voices
This page is for you. We welcome submissions of essays, short stories, an excerpt from your book, and opinion pieces. Professional writers, experts, and amateurs are all invited to contribute. Send an email with the subject line VOICES to trina@icondv.com. Include your name, address, and phone number. If your piece is chosen to be published we’ll let you know and only print your name.
Dreaming Brooklyn By Stephen Purcell
ON WASH LINES IN the convent yard hang the nuns’ undergarments: black stockings, girdles, and other stuff. Playing third base—the only girl on either team—is a pouty-faced, pony-tailed tomboy to beat Don Zimmer (third baseman for the Dodgers). The boy takes note of all of this, the underwear, the girl, and more. It’s balmy for a late afternoon early in March. The air in Brooklyn is heavy with something the boy in his innocence can’t articulate, but which he feels intensely nonetheless. The weather seems almost an ‘occasion of sin,’ keeping him out late against his will. It’s coming on dark. He’s going to be late. His mom will be worried. He’ll probably get yelled at. He’s decided, at the risk of committing a venial sin, to stay and finish the punch ball game with the older guys, and Miss Ponytail. Miss Ponytail’s name is Regina. She’s in seventh grade, a year ahead of the boy. She reminds him of Justine on American Bandstand. He takes note of the darkening sky somewhere over Carnarsie, a blaze of orange, purple and pink. He notices, too, the Blob-like shadow of Blessed Sacrament Cathedral under which they play. Something’s happening here, something momentous, maybe even miraculous. He’s excited and scared, wonderful and terrible, all at once. He’s never felt like this before. He doesn’t let on, though; he doesn’t dare. He plays it cool, like Elvis in King Creole. This wonderful, terrible feeling is larger than the boy’s innocence can comprehend, even if he has rated straight A’s since first grade. Suppose, he wonders, just suppose that the Pope at this very moment is opening “The Letter.” The letter that the nuns are always talking about… the letter from the Virgin Mary… the letter that tells when the world is supposed to end. 16
Last inning. Tie score. He steps up to the plate, a chalked box on grainy blacktop. It’s do or die. There’ll be no extra innings to play today. The boy wants to get home quickly and see his mom and dad. Just in case . . .
At the plate, he bounces the soft, pink Spalding—once, twice, ten times. The creeping shadow of the cathedral looms larger now. To confirm the enormity of the moment, a black cloud shuts out the flaming colors over Canarsie. A sudden evening chill descends upon the borough of Brooklyn. “C’mon, batter up. Punch the ball!” someone yells. He might be the youngest player on the field, but he’s one of the best. They play him deep in the outfield, back up against the high chain-link fence. Finally, the boy crouches into the punch. With his left hand, he lobs the ball a foot over his head, rears back and, with his right hand closed into a fist, smacks the ball with the flat face of his tender knuckles. The ball sails high, high up into the blackening sky, not hitting the outfield fence until he’s rounded first base and
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scrambled halfway to second. Off the fence, the ball bounces funny, confusing the players in the outfield. He bounds past second and keeps running. At third, inexplicably, he slows his locomotive stride. He could have scored easily. The game would be over. Game over, he could have rushed home to see his mom and dad, before. … Anyway, brushing against Regina playing tight to third, the boy steps on the base and scrambles a few feet past her, stops, hesitates … and beats his Keds back. “Nice hit,” Regina says, standing close. “Thanks,” the boy says. “You could have made it home.” The next batter up punches a single. The boy scores the winning run. He should tag straight for home. Instead, he walks the eight blocks along Ridgewood Avenue with several of his teammates. He bops to the rear of the sidewalk phalanx, all the while aware of pouty Regina strutting alone, across the street but even with him. Once, for a wide yawning second, their eyes meet. Across busy Ridgewood Avenue, they glare at each other, like about-to-be combatants in a schoolyard rumble. Regina sticks her tongue out, breaks into a trot, and she’s gone, into the Brooklyn twilight. The boy’s mom doesn’t yell at him for being late. She just asks him where he was and what he was doing. She says she was beginning to worry. His dad’s working late, so he gets to eat dinner and watch television in the living room. By the time his mom serves him Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and macaroni on a TV tray, he’s forgotten the letter from the Virgin Mary to the Pope telling him about the end of the world. He hasn’t forgotten Regina, though. Her last name was Donnelly, as I recall. n
