There were several thousand people there and after she bought us both lemonades and we made our way through the shouting, sweating crowd, we sat next to each other in the grandstands. That was my first professional baseball game. I took in everything at once. I loved it. I still think the few minutes just before a game starts are the most exciting. Mrs. Bennings turned to face me, oblivious to the hoopla around us.
“I think it’s gettin’ to be downright rude of Mr. Birnbaum to not be tellin’ us whether he’s alive or dead.”
“I think we’ll know soon,” I said. “I think we’ll find out he’s just fine.”
She looked out at the field, started to say something else, then didn’t. She watched the whole game and never spoke. The Browns won and the sun went down and the fireworks began. She took off her wide-brimmed hat and some of her black hair fell loose from the bun on top. Her blue eyes flashed in the fireworks. For a few minutes, she looked more like a child than I did. Then she said, “I’ll not be waitin’ to learn.”
“Learn what?” I asked.
“The truth,” she said.
After that, Mrs. Bennings’s spirit changed. For better or worse, only time would tell. She still worked hard, but her heart wasn’t in it. She spent more and more evenings in the saloons and taverns on the south side. I followed her for a while, “watching over her” as Solomon had asked, but after a time, I quit. It was her life and she seemed to want it that way.
I spent all of my free time at the ballpark, hanging around with other boys, sneaking into a game when we could and trying to get the ballplayers to talk to us. Most of them would and I became good friends and errand boy for one of the most notorious players, the “Whirling Dervish,” Billy Covington. He was a great second baseman and a wild man on the base paths. He’d tell me stories about baseball and growing up in the South and how he’d love to have his twin girls see him play, but he couldn’t afford to keep them. I’d listen to everything he said and then run to get him a sandwich and a bromo. He always needed bromo, because he had a reputation as a “whirling dervish” on and off the field. Billy got me my first job as a bat boy in a weekend series against the Phillies. I’ll always be grateful to him for that and for something he had nothing to do with at all, except for dying.
It was a Saturday in late summer. The game started at one o’clock, so I was up early and at the ballpark by ten to watch batting practice. I noticed right away that Billy wasn’t on the field. I asked around and Charlie Sweeney, the pitcher, said he was out by the ticket office talking to his girls. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I thought I’d go and see anyway. When I got there, Billy was still in his street clothes, holding the hands of two girls who looked completely lost. They were both blond and skinny, about twelve years old, and wearing dirty print dresses. Billy saw me coming.
“Hey, kid,” he yelled, “come here, I want you to meet my girls, my daughters.”
They both looked over at me. One of them smiled and one didn’t. I could tell they were twins, but they weren’t identical.
“This here’s Georgia,” Billy said, pulling the smiling one forward and patting her head. I nodded and so did she. “And this here’s Carolina,” he said. He pulled her forward and she looked me up and down.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hello,” I said. I was smiling, but she kept a straight face. Both girls looked tired and worn-out. Billy knelt down so he was on our level.
“Listen, kid. I been waitin’ for you. I got a game to play and these two, well, they been through a rough time. You know your way around, so you stay with ’em, will you, ’til after?”
“Sure, Billy,” I said, “do you want us to just stay here?”
“No, no. I got y’all tickets.”
He slipped me a silver dollar and kissed both girls on the forehead, then he did one of his “whirling dervish” moves and went in to dress. They watched him leave with blank expressions. Carolina picked up her sister’s hand and turned to me.
“Who are you?” she asked. Her face was still blank.
“Zianno,” I said. “Z for short.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. I love baseball, that’s all.”
“That’s silly.”
I didn’t say anything and turned and motioned for them to follow me. We went inside and watched the game. I bought roast beef and lemonade for all of us with the silver dollar Billy had given me. Billy had one of the best games he’d ever played. He went five for five and scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. After the game, a bunch of players carried him off the field on their shoulders. They took him out of the ballpark and down to Chris Vonder Ahe’s Beer Garden, where he drank fifteen beers and chased them with fifteen whiskeys, then did one “whirling dervish,” passed out, and never woke up.
The manager, Charlie Comiskey, was told about the girls and the fact they were waiting for Billy back at the ballpark. He found them sleeping by the ticket office next to me. He’d seen me around.
He leaned over and said, “You with them, kid?” There was whiskey on his breath and he was louder than he thought he was.
“We’re waiting for Billy,” I said.
“Well, he ain’t coming back.” He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. I couldn’t tell whether he was just drunk or he’d been crying. “The good Lord threw him a curve and struck him out for good,” he said.
I looked over at the girls. Georgia was still asleep, but Carolina had opened her eyes. In her eyes was a look I knew myself. That afternoon she’d told me why they came to St. Louis. They had only seen their daddy twice in four years, but their mama got sick with consumption and when she died she left just enough money and instructions for the girls to take a train to St. Louis and their daddy, the only place she knew to send them. Now he was dead. I looked up at Charlie Comiskey and lied.
“Well, sir, they’re really with me, not me with them. Billy set it up for them to stay at Mrs. Bennings’s boardinghouse.”
“Then you best take ’em on over there, kid. We’ll sort all of this out later.”
He glanced down at the girls, blew his nose, and left.
I stood up and Carolina did the same. We looked at each other, but neither one of us said anything. She woke Georgia and whispered something in her ear, then she turned to me, but all she said was, “Which way, Z?” Georgia never did speak, but she cried most of the way to Mrs. Bennings’s.
Some girls don’t have to explain themselves or have things explained to them. They walk into rooms and know where to sit, what object to pick up or leave alone, what to say without speaking. Carolina was like that and Mrs. Bennings loved her for it immediately. She welcomed her and Georgia into her home as if she’d been expecting them. She asked her if Georgia ever said a word at all and Carolina said, “No, she hasn’t said a word since birth, but she doesn’t need to. I can read her eyes.”
Mrs. Bennings gave the girls their own room and within two weeks had taught them everything she knew about how to run a boardinghouse. I think just having them around filled a void for Mrs. Bennings, a void I was sure that Solomon had left. She especially took to Georgia and her simple, quiet ways. Every night after all her chores were done, Georgia would go to Mrs. Bennings’s room and brush her long, black hair. The two of them shared a common need; Mrs. Bennings had found a daughter and Georgia had found a second mother.
I became friends with both girls and at every opportunity tried to take them on some new adventure in St. Louis. Carolina loved seeing new things, going to new places, watching people, and she really could “read” her sister. Georgia never once had to tug on her sleeve to get attention or point her finger to say where she wanted to go; Carolina “knew.”