Uma Krishnaswami - Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh

Cant, cant, cant, Emilio taunted.

Sure I can. Maria gave her little brother a push, but he clung to her like a shadow.

Emilio stuck out his lower lip. He was about to get all pouty and pig-headed, she could tell.

Youre a girl, he said.

So? Not for the first time, she wished she did not have a six-year-old hanging on to her like a goatgrass burr.

Girls cant play ball!

Can too. You dont know anything.

Mam insisted that Emilio was too small to walk to school and back by himself. It was a forty-minute walk if you went fast. In this last month of school, on account of wartime gas rationing, the bus to the farms on the citys outskirts had stopped running.

Ill tell Papi! Emilio said. It was always his ultimate weapon.

You do, and I wont share my tin cans with you.

Emilio glared at Maria, but she knew shed shut him up, at least for now. Emilio was a pack rat. He collected anything and everything, including cans that could be traded in for ration stamps. He was keen to collect the ration stamps too, except that Mam took those away from him, needing them to feed the family.

Around them streamed the ragtag morning crowd of Yuba City Public School pupils, chattering and running and bumping into one another. From inside the door, the mornings first bell jangled.

Cut grass and turned dirt scented the air around the school on this warm California morning. Maria wound up her throwing arm the way shed seen Babe Ruth do in the old newsreel at Smiths Theatre. The one in which the Babe was coaching girls to play ball. The projector got stuck, so the Babe taught the same girl her stance over and over again until even Maria wished he would get on with it and show them how to bat and Papi was about ready to burst from exasperation. Maria could remember every word Babe Ruth said.

Wind up. Wind up. Follow your arm right through. An easy play is hard to make.

She gripped her imaginary ball with both hands. She pulled back and let it fly.

Maria! It was Connie. Consuelo Khan, biggest and bossiest of the seven-count-em-seven Khan kids. Connie to everyone.

Maria and Connie were friends forever. Theyd thrown balls at each other and swung at them with dime-store bats since they were six years old. Both of them came from half-and-half families here in Yuba City, with mothers from Mexico and fathers from faraway India.

People called the families Mexican Hindus even though the fathers were mostly either Sikh or Muslim in the God department. The families joked that they were adha-adha, which meant half and half. The fathers had come from India during famine or war and then found themselves in these strange United States, forbidden to marry outside their race, unable to go back. This was the history, and everyone knew it.

You going to stay to sign up, right? Connie said.

Oh yes. Maria pushed all the objections out of her mind. Pushed her entire family away, Papi and Mam and Emilio parroting Papi.

Good, Connie said. Go on, chica, dont dawdle. She shoved the littlest of the Khan kids through the door.

Papis never letting you. Emilio had found his gumption again. He hopped and skipped ahead of Maria, singing, Never, never, never! Hell never let you play!

Quit it, Emilio! Yet secretly, Marias heart turned over.

Papis never gonna let you. It was true, wasnt it? Even after all his years in America, even with a wife from Mexico, Marias papi carried too much of his native India within him. She knew only too well that in his old-fashioned view, girls did not wear shorts and run around on ball fields.

Connie shot her a sympathetic glance, shrugged, and vanished through the school door behind her brothers and sisters.

Maria appealed to Emilio. I gotta stay behind after school. Dont tell Papi and Mam. Just stay and wait for me, okay?

What about Ta Manuela?

You cant tell her either.

I mean, he insisted, shes coming today. Ta is.

Marias heart gave a little guilty lurch. How could she have forgotten? Their sweet auntie, Mams baby sister. Softball signup had pushed Ta Manuela clean out of Marias mind. She pulled herself together. Well be home before then. She never comes till late anyway.

He scrunched his nose up at her.

Dont tell, okay? She tried not to sound desperate.

He gave her a sly look. Will you give me half of your tin cans? Behind the bathhouse at home was a pile of cans waiting to be salvaged. Papi said tin cans were going to war to help America, although Maria was not sure how that worked exactly. You could turn them in for ration stamps. That much she knew. It was as good as getting cash for your trash.

Emilio loved holding the ration stamps in his hands and poring over the designs on each one. He was mad about those stamps even though he had to give up every last one when he got home. Mam and Papi counted them diligently and traded them in for sugar and butter and gasoline. Half your tin cans, huh, Maria? Emilio prompted.

She considered. And if I dont?

He stuck his tongue out at her. Maria made a grab for him, but he scooted inside, ducking past the teacher stationed in the hallway, waiting, ruler in hand, to swipe at the legs of children who dared to run.