The Language of Sycamores (15 page)

She answered with a rushed hello, covered the phone, and said, “Ooohhh, Joshua, wait a minute, I’ll pour the milk!” Then she came back and said, “I’m sorry. Hello?” Something crashed in the background and she groaned.

“Kate?” I suddenly felt bad for even calling her.

“Karen? Is everything all right? You didn’t even stay for breakfast this morning.”

“We picked up some doughnuts.” The kids were headed my way, so I hurried to get to the point. “But we need some help down here. Is James or Ben around?”

“No.” My hopes tanked. “James headed out to talk to some guy about a barn, and Ben had some meetings at the office in Springfield today. He just left.”

“Shoot.” Amazing how easy it was for me to forget that the rest of the world had jobs to go to. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was Monday and I wasn’t headed to Lansing Tech. The realization was surprisingly freeing. I felt like I was back in college with the cast of
Hair
. No jobs, no real schedules to keep—just thousands of pounds of equipment to move, and nine young people who appeared to believe we could do it.

“I’ll come,” Kate said quickly, and I heard the rattle of dishes going into the sink.

“Oh . . . Kate, you’ve got your hands full.” I felt both guilty and grateful. The last thing Kate needed was one more job to do, but she was willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice to help.

“That’s all right—Joshua, stop that—I’ll call Verna and see if I can take the kids to her house for a few hours . . . Come here, baby girl. Oh, did you pour milk in your hair? . . . I’ll be there. I’ll see if I can get in touch with Jenilee and Caleb over at Brother Baker’s house. They’d probably come down and help for a few hours before they head over to Poetry. There should be some other church volunteers showing up there pretty soon, too. I’ll call around, maybe see if I can rustle up a little more help.”

“Kate, you don’t have to do this.” I pictured how much trouble it would be to get two toddlers cleaned up, diaper bags packed, in the car, delivered to someone’s house. Kate hadn’t mentioned all of that. She’d just said she was coming, and she’d dropped whatever was on her agenda for the day. I couldn’t think of one person back in Boston who would do that for me. But Kate would.

I started to tear up.

The college kids gave me nervous glances.

“It’s all right,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I’m always emotional.” That couldn’t have been further from the truth. “Help is on the way. Let’s get to work.”

So we did. We toured the church, then started bringing in everything from huge rolling mirrors and dance bars to boxes of instruments and baseball equipment for the recreation class. About halfway through the process, Jenilee and Caleb showed up, and then Kate. Brother Baker arrived with the plumber and they disappeared into the back of the building. The work out front took on the air of a well-oiled machine, and I had the adrenaline rush of a job that was falling into place. This wasn’t so different from moving my Lansing team to a new customer site. We came in, we assessed how to make the facilities work for us, we established our various bases of operations, and we got down to business.

By the time Keiler Bradford came squealing up in another multicolored Jumpkids minibus, the work was practically done, which was a good thing, because we were a half hour from the arrival of the children.

Keiler hurried to the door, carrying a huge wad of stereo cables and power cords. Skidding to a halt beside me, he looked not nearly as chilled out as he had been Friday on the plane. He glanced frantically around the parking lot, strands of flyaway hair sticking out in all directions like an electric halo. “I’m scared to ask—where is everything?”

“Set up, for the most part.” I found myself grinning like a parent on Christmas morning, waiting for the kid to find Santa’s toys. “We have the orchestra center in the practice choir room—there were two pianos in there, anyway—the dance center in a large Sunday school room, the art and set design in the old kindergarten area, the theater in the sanctuary, complete with the expanded bilevel stage you brought, and the recreation’s out back on the baseball field.” He stood gaping at me so I added, “That’s pretty much everything, isn’t it?”

“I . . . I think so.” Pulling a handwritten list from his pocket, he checked the items, then handed it to me. “I think that’s about . . . everything. See what you think.”

I scanned the piece of yellow notebook paper, reading the former director’s hastily written instructions on how to set up camp, and concluding that we had done a pretty good job. “Registration table . . .” I muttered when I got to the bottom of the second sheet. “We didn’t do this one. Where are these file boxes with the files on each of the kids?”

Keiler thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Back in Kansas City. I didn’t even think about bringing those.” Bracing his hands on the droopy waist of his camp shorts, he heaved a sigh, looking defeated. “We’re never gonna pull this off without Shirley here. We’ve never even tried to do a camp without our director.”

I felt an almost motherly urge to comfort him. He looked completely despondent. “Oh yes, we
are
going to pull this off,” I said, the same way I would have told my team we
would
have a network up in six days, when they were telling me it would take ten. “We’ve got a good start this morning, and there are church volunteers showing up to help. We’ll just keep putting it together one brick at a time, all right?”

He nodded, still crestfallen. “I’m sorry. It’s not supposed to be this big of a mess. Shirley usually has everything in order and has prep sheets for everybody so they’ll know what to do. Everyone assumes that I know what’s going on, but last year all I did was coach baseball and teach a few guitar lessons. I don’t have any idea about running all the other stuff. The doctors told Shirley no stress, so I can’t call her either, and . . .”

I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, where’s the guy who was looking for a trip off the map?”

Keiler managed a feeble laugh. “Very funny.”

“Oh, come on, remember him?” I teased. “
My reason for being could be anywhere. . . . Stop worrying about the map. . . .
Remember all that stuff? What happened to that guy?”

Rubbing his eyebrows with his fingers, he shook his head back and forth. “He doesn’t like being in charge.”

I chuckled as we started down the hallway. “Well, I’m sure he’ll do just fine. Let me show you how we have things set up.”

“All right,” he agreed, and together did the tour, plugging in power cords and stereo cables as we went. When we were finished, we had fifteen minutes to slap a registration table out front, hang the Jumpkids banner on the portico of the church, and plunk down a set of recycled church file folders in a Cheetos box so we could do some sort of record keeping.

Keiler and I and Mindy, the girl with the nose ring, slid into chairs behind the table, and Dell was our first customer. She handed Keiler her application, complete with a two-page essay, neatly handwritten on wrinkled spiral notebook paper. I glanced at the first few lines as he made a folder with her name on it.
Why I Want to Go to Jumpkids Camp,
it said as a title, and then in the first line,
I want to go to Jumpkids Camp because Karen told me I would learn more about music. I love music, and I am good at it. It isn’t like most things. . . .

I swallowed the lump in my throat. In that one moment, every bit of the work was worth it.

“Hello, Dell.” Keiler greeted her as he tucked her application into the folder. “Thanks for being such a big help this morning. I don’t think we could have done it without you.”

Dell smiled shyly and muttered, “Thanks.”

“I have her permission form in my briefcase. I’ll go get it in a little while,” I said as Keiler leafed through the papers, then closed the folder.

Keiler nodded. “I hope the rest of the kids show up with their Jumpkids packets. It should have a copy of their applications and essays in it. We need those for camp.” He gave the empty file box a look of concern. “Our copies are back in Kansas City in the file box. Without the files, we don’t know if a kid is really registered or not.”

“Oh, let’s just let them all in,” I said, and Keiler went pale.

Mindy let her head fall into her hand. “That means we don’t have the name tags. The name tags were in the file box.”

“Ohhh, man,” Keiler groaned.

I turned around to see if Kate was still in the sanctuary. “Kate, do you think there are some name tags around or big stickers we can write on?” I asked. “And some permanent markers?”

“I think so,” she called back. “Just a minute.”

She returned as the first kids were showing up, and she apologetically offered a stack of tooth-shaped stickers left behind by the local dentist.

KEEP YOUR SMILE
, they said at the top, which, considering the way the day had started, seemed . . . perfect.

Chapter 15

B
y nine o’clock we had ninety-five children registered, and Keiler was worried. “We’re only supposed to have eighty-seven,” he whispered as another car raced up to the curb. A heavyset woman in a flowered housedress climbed out, gruffly hustling two tall, slender African-American girls, probably about fifteen and twelve years old, toward the registration table. They did not appear happy to be joining us.

Keiler looked like he was about to panic. Leafing through the file box, he shook his head. “All the ones we’ve registered have paperwork, but Shirley said there were only supposed to be eighty-seven.” He stopped talking as the woman plunked down yet another set of paperwork, which appeared to be in order.

I read the names on their application—Sherita and Meleka Hall, the ones Dell was afraid would knock her lights out. Great. Just what we needed: eight extra kids, and now two more who, judging from their body language, were ready to start a brawl. “You’re their foster parent?” I asked, thumbing through the foster care forms attached to the paperwork.

“Yeah,” the woman said, then glanced toward the car, where a toddler in a diaper was climbing out the driver’s-side window. “Git back in there, Myrone!” she hollered, and I had visions of the squirming child accidentally kicking the car into gear.

The foster mother did not appear worried. She turned back toward
the table to converse with me, while I glanced around her, wondering if I should do something.

“Myrone, cut that out!” she hollered, obviously more for my benefit than for his, because she didn’t turn around and check on him. Heaving a sigh, she rolled her eyes at me, as if I should sympathize with how much trouble this was for her. “So we supposed to pick the kids up, or the church van gonna bring them home?”

“The van can bring them home.” I glanced toward the car, where little Myrone had turned on the flashers and was looking for something else to play with. He decided to shinny out the window again, headfirst. “He’s going to fall,” I said, and stood up.

The foster mother didn’t even bother to look. “Naw, he’s fine. That one’s just like a little monkey. He climbs everywhere.” She leaned over to sign the transportation form that Keiler had laid on the table.

Slipping one leg out the window, Myrone called to his sister. “Sha-wita. Sha-wita . . .”

The older girl glanced at the foster mother, then huffed and walked down the sidewalk, hollering, “Myrone, you get your butt back in the car or I’m gonna whip it for ya.”

Myrone scurried back through the window with amazing dexterity. He didn’t stop until he was in the backseat. Reaching in through the window, Sherita buckled him into his car seat, then threatened him again, making a few hand motions to show him the whipping he’d get if he caused any more trouble. Then she leaned in through the window and kissed him on the forehead.

I liked her immediately, despite her apparent threat to Dell.

By the time she returned to the table, she was once again wearing the in-your-face scowl. Keiler welcomed her to camp, and she sneered at him, crossing her arms over her chest, letting us know she did
not
want to be there, we were all idiots, Jumpkids camp was a stupid idea, and she hated her foster mother.

The foster mother returned a narrow-eyed glare that said pretty much the same thing, then told me, “They give you any trouble, call me. I’ll come thump heads.” She turned and started toward the car, where Myrone was once again trying to wiggle out of his seat.

“Honky ho,” Sherita muttered, then returned her attention to us, crossing her arms tighter and jutting her slim hips to one side.

Keiler received the performance like he’d seen it all before. Pushing a few fallen strands of brown hair out of his face, he leaned back in his chair and asked, “So, Sherita, what do you like to do? Sing, dance, do artwork, play an instrument? Everyone will get to do a little bit of everything, but we try to put kids in a group that’s going to concentrate most on their main deal.” He gave her another welcoming smile, which went unrequited. “So what’s your thing?”

She lifted her lashes slowly, delivering a dark, murderous glare and a threatening head bob. “Nothing. I don’t wanna do nothing.”

Keiler nodded and made a mark on her tooth name tag, then handed it to her. “That’s fine. There. I’ve got you marked down to do nothing. If anyone asks you to participate, just show them your name tag, and you’ll be all right. I try to put a few nothing people in each group. It gives the rest of the kids an audience to work to. As long as you’re chillin’ and not bothering anybody, we’ll know that you’re happy in the nothing group and we’ll leave you alone. If at any point you start talking to the performers or making comments or moving around during the rehearsals, we’ll know you’re tired of being nothing, and you’re ready to try something. It’s entirely up to you. Fair enough?”

Sherita was completely baffled. Quite clearly, she had no idea how to respond to that. Her arms fell to her sides as she tried to think up a negative answer. Then she crossed them again, huffed, and shrugged.

Keiler turned to her younger sister, who was probably about Dell’s age. “So how about you, Meleka? What do you like to do?”

“Dance,” the girl said quickly. Obviously, she’d figured out what came from saying nothing.

“Hmmm, a dancer,” Keiler said, sounding impressed as he marked her name tag and handed it to her. “All right, there you go. You’re a dancer.”

We stood up and ushered the dancer and the nothing inside, where the rest of the kids were in the chapel, waiting for the opening ceremony.

“That was very well done,” I muttered to Keiler as we walked through the door.

He gave a sly sideways grin. “The kids I can handle. It’s the organizational side that’s not my thing.”

“Not your
deal,
huh?” I joked.

He chuckled. “Not. So I guess you and Brother Baker better stick around and run things.” He pointed Sherita and Meleka to a pair of seats along the aisle. “Looks like this is about all that’s open,” he said to Sherita, who was already sneering at the other kids nearby. “You two can either sit here or stand in the back with the teachers. Your choice.”

Sherita didn’t answer, just slipped past him and plunked into the seat with a loud thud. Her sister slid in beside her and they sat with their arms bolted across their chests, dealing out dirty looks to kids, counselors, and church volunteers.

Dell glanced nervously across the aisle. Sherita and Meleka glared at her in unison, and Dell shrunk back in her seat. Sherita raised her chin triumphantly, pleased to have finally intimidated someone.

I moved to the back with the teachers as Keiler grabbed his guitar, jogged to the stage, and bounded up the steps to the microphone. “It’s showtime!” he hollered so loudly that the sleepy crowd of kids bolted upright in their seats. “Are we gonna do some jammin’ today?” he asked, as the Jumpkids theme song came up in the background, the sound rising until I was sure it would rattle the old building off its foundation.

“Yeah!” the kids screamed, throwing their hands in the air and starting to clap in unison with Keiler.

“A-a-all right!” he cheered. “I see some familiar faces out there. How many of you were with us at a Jumpkids camp last year?”

About half of the kids raised their hands into the air, vibrating up and down in their seats.

“All right, then, you’re gonna know this song!” The lyrics came up on the screen behind him, and he started playing his guitar along with the music. “Let’s get the rest of the Jumpkids mentors to come up and help with the hand motions, O.K.?”

“O.K.!” the kids cheered, and the counselors deserted me as Keiler announced their names like they were celebrities taking the stage.

“We’ve got Too-Tall Paul!” he said as the basketball player bounded
forward. “You’ll be seeing him at the baseball field out back.” He pointed to the clean-cut kid in the button-down shirt. “And Marvelous Marvin! Don’t let the look fool you. He’s a wild man, and he knows his way around a box of crayons. You’ll be seeing him in the art and set-design room!” Pausing while the kids cheered, he motioned to the counselor with the Afro. “And Mojo Joe, you’ll see him in the dance studio, along with Lim-ber Linda!” He indicated to the leggy blonde with the ponytail, then waited while she took the stage and the kids cheered again. The girl with the nose ring headed up, along with the boy with the buzzed hair. “And Magnificent Mindy and Dynamic Dillon, your acting coaches!” The children bounced up and down in their chairs, screaming like they’d just seen the Backstreet Boys. Keiler motioned to the last two counselors, and they jogged up the aisle. “And Harmonious Heather and Tune-Time Tina, your vocal music instructors—that’s singing, in case you didn’t know!” Keiler swept his arms toward the crew on both sides, motioning for the cheers to continue, then suddenly slicing his hands back and forth to cut off the noise. The kids cooperated, as if they knew the routine, and the room filled with little voices whispering
Ssshhhh, ssshhh, ssshhh!

Keiler lowered his voice, sounding serious, “And of course, we have Jammin’ Jason on sound, and Way-Cool Keiler, in instrumental music.” He motioned to himself, then pointed to the audience. “And for a special limited engagement, Crazy Karen, queen of the ivories!”

I noticed that he was pointing at me.

Kate and Jenilee turned around in the front pew, gaping. My young cousin gave me the thumbs-up, and my sister mouthed, “Woo-hoo!”

I didn’t know what to do but shrug helplessly and wave to the legion of cheering fans.

“Come on up, Karen, let’s do the Jumpkids song!” Keiler motioned for me to join the rest of the crew on stage.

Dell threw her hands into the air, cheering wildly and standing halfway out of her seat. All of a sudden, her piano teacher was a minor celebrity.

Sinking against the wall, I shook my head. I couldn’t think of anything more mortifying than trying to sing and dance onstage with a
bunch of college kids. Imagine what the people at Lansing would think if they could see that.
Karen’s lost her mind. . . .

Keiler gave a big, exaggerated frown that made him look like a longhaired clown. Motioning for the sound engineer to pause the music, he surveyed the crowd. “She’s a little shy,” he lamented, and the kids started to moan and groan as he pointed a finger at them. “Are we supposed to be shy at Jumpkids camp?”

“No-ooooo!” the kids squealed.

“Right!” Keiler cheered. “Should she be afraid to get up here and sing the Jumpkids song?”

“No-ooooo!” The crowd sounded ready to riot.

“Does it matter if we mess up?”

“No-ooooo!”

“Does it matter if we’re not perfect?”

“No-ooooo!” All of a sudden, I sensed what Keiler was up to. I was being used as an example, or a guinea pig, depending on how you looked at it.

He waved a hand in the air. “It only matters that we”—then he pointed at the crowd, and they hollered—“Try!”

“That’s right! Let’s help Karen out. Let’s give her some encouragement!”

As if on cue, the college kids, the very same kids whose rears I had pulled out of the noose earlier that day, mutinied on me and started chanting my name. Before I knew it, the entire crowd, including my sister and cousin, were chanting, “Ka-ren, Ka-ren, Ka-ren!”

There was nothing to do but either go forward or make a run for the door, so I dragged myself off the wall, making an exaggerated display of how much trouble it was. The kids went wild, squealing, cheering, clapping, screaming my name.

Dell was on her feet, clapping and cheering, “Go Karen!” as if this were some sort of sporting event.

I walked to the front, giving the college kids an evil look, which only served to pump them up. They were having a good time making a patsy of the old lady.

When I reached the stage, the crowd started chanting my name
even louder, and Keiler whipped it up, presenting me like a sacrificial goat and saying, “Let’s have a big hand for Mi-i-iss Karen!”

The next thing I knew, I was grinning from ear to ear and taking a bow. I’d never felt so popular in my life. It was good, euphoric in spite of the fact that I didn’t know the song and was about to make a fool of myself.

Keiler spied Brother Baker at the back door showing the plumber out. “Hey, look, everybody, there’s our host, Bad-out Brrrother Ba-ker! I think he ought to help us with the Jumpkids theme song, too, don’t you?”