Never Blame the Umpire (3 page)

I don’t know if it’s the tapping on the door or Mama’s words, but something wakes me from a really good dream—the kind that makes you feel warm inside. I try to hold on to it as long as I can. After the second or third “Kate” I know it’s no use. I’ll never get back to that wonderful dream.

In the few seconds it takes me to answer Mama’s “Time to get up” with “Okay, Mama,” I can’t even remember what the dream had been about. It was probably something that would have made a good poem or story, but it’s gone now.

I wonder if that happens to other people, getting pleasant dreams interrupted right in the best parts and not being able to finish them. Ginny claims she doesn’t dream much, but I can’t believe that. How
can someone not dream? It seems like almost every night I have one dream right after another all night long. When I don’t dream, I wake up in the morning feeling a little bit disappointed. To me, the best thing about sleeping isn’t even the rest I get, it’s the dreams. It’s like watching a movie or even reading a story, but without doing the work it takes to actually read a story.

I just wish scientists could find a way to videotape dreams so we could have a permanent record of them. I keep my notebook right next to my bed, and once in awhile I’ll grab my pen the second I wake up and scribble out some words or details of the dream so I’ll be able to remember it longer. I’m not very good at doing it, though. The details of my dreams always fade after a few seconds. I usually end up with a couple of words or sentences that really don’t make much sense when I read them a day or two later. Sometimes I can’t even read my scribbling.

A dream is a lot like eating orange sherbet; it’s sweet and pleasant and you want the taste to last and last, but it’s gone too soon. Nothing is left except the memory that once upon a time something really tasty had been there.

I slip into my summer school clothes—loose fitting denim shorts and a white t-shirt, sneakers, and white socks. The temperature is supposed to be in the low nineties. The director of our school told
us we could dress comfortably, as long as we dress tastefully. By “tastefully” she means don’t show too much skin and don’t wear clothing too tight or with dirty words written on it. Even if I wanted to dress that way, which I don’t, Mama and Dad would never permit it, so the school’s dress code really isn’t a problem for me.

Mama is standing at the kitchen counter. My breakfast is waiting for me—a bowl of cold cereal with a sliced banana, orange juice, and a glass of milk. I pour half the milk into my bowl of cereal. Soggy cereal is really gross, so whenever Mama has breakfast waiting for me, she makes it a point to let me pour the milk into the bowl myself.

“Hi, Mama. Are you feeling better?”

She smiles. “I am, honey. Thanks.” Her eyes have hints of red in them. She looks tired.

“Are you going in to work today? You look like you could use some more sleep.”

She pours herself a cup of coffee and sits at the table. “I look that bad?” She says it in a teasing way, and I can’t help but smile.

“You never look bad, you know that. You do look tired, though.”

“I guess I didn’t sleep well,” she says. She butters some toast, but doesn’t eat it. She just stares at it for a moment. “I’ll be going to work, same as always, as soon as the bus picks you up. Mr. Randolph’s office
would fall apart without me there. You know how it is. Ken’s the only one lucky enough to sleep late, now that you have to get up early for your class.”

She motions toward the toast. “You want some?”

I shake my head. “Has Dad left already?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

I glance at my watch. I still have plenty of time before I have to walk to the bus stop. “I think you should make Ken get up, too,” I say. “I bet there are plenty of chores for him to do while we’re all out working so hard.”

“Oh, are they working you hard?” There’s a twinkle in her eyes. She doesn’t seem to be sick. I’m so glad. I was worried about her. I don’t remember her ever being too sick to say good-night to me. Until last night.

“In last night’s game I could hardly hold the bat, my hand was so stiff from all the writing that Mr. Gallagher has us do.”

“Your hand must not have hurt too badly. Your father told me that you got the game-winning hit. I wish I could have seen it. I’m so proud of you. I can imagine how exciting it must have been.”

“Oh, it was! Remember, you told us about the time you won the conference tennis championship in a tie-breaker that lasted forever. And how exciting that was. 15 – 13, wasn’t it? But I bet I was even more excited about my hit than you were about winning
that championship.”

Mama smiles. Then she gets this faraway look in her eyes. It’s like she’s looking past me, maybe back to that tennis match. She blinks hard a couple of times, then looks back at me. “I’m glad,” she says.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll have another chance. It’s a long season. Thirteen more games. I was talking to Ginny last night and she said she might even start coming to some of them.”

Mama gets up from the table and carries her plate to the dishwasher. “That would be nice. She’s not much of a baseball fan, is she?”

“No, but Ivy and Heather and me are still trying to talk her into playing. Coach says he’ll find room for her if she wants to play.”

Mama sits back down across from me. I can tell she didn’t get much sleep. She has the prettiest green eyes. But today there’s still that touch of redness in them. Not as red as her hair, though. Mama is so pretty with her green eyes and red hair. I’ll never be as pretty as she is, but I’m so lucky I have hair like hers.

I know some girls who say they wish they weren’t redheads. I don’t understand how they can’t not love their red hair. Just looking at Mama makes me feel good about myself, knowing I look a lot like her.

“Ginny’s played before, hasn’t she?” Mama said. “Don’t you play at school, in P.E.?”

“I think that’s why she hates baseball.”

“Why is that? She’s a good athlete. I know she can handle herself on the tennis court. I’m sure she’d be good at baseball, too.”

“I know. I think she’s afraid she’ll get hit by the ball again.”

Mama breaks into a smile. “Oh, that’s right. I remember.”

“I don’t think Ginny will ever forget. We were playing in P.E. and the ball hit her right in the mouth. It gave her a bloody lip, and her mouth was swollen for a couple days.”

“I shouldn’t laugh,” Mama says, but I can see she’s working hard not to. “I know it wasn’t funny to Ginny. But I remember it was the day of your class play. She had the lead.”

“Right. And she still says it was one of the worst days of her life. She had to say all her lines through puffy, swollen lips. She was totally embarrassed by how bad she looked, and she didn’t think anybody in the audience would be able to understand what she was saying. She felt like she had a mouthful of cotton.”

“She did great, though.”

“She sure did.” I glance at my watch. In fifteen minutes the bus will come. It’s only a three or four minute walk to the bus stop, but Ginny and I always like to be a little early. I take a final big swallow of orange juice. “She thinks she did awful, though, and
she blames baseball for it.”

Mama reaches over and touches my hand. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, I guess, if you’re going to convince Ginny that baseball is fun and safe.”

It seems like my morning is never really off to a good start until I feel Mama’s touch, when she gives me a hug or touches my hand. This day is off to a great start.

“I guess,” I say. “But I like challenges.”

“I know you do.” Mama’s voice softens, and the smile leaves her face. “Challenges make us stronger people. Better people.” She quickly wraps both her hands around her coffee cup and says, “Almost time for your bus. You’d better hurry.”

“Are you okay, Mama?”

“I’m fine. You have fun at school today. Write something beautiful.”

“I’ll try.”

Maybe today I’ll write something I’ll be able to let Mama read. I don’t dare show her the poem I wrote last night, the “What I remember most” poem. It would make her feel even worse about missing our game.

When school’s over at three o’clock half of us rush out to the bus. The rest are picked up by a parent. I sit with Ginny on the bus and tell her how much fun it was today in Mr. Gallagher’s class.

“He let us read our poems out loud if we wanted to,” I say, “but he didn’t make us read.”

“You read yours, didn’t you?” Ginny says.

“No way.”

I like it that Mr. Gallagher doesn’t force anybody to read their poems. I mean, I don’t mind writing personal stuff, but I don’t want the whole class to hear it. That’s why I didn’t read my poem about getting the winning hit and Mama and Dad not coming to the game. I didn’t mind if Mr. Gallagher saw it, but no way was I going to read it out loud.

“You should read them,” Ginny says. “I thought everything you wrote was great. You should let the class hear them.”

“Some of them are too personal. I can’t read those.”

Mr. Gallagher said he was going to type some of our poems and make copies so we could enjoy the poems written by other class members and learn from them. He said he wouldn’t type the poems that had NO written at the top of the page.

I made sure that most of mine had a big NO at the top.

I tell Ginny how Mr. Gallagher had us write a lot of other things today. Some were three-line poems. He told us not to use rhyme. He said our poems were a kind of haiku, but that we didn’t have to use the 5 – 7 – 5 syllable pattern that a traditional haiku uses.

I wrote about a girl on the tennis court.

On the green tennis court

Yellow fuzzy balls skip

Into the twang of catgut strings.

The neatest thing was: when Mr. Gallagher came around to see our work he said he liked it! He said, “You have some good images—your colors, the sound of the ball.” He liked my verb ‘skip.’ He said, “Some writers would have said ‘bounce’; ‘skip’
is a more unusual choice. When you’re writing, try to come up with the unusual. Don’t always use the same words everybody else would use.” Then he asked me, “Do you play much tennis?”

“Some,” I said. “Mostly with my family or my friend Ginny. My mom played in college, and she taught me how to play.”

“Kate’s good,” Allison said. “She could play in tournaments if she wanted to.”

I like Allison a lot. She’s a year older than me and we go to different schools, so I don’t get a chance to spend much time with her, but we go to the same church. She’s been in the same youth group as Ginny and me for a couple years. It was nice of Allison to say that, but I don’t think I’m that good.

“Pretty impressive, Kate,” Mr. Gallagher said. “I hope you’ll write some more poems about tennis.” Then he said, “That’s something I hope each of you will do: write about the things that interest you most. You all have talents and interests that would be fun for others to read about. That’s what poetry is all about—sharing with others how you feel about things.”

Then some other kids read more three-liners. I wasn’t surprised at the poem Allison read. She titled it, “My Favorite Book.”

God’s word beside my pillow

Filling me with peace

God’s words of peace for me.

One thing about Allison, she’s not afraid or embarrassed to let people know how she feels about God. I wish I could be that open. I go to Sunday School and church every week. I’m active in all the church’s youth activities. And I love God. I really do. But I pretty much keep how I feel about him to myself. I admire Allison for being strong enough to let people know how she feels, especially when she gets teased by some people for being “goody-goody.” It doesn’t even seem to bother her when people say that about her.

Another thing about Allison, she never puts others down if they don’t believe the way she does about God.

Mr. Gallagher had us write a lot of other things, not just the three-line poems. Every few minutes he’d switch to something new, so class never got boring. He read some of his own poems, and he read poems by Robert Frost and Shel Silverstein and some other poets I’d never heard of. But the way he read made all of them sound good.

The final poem we worked on before the class ended for the day was what Mr. Gallagher called an Expansion Poem. We had to take one of our three-line poems and make it longer by adding details to it. We could describe the place in more detail or add
other people or show more of the action. We could tell how the people were feeling. We could make it into a little story if we wanted to.

I’d written six different three-line poems, and the one I decided to expand was my tennis poem.

On the green tennis court

Yellow fuzzy balls skip

Into the twang of catgut strings.

We dance to the music,

My mother and me, together

On one side of the net.

Across the net my dad and brother

Stumble amid the sound of laughter

Trying to return our powerful shots.

Finally, they sprawl down in defeat,

Faces red and puffing on the green court,

While Mama and me, tanned and fresh,

Barely breathing hard at all,

Jump the net to congratulate them

For a good try.

Well, that’s not exactly how our tennis matches always turn out. Mama and I aren’t always partners, and I don’t always win. But Mr. Gallagher said a poem doesn’t have to be true. A poem is one time when it’s
all right to lie, he said. Except he didn’t call it lying; he called it “changing reality.” The main thing, he said, is that you should just have fun writing a poem.

I had fun writing my tennis story poem, even though it wasn’t a “beautiful” poem like Mama suggested. Even so, I think it’s one she’ll like when I show it to her.

“Hey,” I say to Ginny, “I’ve been rattling on about my day. Tell me about yours. What was your class like?”

Ginny laughs. “Oh Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” she says in a real dramatic voice. Then, in her normal voice, she says, “I’m glad your class was fun. You know about
Romeo and Juliet
, by Shakespeare?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, this afternoon I got to play a scene as Juliet.”

She bus pulls up, and as we walk up the aisle toward the front of the bus, Ginny is already on stage: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

One of the girls up ahead turns around and smiles. “Go girl!” she calls out.

I can’t even begin to picture myself on stage speaking lines like Ginny does. I’m happier than ever I’m in Mr. Gallagher’s creative writing class.