I watched them play. One of them would hand a big, brown, egg-shaped ball to another one facing him. The ones from his side would start running across a point in the street, marked by spit, to the other side. The one who had handled the ball first would count: "…one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Miss…" while the one holding the ball would bring it over his shoulder and start to throw it, pumping his arm as if he were in urgent need of some drinking water from the old well. With everyone running, jumping, and yelling, he would throw it at the count of eight or nine Mississippi, and usually no one would be near it, and it would bounce awkwardly out of sight. The boys who had been sprinting down the block would walk back, screaming at the thrower, "I was in the open," and "Why didn't you pass it to me?" There would be a brief argument among those who had been running and the one who had been throwing, but they would soon settle down and, once more united, they would prepare for another thrust at the enemy.
I watched them play. I wondered why they would play with a ball that was shaped as if it were an overgrown and overexposed-to-the-sun lemon which never bounced true, and never bounced the same way twice. I wondered how they could yell and argue with each other, and then, within an instant, direct this youthful exuberance toward the enemy. I wondered at their way of marking points upon the ground by simply spitting upon it in quite a vulgar fashion, while they would not hesitate to use their very shirts, lovingly, to clean off whatever little spot would appear on their precious oversized lemon. But, most of all, I wondered when I would be able to do all these things with them.
Everyday I would lean on the fence and
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