Jakarta Missing (23 page)

Dad wasn't sure what to think. Was this just typical Amhara mistrust of other ethnic groups? But it was true that the village was eerily still, no women calling to each other as they pounded grain, no smell of cook fires, no children playing. Unfortunately, there were no other places where the river was safe to cross. And the research team had to be ferried back to the side Dad was on in order to get home. Quietly the cook and Dad packed up. Then they blew air into the air mattresses and tied them in a double layer. When the research team returned, Dad shouted the news across the river and then paddled his makeshift raft to the middle, trying to catch the current the way he'd seen the men in the canoes do. He had just found the current when he heard shouts. Rising slowly out of the brown water were the eyes of a crocodile. Someone shot a rifle, and the eyes disappeared.

Dakar shivered. What a trip that was. Dad got everyone safely across, and the village stayed silent, so silent he wondered if anyone was even there, if the cook had somehow misunderstood what was happening. He never did find out. But as they began the trip back, they gradually discovered the mules had saddle sores and couldn't carry the gear back up Maji Mountain. Dad and a Maji policeman volunteered to climb for help. So they set off with no food to stave off their hunger except a little roasted grain the policeman had along. At dusk they ran into a snarling cheetah. Luckily, when the policeman cocked his pistol, the cheetah leaped off into the brush.

She'd always liked the end, when Dad got home in the middle of the night and shook Mom awake. “What are you doing here?” Mom said. He told her to wake him at dawn so he could go back to rescue the others with the Jeep. Dakar had never before thought to wonder what Mom felt as she shone her flashlight up into Dad's puffy, bee-stung face.

“Merciful heavens,” Aunt Lily said. “You remind me of my late husband. Otis used to say, ‘Don't take needless risks, but do take interesting ones.'”

“Great-Uncle Otis was very different from Grandpa, wasn't he?” Dakar asked.

“Yes,” Aunt Lily said. “Otis was a different breed of fish altogether. Charles believed one of life's greatest blessings was to die in the same place you were born. Otis had no roots to speak of. But you know, they had a lot in common. Charles could see beauty in rippling prairie greasy grass under the moon. Otis could see the beauty in just the right tuck of the chin—or in a graceful fall. They both had the gift of doing one thing at a time.”

Mom had that gift, Dakar thought. Jakarta, too. She herself would have liked to have it, but she was more like Dad. Restless. With a start she realized that Aunt Lily was saying something else. “On one of our visits home I heard the two of them philosophizing out by the barn. I heard Charles say life wasn't a matter of fearlessness but of practicing courage. Otis said he made it a point to make friends with one of his fears every day. ‘Life is terrifying,' he said. ‘Terrifying—and wonderful.'”

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.

T
hursday 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 heard 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.”