Ola Shakes It Up (11 page)

“It's true,” Lucas said. His squeaky voice sounded sad now. “Carmen took them ice skating, and Karen wouldn't let me go with her 'cause she said I bother her too much.”

“Thanks, Lucas.” I hung up quickly. They were probably forgetting all about me while they were having fun.

I stood up and put the phone back on the hall table. Maybe some food would make me feel better. The way I was eating Lillian's cooking, I was gonna have to add fat to
my list of problems. Aeisha had even taken me aside because she wanted to talk to me about how I shouldn't use food to make myself feel better. She showed me pictures from one of her teen magazines of girls with eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia. They looked like normal girls to me, but when I told Aeisha that she just shook her head and said, “Exactly.”

I walked into the kitchen and found Lillian there, as usual, in front of the stove. She was still dressing funny, and no one had said anything about it to her yet. That was probably because she was so quiet. Whenever Mama and Dad tried to talk to her, she never said much back. Marie-Thèrése had told us that she could speak some English, but it was hard to tell because she hardly said anything that had more than one syllable in it. It was really creepy. She was like a shadow. Dad said she just needed time to get used to living with us.

I could smell something delicious cooking, and I wondered what she was making. The day before, she had made us something called cod salad, which had salt fish and tomatoes and peppers in it. It was so good nobody could talk during dinner 'cause they were too busy eating. “Hi, Lillian.”

“Ah-lo, Ola,” Lillian said softly. She put a small bowl of some kind of orange-brown soup in front of me. It smelled good, but I wasn't feeling hungry anymore.

“No, thank you, Lillian,” I said, pushing the bowl away from me a little. I put my elbows on the table and cupped my chin in my hands. If I'd been in my old neighborhood, I'd have been outside riding my bike or roller-skating—on the street.

I heard the sound of the bowl moving across the counter,
and I glanced down, surprised. Lillian had moved it back in front of me. I looked up and saw that she was watching me. “What?”

Lillian tapped my elbow with one finger and said,
“Manje
—eat,” loud and clear.

I took my elbows off the counter. Lillian s voice always surprised me. It was deep and strong, like a cello. This was the first time she'd spoken to me without me speaking to her first. “I'm not hungry.”

Lillian didn't take her eyes off me. Her voice came again, welling up from inside her. “Eat. Soup good inside you.”

I picked up the spoon. “What kind of soup is this, Lillian?”

“Soup
jumeau,”
Lillian answered. She sat beside me on the other stool and started twisting her fingers in her lap. Finally she looked up and asked, “Is good?”

I nodded, taking another spoonful. Lillian's soup had made my appetite come back, but I was even more excited that Lillian was talking to me. I'd been wanting to ask her questions about Haiti, but Mama had made me promise not to pester her. “What's it made of?”

“Soup with … pumpkin,” Lillian said slowly. “Is made with Walcott world-famous pumpkin.”

I looked at Lillian. For a second there, she sounded just like Mrs. Spunklemeyer had on the day she'd brought us the pumpkin pie. I wondered if she was trying to be funny by imitating Otis's mama, but Lillian spoke again before I could be sure. “In Ayiti, we eat soup for first day of year.”

“How come?” I asked. Lillian had a heavy accent that
sounded like French mixed in with something else. But her English was pretty good.

Lillian smiled a little. “Give you luck.”

“But this isn't New Year's Day,” I pointed out.

“I wish you for have luck.” Lillian nodded.

I laid down my soup spoon and twisted around on my stool to look at her. Lillian had noticed me moping around the house after school. She had made the soup just for me. That was like something Mrs. Gransby would do. “Lillian?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you about where you lived in Haiti?” I asked politely. Mama couldn't say I was pestering if I got permission.

Lillian tilted her head and said, “Shoot.”

I looked up, startled. Lillian was imitating Khatib. She sounded just like he did when he said that. Lillian had been watching us.

Lillian nodded. “Where I live in Haiti call Anse-a-veau.”

“Ansahvo,” I repeated, trying to say it like Lillian did.

“Anse-a-veau,” Lillian corrected me.

“Is it pretty there?”

“Is small place. By the water—ocean. Is beautiful, the ocean.”

“What do people do there?” I asked. I thought it would be great to live by the ocean. I'd go to the beach every day.

Lillian frowned. “Is poor place. Very poor. Most person make life on fish — catch fish, sell fish, eat fish. My
manman
sell fish for market. My sisters help Manman.”

“How many sisters do you have?”

“I have three sisters. One is name Juliane, call Ju-ju. She fourteen. She say when she is big, she no eat fish no more. One is name Marie-Jose, call Ti Marie. She is nine like you and she love talk, talk, talk. Even when she is sleep, her mouth move. Last one is Edna, call Nou-nou. She is baby, four year, and always she hurry. She try to be born on road, when Manman come from market. She no like to wait for anything.” Lillian shook her head and smiled.

I checked out Lillian's eyes. They had become less sad. I noticed that Lillian's English sounded better, too, the longer she talked. “Where did you learn English?”

“My friend Elise teach me. She learn English in school. I learn more when I in hospital.” Lillian nodded. “I listen everything.”

“You didn't go to school?”

Lillian shook her head. “I stop to help Manman with market.”

“I thought everybody had to go to school. It's against the law not to go to school here,” I said, frowning.

“Is why I come here, Ola,” Lillian told me quietly. “Is hard life there for poor people. Get good job here. Send money for Ju-ju and Ti Marie school. Send money for them come one day.”

“You don't want to go back?” I asked wistfully.

Lillian shook her head firmly. “No go back. Make place here for my family. Is better place. Is more job, more schools. More chance.”

“I guess so,” I said glumly. Those were the exact reasons why we'd moved to Walcott.

Lillian and I turned as we heard a big grunt and Khatib walked into the kitchen.

“Hi, Lillian. What's up, Ola?” he said tiredly. He was walking funny. He would take one step, stop for a second and moan, then take another step and start all over again. “What's wrong with Aeisha? She came in with me and she ran straight up the stairs.”

I shrugged. “She probably went to study.” Aeisha had been spending a lot more time in her room lately. Just as I had figured, getting her own room had made her even more of a hermit.

“Well, if it's that Otis who's bothering her, tell her I'll take care of him for her.” Khatib struck his hand against his chest, like he was Tarzan. I rolled my eyes. It hadn't taken long for Khatib to start acting like he was God's gift to the world again. That was another sign that everybody was adjusting to Walcott but me.

“My legs,” Khatib moaned. He finally made it to the counter and plopped down on one of the stools next to me. “This dance class is gonna kill me.”

“I thought you only had dance class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays,” I said to Khatib. Lillian had placed a bowl of soup in front of Khatib and left the kitchen. I watched her go, sorry that Khatib had interrupted us.

“I do,” Khatib said quickly. He picked up his spoon and bent his face toward the bowl. “My muscles ache from yesterday's class — not that it's any of your business.”

I raised my eyebrows. Khatib was acting weird.

“How's basketball practice going?” I asked.

Khatib shrugged and didn't say anything. Now I knew
there was something wrong, because Khatib loved to talk about how many points he scored in practice and how he was gonna single-handedly beat the next team they were playing.

“Don't you have a game coming up?”

Khatib nodded and kept eating his soup. I watched him for a minute, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to get anything out of him. Khatib is like a big clam. He won't tell anybody anything until he's ready. Why wasn't he talking? It had to be something to do with basketball. Maybe he'd had a really bad practice. Or maybe the coach had benched him for the next game.

I decided to leave him alone and go pester Aeisha. She would stay in her room studying until midnight if I didn't go up there and make her take a break. Besides, I wanted to run my plan for quitting school by her. She'd probably tell me it was stupid, but I'd get her to explain why and then I'd be prepared for Mama and Dad's objections. I stopped halfway up the stairs. I had stepped on something. I looked down and saw that it was a half-crumpled sheet of paper. It was one of Aeisha's test papers. Boring. I picked it up and smoothed it out anyway. It would give me a good excuse to barge into Aeisha's room.

Then I looked at it more closely and my mouth fell open.

It was a science test that she'd taken a couple of days before. Aeisha had gotten a C!

Aeisha never got C's. Aeisha never even got B's. She was a straight-A student—or she used to be. What had happened? She'd been studying like crazy since we started at our new school. Then I remembered how she'd been acting
our first day of school. She'd been flipping through her books like she was worried. And ever since then she'd been studying double the amount that she used to.

I smoothed out the paper and tucked it into my back pocket. Just an hour earlier I'd been depressed 'cause I thought I was the only one not adjusting to this town. Now both Aeisha and Khatib weren't acting like themselves. I had been so caught up in my own problems, I hadn't even noticed theirs — which meant I wasn't acting like myself, either, 'cause I hadn't been keeping up with what was going on with the family. Somebody else had been doing that, though. Lillian. I realized now that she had made that big pot of good-luck soup for the whole family, not just for me. Just like Mrs. Gransby, Lillian was watching out for us.

his neighborhood was full of weird people.

I turned the focus knob on Aeisha's binoculars to see if there was something wrong with it. Maybe I'd seen something that just
looked
like a lady throwing leaves all over her lawn. I looked again. Nope. It was a Saturday afternoon and there
was
a lady spreading leaves all over her lawn. She was an older lady, with curly white hair, and she was wearing a thick blue winter coat and blue rubber boots. She was dragging a huge garbage bag full of dead brown leaves and putting the leaves back on her front lawn. She would take a handful, toss them on the ground, move a little and then start all over again. I watched her for a few minutes. She was doing a good job of it, too. Soon her lawn would be covered with dead brown leaves.

I decided that she must be one of Mr. Elijahs friends from the senior citizens' home. She didn't look as old as the rest of his friends, but she sure would fit in with them. I'd met two more of Mr. Elijah's friends in the past two weeks
'cause he decided that he should introduce me to the neighborhood. First I'd met Mr. Portello, who thought he was a fortune-teller. He said he came from a stock of Gypsies that had come to Walcott in the 1920s and liked it so much they decided to stay. Then he read my palm and told me that I would grow up to be an important person in this town. Me? No way. I was getting out. Mr. Elijah told me that Mr. Portello held regular Saturday-night seances in his house — after ten o'clock. Otis told me later that Mr. and Mrs. Stern hated Mr. Portello because he spent a half hour of each neighborhood board meeting asking for permission to hold his late-night seances and they couldn't say no because that was how he made his living.

Then I'd met Mr. Arnold, the retired newspaperman. He was the founder of
The Walcott Sentinel
, which was the town newspaper. It was hard to talk to him because all he did was grill you with questions. When I'd gone to visit him with Mr. Elijah, he wanted to know who I was, when I moved here, what I moved here for, where I lived, and why I lived there. When I had answered all his questions, he barked out, “Headline: ‘Newest Resident, A Real Nut.’ “ After meeting some of his friends, I told Mr. Elijah that
he
wasn't senile at all.