The Language of Sycamores (12 page)

“No.”
Why not? Why not stay?
“I have to go home.”
To what?
“But did you hear Brother Baker talking about the Jumpkids camp the next two weeks? It’s going to be right here in Hindsville at the church.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. They were here last year. They did, like, a play and some songs at the gazebo. It was cool, I guess.”

My hopes crept up. “Well, I was wondering . . . if we can get you enrolled for the camp, do you think you’d want to go? I hear it’s a fantastic program. You’d learn some new songs, have a chance to work with some people who love music just as much as you do. I talked to one of their counselors on the plane coming here. It sounds like a great time.”

Dell stopped walking and crossed her arms, jutting out one hip and looking at me like I was the stupidest person in the world. “I can’t go to that. It’s for
smart
kids.”

“Dell!” I gasped, sounding more stern than I meant to. “You are smart. Stop that.”

Shrugging, she backed off the aggressive posture, looking down at her red flip-flops, wiggling her toes up and down. “Anyway, Sherita and Meleka Hall are gonna be in that Jumpkids thing, and if I show up, they’ll knock my lights out.”

“No, they won’t.” Did she mean that, or was she making excuses?

“Yes, they will.”

“Nobody is going to knock your lights out at a
church
camp.”

Growling under her breath, she threw her hands up, looking more animated than usual. “
Yes,
they
will.
They don’t like me, and nobody there’ll like me. I’ll be all by myself and everyone will make fun of me. I don’t wanna go, all right?” She glanced toward the café, ready to get away from me and Jumpkids as quickly as possible. “Everyone’s goin’ in. Can we go eat?”

I realized my chance was slipping away. If I didn’t do something now, I’d never convince her to try the camp. She’d build it up in her mind into something terrifying. I had to pull out some desperate measures to stop her from shutting down. “I’ll tell you what. Assuming that I can get you into the camp, what if I stay a little longer, and we go to the first couple days together? That way you won’t be by yourself, and if Sherita and Meleka want to knock your lights out, it’ll be two on two.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth hung open; then she snapped it shut. “Sherita’s bigger than you. She’s a big,
big
girl.”

I did my best imitation of a jive-talkin’ street girl and said, “I can handle it.”

A puff of laughter burst past Dell’s lips.

“What?” I did the chin bob the break-dancers used down at Faneuil Hall in Boston. “Where’s Sherita? Bring ’er on.”

Giggling, Dell slapped her hand over her mouth. “You look majorly lame when you do that.”

We laughed together for a minute, and then I closed the deal. “So do we have a bargain? If I can get you in, we’ll do the first few days together.”

“ ’K,” she answered tentatively.

“ ’K,” I replied, and we headed to the café for lunch.

Kate was definitely curious about what was going on between Dell and me, especially after Brother Baker joined us for lunch. He handed me an envelope with the Jumpkids forms in it, said, “Here’s what you asked for,” and then glanced at Dell, so that it was obvious the contents of the envelope had something to do with her.

Jenilee and Caleb didn’t notice, but Kate and Ben were more interested in the contents of the envelope than they were in the lunchtime conversation. James seemed fairly oblivious to all of it, off in his own world, probably thinking about my job and our finances and our return trips home.

My mind wasn’t in that world at all, even though it should have been. I was right there in Hindsville, and Boston felt far away and insignificant. All of the things I would normally have been doing
Monday morning—getting up, going to the office, gathering my team for our Monday staff meeting, looking ahead to the next job or the next business trip, working to debug our newest installations—seemed like some old, uninteresting, nearly forgotten routine. I’d done those same tasks for fifteen years now, and one week was pretty much the same as the next. These next few days in Hindsville would be something completely different, an adventure. A big jump off the map.

What was James going to say when I told him I might not go home this afternoon—that I might stay a few days and help college volunteers teach underprivileged children to sing and dance? Would he think it was some sort of acute avoidance reaction? My excuse for not facing the realities of our life?

Was it?

I watched Dell helping Joshua color a Farm Bureau paper the waitress had brought him. Was I suddenly so interested in her because I couldn’t face going home?

No,
I told myself.
Don’t second-guess this
. I was trying to do something nice, something that would be good for Dell, and in the process good for me. In a way, this would prove I still had a function in the world, that there was more to me than just my job at Lansing.

As lunch progressed, I listened absently to Jenilee and Caleb telling Brother Baker about Caleb’s enrollment in medical school and Jenilee’s first year in premed. It was pretty obvious that Brother Baker was fishing around, trying to see how serious the relationship was. He was playing the role of both grandfather and pastor, making sure that way up there in the big city, no hanky-panky was going on.

Kate took pity on the young couple and led Brother Baker astray, asking him questions about the upcoming Jumpkids camp. I tuned in to the conversation, gathering that the church facilities would be rearranged right after tonight’s service. The Jumpkids counselors would be arriving from Kansas City early in the morning and would be staying with local families. Kate offered the guest rooms in the farmhouse, if they needed more space, but Brother Baker said they had found places for all ten counselors to stay.

By the time lunch was over, I had a pretty clear picture of the
Jumpkids setup, and I was more determined than ever to get Dell in. Ten counselors, some church volunteers, eighty-seven kids, ten days of music, dance, theater, set design, and outdoor recreation, a performance of
The Lion King
at the end. It sounded perfect. I was going to get Dell in and get the forms signed, no matter what it took.

Excusing myself from the table as Ben and James were arguing about the check, I walked back to the bathroom to use my cell phone. My hands started trembling as I fished Keiler Bradford’s card out of my change purse and set it on the vanity, then dialed the number and waited for the phone to connect. What if he couldn’t help get Dell in? What if he wasn’t one of the counselors coming to Hindsville? What if he didn’t even remember who I was? What if . . .

“Hel- . . . shoot . . . hello?” A voice stuttered on the other end of the phone. I recognized it immediately, even before he added, “This is Keiler.”

“Hello . . . Keiler?” I paused to clear the knot from my throat. I hadn’t been so nervous on the phone since I was in middle school, calling boys. “Uhh . . . you may not remember me. This is Karen . . . from the plane the other day . . . Karen Sommerfield?”

He didn’t answer right away. I heard a crash in the background, then someone hollering. He moved away from the noise to someplace quiet. “Karen?” He repeated my name as if I were an old friend, as if he’d expected to hear from me. “Hi there. How’s the trip off the map?”

I chuckled. “Pretty far off. But in a good way.”

“I had a feeling it would be. Good, I mean. Did you get to meet the new cousin and spend some time with your sister?”

“I did.” I smiled at my reflection in the mirror, at the brown-eyed woman in the expensive suit and the fashionable, neatly highlighted hair—not at all the person Keiler had met on the plane the other day. It felt good to know he remembered me. In some inexplicable way, there was a connection between us. Once again, I felt like I could tell him anything. “Actually, something really amazing happened while I was here, and that’s what I’m calling about. Are you coming to Hindsville this week with the Jumpkids program?”

“I am,” he answered hesitantly. “That is, if we ever get there. We
just lost our director, and things are a little nuts right now. If you can believe it, I’ve been elected temporary director. I’m the only counselor over twenty-one, so that makes me qualified. I hope we can get the soundstage packed up so we can be on time tomorrow morning. Shirley—the director—usually takes care of all this, but we’ll figure it out.” He paused and covered the phone to talk to someone, then came back. “I hear we have a good-sized group of kids waiting on us down there in Hindsville.”

“You do. Eighty-seven, Brother Baker said. That’s what I was calling about, actually. I’d like to make it eighty-eight.” Crossing my fingers, I plunged in. “If I knew of an extraordinarily talented kid who had missed signing up for the program, do you think you could get her in? I know there’s an application process, but do you think it would be possible?” He didn’t answer right away, and my hopes slid downward. I was probably putting him in a difficult position. Now he’d have to tell me that rules were rules and so on. “I’m sorry to ask, Keiler, but you just can’t imagine. She’s my sister’s twelve-year-old neighbor. I sat down with her at the piano, and in an hour she was playing things most people can’t learn in a year. She can pick out the melody to almost any TV theme song. She has a beautiful singing voice. Keiler, please, she really deserves this chance. Is there anything you can do?”

“Well . . .” he said slowly, contemplatively. “Ordinarily, I’d say probably not . . . but . . . right now . . . it’s the monkeys running the zoo around here with Shirley gone. If you bring me this girl’s application and I put it in the stack, who’ll know the difference? Just don’t say anything to anyone. You know how people can be sometimes.”

I let out a long, slow sigh of relief. “I won’t say a word. Thank you, Keiler. I promise you won’t be sorry. We’ll see you Monday morning.”

“All right. See you Monday,” he replied, and then we said good-bye.

Dropping my cell phone into my purse, I yanked open the door just as a gigantic squeal started somewhere in my stomach, whizzed like a rocket up my windpipe, and burst from my mouth in a gigantic “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Kate and Joshua were standing outside the door. They stared at me with their mouths open.

“Long story,” I said, sliding past them, smiling ear to ear and trying to suppress a giddy giggle.

Kate glanced after me, then started into the bathroom with Joshua, who asked, “Did Aunt Ka-wen make a poo-poo in the potty?”

No doubt, the only reason he could imagine for such exuberance while exiting the bathroom.

Chapter 12

A
s we were gathering our things to leave the café, I started thinking about getting the signature on Dell’s Jumpkids permission form. If Brother Baker was so downbeat about the possibility, this was going to be a difficult job. Brother Baker was usually an optimist.

Following Kate and the kids out the door, I waited on the sidewalk as Joshua and Dell took Jenilee to see the historical marker in the park.

“So I guess you’re heading back to the airport,” Kate said, sounding a little down. This visit hadn’t been all she’d hoped for. She glanced at the envelope in my hands with an expression that said,
What could Brother Baker possibly be giving to Karen?

I pretended to be occupied with watching the kids, but in reality I was trying to decide what to tell Kate. I wasn’t up for another round of discouraging stories about Dell’s grandmother, and then there was the whole issue of why I wasn’t heading off to the airport as planned, and why I didn’t have to rush back to work on Monday.

“Actually, I’m not heading home just yet,” I said, noticing that she drew back in mild astonishment. “There’s a little . . . project I’m working on . . . with Brother Baker. It may keep me here a day or two.”

My sister looked pleased, then confused. “Don’t you have to get back to work?”

“No.” I was struck again by how wrong it was that I hadn’t told Kate
about my job. She could see that something was going on. “I can spare some time.” Actually, as of last week, I had nothing but time.

Kate cocked her head to one side, smiling. Shifting Rose to her other hip, she looked at the envelope. “So what’s this project? Not that we’re not glad to have you stay, because we are, but nothing’s ever convinced you to stick around Hindsville for a couple extra days.”

I chuckled at her observation. In the past, I would have taken it as Kate pointing out that she was much more connected to our homeplace than I. Now it didn’t seem to matter. I felt a connection here, too. “I’m trying to get Dell into the Jumpkids camp.” I held up a hand, in case she was going to start on the nay-saying. “Please don’t rattle off all Brother Baker’s reasons why it isn’t a good idea.” I felt surprisingly sure of myself. Considering that I’d been on uneven ground all weekend, it was a pleasant sensation, a little like being the old Karen who knew what she wanted and how to get it. “It
is
a good idea. The program is made for kids like her, and you can bet that not one kid there will be more talented than she is.”

Kate shot a glance toward the children, who had paused in a dandelion patch at the edge of the park. “Did you ask
her,
because I’ve tried to get her interested in things like this before, and she absolutely refused. I signed her up for a 4-H pet show with her dog last spring, and she almost had a panic attack. She wouldn’t go, no matter how I tried to convince her, and she really loves that dog. I know she
wanted
to show him at the pet show, but the idea of getting up in front of people was too terrifying.”

“I already asked her about the Jumpkids camp.” Obviously, Kate thought that as usual, I was trying to bulldoze my way through. “It took some convincing to get her to say yes. I promised I’d stay around and go with her the first few days.”

“I can do it,” Kate offered quickly, too quickly, because it came out sounding like she didn’t want me to stay. “I’m sorry.” She paused for a minute to disentangle Rose’s pacifier from her purse strap. “I think it’s great that you and Dell have found this thing in common, I really do. . . . But I’m a little worried that, in her mind, you’re going to stay here and be her piano teacher forever. I’m afraid that when you go
home, she’ll be crushed the way she was when we lost Grandma Rose. Dell kept insisting that Grandma Rose wasn’t going to die. She had this fantasy that Grandma was going to get better, even after she was really sick, and when Grandma died, Dell couldn’t deal with it. Two years later, she’s still walking around convinced that she’s getting beyond-the-grave messages from Grandma.”

“I’m not going to die, Kate.” The words fell to the pit of my stomach like a chunk of lead.
What if?
What if Dr. Conner did find cancer? What if it was something really serious this time?

Kate drew back, surprised. “I know that. But you have a busy life and you’re going back to it, and Dell doesn’t want to face that. Last night she tried to tell me that you weren’t
going
back to work.”

Fortunately, Kate was occupied with untwisting Rose’s pacifier, so she didn’t catch my reaction to that statement. Had Dell somehow figured things out? “I really think it’ll be all right.” Why was I keeping up this masquerade with Kate? Why didn’t I tell her? “Let’s just take things one step at a time, all right? First of all, I have to get her grandmother to sign the permission form.”

Kate grimaced. “That’s not going to be easy. Do you want me to try?”

Smoothing my fingers along the edge of the envelope, I tried to decide which method was most likely to work. Some divine whispering inside me said that I would have a better chance. “No, let me. Brother Baker was worried that her grandmother might get suspicious of someone coming around with forms to be signed. I wouldn’t want her to get suspicious of you and quit letting Dell come over.”

Kate nodded, visibly relieved. “I hate to sound like a wimp, but when I’ve talked to Dell’s grandmother, things have not gone well. She’s very paranoid that we’re trying to take Dell away from her, so I’ve tried to play it low-key.”

“Low-key it is, then. I’ll soft pitch my proposal as much as I can.”

Kate smiled at me as the guys finished up in the café and the kids came back across the street with Jenilee. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll probably need it.”

Twenty minutes later, as Dell and I turned onto Mulberry Road, I
wondered if luck was going to do it. Driving through Dell’s neck of the woods, I felt like I needed more than luck—maybe a bodyguard and a shotgun. On both sides of the road, the ditches were littered with trash, old furniture, and the forgotten carcasses of rotting mattresses. Tiny houses and decaying trailers squatted here and there, the yards strewn with rusted cars, old school buses, broken lawn chairs, cast-off toys, and bits of trash. Dogs, chained to turned-over barrels, barked as we passed, and their owners eyed us suspiciously from decaying front-porch sofas. The shiny rental car looked out of place as it passed through what had once been a small community of sharecroppers and farm laborers. It didn’t look like there was much ongoing labor in Mulberry these days. There was only a sense of quiet disinterest in life.

Gazing at the roadsides, I tried to reconcile the place with the little girl beside me. It was hard to believe that only a mile or so upriver, on the opposite shore, lay Grandma Rose’s farm, where the fences were always neatly painted and the flower beds manicured. Even the wildflowers seemed to have given up on Mulberry Road, leaving behind only tall stands of last year’s fescue sagging over the road like funeral palls, so that even in the middle of the day, the place was gray with shadow.

I glanced at Dell, sitting in the seat beside me with her bare feet braced on the dashboard, her dark eyes only skimming the landscape, her body not reacting as the dogs jumped at their chains, snarling as the car passed. All of this seemed perfectly normal to her. She didn’t feel the need to be appalled by it or to rail against it. This was life. This was all she could expect.

I had a sudden sense of gratitude for my own life, for my workaholic parents, the upscale school where success was life and death, for my father and his thinly veiled criticism, my perfect little sister to whom everything came easily. There were worse problems to have. My family may have been disconnected, stressed, busy, but we knew where our next meal was coming from. We lived in a house that was large and airy, where the bills were always paid and the cupboards were magically restocked each week. We played in Boston Garden, and roller-skated on
paved sidewalks, and rode our bikes down clean streets, where there were no growling pit bulls on chains, threatening to break free.

It was that very life, that easy life, that taught us to believe we should have more, that we
deserved
more, that we should have
it all
. Perfect home, perfect parents, perfect family.
Enough
of everything. At least enough, and maybe a little more than enough. Without it, life was wrong; it was not everything we had a right to expect.

Dell couldn’t even imagine such an expectation. To her, this was fine. It was all she had a right to. There was nothing better, no sense of
perfect
right around the corner, waiting to be grabbed. No belief that things would ever, could ever, get better.

The idea filled me with sadness, but more than that, with determination to help her see a broader possibility for herself. My soul expanded with the idea, and I felt lighter, more filled with energy than I had been in years. How long since I’d done something strictly for someone else, fought for a cause just because it was right?

She pointed to a house ahead, nearly hidden behind a fence made of loosely wired wooden pallets and chain-link. “It’s that one. Right before the bend.”

“All right,” I said as we rounded the corner and the driveway came into view.

“Uncle Bobby’s here.” She pointed to his truck. Almost before I’d stopped the car, she opened the door and held out her hand. “I can take the paper inside and ask Granny.”

“That’s all right. I’ll go in with you.” I put the car in park and killed the engine, noticing someone working on the truck in the driveway. It looked like I’d have to go through Uncle Bobby to get to Dell’s grandmother.

“I can do it,” Dell protested as I grabbed the envelope and opened my door.

“Don’t worry,” I said, even though I was worried. Did the skills you learned in Dale Carnegie class work in places like this? “I’m good at talking people into things. That’s what I do for a living back in Boston.”

She tipped her head to one side, eyeing me quizzically as we walked to the yard fence. “What kind of stuff do you talk people into?”

“Well, mostly into buying computer systems.”

Dell sagged. “Well, Granny don’t know anything about computers.”

Laying a hand on her hair, I guided her through the yard gate before me. “People are people, and sales is sales. It really doesn’t matter what you’re trying to persuade people to do. The principles are all the same. Don’t worry.”

“ ’K,” she said doubtfully, jerking sideways as the dog barked, straining against his chain beside the house.

Uncle Bobby glanced up from beneath the truck hood, pointing at the dog. “You better make sure that damned dog of yours don’t get off his chain. It comes after me again, I’m gonna shoot it.”

Dell’s face washed white with sudden panic, and she turned quickly, scolding the dog. “Rowdy, hush.”

Rowdy barked once more, then obediently lay down and rested his head on his paws, eyes following us intently as we moved toward the door. I found myself reluctantly agreeing with Uncle Bobby. I hoped the dog didn’t get off his chain. He looked like he was part German shepherd and part God knows what, wolfhound or something else capable of quickly tackling and eating ladies in pumps and church clothes.

Uncle Bobby set down his wrench and crossed to the driveway side of the fence, eyeing me narrowly as he wiped his hands on a grease rag, then smoothed stray strands of sweaty salt-and-pepper brown hair into his ponytail. “You want somethin’?” I was glad to see that in contrast to our last meeting, he seemed relatively sober this time. Sober, but not friendly.

I realized how strange I must have looked, standing there in an expensive silk suit. “I stopped by to talk to Dell’s grandmother.” I tried to sound casual and at ease, in spite of the fact that I was way out of my element. “It’ll only take a minute. I know she’s not feeling too well.”

He scoffed, curling his lip to reveal an uneven row of lower teeth peppered with dark bits of chewing tobacco. “She’s had one too many of them Darvocet pills, if that’s what you mean. She ain’t feelin’ nothin’ right now. She’s smooth out on the couch.” Bracing his elbows on the
top of the fence, he grinned and leaned closer to me, probably just to see if I would back up, which I didn’t. “Guess you gotta talk to me.” Glancing at Dell, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of Life Savers and tossed them to her. “You been makin’ a pain in the butt of yourself again?”

Dell shook her head, looking down at the Life Savers, not at him. “Huh-uh.” Unwrapping a piece of candy, she popped it into her mouth.