Free For One More Day by Mitch Albom Page B

felt my lip tremble. I remember a voice in my head saying, Don't you dare, Chick. Don't you cry, you bastard, don't cry.
    I looked at my feet. I forced them to move. I kept my eyes on them all the way into the batter's box.
    And I smacked the first pitch over the left-field wall.
    Miss Thelma
    MY MOTHER'S NEXT APPOINTMENT, she said, was with someone who lived in a part of town we called the Flats. It was mostly poor people in attached row houses. I was sure we'd need to drive there, but before I could ask, the doorbell rang.
    "Answer that, Charley, OK? " my mother said, putting a dish in the sink.
    I hesitated. I didn't want to answer any bells or pick up any phones.
    When my mother called out again, "Charley? Can you get that?" I rose and walked slowly to the door.
    I told myself everything was fine. But the instant I touched the knob, I felt a sudden blast that blinded me, a wash of light, and a man's voice, the voice from Rose's telephone. It was screaming now.
    "CHARLES BENETTO ! LISTEN! I'M A POLICE OFFICER! "
    It felt like a windstorm. The voice was so close, I could physically touch it. "CAN YOU HEAR ME, CHARLES POLICE OFFICER! "
    I staggered back and threw my hand over my face The light disappeared. The wind died. I heard only my own labored breathing. I quickly looked for my mother, but she was still at the sink; whatever I was going through, it was happening in my head.
    I waited a few seconds, inhaled three long breaths, then carefully turned the doorknob, eyes lowered, expecting the police officer who'd been screaming at me. I pictured him young for some reason.
    But when I lifted my gaze, I saw instead an elderly black woman with spectacles on a chain around her neck, disheveled hair, and a burning cigarette.
    "Is that you, Chickadoo? " she said. "Well, look who done grown up. "
    WE CALLED HER Miss Thelma. She used to clean our house. She was lean and narrow-shouldered, with a broad smile and a quick temper.
    Her hair was dyed a reddish orange and she smoked constantly, Lucky Strikes, which she kept in her shirt pocket, like a man. Born and raised in Alabama, she somehow wound up in Pepperville Beach, where, in the late 1950s, pretty much every house on our side
    of town employed someone like her. A "domestic" they were called, or, when people were being honest, a "maid. " My father would pick her up Saturday mornings at the bus station near the Horn & Hardart cafeteria, and he would pay her before he left the house, slipping her the folded bills low, by her hip, as if neither were supposed to look at the money. She would clean all day while we were out at baseball By the time we got home, my room was spotless, whether I liked it or not.
    My mother insisted we call her "Miss Thelma. " I remember that, and I remember we weren't allowed to step into any room she had just vacuumed. I remember she played catch with me sometimes in the backyard, and she could throw as hard as I could.
    She also, inadvertently, invented my nickname. My father had tried calling me "Chuck" (my mother hated that, she said, "Chuck? It sounds like a cowhand!"), but because I was always hollering from the yard back into the house, "Mommmm! " or "Roberrrrta!," one day Miss Thelma looked up, annoyed, and said, "Boy, the way you holler, you're like a rooster. Chuckadoodle-doo! " And my sister, who was then a preschooler, said, "Chickadoodle-doo! Chickadoodle-doo! " and, I don't know, somehow, the "Chick" part stuck. I don't think that made my dad too fond of Miss Thelma.
    "Posey," she said to my mother now, her grin spreading. "I been thinking about you. "
    "Well, thank you, " my mother said. "I surely have. "
    She turned to me.
    "Cain't throw you no balls these days, Chickadoo. " She laughed. "Too old."
    We were in her car, which, I guessed, was how we were getting to the Flats. It seemed odd to me that my mother would do beauty work for Miss Thelma. But then, I knew so little about my mother over the last decade of her life. I had been too