and her eye almost completely swelled shut. A long and thin cut, crusted with blood, just below her eyebrow. Laverna looked down at her ring, Black Hills Gold, set with a tiny sapphire, the prongs of which had done the most damage. Laverna double-checked to make sure the stone was still there. She couldn’t care less about Rachel’s face.
Diane appeared as she had disappeared ten hours before, mysteriously, stoned out of her mind.
“I’m really high,” she apologized, avoiding eye contact with Laverna.
“No shit,” said Laverna. Diane whimpered, skittish and cotton-mouthed, whispered to Della for gum and fled to the farthest corner.
The bleachers began to fill, even though the game would not begin for an hour. Laverna saw the cluster from Quinn—Bucky cooed to Frank, Rachel’s old men studied the tournament programs, and the Chief crossed his arms, stoic as always. Rocky held a bursting picnic hamper on his lap, sandwiched between Buley and Athena, oversized and overdressed. All of their costume jewelry sparkled and dazzled, alit in the summer morning. Laverna, amazed that her daughter had somehow grown a fan club, blinked back tears. Her hands shrunk into tight fists, fingernails dug into palms; she refused to acknowledge these new emotions, feared they were a harbinger of menopause.
Angered at the thought, pissed that they still had an hour to kill, Laverna erupted, screamed at her girls. She needed to feel normal again. “This is the big dance! Get your shit together right now! For Quinn! For the love of the game!” She realized that these were all sports clichés, and that made her even angrier. The infield sat upright but then cowered against the cement wall, as Laverna began kicking dirt at them.
She was restrained by Athena, and could not free herself from the lock of meaty arms and massive breasts. She continued to kick dirt until the great wall of Buley rose up to shield Diane.
An umpire poked his head into the dugout, clearly concerned. “Is everything okay in here?” He stared closely at Rachel’s battered face.
“That’s just her way,” said Rocky, carrying a sagging cardboard box. Undoubtedly, the umpire had seen worse, but never from a woman.
“Warm up in ten, coin toss in twenty.” He left with a smirk, a tip of his hat.
“Fuck him. Go warm up now,” said Laverna, never one to follow directions. “Shake it off, ladies.” The Flood Girls took to the field, making sure to give their coach a wide berth.
Athena counseled Laverna, massaged her back, as the Flood Girls tossed the ball back and forth. Across the field, Laverna watched the Ellis Talc Miners roll on the grass, stretch luxuriously, like lionesses that had just devoured an antelope.
After ten minutes, Laverna called in her team, and tried to ignore their various states of undoing. Martha’s color was high, her temples sweating and beet red. If Martha had a stroke, Laverna would rip off her man hands and beat her to death.
Without a word, Rocky ripped open the box and consulted a list in Jake’s perfect handwriting. One at a time, he delivered each T-shirt like a precious bundle.
Thankfully, Laverna was too dazzled to cry. The uniform of the Flood Girls, a baby-blue T-shirt, the collar and sleeves embroidered in gold. Across the chest, gold thread outlined by dark blue: TFG, and above the three letters, a foreshortened halo, also gold and dark blue. She turned the T-shirt to find a glittering gold iron-on number, the 1 seemed to be flying on hand-sewn angel wings, crisp white and carefully detailed with dark blue stitches, intricate feathers.
“Save your tears, ladies,” said Laverna. “We’ve got a game to play.”
The Flood Girls were utterly shameless, and changed into the new shirts in the open air of the dugout. Most of the girls wore sports bras, but the Sinclairs wore strange brown camisoles, and Laverna was proud of their new lack of modesty. Red Mabel was completely topless. Bucky let out a wolf whistle from the bleachers, and Red Mabel bowed toward him, breasts sagging. At this, Rachel’s old men applauded.
“He asked for a team photo,” said Rocky.
“He insisted on it,” said Buley, and removed a boxy Pentax from her purse. Athena arranged the Flood Girls in different permutations—by height, by age, by bra size, and by batting average. Buley clicked away, until Athena was satisfied.
“Our first team picture,” declared Laverna, pinching at her thigh to ward off the weepiness. First uniforms, first picture, first tournament. Laverna, the back of her uniform displaying the number one, couldn’t