27 Magic Words

by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  The hospital felt sad and smelled funny and it broke her heart to see Ms. Hancock lying there looking so frightened.

  The next morning, Kobi called Grandmamma on the way to school. It felt freeing to be able to talk to Grandmamma about Ms. Hancock’s illness. She told Grandmamma about Ms. Hancock being in the hospital. Grandmamma listened and said she hoped with all her heart that Sally knew what a good daughter she was.

  At school, Kobi’s stomach turned several backward flips as she walked through the door. This morning she’d put on a beaded jacket Grandmamma had said would be perfect for a chilly autumn day. The jacket was too fancy for school, but Kobi didn’t care. It was warm and beautiful.

  Ms. Lake was standing outside the office and waved Kobi over. “How are you?” she asked, touching Kobi’s arm.

  “Okay.”

  “Your uncle texted me last night,” Ms. Lake said. “He thought you might like to sit with me and catch up on stuff before you go to your room. What do you think?”

  “Okay.”

  In Ms. Lake’s office they sat at a worktable, and Kobi saw math worksheets. Ms. Lake had demystified math for her. She’d let Kobi see that even boring things had order and logic. If you added orange and blue to a canvas, you got brown. If you added numbers, you got sums, different sums for different numbers. Every time. You needed to know where you were going with word problems the way you needed to know where you were going with a painting. All this had been a great relief to Kobi. Ms. Lake had helped Kobi understand that classrooms worked in predictable ways, too, which Kobi hadn’t been able to figure out because there were so many people doing so many different things at once. Kobi pulled the first worksheet toward her and took a pencil out of the cup. Being back in a desk chair with a pencil in her hand felt safe. She got up and sharpened the pencil. The whirr of the sharpener and the smell of the pencil anchored her. She sat down again, took a deep breath, and looked at the worksheet.

  “Did you ever see something that wasn’t real?” she asked, pretending to read the first problem.

  Ms. Lake thought a minute. “I used to stay with my grandparents in Tucson for a week every July. One summer, there was an antique vase on the dresser that at night became a face staring at me. My brain said it was an antique vase, yet I knew it was a face. Someone. I wanted to tell my grandmother, but I was afraid to.”

  “What happened?” Kobi asked.

  “I lived with the face for a week. The next summer, my grandmother had moved the vase into the dining room.” She smiled at Kobi. “Why did you ask that question?”

  “Can I tell you a secret?” Kobi asked.

  “Yes.”

  Kobi told her about using Avanti! to see her parents, about the ways they took care of each other and missed her and Brook. “Am I dotty?” she asked.

  “Dotty?”

  Kobi circled her finger at the side of her head.

  “No. You’re definitely not dotty.”

  “Then why did I see them if they weren’t real?”

  “Because you were so sad you needed to comfort yourself.”

  “So it isn’t my mother’s fault for giving me the magic words?” Kobi explained to Ms. Lake the magic words and how they worked.

  “You’re a wonderful girl, Kobi. I’m sure your mother adored you and wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.” After a minute, Ms. Lake added, “She couldn’t help dying. It wasn’t her fault.” She handed Kobi a tissue and Kobi wiped her face. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  Kobi nodded.

  “My older sister was killed in a car accident when she was seventeen. At night, in bed, when I was in that twilight place where I was almost asleep, but still awake, she came to me. She stayed for a while, made me feel better, and then I fell asleep. At first it happened on its own, but then I was able to make it happen. And it was a comfort.”

  “Do you still do it?”

  “No. It was part of my grief. After a while—a long while—I felt better.”

  Before Kobi walked with Ms. Lake to her classroom, Ms. Lake told her they could swap secrets anytime. Kobi said, “Thank you.”

  In the classroom, it was indoor recess because it had begun raining. Anna and Lily were feeding the bunny. Norman sat at his desk writing in a notebook. He was wearing a bright red shirt with no stripes. Kobi felt everybody looking at her even if they were pretending not to.

  She went to her desk.

  “Thank you for the story,” she told Norman.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “You’re not wearing a striped shirt.”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  He shot a glance at Anna and Lily and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “I went to the birthday party and my mom made me wear a dress shirt that wasn’t striped. And,” he said, lowering his voice even further, “I survived. I even saw television,” he whispered, “and my brain is okay.” His pale blue eyes were earnest. “I don’t need to blend in so much anymore.”

  Kobi was glad he wasn’t still upset about the invitation. She asked, “Does everybody think I’m a big fat liar?”

  “I don’t know. The counselor talked to us about how you needed to believe. About how you’d be sad now that you don’t believe anymore. Are you sad?”

  Kobi sat down in her chair. “Yes.”

  She missed Grandmamma and Mr. Gyver and Madame Louise. She worried Grandmamma wouldn’t get well. She grieved for Ms. Hancock. She wished Uncle Wim and Sally would get married and take care of each other the way Grandmamma and Mr. Gyver did. She hoped they had enough money to buy the vacant lot downtown if it wasn’t free. Most of all, she still wished with all her heart that her parents were coming home. It was very hard to believe they never would.

  Lily came over with the bunny. “Would you like to hold Peter?” Lily asked. “He might cheer you up.”

  Lily didn’t look snotty and mean anymore. She looked scared.

  Kobi took Dante and held him close. He was so soft and sweet-smelling. His nose twitched. She lifted his paw and saw the heart-shaped freckle. “I knew it was you,” she whispered, burying her face in his fur.

  NINETEEN

  ON Thanksgiving, Sally and Uncle Wim got everybody involved in cooking. When the pumpkin pies came out of the oven in late morning, Ms. Hancock cut herself a piece and seemed to find it delicious.

  “Let’s all sit down and eat pie,” Uncle Wim said, tugging Brook and Kobi away from the celery and nuts they were chopping for the stuffing. “Patricia has a good idea.”

  Kobi didn’t think she liked pumpkin pie. It didn’t look likable. But Ms. Hancock was watching and waiting for Kobi to take a bite. Scrambled popped into her head and she pushed it away. She cut a tiny tip off the pie wedge with her fork and put it on her tongue. She mashed it against the roof of her mouth. “Yum!” she told Ms. Hancock before taking a much bigger bite.

  The next day, they began to paint the downstairs of Uncle Wim’s house. Uncle Wim and Sally painted the living room and foyer a color Sally called Maybe-Calamitous Curry. Kobi, Brook, and Ms. Hancock were assigned the dining room.

  Ms. Hancock had no idea who any of them were, but with a roller on the end of an extender pole, she turned the dining room ceiling a cheerful golden color called Marigold Moonrise. She hummed as she worked and sent tiny flecks of paint raining down on them. Kobi rolled paint on the walls, while Brook, with small brushes and a ruler, made a neat line where wall and woodwork met.

  About a million times Ms. Hancock asked when and where the gallery opening was, and about a million times Kobi or Brook made up an answer.

  The next day, they painted the kitchen what Sally called Calm Cream and hired a man with a scaffold to paint the stairwell, which Uncle Wim said was at least two hundred feet tall. They christened the color Perilous Peach. At the end of the day, Kobi felt exactly like she was living inside a bright garden flower.

  That night, for the first time, they took Ms. Hancock to sleep in her room at West Harbor, where ev
erybody was dotty. Sally had decorated the room with Ms. Hancock’s art. When they got there, Ms. Hancock said the gallery was nice, but on the small side.

  Sally cried on the way back to Uncle Wim’s. Uncle Wim asked her if she wanted to spend the night with them and she said no, she needed to be by herself.

  On Sunday, they boxed up a few things from the Hancocks’ house and moved them to Uncle Wim’s. Brook and Kobi went up on two tall ladders and cleaned the chandelier in the dining room until the crystal teardrops sparkled in the sunlight.

  Late in the afternoon, they picked up Ms. Hancock and, with the last of the winter sun lighting the dining room, they spread a sheet on the floor and had a pizza feast. Ms. Hancock called it bohemian.

  When the sun dropped behind the trees, Brook turned on the chandelier. The way everybody went oooh made Kobi think of the Great Alighieri.

  The next morning on the way to school, Kobi told Grandmamma all about the house. “You’d love it,” she said. “It’s beautiful!”

  The silence was so long that Kobi thought she’d lost the signal. Then Grandmamma said, “Do you still want to come home?”

  If she said yes, Grandmamma would feel bad that she couldn’t make it happen. If Kobi said no, Grandmamma’s heart would be broken.

  Kobi would give anything to be with Grandmamma and Mr. Gyver and Madame Louise. But Paris and tutors didn’t feel like her life anymore. And deep in her heart, Kobi could hardly bear to say goodbye to the people here.

  “I’d really like to see you,” Kobi said. And soon she handed the phone to Brook.

  Later that morning, when Kobi was with Ms. Lake, fat snowflakes began to tumble down. By recess time, the snow was falling so fast they stayed inside. Kobi played Where in the World with Anna and Lily and another girl.

  “What’s that yellow stuff around your fingernails?” Lily asked as Kobi passed out the pieces.

  “Marigold Moonrise paint.” And she told them what she’d done over Thanksgiving vacation.

  Lily said, “Remember the day you came to school with the painted arm?”

  Kobi nodded. That seemed like a long time ago.

  “Did the famous artist Patricia Hancock really paint it?”

  Kobi felt her face turning red as they looked at her. “Yes.”

  “Is she really your grandmother’s friend in Paris?”

  “She was my grandmother’s friend a long time ago. Now she’s my uncle’s girlfriend’s mother.”

  “Does your grandmother really live in Paris?” Anna asked.

  Kobi nodded.

  “And did you really live there after . . .”

  Kobi nodded again.

  “Pinky swear all this is true?” Lily asked, her expression saying she really did want to be Kobi’s friend.

  Kobi offered her pinky and swore.

  “I’m sorry I was mean to you,” Lily said. “I didn’t know . . .” She shook her head.

  “Sometimes people do things they don’t mean to do.” Kobi thought of letting Ms. Hancock wander off and almost freeze to death, and of humiliating Norman by making Lily invite him to her party. “It’s okay.”

  That night when she and Brook were upstairs at their desks, Kobi asked if Brook wanted to go home at Christmas.

  “I want to be with Grandmamma and Mr. Gyver,” Brook said.

  Kobi did, too. So that settled it.

  “But I like school,” Brook said. “Actually, I love school. If we didn’t go back to Paris, I’d get to be a peer tutor and wear a special pin.”

  Kobi wished they could be in two places at once. She stared out the window at the holiday lights dancing through the trees. She shut her eyes and imagined she was in Paris. She felt Grandmamma’s arms around her. She heard Mr. Gyver’s rumbling voice. She smelled the coconut kisses and madeleines they made on Christmas Eve.

  The pipes shrieked as Uncle Wim got into the shower. The house would seem empty to him if they went back to Paris, but he would have Sally.

  Kobi felt sure Sally was going to marry Uncle Wim. She understood now that it hadn’t been her and Brook who had kept Sally from saying yes. It had been Ms. Hancock.

  When they got to the Hancocks’ after school the next day, Sally had a row of Post-its on the counter with packing jobs to be done. One said Kobi: Pack dishes. As Kobi wrapped glasses with Uncle Wim and put them in boxes, she asked if they could afford to all go to Paris at Christmas.

  From across the room where she was taking a lampshade off a lamp, Sally gave Uncle Wim a look.

  Kobi wished she hadn’t asked. It cost a lot of money for Ms. Hancock to live at West Harbor, and Uncle Wim and Sally might need money for the vacant lot.

  “All four of us?” Uncle Wim asked.

  “If you could afford it.”

  “There’s enough money, Kobi.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, we could afford to travel back and forth several times a year if you decided you wanted to live here—though I am not a good traveler.”

  Sally shut a cupboard door harder than necessary. “The Mallory family is super rich, girls. In the Bay Area you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting something big and classy with the Mallory name on it. The family gives away enough money each year to feed a midsized country a caviar-and-champagne diet.”

  “Sally,” Uncle Wim said, scowling.

  Brook looked as astonished as Kobi felt. Kobi said, “You don’t act rich.”

  “He never has,” Sally said. “Not even when he was a kid. When Wim was growing up he refused to wear anything that didn’t come from Goodwill.” She smiled. “And that’s still pretty much the case.”

  “Why?” Kobi asked.

  “Because the garment industry exploits Third World people,” he said. He looked at their puzzled faces. “If some-body else has already bought the clothes, I don’t add to the problem by wearing them.” He grinned. “Come shopping with me at Goodwill sometime.”

  Brook shook her head so hard her hair flew from side to side.

  Kobi thought it might be a way to fancy down her Paris wardrobe and look more like everybody else. “Okay,” she said.

  “So do you even need to be a social worker?” Brook asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Uncle Wim said.

  “Only because he loves it,” Sally said.

  Uncle Wim cleared his throat again. “And while we’re on the subject of all this money stuff, girls, you should know your parents’ estate is in trust for you. So it’s very important you learn to manage money ethically.”

  Kobi wasn’t sure what manage money ethically meant. But she remembered Grandmamma saying the world would be a better place if more people were like Uncle Wim. And that was probably what manage money ethically meant.

  “I’m serious,” Uncle Wim said. “You’ll be in trouble with me if you ever discuss this with anyone else except Mom or Sally.” His eyebrows said he was serious. “Understood?”

  They nodded.

  “Does this have anything to do with Grandmamma being famous?” Kobi asked.

  Sally laughed. “Famous for marrying very well.”

  TWENTY

  SINCE Sally needed the little room that had been Kobi and Brook’s closet for her home office, Kobi and Brook had to move their stuff. Uncle Wim said that if they came back from Paris with him and Sally, he would buy them enough dressers and wardrobes for their clothes and invite them to the wedding, which was how Kobi and Brook heard officially that Sally had finally said yes.

  “Does Grandmamma know?” Kobi asked.

  “She does,” Uncle Wim said.

  “What did she say?” Brook asked.

  “What do you think?” he asked, winking at them. “She’s happy.”

  When Sally came upstairs with a box, Kobi threw her arms around her. Sally’s coat was cold and damp from the snow, and her hair had a few melting flakes in it.

  “Are you going to have bridesmaids?” Brook asked.

  Sally laughed. “So Wim told you.”

  “I would make an excellent bridesmaid,
” Brook said.

  “Well, Wim and I are keeping it simple, so you may have to wait until Kobi gets married to show your stuff.”

  “Kobi?” Brook said.

  Kobi shook her head.

  Sally laughed and gave Kobi’s shoulders a quick hug, then went to get another box. Brook followed, talking about bridesmaids.

  Uncle Wim carried Kobi’s footlocker across the hall. “You never did tell me what’s in here,” he said.

  It seemed like ages ago since he had asked her if she had something in her footlocker that needed to be fed and watered.

  “Do you want to see?”

  Uncle Wim sat in the window seat. “Yes.”

  Kobi lifted the lid. “These are the books our mother wrote.” She stacked them on the window seat beside Uncle Wim. “Shampoo.” She opened the cap and held the bottle for him to smell.

  He sniffed. “Orange blossoms. Bea was a California girl.”

  She handed him the ramen noodles. “That’s what I liked for lunch when I was little.”

  A huge clatter came from downstairs, and Sally called, “Wim! I could use a hand.”

  Uncle Wim touched Kobi’s head. “Show me the rest later.”

  After he left, Kobi looked at the ramen noodles and thought about cooking them as a surprise for everybody. But she hadn’t used the stove since she burned her hair, and anyway the noodles had expired four years ago.

  Kobi gathered up the noodles and her mother’s books and went downstairs. Everybody was picking up highlighters, paper clips, and folders from the floor.

  “The bottom came out of the box,” Sally explained. “What’s in your box?”

  “Our mother’s books.”

  She arranged them on the bookshelf that Sally had moved from the Hancocks’.

  “They look nice there,” Sally said. “People will see them first thing.”

  In the kitchen, Kobi put the noodles in the trash. Gently.

  Back upstairs, she spread out her dad’s cape, top hat, and wand on her bed.

  “What are you doing?” Brook asked, coming in.