Akeelah and the Bee (12 page)

Writer and director Doug Atchison discusses a scene with Keke Palmer and Angela Bassett.

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You never lie to me.”

One early summer afternoon, Akeelah had just arrived home from Dr. Larabee’s and was quietly reading aloud from a Latin textbook as she entered the house and headed toward her room.

“Akeelah?”

She turned with a start, hiding the book behind her. She saw a somber-looking Tanya smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table.

“What d’ya got there?” she said.

“Nothin’, Ma. Homework. Why you home so early?”

“I wasn’t feeling good. They let me off early.”

Tanya’s eyes were bloodshot, as though she had been crying. On the table were a number of old photo albums open to pictures of a younger Tanya with Akeelah’s father.

“You know…? The Regional Spelling Bee’s coming up very soon,” Akeelah ventured.

“Is that one gonna be in Beverly Hills, too?” Her mother sighed and kneaded her forehead with her thumb and first finger. “I told you, once you pass summer school you can start worrying about spelling bees again.”

“But—”

“Akeelah, I don’t have time for this right now. You’re always fighting me and I’m not in the mood for it.”

Akeelah studied her mother, who looked gray with fatigue. “You okay, Ma?”

“Just a little under the weather.”

Akeelah nodded and then disappeared into her bedroom. Tanya continued to sit at the table smoking her cigarette. She slowly shook her head and sighed. There was just nothing she could do with that child. She had never had control over Akeelah. The girl existed in an orbit all her own, spinning through space in her own way.

It took Akeelah three weeks to get up the nerve to ask Dr. Larabee anything resembling a personal question. She picked a moment when she thought he might be distracted. He was pulling weeds from his flower garden, and she stood on the patio watching. A neighbor’s dog was barking and soon was joined by a wailing chorus of other dogs.

“I was wondering something,” Akeelah said. “Teaching comes so naturally to you. So how come you don’t teach anymore?”

“I do teach,” he said, without looking up. “I told you. Online.”

“But isn’t that kinda boring, sitting in front of the computer all day? No kids to interact with.”

“I’ve got you, Akeelah. That’s enough.”

“I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t have a change of scenery. Start to talk to myself, not that I don’t do that already.”

“When I want a change of scenery, I come out here.”

“It seems so strange to me—having students and never getting to really see them.”

“That’s all right. Most of them aren’t…as committed as you.”

Akeelah smiled. That was the first compliment she had ever received from Dr. Larabee and she cherished it. She realized how much she craved his good opinion, and she was beginning to wonder if she was doing the National Bee as much for him as for herself, to fulfill something in him that she sensed he needed.

“No more dawdling,” he said. “Let’s keep going. Spell ‘effervescent.’”

The sound of the dogs barking rent the air. Akeelah gritted her teeth. She wondered if they had barking dogs in Woodland Hills. Somehow she was certain the dogs out there were better behaved.

“…e-r-v-e…”

Dr. Larabee watched Akeelah’s customarily tapping hand as it wavered and paused on her thigh.

“Uh… s-e-n-t…”

“Oh, come on. You know the word.”

“The dogs are distracting me.”

“Don’t blame the dogs. When you get to the National Bee, you’ll have bigger distractions than a bunch of canines howling at the moon.”

He decided that the moment had come to delve into her mysterious habit. “What’s that you do with your hand? I’ve noticed it since the first time you spelled for me.”

“What?”

“Your hand. When you spell a word you go”—he began rhythmically tapping his thigh—“like that. Are you keeping count?”

“I don’t know,” she said, confused. “I don’t really know I’m doing it.”

He looked thoughtful.

“Come with me,” he said.

She followed him to the back of the garden, where he pulled a large dusty cardboard box out from a shelf where he kept a vast array of tools. He gently lowered it onto the hood of his car. Akeelah watched him open the lid to reveal a cache of old toys. She felt she might have exhausted her luck by asking him some personal questions earlier, but she couldn’t help herself. A question burned in her and she had to risk asking it.

“What do you got all those toys for?”

“Let’s rephrase the question. ‘What do you
have
all those toys for?’ They used to belong to my…niece.”

“Oh.” She felt that he wasn’t telling the truth, or not all of the truth. “So—you got any kids of your own?”

He looked at her, mildly irritated. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

“I’m naturally inquisitive.”

“That’s often confused with being naturally obnoxious. You shouldn’t pry so much.” He found what he was looking for in the box. “Ah, here we go.” He pulled out an old jump rope.

After he folded it neatly in his hand, they returned to the patio and he handed it to her.

“Okay,” he said, “let me see you jump rope.”

She looked at the rope and then at him. “Just jump?”

“Yes, jump.”

She started to skip rope and, as Dr. Larabee watched her closely, she felt a sudden surge of joy and a wave of remembrance. Until the age of nine she had skipped rope with Georgia for hours at a time, and then for some reason she had given it up. She wasn’t even sure she had a jump rope anymore. Maybe she would look for it when she got home. She was soon breathing hard
(I don’t remember ever being out of breath when I was nine,
she thought) and stopped jumping.

“Is there a point to this?” she said.

He was clearly flustered and she couldn’t figure out why. He was a man of many moods, but being flustered was one that she hadn’t seen before. She was dying to ask him what was wrong, but she felt she had used up her quota of questions for the day.

“Yes, there’s a point to it,” he said. “Keep going.”

“I’m a little out of shape.”

“You’re an eleven-year-old girl. That’s very sad,” he said, but he didn’t sound sympathetic. “Keep going.”

She kept jumping and Dr. Larabee picked up the lid of a metal trashcan and started banging loudly on it. Again Akeelah stopped, sucking air.

“I said keep going! Stay focused. I want you to spell ‘effervescent’ and don’t think about anything else.”

As Akeelah kept jumping, she said, “E-f-f…”

Dr. Larabee picked up two trashcan lids and moved closer to her, banging on them like cymbals. Akeelah kept
her eyes focused straight ahead, spelling the word in time to her jumps.

“e-r-v…”

He moved right next to her, ratcheting up the noise.

“… e-s-
c
-e-n-t.”

Dr. Larabee stopped banging and gave her the strangest look. Akeelah stopped jumping and grinned at him.

“You see that?” he said excitedly. “That’s your trick. Your mnemonic device.”

“Jumping rope?”

“Keeping time,” he told her. “You see kids at the bee doing all kinds of crazy things, looking for the edge. Some of them sway back and forth. Others turn in circles. They do whatever it takes to stay focused.
You
keep time. And I’ll bet that if you learned the words
while
you kept time, you’d remember them that much better.” He gave her a knowing grin. “I think maybe we’ve unlocked the puzzle of Akeelah Anderson. Now we have something new to practice, and I guarantee you that if you don’t win the bee, at least you’re going to be in great physical shape.”

“Oh boy,” she said. “I didn’t expect this. You’re full of surprises, Dr. Larabee.”

“Let’s start,” he said. “You ready?”

“As ready as I’m ever gonna be.”

Akeelah started jumping rope as Dr. Larabee shot her words from index cards, deliberately picking the most difficult ones. Later, he turned a long rope tied to a tree as Akeelah skipped and spelled. She skipped rope down
the sidewalk as Dr. Larabee walked beside her, feeding her words. Against the setting sun, Akeelah kept jumping as Dr. Larabee gave her words while he sat at a picnic table.

“I’m gonna be doing this in my sleep.”

“I hope so,” he said. “Jump and spell. Jump and spell. We’ve had a big breakthrough today.”

The enormous sign said: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA REGIONAL SPELLING BEE, emblazoned in bright red. Scores of middle-schoolers gathered outside the auditorium with their nervous parents. Akeelah, Mr. Welch, and Dr. Larabee had just arrived and were standing in the crush of people, waiting for the doors to open so that Akeelah could register and pick up her ID.

“It’s too bad your mother couldn’t be here today, Akeelah,” Mr. Welch said.

“Well, she wanted to come but she works on Saturdays.” She was craning her neck, looking for friends. Suddenly she shouted, “Hey, there’s Javier.” She rushed over to Javier, who was standing with Polly and Roman. He gave her a huge grin and a playful hug, doing a little dance step with her.

A few minutes later they went inside and the Regional Judge, a perky professor wearing a dark suit and a pink blouse in startling contrast, addressed the audience. About a hundred spellers were seated on the stage behind her. Three other Judges and a Pronouncer sat facing the stage.

“Thank you for coming to USC for the Southern California Regional Spelling Bee,” said the Regional Judge with a pretty smile. “It’s very exciting for all of us.
We’ll be giving out trophies to our top three spellers, who will represent Southern California at the National Spelling Bee in Washington.”

The faces of the eager spellers were following her every word. They knew this was their chance—maybe the only chance they would ever have—to follow the glory all the way to Washington, D.C. Akeelah was twitching in her seat, brimming with nervous excitement.

Mr. Welch and Dr. Larabee were sitting close to the stage, Dr. Larabee as calm as Mr. Welch was nervous.

“So what do you think, Josh?” said the principal. “Does she stand a chance?”

Dr. Larabee took a long time to answer. “We’ll see,” he said finally, not the reassurance Mr. Welch was looking for. “She has the gift. But does she have the character to go with it? Time will determine that.”

Ten minutes later Akeelah approached the mike. She seemed calm and her hand was already tapping lightly on her upper thigh. She’s preparing herself, Dr. Larabee thought. Getting the rhythm down, almost like a jazz musician.

“A-l-f-r-e-s-c-o,” Akeelah said. “‘Alfresco.’”

Mr. Welch joined the applause. Dr. Larabee clapped twice and then put his hands on his knees. Mr. Welch sneaked a look at his friend, who showed no expression.

“Not such a hard word,” Mr. Welch said. He laughed. “If I can spell it, it’s not a hard word.”