I used to love when my cousins would come over to see my grandma because that meant I had built-in playmates. My cousin Johnny and I would always gang up against my sister Misty, my cousin Kim, and Johnny's sister, Julie. Two against three may not sound like much of a ganging up, but since Johnny and I were the oldest, smartest, and most athletic, we always won despite the numbers. Now, those three might argue who was smartest, but since they never caught on to our scheme or they never bothered to protest our scheme, then I would say that we earned the intelligence battle. And those three certainly weren't anywhere near athletic. The most movement their bodies ever saw was much later in the 80s when they spent all afternoon teasing their hair and banging their heads to the music of hair bands such as Guns-N-Roses and Metallica. (I remember our epic verbal battles as teens over which genre was better and cooler - my preference was alternative bands such as U2 and REM, but they loved that heavy metal.)
On one random Sunday afternoon, after having finished our after-church meal of KFC chicken with macaroni and cheese, rolls, and green beans with banana pudding for dessert (standard fare for Sunday afternoons in South Carolina), we decided to play baseball in the front yard of Grandma's house. We had to play in the front yard because the back was too cluttered with Grandpa's junk and random plum trees or pine trees or grape vines. Plus, the front yard had built-in bases. The black kettle hanging from a curved metal pipe and which sometimes held a real flower, sometimes a plastic one, served as home plate. The front porch stairs were first base, a tree truck was second, and the white light pole was third. Either Johnny or I would pitch while the others played defense. We would even give them three outs to our two just to make the odds even more fair. Still, they agreed to the terms every time, and they lost the game every time, too.
On this particular afternoon, Johnny was pitching, and I was on defense. I can't remember who was at bat - Julie, Kim, or Misty - but whoever hit the ball, hit it toward me. Johnny quickly ran to the front porch steps and prepared to catch my toss to first for an easy out. "Over here, quick," he urged me on. I fielded the ball cleanly, but I fell victim to the adrenaline, and hurled the ball to first. Johnny's eyes followed the ball straight into the center of a 3-paned picture window that fronted the living room of my grandma's house. Bodies jumped from their reclining position in the living room, and I knew our game was over.
As cliché as this may seem, time really did seem to stop for a second. Everyone in the yard froze when the ball shattered the glass in the picture window, and we all looked at each other in horror, our eyes wide and our jaws hanging. In that frozen moment, our shared glances spoke of commiseration, collectively feeling the dread of the coming punishment. Or maybe that was what was going on in my mind; my cousins were probably thinking about how they could prove that I threw the ball and therefore was solely responsible for the damage.
Grandma would be ok. She would be upset, but understanding and calm. Grandpa, though, was the one we all feared. He was the one who shouted at us for coming in and out of his house. "Y'all ain't the ones paying the light bill around here. You need to go outside and play and stay outside and quit letting all the air conditioning out," he would bellow. Grandpa was also the one who counted the number of Coca-Cola cans in the refrigerator and fussed every time one of the grandchildren got a cold Coke out of the refrigerator: "Y'all know I only like the cold ones. You can get one of the hot ones and add ice. And you better drink the whole thing, too. I don't buy them for you to let it go flat. You need to drink more water anyway." And Grandpa was the one who dominated the television with his "Hee Haw" and 6 o'clock news broadcasts and dared us to make noise so that he couldn't hear. Yes, Grandpa was the one who fussed and the one who would hurt our feelings and the one who would let us know exactly how much a new picture window would cost.
As soon as our telepathic moment passed, we scattered like bugs suddenly exposed when a rock is overturned. We ran in 5 different paths, all out of the front yard, headed away from Grandpa and our moms, who were sure to follow Papa immediately as he descended into the carport to begin the interrogations. I don't exactly remember where we thought we would hide or how Papa ended up rounding us all together again, but I do remember his eerily serious tone when he discussed how much the window would cost to get fixed and how they would have to tape up the hole right now because they couldn't get a glass repairman out until Monday. And I remember being worried about how Grandma was going to be able to afford a new window, and I still wonder to this day if my mom or my grandma paid for the window to be fixed, but somehow they managed to get it done.
I never denied throwing the ball, but I did try to lay the blame on Johnny. "Johnny was supposed to catch it!" I explained.
"Well, I'm not Kareem Abdul Jabar," he offered.
No comments:
Post a Comment