practices for the past couple weeks. Luis told me that he'd even slept over at their house a few nights.

Uncle Ramon had introduced Gabriel to us as somebody he used to play baseball with. Gabriel sort of nodded his head to that with an honest enough smile. But when a ball got away from some kids playing catch, I watched him toss it back. Gabriel's form was awful, with a huge hitch in it. I would have believed he'd never thrown a ball before in his life. Besides, his hands were cracked and calloused. And the lines of his palms were embedded with grease, like he'd done more fishing than playing sports. I never mentioned it to anyone.

“See you tomorrow, boys,” Gabriel called out, waving to me and my cousin after a short conversation with Uncle Ramon.

“Really?” I asked. “You're driving all the way to Cárdenas to watch us play?”

“Not so far for me. That's where I live,” he said, getting into an old Chevy. “I'm hitting the road right now. I'll meet you there. Maybe show you around.”

It all seemed strange. But I had too much on my mind to think any more about it as my cousin climbed into the passenger seat of my uncle's car, and I unchained my bike.

2

I RODE STRAIGHT
home to take a quick shower and change my clothes. Two old men in straw hats were sitting in the shade outside our building, playing dominoes and chewing raw sugarcane. I smiled at them as I slowed down enough to throw a leg over the seat of my bike, balancing myself on one pedal.

Coming to a stop, I lifted the bike off the ground. Then I leaned back to get some momentum in my legs and started with it up the steep flight of stairs in our building.

Opening our apartment door, I got hit with a blast of hot air, as if the walls had been absorbing every bit of heat from that day, refusing to let any of it go.

Mama was at work, but my sister, Lola, was there, studying at the kitchen table. She was still dressed in her school uniform—a white blouse and yellow skirt—with textbooks spread out all around her. And every few seconds, a rotating floor fan from the living room would make it seem like a page from one of her open books was almost turning by itself.

We had no air conditioner. We could barely afford our electric bill as it was.

“How are your math calculations, Julio?” she asked, turning a pencil over and nearly rubbing a hole in her notebook paper with the pink eraser at the other end.

Lola and I actually shared an old laptop, though we didn't have a license to be on the Internet. We couldn't come close to making the kind of payments needed to become connected.

“Why aren't you working on the computer?”

“It just makes me feel even hotter. Never mind that,” she said, with a hint of impatience. “Now, how are your calculations?”

“Okay, I thought, until they started mixing letters in with the numbers,” I answered, dropping my equipment bag to the floor and hearing the bats inside rattle. “But no matter what, two and two still equals four. Unless your father's a defector; then they try to tell you it's something different.”

“What's that mean?” she asked, sounding irritated, with a bead of sweat starting down her right temple. “Please. I can't get distracted. I have nothing but exams for the next two weeks.”

“Uncle Ramon told me I might not get picked to be a Nacional, because of Papi.”

I suppose there was sympathy inside of Lola somewhere. But she didn't seem interested in showing me any. Maybe it was the stifling heat or tension over her tests that put a charge into her voice.

“That's exactly why I'm going to a university one day, to become a teacher,” she said, burying her head inside a book. “I'm going to make my own history, not be stuck with his. You need to do the same.”

“That's good for
you
. But I'm not a student. I play baseball,” I snapped, heading toward the shower. “They're always going to compare me and him.”

“Then jump in the ocean and swim for Miami! Follow Papi!” Lola shouted after me, a second before I slammed the bathroom door shut.

Turning the faucets up high, I caught a glimpse of my anger in the mirror. It made my eyebrows look even sharper, as they arched at an angle, and my thin lips pulled back at the corners. Only I didn't want to face it. So I yanked the plastic curtain closed. Then I stood in the shower with my head down and the water rushing off the bridge of my nose, like it was a spout. The temperature changed from hot to cold a couple of times without warning. Lola had always said there were ghosts in the shower. But I knew it was just other tenants in our building running water at the same time.

When I finished, I dried myself and wrapped a towel around my waist. The mirror had fogged over with steam. But I'd seen enough of myself and didn't even consider wiping it clear.

Stepping outside into the hall, I saw that Lola had walked away from her textbooks. She was standing by an open window, brushing her straight black hair.

I guess we could both feel a little bit of breeze now.

“Done with your swim?” she asked, behind a half smile.

“For now,” I answered. “I'll probably take another one after the game tomorrow in Cárdenas.”

“Well, make sure you don't drown,” she said. “I'd miss you. You're my only big brother.”

“Thanks, I won't,” I said, letting her words sink in as I grabbed a fresh towel from the closet and began to dry my wet head.

– – –

I put on a white shirt, black pants, and a pair of Papi's old leather shoes. Then I headed back down the stairs and walked the five blocks to the restaurant where I bussed tables. It's part of the hotel where Mama cleans. It's called El Puente—“The Bridge.” That's because Matanzas is the City of Bridges, with seventeen of them crossing the three rivers surrounding us.

My shift ran from five p.m. to midnight. I got there just a few minutes before it started. It's my job to take away the dirty dishes from the tables, make sure all of the water glasses are kept full, and deliver any part of the meal the customer wants to take home wrapped in tinfoil. The pay by the hour isn't good. But the waiters and waitresses give me and the other two busboys a small percentage of their tips every night. That adds up. The only problem I ever had was with a waiter named Horatio, who constantly hides his biggest tips by burying them in a different pocket. He gets away with it because he's the nephew of the restaurant's manager. Otherwise I'd grab him by his black bow tie, turn him upside down, and then shake him until it rained money.

The customers are mostly tourists. Lots of them are from the US, even though there's a travel ban from the States to Cuba. They go someplace like Canada first and then fly here. The US ban is because we're not a democracy and don't have any real human rights, just the ones our
presidente
and his soldiers decide to give us.

Living in a country without freedom is like being stuck at the birthday party of someone who believes he's much better than you. It doesn't matter that the party stinks and you're having a bad time. You can't leave because there are guys guarding the door with guns. And you'd better sing “Happy Birthday” with a smile when the cake comes out, even though you can't have a piece, or else you could wind up in prison.

During my shift, six or seven customers came in wearing New York Yankees caps or T-shirts. Every time I saw one, my stomach churned with acid over Papi and the World Series. Then, around nine o'clock, the manager called me over to a table and introduced me to a customer as El Fuego's son.

A man in a Yankees cap shook my hand. Then the manager translated his English for me, even though I understood some of what he was saying.

“Pleasure to meet you, Julio. I'm normally a big fan of your father's, just not right now. I'd rather see
my
team win. But you must be so proud of him,” he said.

I nodded and said,
“Si. Si.”

The man stood next to me so his wife could take a photo. It was his idea for us each to make a fist. We lined them up, knuckles to knuckles, as if we were fighting over the Series. An instant before the camera's click, I saw Mama standing in the doorway of the restaurant. She was dressed in her blue maid's uniform and apron. Her tired eyes caught mine and I looked away from the lens.

His wife wanted a better photo, so we posed again.

Mama jutted her chin in the direction of our apartment and mouthed,
See you at home
. Then she walked out the door.

After the second photo, the man smiled and stuffed ten pesos into my shirt pocket. That was more than two weeks' salary for me.

“Gracias,”
I responded, feeling better about the whole encounter.

A few minutes later, that river rat Horatio asked about the tip I got.

“Shouldn't that be for you and me to share?” he asked. “It happened in my section of tables.”

I couldn't believe his nerve.

I looked Horatio square in the eye and said, “It's in my shirt pocket. Why don't you stick your hand in there and take it.”

Only he never tried.

That same couple had me wrap up a pork chop for them to take home. It was a beautiful one that neither of them had even touched. I brought it back to their table, but they forgot it and left the bag behind.

Workers aren't supposed to take food out of the restaurant for any reason. But I kept thinking how good that pork chop would taste on the bus ride to Cárdenas. So I hid it in a small alcove, beneath a wicker breadbasket. And when my shift was finally finished, I made sure no one was watching as I tucked it beneath my arm and headed out the kitchen door.

– – –

I turned the key in the lock. Then I stepped inside our apartment. Mama was sitting on the far end of the couch in her pink seashell bathrobe. There was a single lamp lit over her left shoulder. She had a newspaper spread open on her lap, reading it while she worked at her fingernails with a small file.

I figured my sister was already asleep in the bedroom.

“A pork chop from El Puente. No lecture, please,” I said, showing off the silver tinfoil like a prize before making a quick detour to put it into the fridge.

When I circled back, Mama had a serious look on her face. But it didn't have anything to do with taking food from my job.

“Lola told me your name might stop you from becoming a Nacional.”

“Maybe. But my name didn't hurt me tonight,” I said, taking the ten-peso note from my shirt pocket, then pulling it tight from opposite ends with a snap. “That photo I was posing for.”

I placed it on a small table beside some bills that needed to be paid, like rent and electricity. There was also a bill for the two cell phones the three of us shared, making calls only when it was something really important.

“Your father lives like a king while we struggle,” Mama said. “Sometimes I think money was the reason he defected.”

“Not baseball? Not a World Series ring?”

“He wants a
ring
? How about this one?” she asked, pointing to her gold wedding band. “Know why I still wear this?”

“No,” I answered, closing the distance between us.

“It's all I have left,” she said, as her temper began to flare. “This way, I'm the wife of a sports hero who gave this government the middle finger for the whole world to see.”

“And without it?”

“Then I'm just the woman he abandoned.”

“He abandoned me and Lola, too.”

“But he'll always be your father, no matter what,” Mama said. The newspaper fell to the floor as she stood up. “He won't always be my husband. I'm not stupid, Julio. You're old enough to hear this. The great El Fuego has not been alone for six years, not without a woman by his side—one probably ten years younger than me.”

I'd never heard her talk like that before, and now the shadows fell across her face.

“See these fingernails?” she asked, holding her hands out. “Maybe I can't tell you the name of the woman he's with. But I'm sure her nails aren't chipped from cleaning hotel rooms and scrubbing toilets. They're probably perfect and polished at a salon.”

I didn't know what to say. I just knew that suddenly I was even angrier at Papi.

“You need to make your own life now. Take that money. It's yours,” Mama said, becoming calmer and kissing me good night on the forehead. “Treat yourself to something nice. His
name
owes you that, for having to carry it this long.”

Then she went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

For almost a half hour, I paced the living room, cursing Papi to myself until I was too exhausted to keep going. Finally, I took the cushions off the couch and folded out the bed inside. Then I lay there for a while with the light on, staring up at every crack in the ceiling over my head.