Rooting for Rafael Rosales Read online

  “Maya!” Mom called again.

  “Why don’t you add a mosquito grotto while you’re at it?” Grace said. “Or a cockroach villa in the basement?”

  “Shut up! You don’t know anything! And you’re a cyberbully!” Maya stalked down the hall, pretending she didn’t hear Grace’s snort of laughter at her use of that word. She felt such a mishmash of things that she could barely sort it out. Was that the way Grace really thought of her? As a baby bird with a crush?

  ***

  When Maya got home, Dad was in the family room watching the Masters Golf Tournament—one of the few sporting events he watched every year. She stood for a moment, liking the pan shots of the beautiful greenery until she realized the whole course was probably drenched in insecticides.

  “Hey, Rodney called about babysitting,” said Dad. “He’s going back to work and needs someone to take Claire after school. He said to email.”

  “Oh. Great.” Rodney was a former coworker of her mom’s who lived in the neighborhood. Now he was a stay-at-home dad with a toddler named Claire. Rodney had paid Maya a couple of times to play with Claire while he did work around the house. That was easy, because Rodney would swoop in whenever Claire got moody or needed a pull-up change. Being all alone with her would be way different.

  Maya found Grace on the computer, as always.

  “I need to use the computer,” she said.

  “I’m busy,” said Grace. “In case you can’t tell.”

  “You’ve been on it all day! I only need it for five minutes.”

  “Well, you could at least ask nicer.” Grace closed her browser window and opened a new one for Maya. As she brushed by, Maya felt enough friction to start a fire.

  She took her time writing a message to Rodney, trying to sound professional even though he’d known her when she was a baby. She told him she was very interested in babysitting and looked forward to seeing Claire again. After sending the email, she navigated to Grace’s blog to see if she’d deleted the stuff about her.

  She hadn’t deleted a thing, and there was a new post.

  Erratum: Fledgling Fan wants you all to know that her interest in the rookie from the DR is not a “crush.” She sees him more as a puppy in the rain. Out of respect for her and the truth, MLCO will now stand for minor-league compassion object.

  “No,” she said aloud. “Grace!”

  Grace came back in, still bristling with negative energy.

  “I want you to delete this stuff about me. Including the last post. Especially the last post. I don’t see Rafael as a puppy.” Something about that really irritated her.

  Grace let out an exasperated groan. “Well, I need to get on the computer if I’m going to take down half my blog history.”

  When Maya stood, she saw her sister’s eyes were full of anger and hurt.

  “So, um, what happened to Rachel? I mean, today.”

  “None of your business,” Grace fumed.

  Maya slinked into her room. Mom and Dad had redone her room for her eleventh birthday. The walls were light blue, with an art print of animal-shaped clouds and a mobile of dangling songbirds. Her mother had picked out a plush green rug. Maya had barely thought about it at the time—a rug was a rug—but came to love squishing her bare feet in it, or lying on it while she read or daydreamed. It was like lying on a patch of perfect grass under a perfect sky. She did so now and felt her frustration with Grace turn to happier thoughts.

  Babysitting money would help pay for the garden, the garden would help the bees, and the bees would help the world. Rafael Rosales was still playing baseball. It was going to be a great spring and summer, she decided.

  She was at peace again. Her room had that effect on her.

  Maya felt very grown-up picking up Claire from the Montessori on Monday. It was three blocks from her own school and two blocks from Claire’s house. As they walked home, Claire was adorable, tugging on Maya’s hand and singing a song to herself. This will be easy, Maya thought.

  “Do you need to use the potty?” she asked when they got inside. Rodney and Seth—Claire’s other dad—said Claire was out of pull-ups now but needed constant prompting.

  “No! I don’t have to use the potty!”

  “Just sit on it and try.”

  “Nooooooo!” Claire wailed like a siren. She jumped on the couch and threw a pillow at Maya.

  “All right, all right,” said Maya. “You don’t have to.” Another pillow flew at her and missed. Claire ran out of pillows and started to kick at her from the couch.

  What have I gotten myself into? Maya thought.

  “How about a snack?” she suggested. “I think there are gummy bears…”

  For some reason, that set off the Claire siren again.

  “Nooooooo! I don’t want gummy bears! I hate gummy bears!”

  “OK, let’s take five,” said Maya. It was something Mom and Dad used to do with her when she was little. She hadn’t thought of it in years. She held up a hand and counted to five with her fingers while taking a deep breath. She then counted down and exhaled.

  Claire followed along out of curiosity and a few seconds later was calm.

  Maybe I can do this, thought Maya.

  “Curious George is on right now,” Claire announced, and sat on the floor of the living room in front of the TV. Maya would have loved to let Claire zone out for a while, but Claire’s dads had said no TV. How does she know Curious George is on right now if she never watches TV? Maya wondered, but then she dismissed the thought.

  “Do you want to practice letters?” she asked, grabbing a pad of paper and a bucket of crayons and sitting down on the floor.

  “A B C D E G H J…” Claire shouted cheerfully, missing a few letters.

  “No, I mean writing them out,” said Maya, but Claire shouted the alphabet again.

  “Can I tell you about my bee garden?” Maya asked.

  Claire’s mouth dropped open. “You grow bees?”

  “Sort of.” Maya drew flowers on the blank page. “I grow flowers, and the bees live there because of the flowers,” she said. The flower hadn’t bloomed yet, and she hadn’t seen one bee, but Claire didn’t need to know that.

  “Draw the bees!”

  “Of course.” Maya added a dozen yellow smudges, each with a gray V for wings.

  “Where’s the queen bee?”

  Maya was impressed that Claire knew how bee colonies worked.

  “Her name is Queen Bombadala,” said Maya, and she drew a fatter smudge of yellow with a crimson crown.

  “How come her crown is red?”

  “Because it’s made out of rose petal,” Maya said quickly. Claire’s eyes were wide and delighted with Maya’s answer.

  “Tell me a story about Queen Bombadala.”

  “Well, once upon a time, when Bombadala was still a princess, there was an evil king named Darth Alcerius…”

  Claire clutched Maya’s arm and rested her curly dark head on her shoulder. Maya melted a little. She couldn’t draw with Claire clinging to her left arm, so she put down the crayon and made up a long story about Queen Bombadala as a princess, searching for a magical rose that would defeat Darth Alcerius. The princess ran into various talking animals, and Maya did their voices, which made Claire laugh. The story was rambling and pointless, but Claire didn’t seem to care. She listened until she dozed off.

  “Rough afternoon, huh?” Seth asked when he came in and saw Maya, herself half asleep, with Claire snuggling next to her.

  “Some of it was,” Maya said honestly. “Then she conked out.”

  “Oh, I know all the little dramas.” Seth crouched and stroked Claire’s hair. “You can go now, if you can get out from under her.”

  Maya gently nudged Claire aside to free her arm. Claire’s eyes popped open.

  “I have to go potty!” she said.

  ***

  Maya’s afternoons with Claire grew easier as she got used to the little girl’s mood swings. She found that most tantrums could be sidetrack
ed with a new story about Princess Bombadala, who ended up foiling bank robbers, riding in the Kentucky Derby, and rescuing Claire’s two dads from an army of man-eating broccoli. Sometimes she was helped by her brother, Rafael Basewalker. In the end, of course, the villains always turned out to be spies or assassins sent by the diabolical Alcerius.

  Maya had never been so busy. She babysat two or three times a week and spent twenty minutes every morning in the garden, picking the unwanted grass and weeds that poked up through the mulch. She also had more homework as they neared the end of the school year. She read The Miracle Worker, identifying with Annie Sullivan as she weathered the tantrums of young Helen Keller. She wrote a paper on Dolores Huerta, picking her name off a list of famous Americans. She solved pages of math problems and tried to comprehend the scale of geological time.

  The salvia bloomed first: little blue flowers popping up after a few weeks. Maya ran inside and made the family come out to see. Everyone was dressed and having breakfast. They gathered in the backyard, Dad still holding his coffee cup, Mom snapping a photo with her phone, Grace rolling her eyes.

  “You plant stuff and it grows. What a miracle,” she said dryly.

  “It is!” Maya insisted.

  “Let me get a picture of you next to the flowers,” Mom said.

  When she had time to herself and the computer, Maya searched for updates from the DR about Rafael Rosales. She also read Grace’s blog. Her sister wrote updates practically every day. She’d deleted the past bits about Maya and didn’t post anything new—nothing about Fledgling Fan, nothing about any kind of minor-league anything objects. They had an uneasy truce.

  Sometimes Maya would finish her homework and come down to watch a few innings of a Twins game with Grace. She didn’t ask questions or make comments, because Grace would roll her eyes and be annoyed. But she liked that time with her sister and liked watching the games. She even enjoyed the slow moments in the game as the pitcher shuffled around on the mound and the batter adjusted his gloves and looked into the dugout. (Why he did that, Maya didn’t know—it was one of the things she was afraid to ask.) She got used to the rambling commentators, one apparently an ex-pitcher who favored loud ties, the other steeped in baseball knowledge.

  It was the second announcer who mentioned Rafael Rosales one Friday evening in May. It was late in the game, and the Twins were trailing by six runs. Their turns at bat seemed quick and futile, and Grace had halfway stopped watching to study the Minnesota driver’s manual.

  “There’s good news from the DSL Twins regarding prospect Rafael Rosales,” said the announcer. Maya perked up and Grace set her manual down to pay attention, but the player batting for the Brewers hit a double and the announcer had to talk about that. It was a couple of batters later before he got back to it.

  “You were going to tell us about Rafael Rosales,” the ex-pitcher reminded him during a pitching change.

  “Right! Rafael Rosales played very well in rookie ball and came to be ranked one of the top prospects in the organization. As a top prospect, he was invited to spring training, but he struggled. He had about six hits in eighty at bats and was let go before the end of the spring.”

  “But now, good news,” said the ex-pitcher.

  “Yep. Today the Dominican Summer League team kicked off their season, and Rosales went five for five with two doubles and an outright steal of home.”

  “Wow. You don’t see that anymore.”

  “If you want to make a statement that you are still a top prospect, you do it like Rafael did today,” the announcer said.

  Maya felt a thrill. She wondered if there would be any video highlights on the Web, or at least a recap of the game. She realized her eyes were moist.

  “Congratulations,” said Grace, her voice only a little bit mocking.

  The Saturday before Memorial Day, Maya went out to plant forbs. She had a square plastic pot of thistle, which was prickly, and another of borage, which had fuzzy leaves and smelled of cucumbers.

  She stopped and stared. There were three bees circling the tiny pink verbena blossoms. These bees were green instead of yellow, but their shape and sound was unmistakable. They looped and whorled around one another in what looked like a dance. She realized now she might get stung. The website said bees really didn’t want to sting people, but that was easier to believe that when it was hypothetical. Now she had to grab a shovel and walk right among them!

  She reminded herself that Rafael Rosales had stolen home base, an outright steal when the pitcher had the ball. She didn’t know how a runner could surprise a pitcher that well, to slide across the plate before the ball got to the catcher for a tag. It was probably completely stupid, as Danny Rhombus would say, but that didn’t matter. Rafael had gotten away with it.

  She cautiously set a foot into the garden bed. A bee landed briefly on her shoulder, but she remained calm until it buzzed away.

  ***

  “Your garden’s looking really good,” Grace told her later that day. She had just come back from a driving lesson and met Maya in the upstairs hallway.

  “Thanks,” said Maya. She was aching to tell someone about the bees, but wasn’t sure Grace would appreciate it. “Uh…you’re turning into a good driver.” She had noticed that Grace now drove away a bit more smoothly, and that Dad returned from their outings a little less tense. “I’m sure you’ll pass the test with no problem.”

  “Thanks.”

  They looked at each other for a while in the stretch of hallway between their rooms and the bathroom.

  “Also, your Rafael had another good day,” said Grace. “Three hits; one was a homer. He doesn’t get a lot of those.”

  “He’s not my Rafael,” said Maya, although her heart soared. “But I’m glad he’s doing well.”

  She got on the computer after dinner, navigated to a gardening discussion board, and thought about telling these people about her bees. They would get it and congratulate her. But she wasn’t allowed to create accounts or post on the Internet unless Mom or Dad knew about it. She didn’t want to test her luck.

  Instead, she checked the minor league page for the DSL Twins. There was a box score but no recap. Stats instead of a story.

  Finally, she checked Grace’s blog.

  “Our favorite player in the minors had a good game today,” Grace had written in her post from the night before. “We’ll keep an eye on him.” Not a word about “Fledgling Fan,” which left Maya feeling both relieved and disappointed. She felt oddly left out.

  ***

  “I saw three bees in my garden,” she told Claire the next time she babysat. “The first ones of the year.”

  “You said your garden was full of bees,” said Claire.

  “Those were invisible bees,” said Maya. “These are visible bees.”

  “I want to go see!” said Claire.

  “Me too,” said Maya. “But we’re not supposed to go anywhere.”

  “We can go to the playground,” Claire reminded her.

  That was true. Rodney had said so. And a trip to the playground would go faster than the usual two hours of floor puzzles and tantrums.

  “Then let’s go to the playground,” she said. “It’s such a nice day.”

  She found that getting out of the house wasn’t easy. Claire wanted to bring a snack and a juice box, which Maya stuffed into a toddler-sized backpack. She also wanted Maya to pull her in the wagon, but before they left, she loaded the wagon with toys from a bin in the garage.

  “I want to dig,” she said, putting in a plastic bulldozer. “I want to swim and play ball.” She added a pink pool noodle and a small beach ball with an octopus on it.

  “You don’t have a swimsuit on,” Maya reminded her. Claire’s face got a verge-of-tantrum look Maya had gotten to know too well. “But you can wade,” she said quickly. “You can take off your Crocs and wade. It’ll be fine.” She would have to do the same thing, of course, but she didn’t care if her legs got wet. “Are you going to ride in the wagon?�
�� Maya wasn’t sure Claire had left room for herself.

  “Yes!” Claire climbed in, sitting on top of the toys. Maya hoped the girl wouldn’t tumble out. She closed the garage door, pocketed the keys, and started pulling the wagon toward the park. Claire grabbed the pool noodle and pretended to row. It made the ride long and bumpy, and Maya had to retrieve the noodle whenever Claire dropped it, which was constantly.

  “I have to go potty!” the little girl announced the moment they arrived at the park.

  “Seriously?” Maya asked.

  Claire’s eyes were wide and urgent.

  “All right, all right.” Maya checked the bathroom doors on the side of the school, which were locked. She brought the wagon around the school’s main entrance and found that door locked as well. She sighed. Did they have to lock up the moment school was out?

  “I really have to go!” Claire said, clambering out of the wagon.

  “I know,” Maya said. “Listen, my house is closer than yours. We can go there. Get in the wagon and hold on tight.”

  Claire did, and Maya jogged, the wagon bouncing and rumbling behind her.

  “Hurry up! I really have to go!”

  “I know!” Claire called back.

  Fortunately there was no traffic on Victory Memorial Drive, and she was able to drag the wagon across the street without stopping. She pulled the wagon into their driveway, and moments later Claire was in the downstairs bathroom. Accident avoided.

  I should have reminded her to go before we left, Maya thought. An unpleasant, honest truth gnawed at her—she had slightly planned this stop, or at least knew it could happen. She knew her house was close to the park and that the school was often locked by four. She’d been a student there for six years, after all.

  “I can’t reach the sink!” said Claire.

  Maya helped her wash up.

  “Can we see your garden now?” Claire asked.

  “Sure. But only for a moment.”

  “Will Queen Bombadala be there?”

  “She’s a very busy bee,” said Maya. “But maybe.” If they saw any bee at all, she could claim that was the queen and make Claire’s day.