Baseball in April and Other Stories

Yollie and her mother, Mrs. Moreno, enjoy each other’s company and often tease each other. One night, when they stay up late to watch a movie, Yollie dozes off and asks her mother to wake her at the end of the film so she can go to bed. However, Mrs. Moreno tiptoes away, leaving her daughter on the couch. Yollie wakes in the middle of the night, disoriented. Once she realizes what her mother has done, she fills a glass of water and sets it next to her mother’s alarm clock. The next morning, Yollie gloats when she hears her mother scream while trying to turn off the alarm.

Despite their pranks, mother and daughter genuinely care for each other. Mrs. Moreno provides Yollie, a model student, with what she needs to study so that the girl can one day become a doctor. However, although Mrs. Moreno is funny and entertaining, Yollie finds no humor in their financial situation. She needs a new dress for the eighth-grade dance, but they have no money to buy one. Even though Mrs. Moreno has savings for Yollie’s college fund, she will not use it for a dress. Remembering her own childhood hardships, she compromises and buys Yollie a new pair of black shoes and some dye to make the girl’s white summer dress black.