by Jane Kurtz
Dad stood up.
“Terrifying and wonderful,” Dakar said to herself. It sounded like a good thing to hang on to. She hoped she could remember it long enough to write it down.
She was getting up to go upstairs and find her lists and thoughts book when Aunt Lily reached over and grabbed her hand and pressed it to her own heart for a moment.
“Can you feel the happiness pumping?” Aunt Lily asked. “I thought you would stay in Africa forever and I’d never get to meet you. I thought I would never see any of my family again.”
FROM DAKAR’S BOOK OF LISTS AND THOUGHTS
I sat with Aunt Lily tonight while Mom and Dad went to get groceries. I asked her to tell me the story of the Great Cadona. She said exactly what Mom already had told me.
Do you believe in magic? I asked her. She told me you can’t travel with a circus and not see a good many astounding things. Most are frauds. Some aren’t.
But do you believe we can change the way things are going to turn out? I asked. She said, Of course we can. Courage changes things, doesn’t it? Kindness changes things. She said, Don’t you think practicing courage and kindness and things like that sends little magic slivers into the world?
But if the Great Cadona was watching over Great-Uncle Otis, I said, why did he fall? I was afraid I’d gone too far. But she didn’t seem to mind. Yes, there’s that, she said. That and the fact that we all die of something sooner or later.
She told me about casting. Casting is the invisible demon of the circus tent, she said. In one part of an instant the mind just seems to let go. And then you can’t hold on any longer. One time six people fell in the same month after years of no accidents.
Then how can people say Trust God? I asked her. Trust the universe?
Well, she said, they say the universe is at least a hundred million years old, and I’m sure it has more tricks and riddles up its sleeves than I’ll understand. But Otis trusted, and I had to trust, or I would have lived my whole life with Otis in a cloud of fear.
Besides, she said, what if I hadn’t trusted? Otis would still have fallen. Rose would still have died of cancer. Iris would still have flown away and crashed. But I would have been busy fretting and missed all the lovely moments.
Because life is wonderful? I said.
That’s right, she said. Terrifying and wonderful.
NINETEEN
Thursday night Mom and Aunt Lily sat with their cups of coffee, their heads bent over a crossword puzzle. “Isn’t burgundy a wine color?” Aunt Lily asked.
“Bordeaux is, too,” Mom said. “And it has the same number of letters.”
Dakar looked around, wishing she could hang on to this moment. Jakarta was doing homework. Only Dad was pacing, looking howlingly restless.
As if Mom had read Dakar’s mind, she suddenly said, “I don’t think winter’s so bad. After all, we have central heat and fluffy things to wear when we’re outside.” She told Aunt Lily, “In Egypt the apartment wasn’t heated. I never got warm except when I was taking hot baths.”
Dakar nodded. She could remember sleeping with her head under the covers and trying to tuck them in all around so no air could get in.
“Remember the sky?” Dad asked somberly. “It was dark gray all the time. Just like here this week. Anyone would have to be crazy to want to live through a North Dakota winter.”
“It won’t be this gray often,” Aunt Lily said. “They say the clouds keep the temperature up.”
Dad leaned over and laid another log on the fire. “So I can be cheerful and freezing or warm and depressed?” He looked up, dusting off his hands, and caught Dakar watching him. “What?”
“You want to go back to Kenya, don’t you?”
Dad stepped toward the table. In the firelight his reddish beard looked a little like a burning bush. “Well, I’m trying,” he said impatiently. “But all this gray. I feel as if I’m staring upward from the bottom of a deep river.” His voice got even more impatient. “In the middle of the sweaty action—digging latrines or whatever—you’re exhausted, sometimes scared, but you’re not fretting about some trivial thing. The minute you go home, the hardship is gone, but so are the friendships and the feelings that you’re doing something powerful.”
Mom sighed. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you? You’re thinking that we promised never to say no to an adventure. I—” She choked and looked down.
The room was quiet except for a log hissing in the fireplace.
Then Aunt Lily patted Dad’s hand. “Sometimes some people need to be in a garden for a while,” she said. “A nice, sheltered, sunny spot out of the wind. Sometimes, instead of soaring, they need to put down roots and be carrots.”
“I suppose,” Dad said doubtfully. “What do you think we should do, Dakar?”
Dakar swallowed and glanced away, so she wouldn’t see the expression in his eyes. I cannot choose, I cannot choose. Why did it have to be that no matter where she lived, she was always going to be missing something or someone?
Mom was still staring at her knees, and Dakar wanted to run over and hug her. When Mom looked up, though, it was Aunt Lily she looked at. Maybe Mom needs mothering, too, Jakarta had said. But what about the jacaranda trees? What about hearing lovely African words again? But—but …
“I think we should stay,” Dakar said.
“Jakarta?”
Jakarta looked up. Dakar’s stomach clenched and unclenched like a fist. I cannot choose.
“I don’t know,” Jakarta said. From the sound of her voice anyone would have guessed they were discussing the price of turnips. She seemed to be the only calm one in the room. As everyone looked at her, she slowly put down her pen and snapped her book shut. “Let me think about it. I’m going to bed now. We play the Storm on Monday, and they’re famous for pounding guards. I’m getting plenty of rest between now and then.”
“That’s right,” Dad said. “The record.”
“It isn’t about individual honors. It’s about getting to state. We’re going in there as a team.” Jakarta shot Dad a defiant look as she went out.
The next day it was a relief to get to school. At lunch Dakar told stories about her favorite places to eat in Nairobi: the Indian restaurant where they ate tandoori chicken washed down with “a Stoney,” the restaurant where you could order ostrich egg omelets, and the Village Market, which really wasn’t a market at all, Dakar explained, but a mall with trendy little shops, where Mom let Dakar and Jakarta buy their own suppers on busy evenings.
They’d researched the best combinations: an order of nuggets, shared, for 140 shillings and two orders of onion rings (30 shillings each) from Southern Fried Chicken. Chips—“what you’d call french fries”—from Hot ’n Not. For their last 110 shillings, they would get something to drink and candy floss from Slush. If they were celebrating something special or feeling rich, they’d have an extra dessert at Arlecchino Italian Ice Cream, not just cioccolato, vaniglia, or granita de fragola—strawberry—but crema alluovo with a rich eggnog taste, or tart, tangy mango, guava, pineapple, or passion fruit. Every Friday, Village Market had a big Maasai open-air market where you could bargain for thousands of things piled out on straw mats: drums, Samburu beads, little carved half hippos, Kamba three-legged stools—
Andrea interrupted. “For cool,” she said. “I thought the coolest thing about you was that you were Jakarta’s sister. But now I see you’re cool for yourself. Too bad I can’t listen to you all day and not go to class.”
“Really?” Dakar blushed. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Oh.” Andrea tugged thoughtfully at a blond wisp of hair that stuck out from the purple at the nape of her neck. “We thought you didn’t like us.”
After school Melanie groaned and rolled her eyes when Dakar told her what Dad had asked. Then she twisted the bottom of her shirt into a knot, staring off into space. “If Jakarta gets the record, don’t you think she’ll want to stay?” she said finally.
“I think so. I h
eard someone say that by next year she’ll probably set a new state record. Don’t you think she’ll wanna start working toward that?”
Melanie chewed a fingernail. “Probably. And then your dad will stay, too?”
“That’s the feeling I got last night.”
“You know what this calls for, don’t you?” Melanie whispered.
“What?” Dakar looked at Melanie, puzzled.
Suddenly they both said together, “The magic place.”
They ran all the way there. Dakar couldn’t get her breath because she couldn’t stop laughing. But they didn’t stop running when they got to the magic place. They ran in circles in the melting snow, shouting, “Monkey toe, camel bones, petals of lotus, three. Elephant tusk. Hair of dog. Bark of sycamore tree. Wing of eel. Tooth of snail. Golden lion’s mane. Giraffe’s eyelash. Murmur of bat. Three silver birds flying home in the rain.”
Dakar’s head felt light and zingy. This kind of magic making was fun.
“I just have this feeling that everything’s going to work out,” Melanie said.
Dakar hugged her. True friendship must be another one of those things that sent magic slivers into the world. “Me, too,” she said.
Nothing could shake her feeling. Jakarta spent almost the entire weekend in the gym. Sunday afternoon Mom drove Aunt Lily and Dakar over to the school so they could watch Jakarta practice. “You’ve got to see how many threes she can make when no one’s guarding her,” Dakar told them.
On Monday morning Dakar visited the wall o’ jocks, just for good luck. “Don’t feel bad,” she felt like saying to Promise Johnson. “Your record stood for ten years. They’ll probably keep your name up there somewhere.”
“It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay,” she found herself whispering all through the day.
Monday night she offered to do the dishes to make the time go faster. When she was finished, she did a little two-step into the living room, feeling a jittery exhilaration, exactly as if she were the one who was headed for glory. “Hey,” she said, “I think it’s time. We should go.”
Dad was cleaning ashes out of the fireplace. He sat back on his heels. “So early?”
Aunt Lily put her pen down with a flourish. “Last game of the season. The gym will be jam-packed. Dakar, will you get my cane from the hallway?”
“Coming?” Mom asked Dad, almost casually.
“I’m tempted.” He smiled. “But I think I’ll say no. I’d rather encourage mending and building in my children than crushing and winning.”
“Your daughter is quite a girl,” Aunt Lily said. “Was she always athletic?”
“Always,” Dad said. “When we couldn’t find her in Maji, we’d look in the schoolyard and she’d be kicking the soccer ball around with the older schoolboys.”
“She certainly is a natural at basketball, like my mother,” Aunt Lily said.
“The thing that stands out most in my memory,” Mom said, “is that if she ever got a challenge in front of her, she went after it tooth and nail. I suppose it’s genetic. Naneh, Jakarta’s birth mother, was determined to get out of her own sheltered upbringing. She talked her parents into letting her be an aide in the school because the headmaster was a friend of the family.”
“Yes,” Dad said dryly. “Naneh came to Indonesia because she wanted to do something for people and not simply be a pampered Persian princess. Her daughter just wants to play basketball.”
Mom ignored him. “She once told me a story about her father’s mother. Apparently Naneh’s grandmother was from a wealthy but a village family, and after her son married into a sophisticated city family, he commanded his mother to learn to read so she wouldn’t appear so provincial. One day he visited her, and she told him, ‘Son, you commanded me to go to school. I didn’t want to, but I did your bidding, and I have learned to read. Now, my son, I must tell you that if you command me to quit my school, I will not.’”
Good, Dakar thought. Jakarta had Strong Woman Genes from at least her great-grandmother on. She’d need them tonight. Everyone said the Storm was a tough, gritty team.
Dad stood up and walked over to the table. “Jakarta has a brilliant mind, too.” His voice sounded frustrated and a little sad. “I always thought she’d find a way to wipe out malaria or something. Did you know that somewhere in the world a child dies of malaria every twelve seconds?”
Aunt Lily motioned to Dad, who helped her push back her chair. “I know what you mean,” she said. “After Otis was killed, Iris said to me, ‘Wouldn’t you feel better if he had at least died doing something useful?’ And I remembered the time Otis once told me that when he went to meet his Maker, his only hope would be to say he’d been an artist, creating sculptures in the air.”
Dakar had a sudden image of what Great-Uncle Otis must have looked like, turning quadruple somersaults, making air sculptures with his tightly tucked knees.
“On the other hand,” Aunt Lily said, using Dad’s arm to help her stand up, “in confirmation class in a little Lutheran church long ago, on an evening when we had lefse with gooseberry sauce, the pastor had Iris and me memorize what one of the Church Fathers wrote: ‘The glory of God is man fully alive.’”
“We’d better go,” Mom said. She sounded edgy. “Or we won’t get any seats at all.”
Suddenly Aunt Lily’s finger was on Dad’s chest like a pin popping a balloon. “Jakarta might not be saving any lives or changing the world,” she said. “But when she plays, she creates something beautiful.”
In the stunned silence Dakar could tell from their expressions they both wanted to say more. Neither one did.
Finally Aunt Lily reached for her cane. “Merciful heavens,” she said crisply, “let’s not be late to see Jakarta set the school record.”
They were almost out the door before Dad was there, pulling on his coat. “You’re right,” he said. Aunt Lily gave him a sharp look, and he laughed. “If we wait any longer,” he said, putting his arm around her, “we might not get a seat.”
TWENTY
The gym was rocking with noise by the time they got there. Dakar stepped through the door and stared up at the packed seats. The back-flipping cheerleader was doing her flips down the length of the gym. The high school band was playing. Some kids had painted their faces maroon-and-gray and were standing at the edge of the court with their arms around one another, shouting and doing high kicks. Dakar spotted Andrea’s purple hair. If Mom and Dad weren’t here, Dakar would be with the others, locked in the middle of a human chain. Her heart felt as big as all Africa.
“Where should we sit?” Mom was shouting.
“I don’t know.” Dakar looked helplessly around. They should have left even earlier. The gym was already so full. And Aunt Lily shouldn’t be climbing too many steps.
“Hey!” It was Pharo, standing up, waving. “Seats over here.”
Dad started in that direction, and Dakar let Aunt Lily and Mom go next. She wanted to sit at the end where she could go outside for a few minutes if it got too tense. They’d almost reached Pharo when she realized his mother was sitting beside him in a bright red coat, waving a little maroon-and-gray flag.
“Are you having a hallelujah moment?” Dakar called to her.
“I am,” she called back. “Your sister has this whole town cheering together for something. And that’s a hallelujah thing.”
Dakar loved watching Pharo introduce Mom and Dad and Aunt Lily to his mother. “You have lived in Africa,” the cook said, shaking her head. “Now there is a firmament that’s full of the glory of God.”
“Yes, these three have been out changing the world,” Aunt Lily said loudly, settling beside her. “But sometimes people get weary.”
“Doesn’t the Good Book say not to be weary of well-doing?” the cook asked tartly.
“It does,” Aunt Lily said, just as tartly. “But another wise writer says those who make up their minds to go and see the world must needs find it a weary journey. Some of us are going to do crossword puzzles and make
quilts and soup, and when spring comes, we need someone to show us how to plant a garden in this soil.”
The cook settled back and nodded. “I’ll help you put in the peas and beans if you folks will tell me all about Africa while we hoe.”
Cartwheels of sound suddenly rippled along the crowd, and people started leaping to their feet. The basketball team must be coming in. Dakar thought, as she jumped up, that Aunt Lily and the cook would be perfect friends. She could imagine the two of them—no, all five of them—Mom, Aunt Lily, Jakarta, the cook, and Dakar, standing in a tight, warm circle, planting beans. What about Dad? She sneaked a look at him, and he smiled and crossed his eyes at her.
The roar in the gym was dizzying. Dakar listened to the announcer’s voice booming above it, and then the band started in on the school song. When the cheerleaders were introduced, they made a pyramid and flung the little pompoms into the stands. Aunt Lily caught one. She waved it wildly when the announcer called Jakarta’s name and it was Jakarta’s turn to run through the circle of paper and out into the middle of the floor. Jakarta had by far the loudest cheers. Even though Dakar had been so sure everything was going to be fine, she could feel nervousness rippling under her skin.
Within minutes she knew Jakarta must be nervous, too. Almost before anyone knew what was happening, the Storm had leaped out to a ten-point lead. Their tall center beat out the Wildcat center on the opening jump, and the Storm forward who drove in was fouled as she made her basket. She made the free throw, and that was three points right there. At the other end Jakarta shot a trey, but the ball rolled off the rim. “Two rolls and no coffee,” the announcer said as the other team got the rebound and turned the possession into another two points.
Before you could blink, Dakar thought, the Wildcats had suddenly fallen apart, making only one basket to the Storm’s six. “It’s coming down around us like Jericho,” the cook murmured.
“Come on, Wildcats!” Dakar screamed. Her throat felt scratchy with longing. She looked at Dad. He had a faraway expression on his face. What was he thinking? Would it make him feel better to see the Wildcats lose?
