Jakarta Missing (2 page)

“Dakar, you think too much,” Jakarta always said.

“Don't think, don't think,” Dakar told herself as she climbed onto the banister again. She didn't dare look down.

She let go. Her stomach whooshed up so far she could taste it, and then she flew off the end, staggered a few steps, and stumbled forward. She landed right in front of the dining room table. Mom, who always sat at the table and read in the mornings, was not there.

Dakar stood up and rubbed her knees. She knew they'd grow big black-and-blue bruises, and she felt a slight tingling of pride. She'd done it—for Jakarta.

Where was Mom? She felt a tingling of nervousness. “Dakar's famous overactive imagination is at it again,” Jakarta would say. But it really was a mysterious morning, wasn't it? She cautiously moved to the back door. Her father was chopping wood. His arms rose and fell, and for a second Dakar thought of women pounding corn. He was singing a mournful Celtic tune, not one of the sea chanties or West African songs he used to sing all the time.

Dakar watched him warily. Hadn't Dad sung this very song when he was making waffles on the morning he told them they were going to leave Kenya? “We've decided it might be time to spend a year or two on the border of North Dakota and Minnesota,” he'd said, reaching for Mom's hand over the mango syrup. “We'll be living only one long day's drive from where your mother grew up. Hey, we've explored the world … now let's explore the land of ten thousand lakes and the land of the flickertail.”

Jakarta had instantly said, “No. I'm not going.” She had at least fifteen reasons, she said, starting with not being able to make friends in the U.S. Jakarta had said the letters very distinctly. “Youuu. Essss.”

Dakar had wanted to say, “I won't go, either,” but she desperately wanted the four of them together, and she was pretty sure Jakarta would change her mind. So, instead, she'd said, “But what will you
do
?”

“I'll write articles about all my African research,” Dad said cheerfully. “Something I've been putting off for years. We've picked a town not far from both the University of North Dakota and a branch of the University of Minnesota, so I'll have resources.” He laughed his rumbling laugh. “It also has an airport thirty minutes away in case I need to get out of town fast.”

Dakar sighed. But Jakarta hadn't changed her mind. So here she was, and the whole family wasn't together, anyway, because here Jakarta
wasn't
.

Suddenly Dad looked up, stopped right in the middle of a mournful line, and waved. Then he bent, scooped up an armful of wood, and walked toward her, smiling. She had always thought that his smile was bedazzling sunlight and that if she could only get close enough to it, she could get warm and never worry, worry, worry about things again. When he got inside the door, she ran to him and put both her arms around one of his, leaning her head against his shoulder. His beard smelled of incense, and his shoulder smelled of soap and sweat. “Getting some breakfast?” he asked, holding her back so he could look down into her face.

She glanced into his eyes. What was that look? She didn't like it, didn't like it at all. “No.” She hadn't known she was going to say it until the word came out. “I have to get to school early to work on a project that Melanie and I are doing together. It's … um … about different knots. Sailor knots, I mean. The sea, you know.” The sea? Where did that come from? Dakar, you amaze me, she thought.

He didn't try to stop her. She waited for him to say, “Wait! You have to eat breakfast,” as she crammed her books into the bag, but he didn't say anything. Then suddenly he was kneeling beside her, putting his hand over hers. “Dakar,” he said.

“No,” she wanted to say. “No. Don't say it. Whatever it is.” She pulled her hand out from under his. She wanted to put her hands over her ears.

“There's been a bombing,” he said. “We tried most of the night to get in touch with someone at the school. But you know how phone lines can be over there even when things are at their very technological best. Don't worry about Jakarta.” In spite of his words, there was a trapped sound at the back of his voice, and Dakar had a quick thought of a moth in a cage. “Really,” he said, “there's no need to worry yet. You know how the phone lines can be.”

How phone lines can be in Ah-free-kah? She drew the word out in her mind, the way people would say it there. Why hadn't Mom come into her room to rock her for a minute and whisper that everything was going to be fine? “I gotta go,” she said.

She was out the door, running down the smooth sidewalk of this square block. When Dad had said they were going back to the States, Dakar had instantly imagined herself as Georgia O'Keeffe, striding along the desert under an azure sky. Or maybe living in a city where skyscrapers stood so close together you could stretch out your arms and touch buildings with both hands … or somewhere that smelled of sea and fog, in an old house creaky with ghosts. She had not imagined Cottonwood, North Dakota, at all. But here she was.

She opened her mouth and let air whoosh inside it. What was happening to Jakarta right this minute? Don't think. Don't think. Without thinking, she scooped up a handful of gravel and flung it at Melanie's window, where it clattered and pinged.

“Kid-hey!” She could see Melanie's pale face at the window, knew from the shape of her mouth the word she had said. A moment later the door opened. “Get in here.” Melanie pulled Dakar inside, laughing. “What are you doing? What happened to your knees?”

Dakar crossed her eyes and made a fish mouth. “Didn't you always want to try that thing with the window? They do it in books, you know, whenever someone wants to rouse somebody.”

“I've never known anyone who read so much. Anyhow, why are you early?” Melanie tugged on her hand. “Whatever. I wanted you to look at this catalog, anyway. I am in total love with these clothes. Did you eat?”

Dakar nodded yes, but Melanie wasn't looking at her. Melanie would wear all red to school, if she felt like it, and not care if people made fire siren sounds as she walked down the hall. Melanie said just what she was thinking. The first thing she had ever said to Dakar was “Why aren't you black?”

“Why should I be?”

“You grew up in Africa. And your name. I expected you to be black.”

“Well, I'm not.”

“Yeah, I see that. Wanna come to my house and get something to drink?”

Jakarta wouldn't have said yes. But Dakar had said yes to Melanie, yes to pop and Kool-Aid instead of powdered milk and Stoney Tangawizi. “Adorned with three tiny rosettes,” Melanie was saying, now. “Isn't that cool? Breeze tissue linen. I want this blouse. What do you think?”

The woman wearing the blouse had bare feet. She didn't look like the type to get worms in her feet, or thorns. Her face was serene. “Expensive,” Dakar said, wishing people could order feet from catalogs. Or faces. Serene faces.

Melanie wrinkled up her face. “At least you didn't say ‘for cute.' But I didn't expect you to be practical. Everyone around here is so extremely boringly practical. Here, close your eyes. I want you to hear these colors.”

Dakar closed her eyes.

“Not just white and black and red,” Melanie said. “Cinnabar. Dusty plum. Oooo, cypress. What color is that?”

“Mmm.” Dakar felt as if she were floating. Dusty plum. The dust was swirling, turning the sky to grainy gray. Where was she? Camels swaying through the dust with melancholy eyes.

“Olive,” Melanie said. “Coral, ivory, flax, chamois. Shhhhhham-waw.” She rolled the word over her tongue and lips.

Coral- and plum-colored blossoms cascading over a wall … what did that remind her of? Somewhere she'd been with Jakarta. “I'm so sorry, my sweet one. So sorry.” Dakar's eyes flew open. Jakarta had just spoken to her. What would Jakarta be doing speaking to her, unless, unless …

Dakar scrambled to her feet, almost knocking the chair over.

“What's wrong?” Melanie leaped up, too.

“Let's go.”

On the way to school she felt herself shivering. “What would you do if something scared you?” she asked. “I mean, really scared you.”

Melanie knew how to make her eyes go so wide open that she reminded Dakar of a cartoon person. “Around here,” she said, “hardly anything
really
scary ever happens. If it did, I guess someone would give a speech about our brave pioneer ancestors or how community spirit would help us pull through.”

Dakar laughed. This place did seem safe—nothing like walking down a sidewalk in downtown Nairobbery, where she didn't dare wear any jewelry because one of her teachers had gotten his arm stabbed through by someone trying to get his watch.

“But,” Melanie said, “if I was really and truly scared, I'd go right to my mom.” She stared at Dakar with wide-open green eyes. Light green, Dakar thought. Shadow green. Shiny green. Beetle green. Cinnabar green. Nah, cinnabar probably wasn't even green.

Dakar wrapped her arms around her shoulders. How could she just go to school, not knowing if Jakarta was safe or not? Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that the idea of sliding down the banister had popped into her mind before she even knew about the bombing. Was she supposed to be getting the message that there was something she could be doing besides worrying? “Don't mope, do something,” Dad always said. “Big problems require big solutions. You are the hero of your own life.” Too bad his younger daughter was heroic as snail slime.

Heroic as snail slime? But wait a minute! Wasn't it the simpleton, the weak youngest kid in the family who usually turned out to be the hero in the old stories? For a second she couldn't breathe. After all this time was the universe trying to send her on another
quest
?

She put her hands cautiously on her head. On the other hand, maybe deadly cholera had dried up her brains. No, wait. Think this through. People like Odysseus and Gilgamesh knew exactly what they wanted from their quests—they knew they were heroes from the start. But what about Moses standing in front of the burning bush saying, “Send my brother, 'cause I don't know how to say things right”? What about Isaiah saying, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips?”

There were heroes who felt puny when the story started. And who didn't know what to do. They just … started. “Here I am,” Isaiah said. “Send me.” Okay, Dakar thought as they reached the middle school steps. Send me.

Nothing happened. She had absolutely zero inspiration about what to do next.

Okay. What if she was supposed to do, say, three really brave things? She was pretty sure that had worked once. If it worked this time, maybe Jakarta would not only be safe but also come home and all four of them would be together again, which is what Dakar wanted more than anything in the world. Okay. She knew just the place for starting a quest. “Hey, I'm going in the high school door,” she said.

Melanie looked startled and a little scared. “We're not supposed to.”

“I know.” The two words sounded so bold that Dakar flushed.

“Wow,” Melanie said thoughtfully. “Well, maybe if they catch us, they won't do anything. They'll just think you came from Africa and you didn't know better … and we'll say I tried to stop you, but it all happened too fast.” She giggled.

Dakar put her hands to her cheeks as she turned the corner and walked toward the corner of the building. Her face was so hot it was probably purple. What if they got marched to the principal's office? What if he was a growling, scowling gorilla of a man? What if he yelled at them and handed them instant detention? What if someone called her parents? Weird—Dakar, the Good Kid, breaking the rules. Dakar, the Follower, striding along with Melanie pattering after her.

She wished she
felt
bold. Bold enough to ask Melanie the questions that were bouncing around her brain. But what if your mom was scared of the same thing? What if it was a real thing like a bomb, something people should be scared of? What if you'd gotten out of practice talking to your mom because you knew what it was like to go without her for months and months? What if you'd learned a long time ago, not because anyone told you but because you somehow knew knew knew, that some things you shouldn't talk about because they would just make everybody too sad?