As she walks up to the plate in the late game of a long Saturday afternoon, 12-year old Alexis Ayala can’t shake this nagging feeling.
Maybe two nagging feelings.
One is disappointment. Earlier that morning, she’d hit a home run, and her mom was not there to see it.
The night before, the family had gone to see “Shrek,” and then Monica Ayala took Alexis and her younger sisters, 7-year-old Jazmine and 3-year-old Gracie, to their aunt’s house while their father, Rene Ayala, went over to a friend’s. They would see each other in the morning for yet another day at the ballpark.
Alexis loved to show off for her parents. Monica was a high school softball star herself, at Desert View and Sunnyside; Rene was a stud on the diamond, too – first on Sunnyside’s 1992 Little League championship team and later on Sunnyside High’s state finalist baseball team — and Alexis inherited their genes.
Rounding the bases after her home run in that first game, Alexis scanned the crowd, searching for her mother. She dropped her head a little when she was nowhere to be found. Hours went by.
Finally, she’s up for her last at-bat, and the nagging feeling returns. Where is mom?
As she settles into her stance, two men in uniforms walk into the Lincoln Park entrance gates, far on the other side of the complex. She takes some practice swings as they approach the field.
The pitcher throws, and Alexis strokes another hit and rounds first base. She scans the crowd again for those adoring eyes. Nothing, still.
She ends up on second base and looks beyond the dugout, where her dad stands with the two men, his head in his hands.
Where is mom?
And why is dad talking to those police officers?
• • •
Seven years later, sitting on a bench behind the bleachers at Pima Community College, where Alexis is a freshman batting .402, Rene Ayala is doing his best to maintain a stiff upper lip when talking about the day his life was shattered.
He admits, honestly, “I feel like I put up a front,” and right now, his front is showing some cracks.
He is describing a conversation no father wants to have. The kind of conversation that leaves you floating above your body, trying to search for the words, as if there are any, trying to somehow explain to a 12-year-old, a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old that their mother has gone to stay with Tio Arthur in heaven and would not be back to tuck them in or kiss their forehead or watch a home run.
Earlier that morning, they had argued. She wanted to run errands; he wanted her to come straight to the ballfield. It’s where they always put any skirmish aside, the place that always brought them together as a family.
All day long, just like Alexis, Rene wondered where Monica was. It wasn’t like her to go so long without communicating. They’d had to cancel her game — Monica was coaching Jazmine’s Sunnyside Bumblebees team at the time — and none of her sisters had heard from her either.
Finally, the phone rang, and in the dugout watching a game, in a haste he answered without looking at the caller ID.
It was the sheriff’s department. They said they needed to talk to Rene in person. He was dubious. “What’s going on?” he implored, to no avail. They kept calling. Finally, he said meet me at Lincoln Park.
When they walked onto that field, he knew. He saw the chaplain’s insignia on the officer’s lapel.
Monica was alone, driving on a highway near Three Points, near her grandfather’s house. There was a curve, and some loose gravel. The car flipped.
“My first reaction is, ‘Shut up,’” Rene says. “‘Shut up, man. What are you’ … they had stone cold faces. ‘Where is she? What hospital? And that’s when they told me she didn’t make it. At that point, to be honest, of course I’m dying inside, but we have our girls. My job, to this day, to her, is to take care of these girls.”
One accident, one life, two deaths.
• • •
Rene, tell me about your wife.
“She was beautiful, supportive,” he says. “Mom. My wife.”
He laughs.
“Funny.”
They met when they were 13, on the ballfields of Mission Manor Park. Where else?
She was outgoing, Rene says of 13-year-old Monica, ready to try new things. They just clicked. Their first date was at the Red, White and Blue concert at the Tucson Convention Center. They watched fireworks, still too young to make any of their own. It was 1992.
“Good times,” Rene says.
They originally went to different high schools — he starred at Sunnyside, she at Desert View — but they stayed close.
Every time distance would grow, and maybe other relationships would pry them away, they would get closer. They continued dating, she transferred to Sunnyside, and during his senior year — her junior year — Monica became pregnant with Alexis.
He was a state baseball champion hoping to parlay a two-year stint at Pima into a four-year degree; she was a softball star who hoped to walk on to Arizona until she got pregnant.
“That threw a wrench into a things,” he said. “I was 18, and we had Alexis during Christmas break. A nice, big present.”
Plans did change. They accepted the responsibility and doted on their baby. They worked at a Fry’s food store together, and they eventually worked their way into professional careers. She became a medical assistant, and five years after having Alexis, they had Jazmine. They built a family, and they had a path.
“I’d be happy when the electric bill came,” he said. “It was cool. We had enough to pay it.”
• • •
If it was softball that kept them together as a family when Monica was alive, the sport helped them survive after her passing.
“I think softball has virtually saved the family,” said Pima coach Armando Quiroz, whose Aztecs play at Phoenix College at 9 a.m. Saturday in the NJCAA regional playoffs. “It’s given them a purpose and a meaning. They love the game and the game loves them. Without it, it would’ve been really tough.”
All three sisters play, and three star. Rene coaches, and wins. His 2013 Sunnyside team won the Little League Softball World Series; Jazmine was the winning pitcher. They feel like they’re carrying on Monica’s legacy.
“She touched so many people’s lives, especially in the softball community,” Alexis says. “Mission Manor Park, that was our second home. We are known there. A lot of people lost someone they loved.”
When Monica died, Alexis’ team rallied around her. They cried with her, mourned with her, made keepsakes.
She still has a bracelet that one of the team moms made. To this day, softball friends tell her she reminds them of her mother.
Alexis sees it, too.
She has a video of her mom, singing and dancing to a Janet Jackson song, acting a fool. She sees her same silliness in it.
“Mom was the person who was so bright and loud,” Alexis said. “You knew she was there. You could not miss her laugh. Even her smile was so big. She loved to be happy. She lived to make everybody laugh and be silly. She knew she was silly. She loved life. She wanted to never be a fighter, and I hear stories from my tias (and they’d say), ‘your mom was never drama.’ She’d call one of us, she’d never handle it. She wasn’t a confrontational kind of person. I’m a peacemaker too.”
Quiroz sees it, too. Just a freshman, Ayala is considered a leader in the clubhouse, something he saw in her back when she was 12. In a bit of true serendipity, Quiroz was in those very same Lincoln Park bleachers the day of Monica’s accident in 2008, recruiting during his first season at Pima. He remembers the officers, the chaplain, slow walk, Rene’s head dropping.
Quiroz considers it an honor to be coaching his daughter now.
“Yesterday we went to a girl’s house — they had us over for dinner — and it was just girls acting silly, laughing, having a great time. It did come to my mind — this doesn’t happen very often for her,” he said. “She was in heaven with her teammates. It was really nice to watch. You think, I wish she had more of this growing up.”
• • •
Alexis Ayala had to grow up fast.
At 12, she had to become a mother to her younger sisters. Rene did a wonderful job as a father, but there are just some things that a father can’t teach a little girl, things that Alexis would have to learn from her loving aunts.
Rene remembers the first time she talked back to him. It was a proud moment as a father. He knew she was as strong as her mother.
There are times, though, when she is weak, just like everyone.
“I remember the first time Gracie had a breakdown, I just broke down, too,” Alexis says. “I just felt so hurt for her. She told me straight up that she doesn’t really remember our mom. She wishes she did. She wishes she was still here.”
Alexis can’t help but feel a sense of motherhood with her two younger sisters, who both play softball like their big sister and their mom, who both have big smiles and big personalities like their big sister and their mom.
Jazmine’s quinceañera is just around the corner, and Alexis can’t wait.
“I will be the one to do her mother-daughter dance,” she says, beaming. “I know for sure I’m going to have be the one changing her, getting her ready, just as my mom would’ve done. I remember the first time she did a little Instagram for me, the first time she’s said I wouldn’t want anybody else to be my big sister/second mom.”
She remembers her own special day, too.
“My mom was crazing on that day for the longest,” she said. “I remember that morning, and thank God I had my tia and my older cousins to get my hair done. They had me for that. I can remember calling my dad and he was so choked up. He had his moment. That father-daughter dance did get everyone. There’s a picture of me just trying to cover my face. I am thankful my nana had so many girls.”
That day for her was more than four years ago, and she’s matured since then, blossomed from a young lady into a woman.
Sitting in a pizza joint on the eve of the regional playoffs, she wears a pink shirt, silver hoop earrings and a cross necklace. And a few tattoos.
Her dad took her to get the first one. It’s on her right ankle, because Monica had a tattoo of her name on her right ankle. The name Monica, with a flower and a butterfly.
Monica loved black and yellow butterflies.
“I’ll be driving and I’m on the field and I see one fly in front of our dugout and I’ll think of her,” Alexis says. “Our number is 21. My mom’s birthday is August 21, my dad’s is July 21, they got together on June 21, it was both their numbers. I’ll be driving and I’ll ask someone for the time, and they’ll say 8:21. I’ll think, ‘Oh, hi, mom. How are you doing? Thanks. I needed that.’”
When she was 12 years old, standing on second base, Alexis Ayala wondered, “Where’s mom?”
Turns out, she’s everywhere.
