Free Donuthead by Sue Stauffacher Page A

her finger through the wet sand near her feet. When she finally did look at my mother, it was like Sarah was trying to decide if she was poisonous or not.
    “Okay,” she said finally. “Whatever.”
    “All right, then.” My mother slapped Sarah's knee and sprang up. “Let's play ball. We'll start with batting practice.” She tossed the catcher's mitt to Sarah. “I'll pitch. Franklin, which do you prefer? Aluminum or wood?”
    I opened my mouth to explain that either instrument, when applied with the proper force, could prove deadly. But as I watched my mother dance out to the pitcher's mound, I didn't have the heart to say it. I set the batting helmet on my head. It tilted to one side, exposing my left earlobe.
    “I may have to have this fitted correctly before we begin,” I announced. My mother jogged back to home plate and slapped the top of my head. While this did help with placement, it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Now my ears were ringing.
    “Sarah,” she called out, “you stand here, behind Franklin. Okay, now squat down and put the mitt between your legs.”
    “Hey, my new jacket could get dirty,” Sarah complained, stopping at a bend.
    My mother sighed. “That's one of the dangers of baseball. You might get dirty.”
    Sarah stood up, pulled off her jacket, and hung it on the chain-link fence. Then she returned to squat in the dirt behind me, pushing her flimsy dress down between her knees.
    “That's right,” my mother said, “but bring the mitt higher. Gives me a target to aim for.”
    For a moment, she looked at us the way you do pictures in the art museum that you can't quite figure out. Then she dropped her glove and walked back over to me.
    “Now, Franklin, we've been over this before, but just for review …,” she began.
    How many times my mother had tried to get me in this position I could not tell you. I make every effort to block out painful experiences. In fact, I think I can trace the onset of my post-traumatic stress disorder to the first time she pitched me a softball.
    “This is the strike zone,” she said, touching my shoulders and my knees. “When the ball is thrown between these two points, a good ump will call a strike. That means you should swing at it, because if you don't, they're going to hold it against you.”
    “Why do they call it a strike if it means you
don't
hit the ball? In the dictionary,
strike
means ‘to hit, with a hand, tool, or weapon.' ”
    “Quit stallin'. We're gonna play ball whether you recite the dictionary or not. I don't plan to be in this position all day,” I heard Sarah's voice behind me.
    “Okay now, Franklin,” my mother said, trying to recover her earlier enthusiasm. “You know the drill. Feet shoulder-width apart, bend your knees … no, that's a slight forward bend.” She twisted me like a pretzel.
    “Wouldn't common sense dictate that I lean away from the strike zone, rather than into it?”
    Huge sigh. “Franklin, imagine you want to hit the ball as opposed to avoiding it. Imagine that you want to get that offending ball as far away from you as possible.”
    “There's an easy solution to that,” I said, taking a step back.
    “No, dear,” she said, firmly propelling me forward. She walked backward to the pitcher's mound, just to make sure I stayed.
    “Don't balance the bat on your shoulder, cock your elbow in the direction of the pitcher, watch the ball …”
    Her words crackled around me like static electricity as I entered into an advanced state of panic.
    “Try to remember what FDR said, Franklin.” My mother pulled the implement of destruction out of the duffel bag and stepped onto the pitcher's mound. “The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”
    I thought I detected a slight tremor in the ground below me. She threw the ball directly at me and I jumped away, dropping the bat. In the distance, I heard a thud as the missile found its mark in Sarah Kervick's palm.
    “Are you all right?” I shouted, craning my neck