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All they are, really, are girls who want things they aren’t supposed to have. Can anyone really blame them for that?
The baseball comes first, obviously. They are all children the first time they touch the smooth, hard surface of a baseball, tiny hands gripping the solid weight of this thing that cannot possibly be called magic. But it cannot be called anything else either. Because one by one, Greta at age five, Lupe in second grade, Carson when she sees the Little League boys at the park near her house, Jo when her older brother pegs one at her head during a fight, the list goes on, and on, and on. One by one, they fall in love.
That’s what it is, okay? Love. There isn’t a better word for this kind of thing. The crack of the bat, the thumpthumpthump of speeding around bases, eyes pinned to a small white orb flying through the air like it is the second coming of the messiah. Girls aren’t supposed to do this kind of thing, girls aren’t supposed to like baseball, not like this, not in the tongue-and-teeth way they do. Girls are supposed to watch boys play baseball, and care about it because they love their guys. But they are girls. And they love baseball.
And then for the first time in history, something changes.
A war is on, and a switch is flipped, and has there ever been a better time to be a girl who can’t kick the habit of winning at baseball?
///
Once Lupe gets her nose broken because Adam Stewart from school can’t handle the fact that she beats him every goddam time. He’s too young to be swearing and the words sound awkward in his mouth, too big for his teeth, scraping at his throat. She learns to cuss better than most people twice her age, learns to be tougher and harder and faster.
The next time a boy swings at her, she breaks his nose as a thank you gift.
Women always have to bring thank you gifts, didn’t your mama teach you that? Lupe’s sure did. And she’s nothing if not a fast learner.
Jess pretends that she is a wolf ages seven-to-ten, snarling at strangers and tearing at food like a wild animal. When she stops one morning, stands up like a human girl and eats with a fork and knife, a morning that is just like a thousand other mornings, her mother breathes a sigh of relief. But Jess is only learning to tuck her wildness further inside herself, to hide it until she needs to pull out the claws and bloodlust.
She tries, at least a little, to be a normal girl for the better part of six months. Not a wolf.
It doesn’t take and she resolves, right then, to find people who will let her wild run unrestrained, who will see her jaws and touch them gently, see her bite and trust her to not wound
(Years later Lupe will sit next to her on a crowded bus, will blow smoke into her eyes on a porch in the American Midwest, will see the wildness sparking in her eyes and lean in closer, will match every wild swing that Jess knows with one of her own. And Jess will roll her eyes. And Jess will steal Lupe’s cigarettes. And Jess will sit with her limbs thrown out in every direction at once. And Jess will love. Lupe, that is. Of course. Not that they talk about it, or anything. But they don’t need to. So that’s fine. It’s all fine.)
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Greta learns to curl her hair in the sixth grade. She likes the routine of it, likes the smell of her shampoo and the methodical way she can turn her hair tumbled and curly in under twenty minutes when she gets good enough. Greta likes most of the things she’s supposed to do, actually. She likes school, she likes her friends, she loves Jo. She does her best to be good, and most of the time she succeeds. But she likes baseball too much, and even when she gives up other things (shouting in public, eating until she’s full, laughing with her teeth showing) she can’t seem to kick the habit. She doesn’t want to.
And Jo likes baseball too, and Greta knows that if Jo likes something that must make it extra good. So neither of them give it up.
It’s only later Greta and Jo realize they might want other things too, things far less safe than baseball. Baseball Greta knows how to play off, how to giggle and tilt her head and act just stupid enough that men don’t think she’s a threat. But this?
So she and Jo come up with some rules, every game has rules, Jo says. And if this wanting to kiss other women thing is a game, that makes it a little easier to think about.
Greta is raised to be a good, God-fearing girl and at fifteen she lies awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering if God might plunge through it and scream his disappointment at her. And then like, send her to Hell or something. After a month of this she needs the sleep more than she needs to contemplate the state of her eternal soul, so she tells Jo I’m not worried about what my mom thinks anymore, and Jo knows that it’s a lie but that it’s also a start.
When they move away together, to anywhere but here, the second they both turn eighteen, Greta holds Jo’s hand tight in hers, clutches at the lipstick in her pocket with the other, and hopes against hope that maybe they’ll both be okay.
She’s not sure if there’s a happy ending anywhere for girls like them.
But she can hope, right?
///
Carson, for a long time, is pretty happy with her life. She likes her sister, and her friends, and doesn’t chafe at the smallness of her world. But then her mom leaves. And her whole life Carson’s been told, a woman’s place is in the home, a family makes every girl feel complete, motherhood is the greatest gift we ladies have been given. Which all sounds cool, fine, good to her.
But then Carson’s mom leaves, and Meg spends the afternoon locked in their shared bedroom, sobbing.
And it doesn’t make sense, because why would mom be anywhere but here? Aren’t Carson and Meg and their dad all the happiness her mom ever needed?
For a long time she wonders if she did something wrong, if for some reason this family wasn’t enough for her mother, if there is a fundamental flaw in the ties that bind Carson and Meg and the adults meant to care for them together. She asks Meg, where did mom go and why didn’t she say goodbye and when is she coming back? It’s the only time in her life that Meg doesn’t have a response. (Meg always has a response.) So Carson plays baseball to forget, makes her own lunches to take to school, and wears dresses that don’t quite fit anymore until the nice woman next door offers to take her shopping.
It's not bad, her life.
But then she gets older, and better at baseball, marries Charlie, who she loves, who she loves and who still can’t answer why her mom left, who she loves and who still can’t split her world in two. And then the scouts come.
And then she gets a chance, the smallest, briefest whisper of a chance, to play professional baseball.
And for the first time in years, she thinks of her mother.
And she realizes, consciously, all the things a woman can want.
How her mother might not have been a monster, the terrible, heartless woman the town remembers her as. Maybe she just wanted. Wanted other. Wanted different. And how much of a crime can it be, really? To want?
So she goes.
And on a sunny Chicago day like a lot of other sunny Chicago days, a little bit of alchemy takes place.
And a collection of women become a team
///
All they are, really, are girls not pretending to be anything other than what they are.
Ferocious fucking warriors. There is only beauty in that.
Even if other people can’t see it right away, Jo can see how true it is. They are beautiful.
And what comes along with the baseball habit, turns out, not for all of them sure, but for lots of them, is another little weakness.
The way almost none of them are married. The way Carson doesn’t miss her husband the way she should. The way that they are all in a house together, Maybelle fogging the bathroom mirror with steam from her shower and Esti curled on the couch, Lupe and Jess arguing on the back porch and Jo playing endless cards with Greta, and all of them together. All the different kinds of girl, the real kinds of girl, the mess and the smearing and the bite and the sharp, tangy joy.
All of them under one roof.
What would you expect, really. They aren’t saints. Sometimes, you have to live a little. It’s like, the law.
///
It’s a stupid thing to risk, really. No one’s denying that reality. They’re not invisible, they know that, they know how people recognize them, not always but more and more, they know that they love the game, that the game is why they’re all here and that nothing, nothing should get in the way of that.
They’re not stupid.
Greta, Lupe, Carson, Jo, Jess, the list goes on, and on, and on - they know what they’re risking.
And if it didn’t matter so much, this other thing, none of them would think twice. None of them would lean in closer to another woman’s warm breath, none of them would let their fingers skate across soft skin or allow the magnetism between faces to pull too close, none of them want to die.
But they wouldn’t be playing baseball if it didn’t matter so much either. If it wasn’t like breathing. If it wasn’t the entire goddam point of being alive.
They’ve been put on the planet after all, with their powerhouse bodies and their pulsing hearts, their paper-bag lungs and the wanting wanting wanting that beats through their throats a thousand times a day. None of them are women who will take the easy way out, by now that should be obvious, and if playing baseball for real is already an impossible dream, then what’s the harm in adding one more dangerous hobby to the mix?
The question becomes, then, if one of these things might come true, if it is possible to play ball the way no girls ever have before, can the other thing slip away? Can it shrivel up, can it twist and turn into something optional, something non-essential. Can it be forgotten?
The smart thing to do would be to let it vanish.
None of them turn out to be all that capable of giving up.
They wouldn’t be here if they were. Fighting is a lifestyle it turns out, and so is risk, and if the easy way isn’t possible –
if the easy way has never been possible –
then how much can it turn to have a little fun?