Jakarta Missing (15 page)

Dad stared at her without his usual interested, amused expression. Maybe Jakarta had hit a nerve. Not that he was stodgy. Or old. “I actually can't think of anything more stupid,” Dad said, “than a bunch of grown men running around a court chasing a little ball. The time and money that go into sports in this country are obscene.”

Dakar waggled her eyebrows at Jakarta. Not a bad time to quit?

The old Jakarta would have quit or made a joke. “I saw Garnett make a great basket today.” Jakarta faked a basket in the air. “Maybe if you had seen it, you'd change your mind. They're so much fun to watch. Vivid. Elegant. Edgy.”

“What a waste.” Dad waved one arm, but it was a helpless gesture.

Dakar had seen the look on his face before. When Dad couldn't bear injustice or stupidity or the pain of the world being so totally different from the way he just
knew
it should be, he would get a baffled, wounded-elephant look in his eyes. “Watch out,” Dakar wanted to say. Wounded elephants could charge, and pain made them not care who got hurt. But Jakarta didn't stop.

“All cultures have games,” Jakarta said. “In Ethiopia and Kenya people sometimes kill each other over them, right? How's that for taking games seriously? You always said the most important thing is to pay attention, not try to make people over in our own image.”

“How was the library today?” Dakar asked Dad. Her skin felt too tight for her face.

Dad shook his fork at Jakarta, punctuating his words. “People here distract themselves with games,” he said. “They use games to avoid looking at the hard things that matter most. How futile to choose to spend your life throwing a ball through a hoop.”

“You always said
love
can't just be a word.” Jakarta was pushing back her chair as she talked. She stood and leaned toward Dad, both hands on the table. “You said you have to be willing to live with people and listen to them and share their lives wherever they are. Well, maybe I want to share basketball players' lives. Where they are.” She spit out the last three words as if they tasted like mud.

“I don't think …” Dad said.

But by now Jakarta was nearly out the door. Dad pushed his chair away, too, and headed upstairs. Dakar looked around at the table. It wasn't even her turn to do the dishes.

The next morning, when she banged on Jakarta's door, Jakarta yelled, “Go without me.” So Dakar did, feeling hurt and confused. Maybe it was because of the confusion that when she saw Melanie come out of her house, she slowed down and let Melanie catch up. “I thought North Dakota was supposed to be cold,” she said as Melanie ran up, panting and grinning.

“It will be,” Melanie said. “Pretty soon we'll probably be wearing Russells to school every day. Don't worry, though. We'll show you everything. I'm sure you were never cold in Africa.”

Dakar scowled. Someone she thought could be a true friend didn't know the first thing about Africa. If there really were such a thing as magic, she'd zap Melanie into an Egypt winter or a Maji fog—like walking through cold, wet satin—or, better yet, plop her down shivering in a Nairobi rainstorm with frogs squeezing under the door.

“Some summers are hotter than this one was, too,” Melanie blabbed on. “Sometimes it's so muggy and hot that you think slugs could swim in your neck sweat. But you and Jakarta will think nothing of that.”

“Don't be an ignoramus,” Dakar said. Why didn't anybody
understand
?

Melanie flushed. “Pardoney moi for existing.”

“Want to learn an African phrase I learned in boarding school?” Dakar asked glumly.

Of course Melanie did. “Repeat after me,” Dakar said. “O-wa.”

“O-wa.”

“Ta-gu.”

“Ta-gu.” Melanie's voice was full of just the right amount of awe.

“Siam.”

“Siam.”

“Now say it fast,” Dakar said.

Melanie rattled the words off proudly. For a moment there was a bleak silence. Then she said, “You're mean now that Jakarta came.”

“At least I don't have purple hair.”

“I can't believe you said that.” Melanie glared at her. “That's it. No more chances. You stay away from me, and you stay away from my magic place.”

As soon as Melanie ran off, Dakar felt ashamed. After all, she had to admit she was ignorant, too. She'd had no idea what Russells were.

In school she tried not to notice when she walked by Melanie and the girl with the purple hair. She was invisible. Or they were invisible. “Anyway, big, hairy deal,” she told herself. She had Jakarta now, and she didn't mind slipping ghostlike through school.
That
she was used to. “Where were you?” she asked Jakarta at dinner.

“Researching the basketball team,” Jakarta said. “They've already started the season. But I might still be able to get in.” She grinned broadly. “The coach told me to come to practice this afternoon so he could take a look. I made about eleven shots in a row. Nobody passed to me—that's for sure. All of my shots were off rebounds that I had to risk my skin for.”

“Think carefully before you fritter all your time away,” Dad said. His voice sounded preoccupied. “I think you'll find sports in a North Dakota high school a lot different from in a small international school.”

“When in Rome,” Jakarta said. “Please pass the mushrooms and peas. What do you think, Dakar? Would I make an excellent Lady Wildcat?”

“You know,” Dad said, “I got a call today from one of my friends at the MSF.”

Dakar sat motionless with the dish of mushrooms and peas in midair. Médecins sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders. Dad had worked on MSF teams lots of times before, including in Somalia and in the Sudan.

“He was talking about a terrible earthquake in Guatemala.” Dad's voice was sorrowful. “The emergency rescue teams have done all they can. Now it's time to help the survivors.” He shook his head. “What's taking your mom so long to get back here?”

“I know you want to leave,” Jakarta said bitterly. “Just leave.”

Dad looked at her in surprise. “I do want to leave, of course. The situation's desperate, and they need every pair of hands. But I won't leave the two of you alone.”

“Oh, come on,” Jakarta said. “Lots of people my age in East Africa are married at sixteen. It's not like I haven't taken care of Dakar before.”

“Maybe I should then,” Dad said.

Dakar couldn't read his tone. Was he serious?

“Good,” Jakarta said. She pushed her chair back. “I think you should. I'm sure they need you.”

“Don't worry about it. I'm sure your mom will be back soon.”

Jakarta got to her feet. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe she doesn't want to come back?”

“No, it never did.” His voice was firm and impatient. “And it doesn't now.”

Dakar sat looking at the mushrooms and peas in her hand as once again Jakarta headed for the door. She finished her meal in silence and then wandered outside. She thought she knew where Jakarta had probably gone. As she got close to the park, she could see Jakarta on one of the basketball courts, practicing her moves on Pharo. Most of the time Jakarta didn't get past him, but every once in a while she could. Then she would crow and flap her arms. Dakar leaned into the fence and watched them facing each other, panting and glinty-eyed.

“Stay friendly, baby,” Pharo said. “Come on.”

Jakarta looked anything but friendly.

“Come on.” Pharo wiggled his fingers at her. “Think you can get past me?”

Jakarta swayed lightly. A little right. A little left. Suddenly she moved, and he was right with her like a mirror, except that she wasn't going that direction after all, now that he was committed, and before Dakar could even figure out exactly what had happened, Jakarta was free and driving toward the basket, and the few spectators, standing around and half watching, were hooting joyously—“slippery as a soapy baby!” yelled one—and Dakar was laughing, without even meaning to, and imagining that it was she who was feeling that fine, shimmering tightness when every muscle is singing. She hadn't even known Jakarta could play basketball like this.

“Sloppy,” Pharo said. But he was grinning. “You better take a break and work on dribbling with that left hand, hey? A three-year-old could take it away from you on the left side.” As they walked by Dakar, he said, “My mom says, where have you been?”

Dakar walked home hearing the bounce of the basketball behind her.

Late that evening, after she finished her homework, she stuck her head into Jakarta's room and said, “Actually Coach Svedborg is going to kiss your feet.”

“Think so?” Jakarta looked up eagerly. She patted her bed. “Come tell me all about him.”

Dakar caught her breath. Mom and Jakarta could be so much alike sometimes. “I don't know that much. Melanie said a few girls complain because he yells. But most of them worship him. They know he's yelling because he wants a winning basketball team for once.” She felt sad remembering Melanie that day. Melanie saying, “You know what my cousin said? He said, ‘What do those players expect? They're supposed to be
wildcats
, not tabby cats.'”

“So Coach Svedborg is a tough cookie?”

“I guess so.” Dakar suddenly felt
elated
. If Jakarta got involved in basketball, she would surely stay. And what would Melanie think if Dakar were the sister of a Lady Wildcat?

Later she was almost asleep when Jakarta poked her head into her room. “Wish me luck,” Jakarta said. “I've decided that tomorrow I'll go meet my nemesis.” Jakarta grinned recklessly. “Think my nemesis will be prepared for the ordeal of meeting me?”

That night Dakar fell asleep to the lullaby of the thump, thump sound of Jakarta jumping rope. It wasn't “Barbry Allen.” But it was still comforting.

In her dreams that night, False Dimitri was running after Catherine the Great, swinging a sword and screaming. Catherine hollered, “Stay friendly, baby.”

In the morning Dakar woke up sweating and coughing. The first thing she did was make sure Dad was still there. “Going to the library again?” she asked him.

“Not today.” He sounded distracted, but he smiled at her. “I'm driving into Minnesota to talk to some people about relief supplies for Guatemala.”

“Oh.” She was trying to think of something else to say, something useful and maybe even grand, when Jakarta clattered down the stairs.

“Come on,” Jakarta said. “Hustle up, sweet one.” So Dakar did.

With so little sleep, she was dragging herself through P.E. class when the school secretary called her out to tell her that she had a phone call. “Family emergency,” the secretary said.

Dakar felt as though her feet had been swept out from under her and she'd landed flat on the mat. Mom? Or maybe Dad had gone into a hospital to consult about someone who was sick. Maybe he caught a virus that swept through the hospital so fast no one could stop it before everyone had collapsed in twitching heaps on the floor. She shuffle-ran most of the way to the office, glancing down all the halls to see if anyone mouthy was around to see her in her gym shorts.

“Dakar?” It was Jakarta.

“What's wrong?” It had to be something awful if Mom or Dad couldn't even talk to her themselves.

“I made it!” Jakarta said. “Coach just told me he's letting me on the basketball team.”

“Jakarta!” Dakar put both hands on the phone and shook it hard. “Did you hear that? I just shook the phone. I wish it was your neck.”

Jakarta laughed. “Sorry. Did I scare you? I had to tell them it was an emergency because otherwise they wouldn't get you out of class. And it
is
an emergency, don't you think? I not only made the team—I'm a starter.”

Dakar glanced around. The secretary was talking to someone, but you never knew what secretaries could hear. “Hey, I've gotta go,” she whispered. “I'm in the middle of P.E.”

“One more thing,” Jakarta said.

“All right, but hurry—because I have to get out of these stupid gym shorts before someone sees me.”

“The rest of the team was all standing in the gym when I walked in,” Jakarta said. “And … they clapped. They clapped for me.” Her voice was suddenly soaked with emotion. “They could have hated me for pushing my way in, but they didn't. It's so supaloaf to be part of a team again.”

After school Dakar raced all the way home. She was checking Dad's closets, burrowing her nose into the incense smell, when she heard him drive up. She ran downstairs to hug him, squeezing his chest and strong arms as if she could hold him there.

The next few weeks blurred by. Every morning Dakar checked first for Dad. Every evening she hugged him. He hugged her back, but he looked sad and faraway. Most mornings, he got up early and drove to one or the other of the university libraries. He didn't sing anymore. His restlessness seemed to fill the house and spill out the edges.