Ola Shakes It Up

by Joanne Hyppolite

  “I wish you for have luck.” Lillian nodded.

  I laid down my soup spoon and twisted around on my stool to look at her. Lillian had noticed me moping around the house after school. She had made the soup just for me. That was like something Mrs. Gransby would do. “Lillian?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you about where you lived in Haiti?” I asked politely. Mama couldn't say I was pestering if I got permission.

  Lillian tilted her head and said, “Shoot.”

  I looked up, startled. Lillian was imitating Khatib. She sounded just like he did when he said that. Lillian had been watching us.

  Lillian nodded. “Where I live in Haiti call Anse-a-veau.”

  “Ansahvo,” I repeated, trying to say it like Lillian did.

  “Anse-a-veau,” Lillian corrected me.

  “Is it pretty there?”

  “Is small place. By the water—ocean. Is beautiful, the ocean.”

  “What do people do there?” I asked. I thought it would be great to live by the ocean. I'd go to the beach every day.

  Lillian frowned. “Is poor place. Very poor. Most person make life on fish — catch fish, sell fish, eat fish. My manman sell fish for market. My sisters help Manman.”

  “How many sisters do you have?”

  “I have three sisters. One is name Juliane, call Ju-ju. She fourteen. She say when she is big, she no eat fish no more. One is name Marie-Jose, call Ti Marie. She is nine like you and she love talk, talk, talk. Even when she is sleep, her mouth move. Last one is Edna, call Nou-nou. She is baby, four year, and always she hurry. She try to be born on road, when Manman come from market. She no like to wait for anything.” Lillian shook her head and smiled.

  I checked out Lillian's eyes. They had become less sad. I noticed that Lillian's English sounded better, too, the longer she talked. “Where did you learn English?”

  “My friend Elise teach me. She learn English in school. I learn more when I in hospital.” Lillian nodded. “I listen everything.”

  “You didn't go to school?”

  Lillian shook her head. “I stop to help Manman with market.”

  “I thought everybody had to go to school. It's against the law not to go to school here,” I said, frowning.

  “Is why I come here, Ola,” Lillian told me quietly. “Is hard life there for poor people. Get good job here. Send money for Ju-ju and Ti Marie school. Send money for them come one day.”

  “You don't want to go back?” I asked wistfully.

  Lillian shook her head firmly. “No go back. Make place here for my family. Is better place. Is more job, more schools. More chance.”

  “I guess so,” I said glumly. Those were the exact reasons why we'd moved to Walcott.

  Lillian and I turned as we heard a big grunt and Khatib walked into the kitchen.

  “Hi, Lillian. What's up, Ola?” he said tiredly. He was walking funny. He would take one step, stop for a second and moan, then take another step and start all over again. “What's wrong with Aeisha? She came in with me and she ran straight up the stairs.”

  I shrugged. “She probably went to study.” Aeisha had been spending a lot more time in her room lately. Just as I had figured, getting her own room had made her even more of a hermit.

  “Well, if it's that Otis who's bothering her, tell her I'll take care of him for her.” Khatib struck his hand against his chest, like he was Tarzan. I rolled my eyes. It hadn't taken long for Khatib to start acting like he was God's gift to the world again. That was another sign that everybody was adjusting to Walcott but me.

  “My legs,” Khatib moaned. He finally made it to the counter and plopped down on one of the stools next to me. “This dance class is gonna kill me.”

  “I thought you only had dance class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays,” I said to Khatib. Lillian had placed a bowl of soup in front of Khatib and left the kitchen. I watched her go, sorry that Khatib had interrupted us.

  “I do,” Khatib said quickly. He picked up his spoon and bent his face toward the bowl. “My muscles ache from yesterday's class — not that it's any of your business.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Khatib was acting weird.

  “How's basketball practice going?” I asked.

  Khatib shrugged and didn't say anything. Now I knew there was something wrong, because Khatib loved to talk about how many points he scored in practice and how he was gonna single-handedly beat the next team they were playing.

  “Don't you have a game coming up?”

  Khatib nodded and kept eating his soup. I watched him for a minute, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to get anything out of him. Khatib is like a big clam. He won't tell anybody anything until he's ready. Why wasn't he talking? It had to be something to do with basketball. Maybe he'd had a really bad practice. Or maybe the coach had benched him for the next game.

  I decided to leave him alone and go pester Aeisha. She would stay in her room studying until midnight if I didn't go up there and make her take a break. Besides, I wanted to run my plan for quitting school by her. She'd probably tell me it was stupid, but I'd get her to explain why and then I'd be prepared for Mama and Dad's objections. I stopped halfway up the stairs. I had stepped on something. I looked down and saw that it was a half-crumpled sheet of paper. It was one of Aeisha's test papers. Boring. I picked it up and smoothed it out anyway. It would give me a good excuse to barge into Aeisha's room.

  Then I looked at it more closely and my mouth fell open.

  It was a science test that she'd taken a couple of days before. Aeisha had gotten a C!

  Aeisha never got C's. Aeisha never even got B's. She was a straight-A student—or she used to be. What had happened? She'd been studying like crazy since we started at our new school. Then I remembered how she'd been acting our first day of school. She'd been flipping through her books like she was worried. And ever since then she'd been studying double the amount that she used to.

  I smoothed out the paper and tucked it into my back pocket. Just an hour earlier I'd been depressed 'cause I thought I was the only one not adjusting to this town. Now both Aeisha and Khatib weren't acting like themselves. I had been so caught up in my own problems, I hadn't even noticed theirs — which meant I wasn't acting like myself, either, 'cause I hadn't been keeping up with what was going on with the family. Somebody else had been doing that, though. Lillian. I realized now that she had made that big pot of good-luck soup for the whole family, not just for me. Just like Mrs. Gransby, Lillian was watching out for us.

  his neighborhood was full of weird people.

  I turned the focus knob on Aeisha's binoculars to see if there was something wrong with it. Maybe I'd seen something that just looked like a lady throwing leaves all over her lawn. I looked again. Nope. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a lady spreading leaves all over her lawn. She was an older lady, with curly white hair, and she was wearing a thick blue winter coat and blue rubber boots. She was dragging a huge garbage bag full of dead brown leaves and putting the leaves back on her front lawn. She would take a handful, toss them on the ground, move a little and then start all over again. I watched her for a few minutes. She was doing a good job of it, too. Soon her lawn would be covered with dead brown leaves.

  I decided that she must be one of Mr. Elijahs friends from the senior citizens' home. She didn't look as old as the rest of his friends, but she sure would fit in with them. I'd met two more of Mr. Elijah's friends in the past two weeks 'cause he decided that he should introduce me to the neighborhood. First I'd met Mr. Portello, who thought he was a fortune-teller. He said he came from a stock of Gypsies that had come to Walcott in the 1920s and liked it so much they decided to stay. Then he read my palm and told me that I would grow up to be an important person in this town. Me? No way. I was getting out. Mr. Elijah told me that Mr. Portello held regular Saturday-night seances in his house — after ten o'clock. Otis told me later that Mr. and Mrs. Stern hated Mr. Portello because he spent a half hour of each neighborhood board
meeting asking for permission to hold his late-night seances and they couldn't say no because that was how he made his living.

  Then I'd met Mr. Arnold, the retired newspaperman. He was the founder of The Walcott Sentinel, which was the town newspaper. It was hard to talk to him because all he did was grill you with questions. When I'd gone to visit him with Mr. Elijah, he wanted to know who I was, when I moved here, what I moved here for, where I lived, and why I lived there. When I had answered all his questions, he barked out, “Headline: ‘Newest Resident, A Real Nut.’ “ After meeting some of his friends, I told Mr. Elijah that he wasn't senile at all.

  I lowered the binoculars to think for a minute. There weren't any rules against putting leaves on your lawn, but there was a recommendation about keeping your lawn neat and clean. I picked up the binoculars again and looked out at Otis's house. Yup, his bike was still there rusting on the lawn. That wasn't exactly breaking the rules, either, but it wasn't following them. Then I thought about Mr. Portello. He followed all the rules about getting special permission for late-night visitors, but he followed them so well it made the Sterns mad. That was just as good as breaking the rules. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought there was something going on with the people in this neighborhood.

  “Ola, what are you doing in here?”

  I put the binoculars down and turned around. Aeisha was standing behind me with her hands on her hips.

  “Aeisha, you wouldn't believe how weird our neighbors are.”

  “This is my room. That means you can't come in it without permission,” Aeisha said, scowling.

  “Don't have a cow, Aeisha. I just wanted to look outside your window.” I was telling half the truth, anyway. My bedroom window looked over the backyard, and there hadn't been anything going on there. But I had also come into her room to see if I could find out more about Aeisha's grades. Aeisha would call that snooping, but I called it helping. As soon as I could figure out why Aeisha was doing so badly, I could come up with a plan to help her.

  “You shouldn't be spying on people, anyway.” Aeisha dropped her hands from her hips and walked over to her desk. She started pulling her schoolbooks together and packing them in her backpack. “It's rude.”

  “What's the matter with you?” I asked. Aeisha was super grumpy. I had a feeling all that extra studying wasn't working, 'cause the more Aeisha studied, the worse her attitude became.

  “Girls!”

  Aeisha and I jumped. Mama had burst into the room all of a sudden and was standing there waving her arms up and down excitedly.

  “Are you okay, Mama?” I asked.

  “Family meeting. Now. In the living room. Let's go,” Mama ordered. She looked really pretty in her red pantsuit and gold hoop earrings. She had gone to a luncheon for work earlier and she was still dressed up.

  “I have to study, Mama,” Aeisha protested. She had finished stuffing her backpack.

  “It can wait a half hour. Let's go,” Mama said again. She turned around and disappeared as fast as she had come in. Aeisha and I hurried after her. I figured it must be serious. We hadn't had a family meeting since we moved in here. That was because Dad hadn't been around enough to torture us with one. But here it was right in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and Mama was calling a meeting.

  Khatib was already in the living room when we got there. He was stuffing his face with some of Lillian's pate. She had left them for us before going to her first English class that day. “Dad's not here. We can't have a family meeting without Dad,” he said.

  Mama shrugged and turned away. “We sure can.”

  Uh-oh. Khatib, Aeisha and I looked at each other. We knew Mama must be really mad with Dad to be shrugging him off like that. She had been upset earlier when Dad told her he couldn't go with her to the luncheon because he had to work.

  “Somebody has to run this family,” we heard Mama mutter. Aeisha and I sat down on the green-and-rose sofa. The new living room furniture had just been delivered the day before, and we hadn't had time to check it out yet. I bounced up and down on it. It was comfy.

  “Now.” Mama sat down on the tall wooden chair with the long arms. She looked like a queen, with her arms resting on the chairs arms and her back held straight. “Talk,” she commanded.

  “Talk about what?” Aeisha asked. She sounded nervous, but I bet I was the only one who knew why.

  “About you — all of you. School. Home. Basketball. Your dad. I want to know what's going on with you all. It's been so quiet around here, it doesn't feel like home. Something must be up.”

  Aeisha, Khatib and I looked at each other again. Then we looked at Mama. I knew that Mama was right; something was going on with Aeisha and Khatib. But I also knew that Khatib would never admit it and that Aeisha would kill me if I told everyone about her grades. She would think I had been spying on her. Besides, I knew I wouldn't have to say anything for Aeisha. She always spills out all her problems at family meetings. Dad always starts with her at our meetings 'cause she's supposed to serve as an example for the rest of us.

  I decided to speak up first. “I still think that it would be a good idea for me to quit school. I'm not really learning anything I couldn't learn at home and—”

  “Ola, we already talked about that,” Mama cut me off.

  Shoot. I closed my mouth. I had talked over my idea for a home teacher with Mama early that week and she had said one thing: no.

  “Khatib, how's basketball practice?” Mama asked, turning to him. He had sprawled out on the floor on his back, resting on his elbows.

  “No problem.” Khatib nodded.

  “Aeisha—your new classes?”

  I looked over at Aeisha, waiting for her to spill it.

  Aeisha heaved a big sigh.

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “Well,” Aeisha said slowly, “I miss Dad. He's never around anymore.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Khatib chimed in, sitting up. “He's like the Invisible Dad since we moved here.”

  Mama nodded. She looked really pleased with what Aeisha and Khatib were saying. Then she started to look sad. “I know. I've tried to talk to him about it.”

  “He hasn't asked me about basketball in weeks,” Khatib said. “Not that I mind, that is.”

  I tried to keep my mouth from dropping. Khatib always minded when people didn't ask him how many points he had scored in a game or how well he had done in practice.

  “He hasn't been around to check my homework,” grumbled Aeisha.

  Everybody looked at me.

  “He was supposed to help me redo my star chart,” I pitched in. This was the weirdest family meeting ever. Aeisha wasn't talking about her real problems and Khatib was shrugging off basketball. It was true that Dad hadn't been around much lately 'cause of work. We had all felt it. But it was like Aeisha and Khatib were using that as an excuse not to talk about other things.

  “Your dad feels like he has something to prove in his new job,” Mama explained, frowning.

  “ 'cause he's black,” Aeisha said, nodding.

  “And because he's new and he's older than many of the other engineers in his position.” Mama didn't sound like she was mad at Dad anymore.

  “So what do we do?” Khatib asked, leaning back against one of the chairs.

  “Maybe we should schedule an appointment with him,” Aeisha suggested, pushing her glasses up on her nose.

  Mama grinned at her. “Aeisha, child, you've got it.”

  “Got what?” I asked, confused.

  Mama explained, “Maybe if we all start making family appointments with your dad, he'll start getting the point. We should all schedule time with him individually. Drive him crazy with it.”

  Aeisha, Khatib and I nodded and smiled back at Mama. This was gonna be fun.

  Mama gazed at the three of us. She looked like she wanted to say more but thought better of it. Instead she raised her eyebrows and said, “Can I get a witness?”

  We all laughed at her. That was always Dad's line at
our family meetings. We all raised our hands and sang out, “Yeah.”

  “Then I guess we're adjourned.” Mama sighed. I could tell that she knew something more was going on, but Mama never likes to push. That's Dad's department. He's more like me. He'll dig and dig until he finds out what is bothering one of us, and then Mama fixes it. These family meetings just don't work right without Dad.

  I followed Aeisha out of the living room. I was worried about her now. Something really big must be happening for her not to have said anything about her trouble with school. And since Dad wasn't there, it was up to me to find out why she was keeping such a huge secret.

  Aeisha turned around to look at me when we got to her room. “What, Ola?”

  “What's the matter with you?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. I was hoping that Aeisha would tell me what was wrong before I told her that I'd found her test.

  “Nothing.” Aeisha walked into her room and picked up her loaded backpack. It had so many books sticking out of it, she couldn't even close the zipper. Then I noticed that she was dressed up. She had on a jean skirt with a pink sweater and pink tights. She even had on shoes.

  “Where you going?” I asked, moving toward her.

  “Nowhere. And don't follow me,” Aeisha ordered. I edged toward the window seat slowly. Aeisha's binoculars were still sitting there, and she hadn't said anything about not watching her.

  “Where are you going?” Aeisha asked suspiciously.

  I stood still. “To my room. I got homework to do, too, you know.”

  “Don't follow me, Ola,” Aeisha ordered again. She gave me a look to say that she meant it, and then she walked toward the door. But before she got to the doorway, the zipper to her backpack slid all the way open and every single one of her books and papers spilled onto the floor.

  She bent down and started picking them up fast. “Don't touch anything, Ola.”

  I didn't pay any attention to her. This was perfect. I'd been carrying her test paper with me for a few days, waiting for the right time to ask her about it. I pulled it from my pocket and let it float to the floor casually.