Who knows how the rumor started?

The whistle shrieks. "Out," Armena Mint, Four Square Captain, declares.

Maybe some boy made it up—you know how they are.

"What? How? The ball wasn't even out of bounds!" A kid whines.

Maybe it was the Italian-American in me who always tries to be funny and have something to say. So afraid of being forgotten.

"I'm the captain and you're out." Armena glares at the dissenter, her face like a clover, braids blossoming from her scalp. Unlike the plastic bows and flowers that clack as she shakes her head, her decision is immovable. When the kid doesn't move, she blows the whistle again—did she have a whistle?

Maybe I just heard someone say it once, and it was never mentioned again.

"Ugh!" The kid stomps off the court, off the golden number 4 spot.

Did you play Four Square in elementary school? Okay, well it's what it sounds like: squares painted on the concrete numbered 1 to 4. One person per square. You bounced the ball back and forth and it was out of bounds if it was still in your square, on the line, or out of the whole station. Okay? Got it?

Armena retrieves the red rubber ball that's bouncing in place like an awaiting sidekick.

Those balls were always red. I mean I didn't work in the factory or anything, but I'm pretty sure they didn't make them in any other color. Ya know, the ones that wheeze whenever they bounce.

The current players and line of antsy students await her call. Their breaths, even their sweat, seem to freeze in anticipation.

There were multiple Four Square stations at recess. That's how serious it was. We should have had a tournament or something. And if you were a captain, you had a whistle or sash or maybe one of those mesh jerseys from the gym that always smelled like B.O.: something that gave you the visual authority of captainship.

At Armena's Four Square station, the air is still. Like the outside of a saloon in a Western movie. Right before the guys start shooting.

Right, right. The rumor. I'm getting to it, geez!

Armena tosses the ball to a lucky player and with the screech of her whistle, like the bellow of a horn in the ancient Colosseum, the game is on again.

So it goes that Armena would kick out all the White kids at her station. Again, I don't know how it started so don't ask me, but it must've been in those vague in-between, splitting-hair moments when no one was really paying attention to where the ball dropped that Armena would say,

"Out!"

Because Armena was Black, her perceived slight against the White kids was seen as racist. Because kids love to call things racist even when they're not. My theory is that it makes them feel grown up and righteous. Like they're finding their height in a world that is still so tall to them. Right, the story. Okay, I'm getting back to it!

"Hey, she keeps kicking out the White kids. She's discriminating against us."

No, that can't be how it was. Kids don't just casually use the word "discriminating." Maybe it was,

"Armena, you're being racist!" A White boy pouts from the station's edge, bent at the waist akimbo.

Straight to the point like a kid, but it probably went something more like this:

"Recess is over!" The lunch ladies wail, corralling the children of the schoolyard. The last Four Square player at Armena's station flocks to the globing lines, abandoning the ball on the pavement. Armena sighs and rescues the ball from any more wheezing. She's the Four Square Captain. She's the captain, and they don't even have the courtesy to return the ball when it's time to go back in. No respect for the game. No goodbyes to the one who called the hard shots for the harsh crowd. When the kids head back inside, the sunlight clips off like sound suctioning out of an air-tight room. One motor boat mouth approaches Armena from behind, whacking the ball from her grip. "Oops! You gonna kick me out, Armena?" And the Whites cackle as the ball coughs down the hallway. The ball that Armena has to chase because it's her ball. Because she's the captain!

That might be more like what a White kid would've said. Subtle enough to not be courageous. But direct enough to have the audacity. But again, I don't really have a distinct recollection of this. I mean, come on, this was in the single digits days! Memory is like an erased chalkboard in that way. You can still kinda see what was written there so you connect the residue even though every second, minute, day, year longer, it's all a little more gone.

Armena's mouth twists, a comeback curling on her tongue.

Like reaching for a bubble only to have it pop.

Armena... Armena has a voice, ya know.

Yeah, I know Armena has a voice, and that she doesn't only say, "Out!" or "I'm captain." I'm just struggling to write made-up words for this real person. Ya know, I haven't seen her since 4th-grade graduation and the most clear image I have is her smiling against the royal blue backdrop from Picture Day.

As words fail to march past her teeth, Armena feels alone in a crowd of kids. Like they're all tethered to the spaceship in their astronaut suits and Armena's floating farther away from base.

Okay, well I can resonate with that. I guess what I mean to say is that I was a White kid and I don't know how she felt. We're all trying to fit our circle souls into different shaped holes, and I was too busy slamming my body up against the box, too busy in myself to see Armena. To really see her.

Armena Mint, Four Square Captain, is stripped to the same status that she had before lunch, the same mediocre level of a fellow classmate.

I guess what I really mean is that I'm ashamed, and I'm ashamed that I feel shame. That after all this time it's still about me and not Armena.

The ball tumbles down the hall, and Armena attempts to Frogger through the sea of kids, playing a losing game with a ball that has a cold.

And if this were a wholesome story, a bow-wrapped story, the kind of story that is scored with strings and wins Oscars, this is what would happen:

"Hey," I say. "Here's your ball." Armena smiles, and it feels like a release.

And Jesus Christ, it's still about me, and this White Savior shit.

Anyway, the story...

The story...

Armena scoops up the ball, and when she feels a whoosh of air rush around her, she readies for a battle, but turns to see... no one.

Well, there really isn't a story. That's the truth of it. I just. Don't. Know. I don't have Armena's eyes or skin or hair, and that's where my version of the story ends. It has to.

No one besides the kids at the end of the hallway, sweating and heading back to class. No one besides grumpy lunch ladies. No one close enough to send that breeze across her back.

The best I can do is understand that, to an eight-year-old Armena, all white people are White people; that if there are bad guys in the world at least their skin is a warning; that if the only control she felt in this tall world was when she was Four Square Captain, then kick the bad guys out, Armena.

"Armena!" A lunch lady calls. "Return the ball and let's go!"

I could yell to her across an ocean, across time and space, but I would always just be on the sand, away from the big waves that break and crash onto her.

Armena should get back to the other kids. But she feels like someone is there. In the particles of the air. Between the hinges of the doors. Creaking in the floorboards. Swimming underneath the twitching lights.

Maybe that's all I can do.

Even though she can't see anyone, someone is there.

Let her know that I hear her.