A Broken Window
“Did you see that Lorus,” she said.
I didn’t hear her because I was standing 150 feet away at home plate.
There was glass all over the floor, and there were bits of glass nestled in the African violets on the window sill. One violet, a shy blue, was on the floor, tethered to its pot by a single root, and there was a baseball next to it.
The game stopped, each of us, my cousins and some neighborhood kids, stood at our positions and looked at one another like nine and ten-year olds do when they know there is going to be trouble.
“Who is going to get the ball?” said the pitcher.
Everyone was looking at me.
“You’re closer,” I said.
“Yeah but you hit it,” he said, and the others nodded.
I dropped the bat and started the long walk to the house. The field was Grandma and Grandpa’s front yard. The yard was longer than it was wide, and the house was set back a considerable distance from the road. Home plate was near the road, Grandma had insisted; she didn’t want us running into the road for a long ball. On the third base side was a row of lilacs, they had been growing for years and were more like trees than bushes and a ball that rolled into them was always good for an extra base. On the first base side a row of roses that would, in a few years, be destroyed by a flood from a nearby creek. And in deep right field just to the side of the house, a willow tree that I would fall out of the very next summer.
I walked through the front door, Grandma was standing in the living room, and she was smiling. I didn’t understand. I was expecting the worst. There was glass all over the floor, and her plant, the precious violet, roots dangling, was sitting next to the baseball I had been sent to retrieve. She said, get the dustpan and a broom and I’ll help you clean up. And then, as I left the room, she said it again, “Did you see that Lorus, he knocked the dickens out of that ball.”
Tags: baseball