by Jane Kurtz
For the first time since Mom left, Dakar felt a pang. Uh-oh. This pain didn’t feel good. Was the ice melting?
“What kinds of trees are those?” Jakarta asked, pointing.
Dakar sat down. She’d stood under those very trees her first week, feeling confused and lost while bits of white fluff floated down, covering her shoulders. She’d been wondering if the white stuff could possibly be snow, although she was pretty sure the air had to be colder to make snow.
A girl with purple hair had ridden up on a bike and slowed down to stare.
“What is this stuff?” Dakar asked.
“Kid-hey. Why do you think they call it a cottonwood tree?”
“I didn’t know they did.”
“For weird. I guess you’re not from around here.”
Dakar winced, remembering. She sometimes saw the girl with purple hair in the cafeteria and walked as far away from her as possible. Why was she feeling twinges that could make her wince? The ice floes must be breaking up. Fretfully she pointed to and named the ones she’d learned: birch, cottonwood, Norwegian maple, oak.
“I miss our trees,” Jakarta said.
Dakar nodded. “The frangipani tree. And jacaranda.”
“Thirty-foot-tall ficus trees with fat, shiny leaves,” Jakarta said. “Rubber trees. Pepper trees, bottlebrush trees, mango, avocado, hibiscus.”
“Don’t worry,” Dakar said suddenly. “Mom will come back soon.”
Jakarta shook her head. “I don’t think so. By the way, sweet one, I’m sorry I got so mad about the incantation and all.” She wriggled the sweater up and stretched out her hand.
Dakar let Jakarta pull her close and then leaned her head against Jakarta’s shoulder. She was definitely feeling things again; something was wringing and twisting her stomach like a washcloth. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” she whispered.
“Do you even remember what pulled Mom inside the Allalonestone that time?” Jakarta asked.
“Of course,” Dakar said. “Her mom was killed in a plane crash on her way to visit us in Maji.”
“Partly,” Jakarta said. “But that was the second death. Remember the first one? I guess you wouldn’t. I guess it would be like asking if I remember anything about Indonesia.”
Dakar stiffened. Was that pain what it felt like when a liver thawed? Jakarta stroked her forehead the way Melanie might rub Gingerpuff. “We had a brother,” Jakarta said suddenly. “You don’t remember him at all?”
Dakar pulled back, trying to see Jakarta’s face in the glow of the streetlamp.
“He was born right after we got to Ethiopia,” Jakarta said. “He was only about four months old when we moved to Maji. One night Mom got up to check on him and he was … just … dead. They never did know why.”
Dakar squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. Was even a scrap of memory stored way back there? She thought she could catch a splinter of Mom crying. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Mom never wanted anyone to talk about him, and she got frantic if anybody tried. Dad and the yard workers dug a grave. You walked around telling everyone, ‘Our baby has gone to heaven. Our baby has gone to heaven.’ Mom planted flowers all over the grave. She always cried if she saw us playing near it, so I told you an evil enchantress had put a spell on it and we couldn’t go near it.”
Dakar nodded, remembering.
“A year later Dad was away on a trip, and the runners brought her the news of the airplane crash. The crash happened on the very same day our brother had died. At first Mom thought they were talking about Dad. Then she realized it was her mother. She went in her room and didn’t come out.”
“I completely remember that,” Dakar said.
“I was terrified,” Jakarta said. “I was, what, eight years old? Nine? I made up all those things just to keep you doing something. The schoolboys kept fixing meals for us, so I knew we wouldn’t starve.”
“We went on a quest,” Dakar said. “You told me all about the hoodies and the Allalonestone. I believed you.”
Jakarta laughed. “It was weird that she came out on the exact day I made up the incantation.”
“And Dad showed up that night, and it was all over.”
“It was all over,” Jakarta repeated. “But I don’t think it was all over for Mom. I think she’s been waiting a long, long time to mourn everything. And there’s another reason why she’s not coming back. Because when she does, Dad will make a stink until we leave here, and she doesn’t want to leave.”
Thursday morning when Jakarta and Dakar walked to school, Melanie hurried out of her own house and walked behind them, about half a block back. Every time Dakar turned around, Melanie was looking at her with hopeful eyes. Dakar didn’t say anything, but she felt a secret flush of joy.
That evening she and Dad and Jakarta sat on the front porch cracking walnuts, laughing, telling stories of camping trips. “Remember German Wuha?” Jakarta asked.
Dakar nodded, dreamy, and leaned her head against Dad’s arm. The river at German Wuha was wide and warm, and she felt safe and thrilled all at the same time as they rippled down it on their air mattresses. Mom stood in the river laughing and whisking water at them, water that dried instantly on her shoulders in the hot sun.
“I took off swimming one afternoon,” Dad said. “I was having quite a workout when suddenly I rounded a bend and came face-to-face with a wild buffalo.” Dakar could hear his laugh rumbling in his chest. “African buffalo may not look like much, but they can be extremely dangerous. They’re a good match for any lion.”
“Did you know that hippos kill more human beings every year in Africa than any other large mammal?” Jakarta asked. “It’s the animals you wouldn’t expect that are really scary, isn’t it?”
Dakar swallowed. “What did you do?” The elephant was starting toward her, shuddering the ground. “Take a step back,” Dad was saying quietly, urgently. No, this was a different story, a different time. And no trackers with guns. Just Dad, alone in the river.
He laughed again. “Turned around and churned out of there as fast as I could go.”
Later that night, Mom called. “What are you doing?” Dakar asked when it was her turn to talk. She could hear Jakarta’s breathing on the extension.
“I can’t believe how many people around here remember me.” Mom’s voice sounded young. “Everyone talks to me about my parents. I walk out to the graveyard every day and sit by their graves. Does that sound morbid? Oh, Aunt Lily is getting a little bit better, too.”
By the time they got off the phone, Jakarta and Dad were arguing with each other again. Dakar didn’t get it. She’d seen Dad swap stories with Kenyan businessmen, Ethiopian ambassadors with aristocratic faces, nearly naked nomads who drank the blood and milk of their cows for supper. But he couldn’t seem to connect with Jakarta. He’d ask her things like “Why are you pushing your food around your plate? What are you eating at school these days?”
“Food,” Jakarta would say. “Or homework once in a while. But only when I need to.” If Dad tried to give her advice, she’d say, “I have two words for you. Puh. Shaw.”
When Dad asked Jakarta how her classes were going, she admitted, “Not as appalling as I thought. The science curriculum is actually pretty interesting. Did you know botanists recently found the biggest living thing ever discovered? It’s a tree-killing fungus that started from a microscopic spore and has been spreading rhizomorphs for about 2,400 years.”
Dad looked at her with a triumphant expression, but when he opened his mouth, she said quickly, “My English teacher, on the other hand, talks so slowly that you can dream a whole daydream in between each of her words.”
Over the weekend Jakarta and Dakar sat in the living room doing homework and swapping memories. “Do you remember,” Jakarta said, “how we made partners for the frogs when the king of the water babies decided to give a ball?”
“No,” Dakar said. And then: “Yes! Oh, I do remember.” They both started to laugh and
talk at the same time. At first Dakar had been afraid of the calla lilies that looked like gloating mouths with long yellow tongues. But then Jakarta had pulled the pale yellow stamens from the calla lilies and showed Dakar how to dress them in Mom’s petunias. Nothing would ever be as beautiful as the calla lily princesses in their ruffles and ruffles of red, purple, and pink petunia dresses. The brightest petunias were in the enchanted garden, but they’d dared go there only once. How odd to think that she had a baby brother buried in Maji. “Do you remember him?” she asked Jakarta.
“No, not really. He wrapped his hand around my wrist. His hair was kind of reddish like yours.” She hesitated. “Let’s talk about something that isn’t so sad, okay?”
“‘Tusker,’” Dakar said in the low, dramatic voice of the ad. “‘Tusker … my country. My beer.’”
“‘Don’t say bread,’” Jakarta sang.
“‘Say supaloaf,’” Dakar finished. They giggled, tossing memories back and forth like socks.
“Remember the teeth in the road in Nairobi that would bite your car tires?”
“And how weird it felt at first to drive on the left?”
“And going to Amsterdam for vacation?”
“Remember the Rijksmuseum, where we ditched Mom and Dad and spent the day with just the two of us? It was raining.”
Dakar grinned. They’d stopped in front of anything bizarre or gory. “Remember that headless guy in the painting? Remember that in India a raised big toe is a sign of vigor?”
“Remember when you ordered parmaham thinking it was Parmesan cheese and it was ham?”
“Remember making up fake Dutch? Remember der schteppen yen?” Remember? Remember?
“I want to tell the same stories over and over,” Jakarta said later that evening as she brushed out her hair.
The air was strangely warm. Dad said this was Indian summer. “Why the same ones?” Dakar asked. “Can I do your hair?”
Jakarta handed the brush to Dakar. Her hair was wavy and black, and Dakar loved the way it felt. Jakarta had always brushed Dakar’s hair in boarding school. Now she felt good to be taking care of Jakarta. “There’s no way I’m going to forget it all,” Jakarta said in a low voice, tipping her head back. “Telling the details, over and over … that’s the only way I know to keep Africa from disappearing forever.”
It was going to be okay, Dakar thought as she brushed. Jakarta was settling. She herself was perfectly happy to be back to being Jakarta’s shadow.
She hardly noticed when Melanie didn’t come out of her house to follow them Monday morning. Next time Dakar saw her, she was walking with the purple-haired girl in the hall. It was a shock, but Dakar reminded herself that everything was going to be fine. Jakarta was back to take care of her again. If she was careful not to be a wart, maybe pretty soon Jakarta and Dad would even get more used to each other and go back to being the laughing, adventuring pair they had always been, and the three of them would have lots of fun. And maybe Mom would reconnect with her roots and then come home.
That was before basketball changed everything.
TWELVE
It started, as all the other trouble seemed to start these days, at the dinner table. Jakarta said, “Pharo and I were watching old videotapes of Timberwolves games. The Timberwolves make a lot of the other NBA teams look like stodgy old men.”
Dad stared at her without his usual interested, amused expression. Maybe Jakarta had hit a nerve. Not that he was stodgy. Or old. “I actually can’t think of anything more stupid,” Dad said, “than a bunch of grown men running around a court chasing a little ball. The time and money that go into sports in this country are obscene.”
Dakar waggled her eyebrows at Jakarta. Not a bad time to quit?
The old Jakarta would have quit or made a joke. “I saw Garnett make a great basket today.” Jakarta faked a basket in the air. “Maybe if you had seen it, you’d change your mind. They’re so much fun to watch. Vivid. Elegant. Edgy.”
“What a waste.” Dad waved one arm, but it was a helpless gesture.
Dakar had seen the look on his face before. When Dad couldn’t bear injustice or stupidity or the pain of the world being so totally different from the way he just knew it should be, he would get a baffled, wounded-elephant look in his eyes. “Watch out,” Dakar wanted to say. Wounded elephants could charge, and pain made them not care who got hurt. But Jakarta didn’t stop.
“All cultures have games,” Jakarta said. “In Ethiopia and Kenya people sometimes kill each other over them, right? How’s that for taking games seriously? You always said the most important thing is to pay attention, not try to make people over in our own image.”
“How was the library today?” Dakar asked Dad. Her skin felt too tight for her face.
Dad shook his fork at Jakarta, punctuating his words. “People here distract themselves with games,” he said. “They use games to avoid looking at the hard things that matter most. How futile to choose to spend your life throwing a ball through a hoop.”
“You always said love can’t just be a word.” Jakarta was pushing back her chair as she talked. She stood and leaned toward Dad, both hands on the table. “You said you have to be willing to live with people and listen to them and share their lives wherever they are. Well, maybe I want to share basketball players’ lives. Where they are.” She spit out the last three words as if they tasted like mud.
“I don’t think …” Dad said.
But by now Jakarta was nearly out the door. Dad pushed his chair away, too, and headed upstairs. Dakar looked around at the table. It wasn’t even her turn to do the dishes.
The next morning, when she banged on Jakarta’s door, Jakarta yelled, “Go without me.” So Dakar did, feeling hurt and confused. Maybe it was because of the confusion that when she saw Melanie come out of her house, she slowed down and let Melanie catch up. “I thought North Dakota was supposed to be cold,” she said as Melanie ran up, panting and grinning.
“It will be,” Melanie said. “Pretty soon we’ll probably be wearing Russells to school every day. Don’t worry, though. We’ll show you everything. I’m sure you were never cold in Africa.”
Dakar scowled. Someone she thought could be a true friend didn’t know the first thing about Africa. If there really were such a thing as magic, she’d zap Melanie into an Egypt winter or a Maji fog—like walking through cold, wet satin—or, better yet, plop her down shivering in a Nairobi rainstorm with frogs squeezing under the door.
“Some summers are hotter than this one was, too,” Melanie blabbed on. “Sometimes it’s so muggy and hot that you think slugs could swim in your neck sweat. But you and Jakarta will think nothing of that.”
“Don’t be an ignoramus,” Dakar said. Why didn’t anybody understand?
Melanie flushed. “Pardoney moi for existing.”
“Want to learn an African phrase I learned in boarding school?” Dakar asked glumly.
Of course Melanie did. “Repeat after me,” Dakar said. “O-wa.”
“O-wa.”
“Ta-gu.”
“Ta-gu.” Melanie’s voice was full of just the right amount of awe.
“Siam.”
“Siam.”
“Now say it fast,” Dakar said.
Melanie rattled the words off proudly. For a moment there was a bleak silence. Then she said, “You’re mean now that Jakarta came.”
“At least I don’t have purple hair.”
“I can’t believe you said that.” Melanie glared at her. “That’s it. No more chances. You stay away from me, and you stay away from my magic place.”
As soon as Melanie ran off, Dakar felt ashamed. After all, she had to admit she was ignorant, too. She’d had no idea what Russells were.
In school she tried not to notice when she walked by Melanie and the girl with the purple hair. She was invisible. Or they were invisible. “Anyway, big, hairy deal,” she told herself. She had Jakarta now, and she didn’t mind slipping ghostlike through school. That she was us
ed to. “Where were you?” she asked Jakarta at dinner.
“Researching the basketball team,” Jakarta said. “They’ve already started the season. But I might still be able to get in.” She grinned broadly. “The coach told me to come to practice this afternoon so he could take a look. I made about eleven shots in a row. Nobody passed to me—that’s for sure. All of my shots were off rebounds that I had to risk my skin for.”
“Think carefully before you fritter all your time away,” Dad said. His voice sounded preoccupied. “I think you’ll find sports in a North Dakota high school a lot different from in a small international school.”
“When in Rome,” Jakarta said. “Please pass the mushrooms and peas. What do you think, Dakar? Would I make an excellent Lady Wildcat?”
“You know,” Dad said, “I got a call today from one of my friends at the MSF.”
Dakar sat motionless with the dish of mushrooms and peas in midair. Médecins sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders. Dad had worked on MSF teams lots of times before, including in Somalia and in the Sudan.
“He was talking about a terrible earthquake in Guatemala.” Dad’s voice was sorrowful. “The emergency rescue teams have done all they can. Now it’s time to help the survivors.” He shook his head. “What’s taking your mom so long to get back here?”
“I know you want to leave,” Jakarta said bitterly. “Just leave.”
Dad looked at her in surprise. “I do want to leave, of course. The situation’s desperate, and they need every pair of hands. But I won’t leave the two of you alone.”
“Oh, come on,” Jakarta said. “Lots of people my age in East Africa are married at sixteen. It’s not like I haven’t taken care of Dakar before.”
“Maybe I should then,” Dad said.
Dakar couldn’t read his tone. Was he serious?
“Good,” Jakarta said. She pushed her chair back. “I think you should. I’m sure they need you.”
