Bat 6 Read online

  Praise for

  VIRGINIA EUWER WOLFF’S

  Bat 6

  “The period details and use of the vernacular are right on the money … Wolff delves into the irreversible consequences of war and the necessity to cultivate peace and speaks volumes about courage, responsibility, and reconciliation in a book about softball.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “The voices … reveal complex, fully realized characters. Gradually, their vignettes merge into an extraordinarily artful portrait of a moment in American history that challenged our comfortable assumptions about who we were and what we believed. None of the 21 girls emerges unchanged from what happens during that fateful encounter nor, one predicts, will most readers of this powerful novel.”

  —Booklist

  “[The] emotions and perspectives ring true. Wolff is especially deft in creating a transforming, bittersweet post-war atmosphere and winning portraits of members of the communities who support, respect, and encourage their young girls, but come to question their own roles in the tragedy.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The characters are engaging … Wolff’s evocation of period and place is indisputably masterful. The questions she raises about war, race, and cherished beliefs are difficult and honest and a welcome antidote to more romanticized versions of the years following the ‘last good war.’ ”

  —Horn Book

  A New York Public Library 100 Best Books of the Year

  A School Library Journal Best Book

  An ALA Notable Book

  A Jane Addams Award Winner

  For Sarah Wolff Hamel

  CONTENTS

  PRAISE FOR VIRGINIA EUWER WOLFF’S BAT 6

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  1 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL

  2 BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  3 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL

  4 BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  5 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL

  6 BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  7 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL

  8 BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  9 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL

  10 BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  11 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL AND BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  12 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL AND BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  13 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL AND BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  14 BEAR CREEK RIDGE GRADE SCHOOL AND BARLOW ROAD GRADE SCHOOL

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THIS SCHOLASTIC AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Softball became an official sport in 1933. Before that year, the game had been called kitten ball, ladies’ baseball, and soft baseball, and had had widely differing rules. The Amateur Softball Association published the first standardized rules in 1934.

  The Japanese navy bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

  On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering the evacuation and imprisonment for the duration of World War II of all persons of Japanese ancestry living in the western United States.

  Ten camps were hastily built in order to house the thousands of families who were to be removed from their homes. The camps were scattered: Tule Lake and Manzanar in California; Minidoka in Idaho; Topaz in Utah; Poston and Gila River in Arizona; Heart Mountain in Wyoming; Granada in Colorado; Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas. The total number of men, women, and children interned in the camps from 1942 to 1945 was 120,113.

  Not until 1952 were Issei, Japanese-Americans born in Japan, permitted to become U.S. citizens.

  In 1987, the United States Supreme Court declared the internment of Japanese-Americans unconstitutional, calling it “one of the worst violations of civil liberties in American history.” The United States government officially apologized to all American citizens of Japanese ancestry in 1988.

  Tootie, Ellen, and Lorelei

  Tootie, catcher

  Now that it’s over, we are telling. We voted to, it’s fairer than not. We’re all taking our turns, even the ones who don’t want to speak up. I’m going first because I was first, sort of. Even though it’s hard to tell exactly when it began. I mean exactly when. It began so many different places.

  There were some sayings everybody knew: “Come fall, hit that ball.” “Mt. Hood gets the first new snow, team positions you have to know.” And “Decoration Day, ready to play.” Even the old men who sit on McHenrys’ Store porch would tell you that.

  When I walked past them to buy my new 3-ring binder for 6th grade, one of those men said to me, “Your year, right, Tootie?” They kidded me: “I can smell them hot dogs already.” “You gonna hit one over the Barlow fence, Tootie?” They gave me advice, too. “Keep your legs limber, you never know when a leg’ll cramp up on you.”

  They are the retired Blue brothers and Vernell’s mother’s old cousin, and they knew I was going to be catcher for our team. They couldn’t not know. They had seen me across the road on the school playing field many times in the summer, very often Shadean and me were there practicing. She’d pitch to me and we had very good signals all ready for our game.

  It was a rule that official softball team practices couldn’t begin till the first day of school of the 6th grade year. But there was no rule that we couldn’t be ready. And we were getting ready. The school principal let me borrow the catcher’s mask and pads for the summer, like she said, “so you don’t kill yourself before you even get to play your game, Tootie! For heaven’s sake!”

  We thought it would be the year of our lives. For 49 years the game had been played between Bear Creek Ridge and Barlow, girls only. It was like just yesterday we were little kids, watching the big girls play their game every spring. May 28, 1949, would be the 50th anniversary game. And we would get to play it.

  People were already calling us the 50-year girls.

  And I’d made my discovery, and she was going to make all the difference.

  I’d discovered Aki. And her champion mother, too. I found Aki by surprise at my summer job in Hirokos’ strawberry patch. There she was, a Japanese girl looking about my age, quite a fast berrypicker, nimble you could say, and when I looked up and saw her heave a rotten berry left-handed over into the woods, I said to myself, There’s an arm.

  Right away I thought of our Bat 6 game.

  I said to her across the three berry rows between us, “What’s your name?” and she said, “Aki,” and I said, “My name’s Tootie, do you know how to play ball?” and she said, “Yes, I played a lot of it.” At lunchtime we played a little bit of catch with my ball I often had with me, and she was right. She was so right. She could catch anything. We had no gloves or anything. She’s a lefty.

  I got home and told my folks about this new girl that just suddenly turned up in the middle of the berry patch, and I said her name, and my mother whirled around from the corn she was shucking and she said, “Aki! That’s Aki Mikami — the Mikamis are back?”

  You might ask why would my mother not already know the Mikamis were back in such a small country town like ours. Well, that is a long story.

  The short part of the story is my mother got on the phone with Susannah’s mother and Shadean’s mother and Little Peggy’s mother, and she even included Lorelei’s mother, and they arranged to have a luncheon as a welcoming-back party in honor of Aki’s mother, Keiko Mikami. They had a corsage for Mrs. Mikami from Little Peggy’s mother’s garden, and Mrs. Mikami was so embarrassed she almost didn’t say anything at all, and all the mothers agreed she didn’t have to say much, it was just good luck and thanks to God she and her family came back.

  Aki and I didn’t even recognize each other. Even though we used to play together when we wer
e little tiny kids. There is even a picture of Susannah and Aki and me in my mother’s album. We were around 2 years old and it was somebody’s birthday. But the Mikamis had been away so long.

  The truth about Aki and her family is sad. They used to live here. Then every single Japanese had to go to a camp to live because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Even the ones born in America, American citizens. Aki and her brother and even her dad are that. The government sent them to a camp in the desert, and they stayed there for the whole war. They just disappeared, and we were so little nobody explained it to us.

  So we didn’t know anything about Aki. We went through our grades, from first up to nearly beginning sixth, without knowing she even existed.

  And then suddenly her whole family came back.

  Hubba hubba ding ding, you should have seen Aki on a ball field. All we had for her was an old ratty glove, the only one for lefties in the sports cupboard. She’s very short, but her stretch was great. Lefty is excellent for first base, which I suggested her to be. And you put a bat in her hands, she could hit nearly over to McHenrys’ store from the ball field at school, all the way across the road, that’s how far. Most girls can’t do that. She could hit hard grounders, too.

  And I had done a research. By listening in at the luncheon when I was getting ready the cups and saucers. The ladies started talking about it, remembering all those years ago. When I told the girls what I overheard, they were amazed.

  “Guess who was MVP in Bat 6 for 1930,” I said. Everybody looked blank at me. “Well, she’s somebody related to somebody,” I hinted. Still nobody got it. “It’s Keiko Ishigo, which was Aki’s mother before she married Mr. Mikami and had Aki, that’s who,” I said. They stopped their blank looks and we agreed we might have an MVP standing right there among us.

  Aki was embarrassed about it. “Oh, I’m not that good,” she said. That’s Aki’s way. She would rather die than brag.

  But she was that good, and everybody including Aki knew it.

  Ellen, shortstop

  Tootie wouldn’t say this herself, but she’s a good hitter, she always did like batting a ball, even when others of us wanted to play other things, house or dolls or store or Red Rover.

  It was only in sixth grade we all had to pay attention to softball.

  When Mrs. Porter was setting up our team with her assistant coach, who was her gorgeous husband named Mr. Porter, she said how lucky we were to have such good equipment, “not like when we came back after the war,” she said. She was very proud she was a WAC. The principal was so proud of Mrs. Porter, she put a photograph of her in uniform right up front in the display case of the school. Right beside the Trophy Bats from Bat 6 and the spelling bee plaques that Susanna’s father and Aki’s father won in 1924. “No new equipment had been made for the duration, the balls were practically shredded, the gloves were nearly in tatters, the bats were scratched and chipped —” I stopped listening to her.

  We were so tired of hearing about it. War this, war that. It was over, but not according to the adults that kept talking about it. I’m glad to never see a ration book again in my life.

  We all knew how bad it was. Everybody suffered. We couldn’t help seeing the gold stars in people’s windows. And the limping men. Even gorgeous Mr. Porter has a part of his arm missing from being with General Patton. Everybody had a hard time. And the grownups wouldn’t stop talking about it.

  I had to go away to a completely different school because my dad went in the service and my mom worked in the shipyards in Portland. We lived near the shipyards and I didn’t come back here till 4th grade.

  In first grade, when I left, nobody was being nice to Lorelei because of the terrible thing about her father. He wouldn’t fight in the war, he doesn’t believe in war of any kind. So he had to go to the conscientious-objector camp for the whole duration and do reforestation. People were so nasty to Lorelei and her mother, just on account of how the war came between everybody.

  Even by 6th grade, we still felt guilty about Lorelei and we were always nice to her. Even sometimes we were too nice, trying to make up. And Daisy’s father still wouldn’t speak to Lorelei’s father, although Daisy herself was grown up enough to be nice to Lorelei. It was because Daisy’s father fought for his country and he hated those that did not.

  There was the problem of Daisy, too. In first grade at Sharing Time, she tried to tell where her father was going in the war and Herby shouted very mean, “Loose lips sink ships!” and children began calling Daisy Loose Lips. It is a mean nickname that has hung around all these many years. Even I myself have said it. It’s hard to resist, I confess. And it was ridiculous to even think of it. Nobody in our first grade was a spy for the Nazis.

  And then there was Aki and her whole family that had to go away. The government ordered them to go. We completely lost track of Aki, we even forgot about her, because the grownups never mentioned the camp.

  See why we were so tired of hearing how bad the war was? It just made more bad feelings and we wanted to have our regular girlhood like we deserved.

  But they kept reminding me the war was why I have my own bedroom plus the INDOOR BATHROOM in our house from the G. I. loan to my dad. If we didn’t have a war, I would not have my own room and it is so beautiful with two windows and even a closet. And the INDOOR BATHROOM is so good you can’t even imagine how different. I’ll never put my fanny on a cold splintery privy seat again in my whole life. I hope. And I can lie down completely all the way in the brand-new bathtub. It is luxury.

  So the war was good. But the war was not good.

  I just wanted to stop hearing about it.

  What was best about being in sixth grade was team practice. Sometimes it was so funny, like when Tootie got a hit she always said, “See you later!” taking off for first base. Even when we were tired, there were funny things. There was the time Lorelei hit a ball that went way under the huge dogwood tree by the school door, and two of the town dogs sleeping there lurched and started barking to protect the school from it. I can still see the whole bunch of us laughing together. Even now.

  Lorelei, center field

  “Feel the heft of the bat in your hands, girls.” This was Mr. Porter talking, Mrs. Porter our coach’s assistant, he was a nifty coach for he made sense about how to do things. He was saying Little Peggy needed to know exactly what weight of bat to use for her size. He was also saying she needed to know where to hold her bat, not choke up too much. “You can even spread your hands a little bit if that feels better. Ty Cobb did. Try it and find what feels right.”

  It was such a good autumn in a lot of ways. For one thing, there was Aki. I felt such a relief that she came back and she made two of us that were different. I didn’t stick out so much anymore. For instance, I had to miss some team practices to go home right after school to pick pears and then apples so they wouldn’t ripen too fast on the trees and be ruined. And Aki had to do the same thing, even more so, she had to miss some whole days of school to pick. She did her homework anyway, and I don’t think she ever missed a word on a spelling test.

  Everybody else was more or less regular and normal but us two. Well, not exactly. Little Peggy was so undersize. And Vernell with her wandering mind. But everybody else was all the same.

  Well, there was Susannah. She was a little bit different, to my mind anyway. She had invited me to her seventh birthday party. I had not had a friend the whole first grade. And at her party the girls started to let me be their friend even though their parents were angry at my father. All these years later, Susannah’s mother still calls me her special friend, she knew my feelings when I walked in the door to that birthday party when I had not been invited to any other parties. She had secretly made Susannah invite me to her party, although nobody has ever said that in so many words.

  Even by 6th grade, Daisy’s father would not speak to my father. He walked right past him in McHenrys’ Store, acting as if my dad was invisible.

  Daisy and I were buddies, doing reports t
ogether, sharing lunches, doing eraser and wastebasket duty in partners. She felt terrible about her father. But he is her father. And you have to love your father.

  It was so strange about both our fathers, both believing their beliefs so hard they made it into their life. Others had softer beliefs. Like the election. People got angry for Truman or Dewey, but Democrats went right along with the Republicans in everyday things. Being neighbors, selling eggs and goats to each other. It was not such a serious ordeal is what I mean. But Daisy’s dad and mine, they would not give an inch.

  It was because of my dad I had to miss practices to pick fruit. It was because pickers would hear that my dad didn’t fight in the war and they wouldn’t come to our place to work. So we didn’t have enough workers, and my mom and dad and I had to do a lot of the picking. That’s a lot of acres. I missed so many practices.

  The worst part was carrying the ladder around, it was so heavy. And the picking bag dug into my shoulders. I took a long hot bath at night, but still.

  What happened when my dad’s tractor broke down and Shadean’s father helped him out, it made my mom cry with gratefulness. The tractor just died right there in the apple rows and we didn’t have the money for the repair. And Shadean’s dad drove past on his way home from River Bend and he saw our tractor sitting there late at night. He knew something was wrong and he called my dad on the phone to find out what.

  And the brand-new baby pear trees were waiting to be planted. My dad would have planted them months before, but we didn’t have the money to buy them from the nursery. Then when he did buy them the tractor broke down before he could cultivate the ground.

  And then Shadean’s father volunteered to bring his brand-new John Deere to pull the cultivator. And sure enough, he got the two acres cultivated out of the goodness of his heart. Not only he cultivated, he said to my dad, “Let’s get these trees planted so they don’t lose more growth time.”

  They had my mom and me in charge of the string line to get the rows straight, and in just a few afternoons every little skinny baby pear tree was in the ground. It would have taken us more than double the time without the help.