Thursday, April 15, 2010

The start of a new baseball season elicits so many different memories for me. I learned the game of baseball from my father, who was a huge San Francisco Giants fan. Games were rarely on television; people listened to games on the radio. I remember my dad setting up the briquets to BBQ hamburgers with his transistor radio close by. Every so often he would pause and listen hard to the announcer at some crucial at-bat. He expected me to listen intently as well, and he often quizzed me: "How many outs is that?"

So baseball was a part of my youth...as was Motown music. This poem allows those lines to cross.


BABY LOVE
--Summer 1963

It was the summer Juan Marichal pitched
a 1-0 no-hitter over Houston
at Candlestick. The summer
I wanted to be
Diana Ross.

For over two weeks, cool breezes
from the Pacific failed to revive the
sun-baked east Bay neighborhoods.
Sprawled over the Moreno’s shaded
front porch, we sucked lime Kool-Aid
ice cubes wrapped in white paper napkins
while the still heat of mid-afternoon
mixed with the thick, nauseous fumes
from Hunt’s cannery in Hayward.

Sometimes the cannery workers would join us
on our trips home from downtown on
number 19. Women sealed in Aqua Net
Hairspray and delicate brown nets
from Newberry’s cosmetic counter.
Tomato stains drying on frayed white
smocks. We watched them from the back
of the bus. Cracking gum, poking each
other, nervously fingering unlit cigarettes
their nails layered in Baby Pink polish.

Escape from the summer air meant we’d
congregate in Tonye-Ann’s dark, cool
cellar. Veronica brought her transistor
with a red case that snapped on. When
a Supreme’s song came on, we’d bicker
halfway through the lyrics about who
would be who – Diana, Flo or Mary.

By nine, I had learned all the phrases
for heartache, true love, and love
gone bad. After the supper dishes were wiped,
I’d lock myself in the downstairs bathroom
and sing with longing
into the medicine cabinet mirror.
“ooh ooh, baby love.”
I shed undershirt, my pedal pushers
caught around my ankles. The toilet room
changed magically into a smoky blue
album cover of the Greatest Hits.
I longed for Diana’s thin, pretty wrists
and spidery legs and curved breasts
protected in red sequins. And that look she had
when she sang “Come See about Me”
on the Ed Sullivan show –
the look my mother called the ‘come hither’.

On the last weekend of summer,
the cannery ran shifts back to back.
Hundreds of worn women swearing at steel bins
of rotting tomatoes. Rides home
were almost eerie. Women with little to say
rubbing the backs
of their necks.
Chests heaving in soft, soft sighs.
I was ready to be ten.

--Catherine Fraga