Never Blame the Umpire (6 page)

It’s Friday. The second week of class is almost over, but I honestly can’t remember much about the week, about what happened either in or out of class. Everything’s cloudy, almost like I’ve been walking around in fog all week. I know I went to school every day. I know I spent the afternoons with Ginny after school. I don’t think I yelled at her again, but I also know I didn’t tell her about Mama’s cancer.

I know I went home at five o’clock every day. I know our baseball team played two games. I think we won both of them. No, I know we did. I remember that. I don’t remember the scores, though. And I don’t think I did anything especially good. I didn’t get a game-winning hit. I would have remembered. I’m pretty sure
of that. I do remember that I didn’t want to play. I only played because Mama and Dad were going to be at the games. They expected me to play. I couldn’t not play without a good reason, and I didn’t really have one. Not one they’d understand anyway.

Details. I remember that word from our first week of class. Mr. Gallagher used it a lot. Details. They’re the difference, he said, between just an average piece of writing and a good one. Details. The good writer lets us see everything, not just with our eyes but with all our senses.

He might have used the word this week, too. He probably did. I don’t remember many details of the past few days. Every day has been pretty much the same. I get up every morning. I sleepwalk through the day. I’m anxious for night to come so I can go to sleep. A real sleep, not just a daytime one. When I’m asleep I don’t have to think. I don’t have to remember. Except in dreams. But my nighttime dreams haven’t been nearly as bad as my daytime ones.

We’ll only have one hour of class left after our afternoon break. I’m sitting here watching our class play volleyball. Some of them tried to get me to play, but I don’t feel like it. It’s almost like my body’s numb. I don’t feel like doing anything.

Mr. Gallagher is playing on one of the teams. He calls to me, “Are you sure you don’t want to play? We can use you on our team.”

I tell him no, and he doesn’t tell me I have to play.

I watch the ball go back and forth over the net. I watch Allison jump up to spike the ball. She comes back down and ends up on her knees in the sand. She reaches for her ankle.

“Are you okay?” Mr. Gallagher asks.

Allison bounces right back up. “Sure. Just twisted my ankle a bit. Nothing serious, but I think I’ll sit out for awhile.” She comes over and flops down beside me.

“You didn’t sprain it, did you?” I ask.

“No, just twisted it a little. It’ll be okay in a minute.” She bends her leg and reaches out to rub her ankle. “I haven’t heard you read your work in class yet.”

I shrug. “I don’t have anything worth reading.”

“I don’t believe that. You write really well.”

“Not like you. I love your poems.” We’re sitting on sandy ground next to the volleyball court. I pick up a handful of sand and let it sift through my fingers.

“Thanks,” she says. “I really love our class. I’ve been writing poems since I was in third grade, but I’ve never had as good a teacher as Mr. Gallagher.”

He’s up at the net. The ball comes to him. He could easily spike it and win the point, but he tips it to Miranda. She’s too short to spike the ball, but she manages to get it back over the net. I’ve noticed that Mr. Gallagher doesn’t take advantage of his height or the fact that he’s a lot better player than anybody
else. He doesn’t try to win points outright, he just tries to set up other players.

“I like him,” I say. “It’s not his fault…” I was going to say it wasn’t his fault I didn’t write good poems. Even though I meant it about my poems being bad, I stop. I don’t want Allison to think I’m fishing for a compliment or anything like that.

“I was talking to him at lunch today,” Allison said. “He told me that one of the things he plans to have us do is write collaborative poems.”

“What are those?”

“He said next week one of the things he’s going to do is have us choose a partner and write some poems with them. Two people working on one poem. I thought it would be fun if the two of us paired up. That is, if you wouldn’t mind.”

All of a sudden something clicks in my mind. It all seems too much of a coincidence. I can’t help but wonder. Mr. Gallagher and I haven’t talked about Mama since that one day. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t told anybody what we talked about. No one in the class seems to know about her cancer. Now he told Allison about the collaborative poems. She twists her ankle and comes to sit by me. And she asks if I will be her partner on the collaborative poem assignment. It’s as if Mr. Gallagher is trying to get Allison to talk to me about Mama. Or make it so I’ll talk to her. It all seems like a set-up.

“He told you, didn’t he?” I whisper. “About my mother.”

“Your mother?” Allison says. She looks truly surprised. “No. What about her?”

Suddenly, I can’t stop tears from burning my eyes. I push myself to my feet and start to run.

I end up at the same bleachers where I sat the day I talked to Mr. Gallagher about Mama. I don’t know why I came here; it wasn’t on purpose.

I don’t even know why I got up and ran from Allison. It’s not something I planned.

Maybe it’s because deep down I must have hoped Allison would follow me. Maybe the reason I’ve been walking in a fog all week is because I’ve kept everything locked inside me. I haven’t talked to anybody about Mama because I don’t know how to without crying. Or screaming. I just feel so sad all the time. And so angry. I don’t understand how God could do something like this.

So I’m not really surprised when Allison sits down beside me. I even feel relieved. God is such an
important part of Allison’s life I think maybe she can explain it to me. Maybe she has some answers.

Even before she says anything I blurt out that Mama has cancer and the doctors says there’s no cure.

I’m not crying anymore. I feel as if a big weight has been lifted from me. I stare out at the field. I know it seems strange to say this, but I almost feel the way I do when I’m in church. Every time I go to church and settle on a church pew with a hymnbook in front of me and look around at the stained glass windows and the large gold cross I always get this warm, comforting feeling.

That’s almost what I feel now. It’s as if this bleacher I’m sitting on is a church pew. I feel comforted with Allison beside me. She says, “Oh Kate.” Then she wraps an arm around me and pulls me close to her.

I can’t help but think of the words I’ve heard in Sunday School Class so often: “The loving arms of Jesus.”

Then I feel myself stiffen. Where have Jesus’ loving arms been? These are the arms of a girl in my class. A human’s arms. How can it be that she can give me comfort and Jesus can’t? Where is he? Where is God when I need him? No, not me. It’s not me who needs him. It’s Mama. She’s the one that needs him now more than ever. He can cure the cancer if he
wants to. Mama’s such a good person. She’s always been faithful to God. She doesn’t deserve to have this cancer. Where has God gone? Why has he deserted her? Why has he deserted us all?

I pull away and shout, “I hate God! I hate him!” I slam my fist down against the bleachers. I want it to hurt. Maybe the pain will somehow help me forget my other pain. But it doesn’t. It just make a dull thud.

“How can God let this happen?” I cry. “Tell me! You’re always talking about how good God is. Tell me how a god that’s good can do this?”

I wait for an argument from Allison. I expect her to try to justify God’s goodness, even though I know she can’t.

She doesn’t say anything. I see her eyes mist over as she reaches out and pulls me to her. I rest my head on her shoulder and start to sob. I feel her touch as she gently caresses my hair.

After talking to Allison, I know now that I’m ready to tell Ginny. But not here. Not on the bus with all the other kids around.

“Something’s wrong,” she says. “I know it. Please tell me. You’ve been acting strange all week. I’m your best friend. Whatever it is, you can tell me. I want to help.”

“I know,” I say. “But not now. Not here. Later.”

I stare at the back of the seat in front of us until I feel the pull of Ginny’s eyes. I finally look over at her. “Today,” she says. “This afternoon.”

I nod. “Yes,” I say. “This afternoon.”

The bus is full of talking and laughing, just like every day. But there’s only silence between Ginny and me the rest of the way home.

I know Ginny is keeping quiet on purpose, waiting for me to speak first. I don’t say anything until we’re in her back yard.

I say, “I’ve wanted to talk to you, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to say.”

“It’s something terrible,” Ginny says quietly. “I know it is. Or else you would have told me already. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is. The worst thing I can think of is that you’re moving away. I don’t think I could stand it if you were moving.”

A week ago if Mama or Dad had told me we had to move, I would have said just what Ginny did. I couldn’t have imagined anything more horrible. Now if only Mama would say that her cancer is cured but we have to move away I think I’d jump up and down and clap my hands and say, “Oh, that’s the best news ever!”

We’re sitting in Ginny’s backyard swings. Her dad built the set years ago, when she was four or five years old. Now we’re almost too big for them. I push off with my feet and start to swing. Ginny pushes off too, and soon we’re side by side, swinging higher and higher. The breeze on my face feels good. I’m swinging so high I can look straight up at a big fluffy cloud. It’s so pretty, stuck up against a clear blue sky.

I have to close my eyes to speak the words. “We’re not moving away. Mama’s dying.”

I open my eyes. I see that Ginny has jerked on
the chains of the swing and is coming to a stop. I slow my swing down and come to a stop beside her. She doesn’t say anything. I don’t either. I can hear her breathing, though. It’s like the whole world has suddenly become silent. No sounds of cars. No birds. No doors slamming. No babies crying. No barking dogs. Only Ginny’s breathing.

She’s standing in front of me, looking down at me. I can’t see her clearly because my eyes have filled with tears.

“No,” Ginny says. “It’s not true.”

I pull myself up out of the swing. “She’s dying!” I blurt out the words. I throw my arms around her neck and bury my head in her shoulder. “She told us last week. It’s cancer. She said there’s nothing the doctors can do.”

“I don’t believe it. Oh, Kate. Oh, Kate.”

And now she’s crying too, crying as hard as me. I don’t know if I should have told her. Mama didn’t say I shouldn’t tell anybody. That’s something we haven’t talked about, if she wanted anybody else to know. It’s just something I couldn’t keep inside any longer. I’ve felt so alone. I’ve felt like Mama’s deserting me. I’ve felt like God has deserted me. Even though I’ve been with Ginny a lot, I’ve felt so far away from her because I’ve had this awful secret I couldn’t bring myself to share.

Now I’ve told her.

But nothing is better. I still feel deserted by God. I still hate him for letting this happen to Mama.

Nothing can make it better. Except…now I don’t feel quite so alone. I don’t have this terrible secret inside me anymore. I know that I have Allison. And even though I feel bad that I’ve made Ginny cry, I’m really glad I told her.

Mr. Gallagher told us that most of what we’ll be doing this last week of class will be to put together a book of our poems. And of course we’ll have to plan our Friday night program. For our part of the program, he said, we’ll each read some of our poems.

I don’t want to do it, but I know I have to. Mr. Gallagher said it’s important that each of us read. “You’re each a part of the class, and you all owe it to your classmates to participate. And you owe it to your family. You’ve all written terrific poems, and they need to hear them.”

I don’t really think I’ve written anything terrific yet. I have five more days, though. Maybe I still can.

The fog has lifted. A little bit, anyway. I think
that finally telling Ginny has helped. It was so awful keeping Mama’s sickness inside me all that time.

Mama tries to pretend nothing has changed. She doesn’t seem sick, and she goes around smiling more than ever. I know what she’s trying to do. I know she’s trying to make us all feel better.

I try, for Mama’s sake, to smile too. I went to church yesterday, like always, and I sat there with Mama and Dad and Ken and tried to sing the hymns. But when we sang “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I listened to the words and found that I couldn’t sing them. I didn’t believe them. I’d be singing a lie. I heard everybody else singing the chorus: “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him! How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er!”

It’s not true. I don’t trust him. Not now. Not after what he’s let happen to Mama. I just stood there and watched Mama singing those words. Her eyes were bright and her face was glowing. Like she really believed those words!

The only thing I could do was whisper a silent prayer: “I want to trust you, Jesus. But I can’t. Not until you show me that you care about Mama. That you’ll make her well again. If you do that I’ll sing your praises forever and forever. Please do that, Jesus.”

The rest of the day was so great I almost forgot about Mama’s sickness. We went to a major league
baseball game at Kauffman Stadium. We live less than two hours from there. It’s where our favorite team, the Kansas City Royals, play their home games. It’s a beautiful ball park. The best thing is, they played the New York Yankees. The Yankees have all this money and can pay their players a lot more than the other teams can. So they have this big advantage. It’s especially fun to see our Royals beat the Yankees.

And they did! The game was so exciting that I hardly thought about anything but the game for the whole three hours. We scored a run in the bottom of the tenth inning to win the game. We all left the stadium with more than thirty thousand other fans thinking that all was right with the world.

The Royals winning a game like that over the Yankees made me think that anything is possible. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe from this time on everything will be all right. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus heard my prayer.

And if that wasn’t a sign, I got another one when I first got to class today. Allison gave me a poem. She said, “Here’s a poem I wrote this weekend. I thought you might want to see it.”

The title was “Prayer.”

Splashed against December’s sky is snow.

The harsh wind peppersit

against my frozen face; and though

I shiver just a tiny bit, I know

that winter’s bleakest rage

cannot begin to match the chill

of frozen souls, of my soul

in that icy place I lived

before I knelt to pray.

The snow that whips my wind-raw face

is warmer still than sunlit cold

of every godless yesterday.

I read the poem over and over. What made me feel just a little discouraged was knowing how much better Allison is than I am at writing poetry. What made me feel good was the poem’s message. It seemed to be saying that prayer can help. Oh, I hope so, I thought. I hope so. I want my frozen soul to thaw. I do.

“Okay,” Mr. Gallagher says. “To start out, we’re going to try something new today. I’m going to have you pair up with somebody else and write some poems together. There are different ways this can work.”

I look over at Allison. She points at me and then back at herself. She mouths the words, “You and me.”

“One way to do this is for each of you to write your own poem,” Mr. Gallagher says. “If you do, then you help each other out with the revision. Go over each poem word by word, line by line. What can be added? Taken out? What words can be changed?” He pauses. He holds his hands in front of him. Palms out. “But we’re not going to do that right now.”

He picks up a stack of note cards. “Another thing we could do is give each pair of poets some note cards. Each of the cards has a word on the back, words like ‘bird,’ ‘snow,’ ‘mountain,’ ‘water,’ and so on. You’ll use that word to give you an idea for your poem.” He spreads his palms again. “But we’re not going to do that yet, either.”

“The suspense is killing me,” Adrian Barrow says. He’s kind of the class clown, except he writes really good poems.

“I’m sure you’ll survive,” Mr. Gallagher says with a smile. “Now there’s another way to approach your poem. Each partnership can work on a single poem. Each of you can contribute ideas, lines, images to it. You can build the poem together.”

“But we’re not going to do that either, I bet,” Adrian says.

“You’ve got me pegged,” Mr. Gallagher says.
“What we’re going to do is have a little challenge. I’m going to give you a subject to write about. We’ll be able to take a look at all the different ways each of the groups writes about the same subject. It’s a subject that will be wide-open. It’s limited only by your imagination. The subject is, drum roll please…”

“Oh, the suspense!” Adrian says.

“…months of the year,” Mr. Gallagher says.

“Which month?” Kerry Wilson asks.

“Any month,” Mr. Gallagher says. “Every month, if you’d like.”

“How long should it be?” Kerry asks.

“As long as it needs to be,” Mr. Gallagher says. “Just like most of your other poems.”

Allison and I sit at a corner table and start to brainstorm. We go through each of the twelve months. We think of things that have happened to us in each of the months. We list things we associate with each of the months. Like for January: snowball fights, ice-skating, school being cancelled, basketball games, colds. Or April: blossoms, green grass, Easter, baseball season, robins, spring rains, spring breezes.

After half an hour we still haven’t started our poem, but we have a page full of ideas for dozens of poems. Which isn’t all bad, I guess. Mr. Gallagher keeps telling us that the hardest part of writing poems is coming up with ideas.

We have plenty of those.

Mr. Gallagher keeps us busy all day. There’s no time to think of anything but poetry. By the time school’s out and I meet Ginny at the bus, Allison and I have completed the first draft of our month poem and I’ve written four new poems of my own.

It’s been my best day of writing in three weeks. Maybe I’ll have something good enough to read on Friday night after all.