by Jane Kurtz
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure your mom will be back soon.”
Jakarta got to her feet. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe she doesn’t want to come back?”
“No, it never did.” His voice was firm and impatient. “And it doesn’t now.”
Dakar sat looking at the mushrooms and peas in her hand as once again Jakarta headed for the door. She finished her meal in silence and then wandered outside. She thought she knew where Jakarta had probably gone. As she got close to the park, she could see Jakarta on one of the basketball courts, practicing her moves on Pharo. Most of the time Jakarta didn’t get past him, but every once in a while she could. Then she would crow and flap her arms. Dakar leaned into the fence and watched them facing each other, panting and glinty-eyed.
“Stay friendly, baby,” Pharo said. “Come on.”
Jakarta looked anything but friendly.
“Come on.” Pharo wiggled his fingers at her. “Think you can get past me?”
Jakarta swayed lightly. A little right. A little left. Suddenly she moved, and he was right with her like a mirror, except that she wasn’t going that direction after all, now that he was committed, and before Dakar could even figure out exactly what had happened, Jakarta was free and driving toward the basket, and the few spectators, standing around and half watching, were hooting joyously—“slippery as a soapy baby!” yelled one—and Dakar was laughing, without even meaning to, and imagining that it was she who was feeling that fine, shimmering tightness when every muscle is singing. She hadn’t even known Jakarta could play basketball like this.
“Sloppy,” Pharo said. But he was grinning. “You better take a break and work on dribbling with that left hand, hey? A three-year-old could take it away from you on the left side.” As they walked by Dakar, he said, “My mom says, where have you been?”
Dakar walked home hearing the bounce of the basketball behind her.
Late that evening, after she finished her homework, she stuck her head into Jakarta’s room and said, “Actually Coach Svedborg is going to kiss your feet.”
“Think so?” Jakarta looked up eagerly. She patted her bed. “Come tell me all about him.”
Dakar caught her breath. Mom and Jakarta could be so much alike sometimes. “I don’t know that much. Melanie said a few girls complain because he yells. But most of them worship him. They know he’s yelling because he wants a winning basketball team for once.” She felt sad remembering Melanie that day. Melanie saying, “You know what my cousin said? He said, ‘What do those players expect? They’re supposed to be wildcats, not tabby cats.’”
“So Coach Svedborg is a tough cookie?”
“I guess so.” Dakar suddenly felt elated. If Jakarta got involved in basketball, she would surely stay. And what would Melanie think if Dakar were the sister of a Lady Wildcat?
Later she was almost asleep when Jakarta poked her head into her room. “Wish me luck,” Jakarta said. “I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll go meet my nemesis.” Jakarta grinned recklessly. “Think my nemesis will be prepared for the ordeal of meeting me?”
That night Dakar fell asleep to the lullaby of the thump, thump sound of Jakarta jumping rope. It wasn’t “Barbry Allen.” But it was still comforting.
In her dreams that night, False Dimitri was running after Catherine the Great, swinging a sword and screaming. Catherine hollered, “Stay friendly, baby.”
In the morning Dakar woke up sweating and coughing. The first thing she did was make sure Dad was still there. “Going to the library again?” she asked him.
“Not today.” He sounded distracted, but he smiled at her. “I’m driving into Minnesota to talk to some people about relief supplies for Guatemala.”
“Oh.” She was trying to think of something else to say, something useful and maybe even grand, when Jakarta clattered down the stairs.
“Come on,” Jakarta said. “Hustle up, sweet one.” So Dakar did.
With so little sleep, she was dragging herself through P.E. class when the school secretary called her out to tell her that she had a phone call. “Family emergency,” the secretary said.
Dakar felt as though her feet had been swept out from under her and she’d landed flat on the mat. Mom? Or maybe Dad had gone into a hospital to consult about someone who was sick. Maybe he caught a virus that swept through the hospital so fast no one could stop it before everyone had collapsed in twitching heaps on the floor. She shuffle-ran most of the way to the office, glancing down all the halls to see if anyone mouthy was around to see her in her gym shorts.
“Dakar?” It was Jakarta.
“What’s wrong?” It had to be something awful if Mom or Dad couldn’t even talk to her themselves.
“I made it!” Jakarta said. “Coach just told me he’s letting me on the basketball team.”
“Jakarta!” Dakar put both hands on the phone and shook it hard. “Did you hear that? I just shook the phone. I wish it was your neck.”
Jakarta laughed. “Sorry. Did I scare you? I had to tell them it was an emergency because otherwise they wouldn’t get you out of class. And it is an emergency, don’t you think? I not only made the team—I’m a starter.”
Dakar glanced around. The secretary was talking to someone, but you never knew what secretaries could hear. “Hey, I’ve gotta go,” she whispered. “I’m in the middle of P.E.”
“One more thing,” Jakarta said.
“All right, but hurry—because I have to get out of these stupid gym shorts before someone sees me.”
“The rest of the team was all standing in the gym when I walked in,” Jakarta said. “And … they clapped. They clapped for me.” Her voice was suddenly soaked with emotion. “They could have hated me for pushing my way in, but they didn’t. It’s so supaloaf to be part of a team again.”
After school Dakar raced all the way home. She was checking Dad’s closets, burrowing her nose into the incense smell, when she heard him drive up. She ran downstairs to hug him, squeezing his chest and strong arms as if she could hold him there.
The next few weeks blurred by. Every morning Dakar checked first for Dad. Every evening she hugged him. He hugged her back, but he looked sad and faraway. Most mornings, he got up early and drove to one or the other of the university libraries. He didn’t sing anymore. His restlessness seemed to fill the house and spill out the edges.
“Shouldn’t we start raking the leaves?” Dakar asked him. “They’re almost covering the lawn.”
He shook his head. “Let them rot and go into the soil and provide humus.”
Dakar blinked, remembering the glossy grass under her fingers. Remembering Mom. “So leaves on the lawn are like wild hedges?”
At least that made him laugh. Then he tapped his fingers on the table for a few minutes and stared out the window. Finally he said, “When I was in college, I stayed with a family in Guatemala for a few weeks, and the father loved to sweep the yard. By the time he was done, there wasn’t even one leaf. He would talk to me as he worked, while his small son dodged around our legs, giggling and pretending to play soccer. He said his people have been suffering since the conquistadores rode up three hundred years ago.”
Dakar tried to think of something to say, but her mind felt as smooth and blank as the window glass.
Every time Mom called, she said Aunt Lily was doing a little bit better. Then she always went on to talk about harvest or something. One time she said, “Aunt Lily has been telling me stories about when she and Mother were little girls and would run two miles to confirmation class, where they loved to eat the peanut butter and syrup sandwiches for supper.” Another time she said, “Aunt Lily and I have been looking through all of Mother’s things.” She never said anything about coming home.
Jakarta was no help. All she could think about was basketball—how to improve her game and whether she had her footwork right. Maybe, Dakar finally decided, the cook would know what to tell her about the feeling that something big was crouched just inside the front door, wa
iting to gulp her down the minute she forgot to be scared.
The next morning she and Jakarta had gotten almost all the way to school when she realized that for the first time she hadn’t even looked at Melanie’s house. That was good. “I’m over her,” Dakar said out loud as she trotted down the stairs and toward the kitchen.
Schiiick. Schiick.
She stopped. A strange woman was standing at the counter chopping tomatoes. “Where’s the cook?”
“I’m the cook.”
Dakar looked around anxiously. Nobody moved a knife the way her cook could. “But where’s the real cook?”
She hated the way the woman chuckled. “You mean Ms. Plummer? Gone home. First time off she ever took since she started working for the district, she told me.”
“Did she leave a message for anyone she called Africa child?”
“No,” the woman said. “No message.”
In English class Dakar rippled the pages of her book helplessly, staring at her desk while Ms. Olson explained, for the zillionth time, what a preposition was. Even when the whole class started complaining that it was too hard and stupid to tell when “to” was a preposition and when it wasn’t, Dakar didn’t look up. No one looked at Dakar, either. Wildebeests. Good thing she had an invisibility cloak.
After school she went for a walk. Everywhere she looked, leaves were chittering along the sidewalk, brushing against one another and piling in little heaps. Darkness came so early these days that Dakar was shivering in her sweater by the time she got home. Jakarta was lying on the couch tossing the basketball straight up in the air and catching it. “Pharo’s coming for supper,” she said. “I told him …” Her voice stumbled a second and then caught itself. “I told him to eat with us while his mom is gone because our mom and dad are gone, too.”
Dakar stiffened. “Dad did it? He really went?” She wanted to howl. “When will he be back?”
Jakarta caught the basketball and held it still. “I’m sorry, Dakar. He and I got in another big argument, and he said he’d been thinking about things and realized … realized I was right. He said you and I were very resourceful, more resourceful than spoiled kids in the United States.”
Dakar coughed. Her throat was filling up with sadness, but she refused to cry. “When is he going to come back?”
Jakarta pulled her down on the couch and gave her a hug. “Probably pretty soon. But you know how Dad is when he’s helping with a humanitarian crisis. He gets completely involved, right? He loses track of everything, including—may I point out—time and his family.” She frowned. “At least he had the decency not to write to Mom, because of course, she’d feel like she should sacrifice her time with Great-Aunt Lily.”
Dakar tried to think exactly where Guatemala was. It couldn’t be that far from North Dakota, could it?
“He gave me a credit card to use so we can buy things.” Jakarta pulled it out of her pocket and waved it like a fan in front of her face. “Anyway, as I said, Pharo is going to eat with us tonight. Then he and I can practice basketball after supper.”
“Where is Pharo’s mom, anyhow?”
“Visiting her family. See, people do that. Don’t be such a worrymeister.”
Dakar sighed. She wanted to ask what Dad had said exactly and whether he’d given Jakarta any messages specifically for her. In fact, she wanted to wail like a little kid and kick the stupid universe in the knee for making the cook and Dad disappear on the same day. How unfair was that? “Ayezosh,” she told herself. Maybe this was her chance to show Jakarta how brave she could be. Dad and Mom would both come back soon, wouldn’t they? “How did basketball go?” she asked. If Jakarta saw that Dakar wasn’t such a wart anymore, she would probably want to stay, too, and they’d all be together at last.
Jakarta grinned. “We lost today but we are on the edge of being so good. Coach moved me to point guard. It’s going to make a world o’ difference.”
Dakar smiled back, caught in the glow. What a buff Jakarta was. She and Jakarta were resourceful, and, anyway, they’d been almost on their own in boarding school, hadn’t they? “What do you think of him?”
“Coach? He kinda reminds me of Dad, which is ironic. Pretty intense around the eyes. Here.” She jumped up and tossed the basketball to Dakar. “Now throw it back. You be the guard.”
It felt good to have something to do. Dakar waved her arms and bounced wildly on the balls of her feet, determined to stop Jakarta. Up on her toes. Watch … watch … but Jakarta faked and was around her in an instant. Dakar slammed her fist against her thigh in frustration.
“Watch my stomach, not my eyes,” Jakarta said, grinning at her. “Stomachs don’t lie.”
“Maybe I could help you like I did with soccer,” Dakar said. It would make time go by, anyway.
“Sure.” Jakarta hesitated. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a barracuda and maybe drove Dad off or something.”
Dakar wanted to say something mean, something angry. But how would that help anything? “It’s okay,” she said sadly. “He probably would have gone, anyway.”
“No, it isn’t okay.” Jakarta sat down, dribbling with her left hand. “We’re supposed to take turns making supper. I’ll just do it for a while, though, if you want.”
Dakar nodded. Jakarta kept dribbling. She was getting pretty good with her left hand. It was going to be some kind of miracle in reverse if Jakarta didn’t get that team on a roll.
“By the way,” Jakarta said, “I don’t think you should tell anyone that Mom and Dad are gone. Not anyone, okay? I have no idea what the laws are like here, but I’d hate to wake up one morning and have us in a foster home or something.”
Dakar imagined she could hear moth wings brushing against the kitchen window. She wished she could ask Jakarta what exactly was going to happen to them. She wished she could ask about that day when she’d been so sure she heard Jakarta’s voice. But how would she even start?
FROM DAKAR’S BOOK OF LISTS AND THOUGHTS
Some things we need to learn how to do that we’ve never (or hardly ever) done
1. Cook suppers.
2. Wash clothes.
3. Buy groceries.
4. Vacuum.
5. Clean windows and stuff.
I wonder what I’m forgetting. How ironic that Jakarta’s here now and they’re gone. Here’s a horrible thought. What if my quest brought Jakarta back but somehow, without knowing it, I made some terrible bargain with the universe? I think the saddest story in the whole Bible is the one about Jephthah. He told God that if he won a great battle, whatever he first saw when he came to his house would be a sacrifice. And behold, his only daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dance. He tore his clothes and said to his daughter, Alas. You have brought me very low. As much as I love you, I cannot take back my vow. Every year after that the daughters of Israel went out for four days to lament the daughter of Jephthah.
Did I do something that brought Jakarta back but sent Mom and Dad away?
THIRTEEN
Nighttimes were going to be the worst. “Be sensible,” Dakar wrote in her lists and thoughts book, gripping the pen tightly to keep her fingers from shaking. “What’s going to get you here? A lion? A deadly mamba snake? If a person was going to break into the house, what good would Mom and Dad have been, anyway?” She promised herself she wouldn’t tell Jakarta what a worrywart she was being.
The next afternoon she had to walk home by herself because Jakarta had practice. When she stepped into the house, a swoosh of silence met her. “Dad?” she said out loud. But of course, he didn’t answer. She always worried so much about Dad when he was gone.
“Foo on you,” she told his face in the picture that hung by the table. “We’ll have fun without you.” She rooted around in the cupboard until she found a cupcake mix.
Okay. Just follow the directions. How hard could it be? Later, when they were eating supper, she told herself it had been fun, even if she had only made macaroni and cheese from a box with the cupcakes
for celebration. It was fun doing homework in the living room while Jakarta typed e-mail messages to her Nairobi friends.
“E-mail message from Dad,” Jakarta said.
“Where?” Dakar jumped up. “Let me see.”
“It just says he’s there and fine,” Jakarta said. “Exhausted. Kinda sad. There’s an e-mail address where someone can get him if we have an emergency. He loves us.”
Looking over Jakarta’s shoulder, Dakar read it for herself. Jakarta was right. That was exactly what it said. Even though Dad said he’d be out in the camps and not near a computer, Dakar made Jakarta type an e-mail message right away saying that they loved him, too. She felt guilty for saying foo to him. For being mad.
The closer it got to bedtime, the more Dakar found herself stalling. “Did you like the family you were staying with in Kenya?” she asked when she’d finished the rewrite of her paper on Roman battle strategies and there was absolutely no reason not to go upstairs.
Jakarta was stretched out on the floor, rolling the basketball with one hand and balancing her history book on her chest with the other. “Sure,” she said. “Malika was my best friend at school, anyway.”
Dakar forced a smile. A pure-hearted person wouldn’t feel jealous when Jakarta said things like that.
Jakarta sat up and tossed her history book into the wastebasket. “Two points!” She laughed. “A couple of days after school started, Malika came running downstairs to say there was a snake in her computer.” Jakarta started to laugh harder, so that for a minute she had trouble telling the story. She and Malika had gotten a bag and stick and chased the snake around the room until they got it into the bag. Then they managed to pour the snake into a jar. “It didn’t really want to go,” Jakarta explained, “but we shook the bag, trying to make sure the unzipped part stayed over the opening of the jar, and finally the snake dropped in. We thought it was the little black house snake her brother had brought home over vacation that had managed to escape, but Mr. Jenotte pounded it into us last year that you should always assume a snake is poisonous until you know for sure, so we were careful with it. Guess what?”
