Help Wanted (7 page)

"What's hot is my play, you mean," said Dulce, who was using a three wood as her putter. On her knees, face close to the ground, she had the club positioned between her thumb and index finger and was pretending to shoot pool. With one eye closed, she slid the club back and forth and then struck the golf ball. The ball traveled six feet straight into the hole.

"That's not how you play golf!" Becky exclaimed.

Dulce rose to her feet, her knees powdered brown from the sandy dirt. "The ball went in, didn't it?"

Becky fumed. She didn't know the rules of golf but
didn't believe that using a club like a pool stick was in the books. Still, she didn't say anything more. She felt confident.

"Okay, my turn," Becky said, and lowered her club, eyeing first the golf ball, then the hole. She wiggled her body a little, just like the pros do on television, and then tapped the golf ball. The ball rolled four feet and to the left.

"Too bad, girl!" Dulce cried.

Becky furrowed her brow and bit her lip. She took a second shot and that one stopped an inch short of the hole.

"You got to put a little meat into it!" Dulce sang.

Becky got the ball into the hole on the third putt. She picked up her ball and said, "Dulce, you're not supposed to talk to the other player."

"What other player?" Dulce asked seriously. She looked around.

"The other player is ... me," Becky said. She swallowed painfully. The score was one to three.
How is that possible?
she wondered.

They studied the second of eighteen holes. It was in a small valley and the ground was cement hard.

"You go first," Becky said.

"Nah, girl," Dulce mumbled. She had a length of red whip licorice hanging from her mouth. She chewed a little and said, "You go first."

"But you're in the lead."

Dulce shrugged. She stood and used the club properly. She took a practice swing, the red whip licorice dangling from her mouth. She swung the club back and smacked the ball, which went racing left and then corrected to the right. The golf ball disappeared into the hole.

Dulce threw the golf club into the air. She pumped her arm and yelled, "I'm hot, man!" She fitted a few inches of red whip into her mouth.

"Dulce," Becky growled, "you're not supposed to be eating in the presence of the other player."

Dulce laughed. "And you're the other player, huh?"

Becky nodded.

Dulce gobbled more of the red whip but first offered Becky a few inches by pulling and breaking it into halves.

"No, thank you," Becky said as she dropped her golf ball and lined up a putt. She measured in her mind the distance between the ball and the hole. She wiggled and adjusted her stance. She then let the club rise and fall, striking the ball past the hole by four feet.

"That's too bad, girl!" Dulce said. "You got to do it a little smoother. Let me show you." Dulce stepped toward Becky, who turned her body away and suddenly had a great interest in the house across the street.

"Don't be like that!" Dulce warned.

"Like what?"

"Like a friend can't teach you. I mean, Tiger had to learn from someone.
¿Qué no?
"

Becky glowered at Dulce but was surprised that Tiger Woods was in her vocabulary. She thought,
Yeah, maybe she's right.
Tiger started somewhere and with someone's help. But for the time being, Becky felt she should play by instinct. She approached her golf ball and knelt down, her hands cupped around her eyes as she studied the distance and terrain of the course.

"Whatta you doing?" Dulce asked.

Becky rose quickly and ignored her friend.

"I'm studying the ball," Becky said.

Dulce laughed. "That's funny—studying the ball, like you're in school or something."

Becky mumbled and took her stance. She placed her club behind the golf ball. But while she was adjusting her stance, her club struck the golf ball by mistake.

"Hey, that counts!" Dulce yelled, jabbing a finger at the golf ball. "I saw it."

Becky swung around to her friend. "It was a mistake."

"Yeah, but you hit the ball, didn't you?" She was gobbling a handful of Nerds. The corners of her mouth were stained red from candy.

Becky had to admit that she had struck the golf ball. But it had traveled only two inches. "That wasn't a hit," she argued to herself. Wasn't there a rule about a golf ball touched by mistake? She was about to concede
the stroke when Dulce cried, "Okay, I'll let you off this time. But that's it, girl." She then rattled a box of Nerds at Becky. "Want some? They'll give you energy."

Becky refused the candy and refused to give up, though by the ninth hole she was behind twenty-four hits to sixteen by Dulce, who had finished the box of Nerds and was then eating sunflower seeds.

"I oughta go pro," Dulce bragged. She spit out the shells of sunflower seeds. "Except this game is boring." She smacked her lips. "I'm thirsty, too."

"It's not boring," Becky argued.

"When you're in the lead it is." She spanked her golf ball without concentration, and the ball rolled and went into the hole. She let the golf club fall from her grip. "Did you see that?"

Becky's shoulders slumped.

Dulce lifted her face skyward. There was the sound of an approaching vehicle. "It's my
papi.
"

A rattling pickup truck filled with his kids and other kids rounded the corner. The horn tooted.

"There's a fire!" Dulce screamed.

Dulce's father was an amateur ham radio operator. A large antenna was propped up on his roof. His radio was able to pick up police and fire calls. He didn't respond to police calls, but if someone's house was burning, he would yell, "Fire—let's go!
¡Ándale!
" Dulce's father argued that his interest in fire was a community service. It taught kids not to play with matches.

Dulce ran off but turned and said, "You win!" She leaped over every hole she had won, and that was all of them.

But Becky didn't feel like a winner under the hot summer sun. She was disgusted with her play. How did someone loud and rough like Dulce beat her? Wasn't golf supposed to be subtle and a thinking person's sport? She gathered the golf balls and clubs and walked home with her bag on her shoulder.

"Hi, Mom!" she called out. But no one was home, though the cooler was on and stirring the newspaper on the coffee table. The newspaper was opened to the sports section. Tiger Woods was smiling with a trophy hoisted over his head.

Becky went into the kitchen and got herself a glass of grape Kool-Aid. She returned to the living room. She plopped herself down on the couch and zapped on the television. Tiger Woods's face appeared and nearly filled the television screen with his bright, toothy smile. He had just putted a fifteen footer, and the crowd behind him was cheering. Becky looked behind her when she heard a tap on the window. It was her cat, Samba, wanting to come in.

"You can't come in," she told her.

The cat was allowed into the house only when it rained.

Becky zapped off the television, got up, and pulled out a club—a two iron—from her bag. She dropped a
golf ball onto the rug and lined up a shot that rolled under the left end of the coffee table. She mumbled, "It was an accident." She was thinking of the third hole when she had carelessly struck the ball on her backswing.

"But it's not going to be an accident if you break the TV?" Becky's mother asked. "Or the window. Or the lamp." Her mother hurried in small steps across the living room with a potted plant in her arms. She set the plant by the window.

Becky picked up the ball.

"Are you hungry?" Becky's mother asked, breathing hard from the exertion of carrying the pot.

"A little bit," Becky answered. She told her mother she had played against Dulce but didn't say she had lost.

Her mother fixed her two bean burritos and went outside. Becky devoured them within minutes and, one by one, licked her fingers. She got up, went into the kitchen, and looked in the refrigerator—she was still hungry. When a hard-boiled egg caught her eye, she couldn't help but think of a golf ball.

"I need to practice," she told herself, and closed the refrigerator. She squeezed on the hard-boiled egg, but it didn't break. She squeezed harder until she felt the shell crack. "I'm going to beat Dulce."

Becky returned to the living room and turned on the television again. Tiger Woods was crouched and
studying the line between the putter and the hole. His hands were cupped around his face, which was stern-looking with determination. He stood up, positioned himself next to the ball, wiggled his body, and let his putter guide the ball.

Becky was already asleep by the time the ball traveled left to right and found the hole.

Becky challenged Dulce the next day, and Becky lost sixty-five strokes to fifty-four. She challenged her the following day, and again Becky lost with the embarrassing score of sixty-seven against Dulce's fifty-one. Becky challenged her a third time after she had called Uncle Andy for tips on putting. He kept repeating that the lightness of grip was all-important. He also apologized for not providing her with a putter and promised to get her one for Christmas, if he didn't spot one on sale sooner.

But to Becky's new challenge, Dulce argued, "What's the point, girl? You know the outcome before we even start." Also, Dulce had plans to go swimming. She had a bet against some boy that she could hold her breath underwater longer than he.

Becky went out alone to her homemade golf course at the corner.

"I'm not going to go home until I win," she told herself as she set her bag down. She was going to play against herself. She figured that she had to beat the
course record of fifty-one, a record held—she gulped—by Dulce. But first she had to clean up a pile of dog poop that was between holes three and four. She scooped it up with a board and carried the mess to a far corner.

Then she approached the first hole. She dropped the ball and took out a smaller club than she had used before, a four iron. She gripped it lightly, like her uncle said, and practiced swinging effortlessly. "Be like Tiger," she commanded herself.
Like Tiger.
But when she swung for real, the golf ball moved only a foot.

"Darn it!" she scolded herself.

She took a second shot, and the golf ball skipped beyond the hole.

"Stupid ball!" she muttered.

She spent the morning in the vacant lot, and with each round she got worse. She had completed the first round with sixty strokes and the second round with sixty-nine, though she argued with herself that it was really a sixty-eight. Her ball would have gone in, except there was a small wood chip in front of the hole.

Tired, Becky sat in the shade of the fence that separated her golf course from a neighbor's yard. She peeked between the slats of the warped fence. She could see Dona Carmen Maria sweeping her back steps. In her hands the broom operated like a golf club—Dona Carmen Maria could manage only small swings that gathered dust and a few leaves from her mulberry tree. She was old.

Becky's mother said their family was related to Doña Carmen Maria. It was through a cousin of a cousin or something like that. The old woman occasionally visited them, shuffling down the street with two sweaters on—she was always complaining about the cold, even in the summer, when the sun yellowed lawns, cracked the ground, and darkened children to the color of mud. Becky hated when Doña Carmen Maria would pinch her cheek and say, "
¡Qué linda chica!
"

Becky's club, which was resting in her lap, accidentally knocked against the fence. Doña Carmen Maria stopped sweeping. Becky could see the old woman's eyes narrow. Her whiskery mouth pinched into a small knot. She took a few rickety steps toward Becky.

"It's me," Becky braved as she stood up. "You know, Becky." She pushed herself up onto the fence and showed her face to Doña Carmen Maria.

"Oh, you," the old woman said. In Spanish, she asked Becky what she was doing.

In English, Becky told the old woman she was playing golf.

Doña Carmen Maria's face brightened. "
Como Tigre Woods, qué no? El joven es magnífico.
"

Becky was surprised that she would know Tiger Woods. In her eyes her hero, Tiger, had grown even
larger. Why would an old woman like Doña Carmen Maria be aware of a golf legend?

"Yeah, like him," she answered. And to her surprise, Doña Carmen Maria came down her driveway and out of her yard. Queenie, her small dog with crooked teeth, followed. Becky dreaded the cheek-pinching routine but was prepared. She was already wincing when the old woman, smiling a nearly toothless smile, raised a hand and twisted her cheek and said how pretty she was.

Becky fought the urge to wipe her cheek of the old woman's touch.

"
¿Cómo estás, mi'ja?
" she asked, an ancient finger playing with a mole on her throat. "
¿Y tus padres?
"

Becky answered that she was okay and her parents were fine. She said her mother was at the beauty parlor.

Doña Carmen Maria shivered. "
Hace frío.
" She adjusted the sweater on her shoulders. She also adjusted Queenie's sweater.

If anything, Becky was burning up. It was two-thirty in the afternoon, the hottest time of the day.

Doña Carmen Maria scanned the vacant lot. She asked if someone was buying the lot because it was clean.

"I cleaned it up," Becky said. "I made it into a golf course."

Doña Carmen Maria smiled. "Like Tiger."

Becky hoisted a small smile that lasted only a few seconds.

Doña Carmen Maria reached for one of the clubs in the bag. She said it was like a sword. She poked the air and laughed to herself.

Becky didn't smile. She was hot, thirsty, and uneasy with the old woman who again started to play with the mole on her throat. But Becky's parents had always taught her to respect elders. And she had to respect Doña Carmen Maria because, if not, Becky feared the old woman would walk down the street and report her incivility. Becky could see herself grounded until she was as old as Doña Carmen Maria herself.