The sixth grade boys were gathering at one end of the playground to play kickball. Osei knew it would be best to join them; taking part was a safer option than remaining alone. He had learned to play soccer in Ghana and Rome, cricket in London, softball and basketball in New York. Kickball was like softball, or English rounders, with bases and runs and outfielders and a pitcher who rolled a red rubber ball the size of a basketball at you, and you kicked it and ran. It was hard to take a bouncy ball seriously, and the kicks made everyone look a little foolish. But it was fun to play, and you didn’t have to be really good to kick the ball, or catch it. Everyone stood a chance of playing well. Even American girls played kickball, whereas O had never seen Italian or English girls playing soccer.
He was not worried about the game itself, but the choosing of teams was like the cold shower he had to run through to get to the warm swimming pool. As the new boy, he was likely to be chosen last, since he was an unknown quantity and had no alliances to count on. It was always humiliating to stand there as boys were chosen, bodies thinned from either side of him till he stood with just one or two others—the weak, the sick, the friendless. The black. Usually he fixed his eyes on something in the distance so he would not have to see the grins and—worse—the looks of pity. If the captains were merciful they didn’t linger, but divided up the rejects swiftly. Sometimes, though, a captain would take his time to study who was left, and would laugh and say something derogatory to his teammates, and O would have to stand there and clench his fists and imagine his mother saying, “No violence, Osei. Fighting is not the way.” He did not always obey her.
Today he stood to one side, resigned to waiting for the endgame with the other losers. At least he had something to look at in the distance: Dee was sitting with her friends on the playground pirate ship, smiling at him.
He was smiling back when he felt a nudge. “Hey,” said a heavy boy next to him. “Ian wants you.”
O looked up, surprised. The two captains, Casper and Ian, had each picked a teammate and were starting the second round. Ian was the boy who had told O where to stand before school. His eyes were gray like slate, with a guardedness that made it hard to read him. Osei understood that shuttering of the eyes; he had done the same himself, for protection. He was doing it now.
“You—what’s your name?” Ian asked.
Osei hesitated. I am named after Asante kings, he wanted to say. My name means “noble.” But he said neither of these things, though he was proud of his name. It was because he was proud of it that he wanted to keep it safe from bullies and jokers. “Call me O,” he said.
“O, have you played kickball before?”
“Yes—in New York.”
There was a silence. He’d noticed that the mention of New York often inspired awe from residents of other cities, who thought it was huge and dangerous. He wasn’t going to tell them that he’d gone to a sedate private school—also all white—rather than a much tougher public school. Casper, the other captain, nodded in a show of respect. Osei recognized his type. He looked a little like a blond David Cassidy from The Partridge Family; Sisi had kept a poster of him on her wall for a few years, before replacing it with one of Malcolm X.
“All right,” Ian said then, and gestured with his head for O to join him.
“What’s he up to?” the heavy boy muttered to his neighbor as Osei walked awkwardly over to Ian’s team, feeling the pressure of fifteen pairs of eyes on him.
It was only when he had joined them that Ian said, “Black people are good at sports, right?”
The other boys whistled through their teeth and laughed.
Osei didn’t grimace, or hit him, or walk away. Here was a straight talker. It was almost a relief to hear the prejudice out in the open. Now he could be open too. “This black boy is,” he said.
He was going to have to kick the hell out of that ball.
They lost the toss, so Ian’s team fielded first. Ian didn’t assign positions, but O automatically headed to the outfield where there was less action, knowing not to show off by taking first base or shortstop. He was content to wait it out in the long grass with the weaklings.
Like softball, kickball had four bases, and you had to go around them all to score a run. You were out if the fielders threw the ball you’d kicked to the base you were running to before you got there, or if you got tagged with the ball before you got to a base, or if you kicked the ball up and a fielder caught it before it touched the ground. If a team got three outs, it was the other team’s turn. Whichever team scored the most runs won.
A boy named Rod was first. He kicked the ball low and hard so that it shot between first and second bases to the fumbling outfielder on Osei’s left—a slow boy who grabbed at the ball and threw it so wildly it went to O rather than toward the infield. By the time he’d scooped it up and thrown it in, Rod had reached second base. There were groans from the team and a “Come on!” from Ian, but at least they were not directed specifically at O. There was nothing he could have done better.
It felt good to have touched the ball, though. After the first touch he always felt more confident.
The next boy kicked it short and high and Ian, who was pitching, caught it easily. One out. The boys after that did what any sensible player would do and took advantage of the weakest point of the team: they aimed deliberately at the boy on Osei’s left. The first time they did so the ball was on the other side of the slow boy—too far away for Osei to help him out—and the first baseman had to run and get it. Rod got to third base on that turn, and the kicker to first. The next kick, though, was high and hard and the weak boy stood under it with his arms wide, hopeful that he would miraculously discover his athletic ability and close his arms around the ball at just the right moment. Osei could have shoved him out of the way and caught the ball himself—there was plenty of time to make this calculation. But he didn’t: it felt wrong to muscle in on the weak boy, and it might not help either of them. So he ran over, stood, and watched the ball drop through the boy’s arms. Then he picked it up and threw it hard to second, where the baseman managed to tag the runner out. Second out, though Rod had run home to score.
That left just one runner on first when Casper stepped up to kick. Some boys you know right away will do well, even if you’ve never seen them perform before. Osei and the rest of the fielders took several steps back, out of respect for Casper’s ability, knowing he would kick it the hardest yet. He was honorable as well: he was not going to kick the ball toward the weak kid. O glanced over at the ship and saw that the girls were watching Casper, and felt a pang that someone else was getting all the attention, even a nice kid like Casper. Ian rolled the ball to him and Casper kicked it—high, high into the air, spinning and spinning and descending toward O. He hardly had to move—just a step forward to meet it and the ball landed hard in his arms, stinging his cheeks and thumping his chest, but he held on to it and didn’t let go and Casper was out.