All the Broken Pieces

Matt is nervous to try out for the baseball team, particularly because he knows how important baseball is to his father. During tryouts, when Matt is asked to stay and pitch—his strength—he hears the other boys whispering, calling Matt “Frog-face” (47) and “Matt-the-rat” (48) and insisting they’ll quit if he joins the team. After the tryout, another seventh-grader, Rob Brennan, bumps into Matt and “hisses”: “My brother died / because of you” (48). Matt—afraid if he tells on the others, he “will be a rat” (49) and worried that if he drops out, his father will be suspicious—decides to do nothing.

Matt’s father picks Matt up from the tryouts and plays “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees in the car, telling Matt “Even if you don’t make it, / you’ll always be our MVP” (51). Later that night, the phrase “stayin’ alive” (52) repeats in Matt’s head, punctuated with “my brother died / because of you” (53).

Only four seventh graders make the baseball team, and Matt is among them. Someone has taped a picture of a rice field to his locker, with a drawing of a rat and “Matt-the-rat” (54) written on it. Matt interprets the note’s message: “Because of you / there’s no place for me” (54). While he doesn’t tell anyone about the note, he discovers Coach Robeson has heard about it, as Coach warns the team: “Prejudice is ignorance / in a catcher’s mask” (55), and “one more derogatory comment” (56) will lead to the perpetrator being kicked off the team.

On the baseball team, Matt usually pitches but sometimes plays shortstop. He dislikes shortstop because he’s not always sure a teammate “wants to win / more than he wants / to hurt me” (57). While pitching, on the other hand, Matt’s enemy is “always on the other team” (57).

Matt has a school assignment to write “a brief character sketch” (58) about a family member. He takes a pencil from his drawer and mentions that he even saves tiny pencil stubs, and that if something “terrible” (59) ever happens, he’ll grab everything he can fit in his pockets and take it all with him: “Even the broken pieces are worth something to me” (59). To complete his assignment, Matt writes the words “my” and “mother” in separate boxes, then keeps coloring until all that’s left is “a plain, / dark, / black / box./ No one would ever know / there’s something inside” (60).

Matt is also growing more dedicated to the piano, to the point that he plays when he has any spare moment. Piano allows Matt to feel “sheltered / in that safe place / where the only thing / that matters / is music” (62).

Matt hears his parents whispering, his mother saying: “maybe we can’t provide what he needs” and “maybe if he goes, he’ll understand more” (63), and he worries they want to send him away. He tells himself that his parents say they love him—but his mother in Vietnam said the same thing and still gave Matt away. The American who lived with Matt’s mother also said he loved her and would return, but he didn’t. Finally, Matt loved his little brother with “mangled stumps” for hands and legs, but Matt still “le[ft] anyway” (67). Matt concludes that perhaps love is like “a monsoon rain” (67): when it’s heavy, it seems it will go on forever, but then “the wind shifts,” the earth dries up, “and love just tiptoes away” (68).

Matt tries to get perfect grades, do well in all his activities, and do extra chores so that his parents won’t send him away, and he reasons his father loves baseball too much to give him up before the season ends. During a baseball game, Matt uses his throwing skills to pitch strong balls that “sail through the air,” but then “drop at the batter’s feet / like a wounded bird” (73). As a result, the other team doesn’t get a single hit and Matt’s Lynbrook Lions win by a landslide. After the game, the team gets pizza to celebrate, and Matt’s father “glow[s]” (78) with pride. Rob, however, seems to resent Matt’s success: while everyone else is having fun, Rob is “breaking his crust / into little pieces and / leaving it on the plate, / not talking to anyone” (79).

At his piano lesson, Matt is supposed to play a “lonesome ballad” (80), but he’s so happy about the baseball game that he makes it into a jaunty tune—and the piano teacher Jeff comments on Matt’s “perfect game” (80) as well. At the next baseball practice, Coach Robeson emphasizes the importance of teamwork to success, but gives Matt an extra smile. Rob whispers to Matt that “even a Frog-face / can get lucky, I guess” (82).