by Jane Kurtz
She got to know each player’s name. Emily, Shannon, Andrea, Kinsey, and Jakarta were the usual starters. Laura came off the bench, sometimes midway through the first quarter, but immediately if Emily started making wild passes. Jen and Beth came in if the Wildcats were either way ahead or hopelessly behind. A few other players mostly warmed the bench.
“Take that shot,” Coach Svedborg sometimes yelled at Jakarta. Once in a time-out he hollered, “You need to be more selfish. If the shot’s there, take it.”
Dakar didn’t like to hear him yelling at Jakarta. But in the second half Jakarta made twenty points. Dakar waited for her to change and walked her home. “You were supaloaf today,” she said.
“I felt supaloaf.” Jakarta gave her a look of fierce joy. “It feels like every nerve and muscle is tingling when I’m out there.” She paused. “All those memories that stick to me like red Kenya dust … well … when I’m playing, I don’t think of Africa or my friends or anything else except me and the ball and my teammates.”
The next morning Jakarta’s face stared up from the front of the sports page. “She could be an effective post player, she’s our best perimeter player, she can break a press, she’s a fabulous passer,” the coach was quoted as saying. “She just does so many things. And she makes her teammates better because she likes to pass. I actually have to get on her about shooting more.”
Two days later the university television station sent out a crew. That night the team and Dakar all went to Emily’s house to have pizza and watch.
“Near the end of the season the Lady Wildcats are playing with ice in their veins and fire in their bellies,” the reporter began.
“With Jakarta, we have a whole new look,” Emily said into the mike. “She refuses to lose. She doesn’t like to lose at anything. From the first day she practiced with us, she was kicking everybody when we were running sprints.” On the screen Jakarta let loose a long three and it swished in.
Dakar ate her pizza, shyly watching the girls laughing and giving each other high-fives. “Look, Mom,” she wanted to holler. “Look, Dad. Jakarta’s on television.”
The next evening Dakar was surprised to look around and realize that the bleachers were more than half full. The gym quivered with noise every time the girls were bringing the ball down the court. It dropped into silence when a Wildcat was making a free throw. The funniest thing was what happened after Jakarta made her fourth three-point shot. Someone started it up and others took up the chant: “Tarzan. Tarzan. Tarzan.”
Dakar’s invisibility cloak had holes in it now. “Is that Tarzan girl your sister?” kids asked her. Kids she didn’t even know. She tried to give them Donbirra eyes of eggshell calm, even though she often felt just like what the reporter had said about the Lady Wildcat team—either ice or fire or both.
By this time the leaves were mostly off except for some pale lichen green leaves in a little tree in front. While Dakar waited for more leaves to come down, she carried armloads of wood into the house. When the fireplace box was full and she still didn’t have any more leaves to rake, she figured out how to use the vacuum cleaner. At least it made some noise in the house. The next day, when Jakarta had an away game, she walked to the store to read labels and then buy dust spray and glass cleaner for her smudges. Then, rather than spend time in the empty house, she sat in the gym and watched Jakarta practice.
Sometimes Jakarta shot three-point shots, making one after the other, moving steadily around the key. “I want to be able to make it from anywhere,” she told Dakar. Sometimes she practiced jump shots or left-handed layups. Saturday, when almost nobody was in the gym yet, Jakarta stood just inside the free throw line and threw the ball, over and over, to a blond girl standing near the basket. Over and over the girl shot. Neither one of them moved, and the girl never missed.
Dakar began to feel dizzy, as if she were caught in the loop of a movie. The blond girl wasn’t one of the starters. Dakar had never even noticed her sitting on the bench. There was something weird about the way she was standing. But she sure could make baskets from that spot.
When the rest of the team started coming in, Dakar wandered back home to see if there was anything to rake. The leaves from the little tree in the middle were finally coming down, dusting one spot on the lawn with a light green cloak. It didn’t take long to rake them up. Most of the leaves had been picked up by the town’s trucks. Only two neat piles remained. “I’ve made your lawn look so nice,” she told the house. “Won’t you tell me your name?” The house smiled enigmatically.
Dakar walked back to the gym. Two practice teams were scrimmaging. Coach Svedborg ran up and down the court, red-faced, looking as if he thought he could see everything if he could always be right there, close enough. “Lollipop passes,” he shouted. “You’ll just be handing the ball to the other team with passes like that. Gift-wrapped. Here you go, ma’am.”
Dakar wondered how he had enough breath to shout this much and run, too. Emily faked a move to the left, but her defender wasn’t fooled. She flicked at the ball and stole it. Suddenly everyone was thundering down toward the other basket.
The B team point guard took the shot from about the free throw line. The ball wobbled around the rim. Even Dakar could see it was clearly coming off. Jakarta was in there, jostling, elbowing. She was leaping. Hands were everywhere, but somehow, even though she wasn’t the tallest player, it was Jakarta’s hands that were pulling the ball down, tucking it in as she swung her elbows. Then she was dribbling down the court, two steps ahead of everyone.
“Go in!” Coach Svedborg screamed. “Take it on in. Finish it off.”
But Jakarta didn’t. With her nearest defender still two steps away, Jakarta dished the basketball to Emily. Swish. Emily laid the ball in the basket.
“That was sweet,” Jakarta said, grinning. Her hair was coming out of its braids, and sweat flew everywhere as she shook her head. “Really sweet.”
“Not sweet,” Coach bellowed. “We can’t afford to lose another game. Take those shots, Jakarta. Don’t take stupid chances.”
“Right,” Jakarta said. “Next time.” But Dakar saw her grin at Emily as she turned away.
“Aren’t you scared of Coach Svedborg?” Dakar asked when they were eating supper with Pharo.
“No. What’s he going to do to me?”
“That’s right,” Pharo said. “Jakarta is his star girl. What’s he going to do to his star girl, hey?”
“That’s not it,” Jakarta snapped. Pharo laughed. “I’m just trying to build a tight team,” Jakarta said. “Everyone needs a team.”
“He sure sounded mad today,” Dakar said.
Pharo shrugged. “You can’t be the hero if you can’t be the goat.”
“That’s right,” Jakarta said. “Coach Svedborg doesn’t scare me. The only thing that scares me is not getting my English paper done. Not with an away game Friday.”
“She’ll let you turn it in late,” Pharo said.
“I don’t think so,” Jakarta said. “She’s already made one exception for my pathetic self.”
“So. Skip our shoot-around tonight?” Pharo asked.
“Never.” Jakarta whirled on him, and he laughed and held up his arms as if he needed to save himself from attack.
“Who was that girl I saw you practicing with today?” Dakar asked.
Jakarta hesitated. “Sharyn. I’m not even sure why she made the team.”
“Yes, you know, hey?” Pharo said. “Someone felt sorry for her. That’s why they let that girl on to the team. She’s a hard worker, but she was born with something wrong with her foot. She’s never going to play in a game. Never, never, never.”
“She’s got that one excellent shot, though,” Jakarta said. “Too bad she can’t just park under the basket and shoot it. Don’t you ever feel bad about the girls Coach calls the blue-collar players, who show up with their lunch boxes even though they don’t get any glory time? Why shouldn’t I work with her?”
“Keep it friendl
y, baby,” Pharo said. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I’m going out to see if there’s anything more to rake,” Dakar said, even though she knew there wasn’t.
Pharo shook his head. “You’re crazy, too,” he said. “Snow is going to be here and cover those leaves up. Maybe even tonight. I feel it.”
“Snow?” Dakar shook her head in disbelief.
“Right after we shoot around,” Pharo said, “I’m looking at the furnace. Then I’m taking the two of you to a store. Gotta get scarves, gloves, Russell pants. Act like a babe in the woods when it comes to winter, and you could lose a finger.” He waggled his fingers meaningfully at Jakarta.
“Okay, okay,” Jakarta said. “Don’t get in a twist. It’s only October.”
“Yeah,” Dakar said. “Quit trying to scare us. It’s nowhere near winter yet.”
FIFTEEN
“Please. Not snow.” Dakar peered out the window of her room later that evening with her new winter clothes all lying on the bed. Pharo had said the furnace was fine, but what did he actually know about furnaces? What if it coughed a bunch of carbon monoxide into the air and they went to sleep and never woke up? Or what if so much snow came down that they couldn’t get out? What if the snow was up to their second-floor windows and they slowly starved to death? Before she went into Jakarta’s room to sleep, she lit a candle and whispered into the flame, “Come home. Come home. Come home. Come home.” Oops. Too close. That last h blew the candle out.
The next day felt like walking through glue. But every time Dakar glanced out the windows, she didn’t see anything that looked like snow. Ha, she thought when they’d made it safely and snowlessly through the morning and most of the afternoon. She picked up a couple of the yellowish leaves and put them on top of the pile. Pharo wasn’t right. She knew it. But the sky was a strange, soft gray, and the dark arms of the trees looked bleak and bare against it. Could winter possibly come this soon?
She tried to imagine what it would be like to see snowflakes floating down. What did snow actually and truly feel like when you touched it? Besides cold? She was pretty sure it was Egypt where Mom first read that snow poem out loud, because Dakar had a blurred memory of looking out the window at a yellow-and-beige world, imagining palm trees reaching up to catch handfuls of snow. She and Jakarta had pestered Mom with question after question. Did snow really clump on branches and pile so high that you had to dig a path to get through it? What was it like to float down a hill on a sled, your fingers tingling in your mittens?
In Maji they’d begged Mom to read the poem every night for a while. Finally, when the workers were cutting the grass on the hill behind the house, squatting to slide their hand scythes through handful after handful, leaving the grass lying in clumps to dry, she and Jakarta had come up with a snow poem plan. It wasn’t easy finding the cardboard, but somehow Jakarta had managed. For hours, they polished the pieces with handfuls of dried grass. Then they built grass paths down the hill. They spent one glorious day climbing the hill and sliding down on their cardboard sleds, over and over, until Jakarta decided to try a piece of tin, instead of the cardboard, and gashed her arm open. That put an end to the snow game, but for that one day, every time Dakar swooshed down the hill, she wondered if this was anything like snow. Now she was going to find out.
Could you run in snow? Toss it like confetti? Giddy with questions, Dakar leaped into the pile of leaves, laughing and throwing the leaves. Suddenly she stopped. No. Wait. If snow came down like confetti, it would cover up the lawn. Had she done all that work for nothing?
“Waaaaait,” she hollered up at the sky, feeling foolish.
But the sky didn’t wait. When Dakar woke up and looked out the window the next morning, she knew that Pharo had been right. Winter was dancing its way into town like a juggler pulling silk scarves from the sky, and the leaves would be covered with snow before Mom ever had a chance to see how tidy and safe she had made everything look.
She walked glumly downstairs and poured milk onto cereal, watching it splash over the cereal the way the snow would cover her leaves while she was in school. What was Mom doing right this minute? What about Dad? Was Dad missing them? Was he missing Mom? Probably he was working, too, and saving too many lives to think about missing anything at all. He was Donbirra’s father in reverse. He loved his daughters, but he loved his work even more.
“Doesn’t it bother you that Dad gets caught up in trying to save the world and forgets about us?” she asked Jakarta. Out the window she could see that the snow was now thick as a Maji fog. Good thing Pharo had made them get all that winter stuff.
“Not really. I think my real dad was the same way.”
Dakar was shocked. Jakarta had never said those words before. Real. Dad. “Did Mom ever tell you more about him?” she asked cautiously. She wondered if Jakarta ever thought about the letter waiting for her when she turned eighteen.
“Not much. She said my real dad and Dad saw an accident when they were going out to look at some temple ruins. They turned around and were going back to help when another car hit them. My real dad was on the side of the car that got hit, and he died instantly.”
Dakar stirred her cereal bleakly. Mushy. What if Dad had gotten killed, too? One thing she did not miss in Kenya was the driving: people slamming around, darting or blundering their way in and out, and saying enshallah, meaning that if God wanted them to die, they would die, and if God wanted them to live, they would live, so why bother to look before pulling out into a busy street? Addis Ababa was bad, too, but cars went faster in Nairobi, and there were more terrible accidents.
Probably Guatemala was another country of bad traffic, and maybe that was just the least of Dad’s dangers. What if an unstable building toppled over and squashed him? What if deadly cholera started sweeping through the camps? Or some other loathsome disease from too many people and too little clean water and food?
She just had to think of something else to try. Jama was just a runt whose two older brothers called him things like son of a hyena, but he had saved Donbirra from the crocodile. She couldn’t quit trying to get the family back together, no matter how many hoodies or how much snow tried to stop her.
All the way to school Dakar felt cold and wet. Snow kept creeping down the back of her neck, and she couldn’t figure out how to use the scarf to keep it out. The wind had painted a skunk stripe of white on all the trees, and now it blew refrigerator air against her cheeks. When they got near Melanie’s house, she stared at Melanie’s windows. Three lights were on, and the house looked cozy and charmed. She looked closely for any movement, a shadow. Nothing.
With every step, her leg brushed against the cold denim of her jeans and made her shiver. Homesickness for East Africa trickled through her like a slow, sweet ache. “Don’t forget the Nairobi eye fly,” she told herself firmly. If you brushed at it and accidentally squashed it on your skin, it left ulcers. “Don’t forget ugly Nairobi frogs.” Last year, after the huge October rains, Yusef told them to be sure to block up the kitchen door against frogs. Sure enough, within a half hour, three big ones were squeezing their slimy swamp bodies under the door, and these weren’t sweet Maji frogs, either, but sewer frogs. Mom got five out of the pantry. Jakarta counted fifty in the back entryway. All fifty of those frogs would have been in the house if she and Jakarta and Mom hadn’t been home to stuff plastic bags in the crack under the door. Yes, every place had its bad-weather agonies.
That morning one of the announcements over the intercom was about how the Lady Wildcats were about to qualify for regionals. Dakar pretended to hunt for something in her desk. “Look for the schedule on the board inside the high school door,” the high school assistant principal said. “It’s time to get out and support those roaring Lady Wildcats.”
“Tell your sister good luck,” Ms. Olson said.
Dakar blushed. Kids were looking. But for once their eyes didn’t say ferenji, mzungu, khawaaga. She gave the class a shy smile back, holding the moment in her mind, s
weet and bitter as pomegranate seeds.
When the end-of-class bell rang, she rushed out, still feeling flustered, and almost ran smack into Melanie, who wasn’t looking where she was going because she was talking to two girls. One was Ms. Purple Hair. How long would it take for Melanie to have purple streaks in her own silvery white hair? Melaniethefollower. Off to follow someone else.
“Whoa—kid-hey,” Purple Hair said. “You’re Jakarta’s sister, right?”
Dakar’s eyes flickered to Melanie. But Melanie didn’t say a word.
“Yeah,” Dakar said. “That’s right.”
She felt ready to fight. Or ready to run. But all the girl said was, “We were just talking about how she’s going to take the girls’ basketball team to state. I don’t think they’ll win state, but wouldn’t it be cool if they could? We’ve never had a girls’ basketball team that even got to regionals.”
“My cousin says they’re definitely going to state,” Melanie said.
Dakar looked at Melanie with a sudden longing. Maybe Melanie would say something about having gotten to meet Jakarta.
“I can’t wait to see them play Bear Lake,” the third girl said. “Bear Lake beats us in everything.”
“Me, too,” Melanie said. “But you know what? My cousin said the mongo important thing is that Jakarta is going to set the girls’ school record for the most points in a regular season, and she didn’t even play the whole season. She’ll have her name on the wall with all the other Wildcat heroes, and the record will stay on the books for a long, long time. Maybe forever.”
