Ola Shakes It Up Read online

  “Uh—Aeisha,” I said quietly. She was stuffing the books back into her pack hurriedly.

  “What?”

  “You missed one.” I pointed at the paper and widened my eyes. “Aeisha, you got a C?”

  Aeisha ran over to pick up the paper. She stared at it, then crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash can by her desk. Then she went to sit on the edge of her bed. I walked over to her slowly. I hoped Aeisha wasn't gonna cry. Aeisha, Mama and I all have the Benson crying syndrome. One of us can't start crying without starting the other one off.

  “So what's going on?” I reached over to pat her hand, just like Mama does when one of us is having a problem.

  Aeisha snatched her hand away. “First you have to promise not to tell anyone—'cause I'm taking care of it.”

  “Okay,” I promised. “Taking care of what?”

  Aeisha hesitated. “I'm not doing so good in my science class.”

  “How come?”

  Aeisha wouldn't even look at me. She was talking straight to her shoes. “I don't know. I guess I'm not smart enough.”

  I couldn't believe that. Science was Aeisha's best subject.

  “It's the teacher.” Aeisha spoke again, slowly. “I don't think he's grading me fair.”

  “How come?” I asked, standing up.

  Aeisha shrugged one shoulder. “I don't know, Ola. I'm studying harder than I've ever studied. I study until I know all the answers, but he always finds something wrong with them. I don't think he likes me. Our first day of school, he kept picking on me to answer questions — and I hadn't even got our science book yet.”

  I put my hands on my hips, mad. “What's his name?”

  “Mr. Stillwell,” Aeisha muttered. “That's not all, Ola. When I went to him for help, he said that he didn't think I belonged in the advanced class. He suggested that I go back to the regular science class.”

  “Aeisha, you gotta tell Mama and—”

  “You can't tell anyone. I'm taking care of it.” Aeisha stood up and went over to her backpack. She stuffed the last book back into it and zipped it up all the way.

  “What are you gonna do?” I asked. Aeisha didn't look sad anymore. She looked angry.

  “Otis is gonna help me.” Aeisha slung the backpack over her shoulder.

  “Help you do what?” I asked, following her as she headed toward the door.

  “Catch Mr. Stillwell.” Aeisha had a gleam in her eye that I'd never seen before. “Otis is in the same class as me and he always gets As. We're gonna put each other's names on our tests, so Mr. Stillwell will think my paper is Otis's.”

  I was impressed. Aeisha had come up with a great plan. “But what about your handwriting? Won't he be able to tell? I'm coming with you.”

  “Otis and I are gonna practice each other's handwriting. I'm going over there right now to work on it,” Aeisha said, going down the stairs. “You can't come.”

  I leaned over the railing. “Aeisha, if you need any help, just call me!”

  Aeisha didn't answer me. I stared after her for a moment. I couldn't believe she had been going through all this stuff and hadn't told anybody about it. Aeisha was sure acting different since we moved here. Here I was trying to think up a plan for her for a whole week and she didn't even need my help. I decided to go look for Grady. He needed me. The two of us could take a walk over to Mr. Elijah's — maybe he would know why that lady was putting the leaves back on her lawn.

  I whistled for Grady a couple of times and waited. Nothing. Grady didn't come running from one of our bedrooms or up the stairs. That was weird. I walked around upstairs and asked Mama and Khatib, but they hadn't seen him anywhere, either. Maybe Aeisha had taken him with her. I went downstairs to check around. If Aeisha had taken him out, she should have told me first. Grady was my responsibility. I walked around the front part of the house and then into the kitchen. Still no Grady. I stopped still when I heard a low voice coming from the backyard and then a short whistle. I walked over to the kitchen window. Lillian was in the backyard, all bundled up in Mama's old winter coat, and Grady was with her. I heard Lillian say something in Kreyol and watched in amazement as Grady started chasing his tail around and around in a tight circle. Then Lillian said something else, and he fell over on his back and stuck his legs in the air. He was playing dead.

  Lillian was training my dog. And it was working! He was doing some of the circus tricks from the second part of Ms. Pitapat's book.

  I watched them for a couple more minutes. I wanted to know how Lillian had taught Grady to do those tricks when he wouldn't even do simple things like sit or stay for me, but I also felt sort of mad. Even Grady didn't need me. Then I started to feel bad. Lillian was probably teaching Grady those tricks to surprise me. She knew how frustrated I was that he wasn't learning anything. Lillian was doing something nice for this family again.

  I walked out of the kitchen and grabbed my coat and hat from the closet. I didn't want to ruin Lillian's surprise. I would go see Mr. Elijah by myself. When I went outside, the cold air hit me in the face and made it tingle. I walked down the street in the direction of the old lady's house, but I didn't see her anywhere. She had finished spreading out all her leaves, and you couldn't even see the brown grass of the lawn anymore. I looked at it for a couple of seconds. It was sort of pretty. The lady had even left a big pile of leaves in one corner that was perfect for jumping into.

  I looked around. There would be nobody outside to see me.

  Then I remembered my promise to Mama. I was supposed to behave myself better than that. The lady who lived in this house would probably report me.

  I started walking again. When I reached Mr. Elijah's blue-and-white house, I saw that he was standing in his doorway with another man. Mr. Elijah noticed me and called out, “Just Ola! Exactly the person I want to see.”

  I had tried correcting Mr. Elijah about my name, but he didn't seem to understand. As I got closer to them, I noticed that the other man was much younger than Mr. Elijah and very short. He was also very red in the face. He looked embarrassed about something.

  “Just Ola, this is my son-in-law, Mr. Julius Jones,” Mr. Elijah introduced us cheerfully. “I was just telling him about your tree-climbing expedition. Again.”

  “Hi, Mr. Elijah. Hi, Mr. Jones,” I said uncomfortably. I felt like I had interrupted something important. Mr. Jones had turned even redder when he found out who I was.

  “H-How d-do you do,” Mr. Jones stammered. He took a deep breath and looked at me steadily. He had nice brown eyes. “I'm very sorry about your accident.”

  “I'm okay now,” I started to say, but Mr. Elijah cut me off.

  “Ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Mr. Elijah muttered, giving his son-in-law a hard look. “It's a crime, I tell you. A real crime to this town.”

  Mr. Jones ducked his head again. “Okay, Pop.”

  “Used to be a time when people were more free around here.” Mr. Elijah wagged a finger at his son-in-law. “Until you came along.”

  I looked back and forth at them, confused. It was hard to believe this was Mr. Elijah's no-good son-in-law. He looked like such a nice man.

  “I've got to go, Pop.” Mr. Jones shuffled his feet nervously. “Please tell Janet I'll be home for dinner. Goodbye, Just Ola.”

  “You better be here on time, 'cause we won't wait on you,” Mr. Elijah called after him. Mr. Jones scurried to his car and drove off quickly. “Come on in, Just Ola.”

  I followed him inside. “Mr. Elijah, what was that all about?”

  Mr. Elijah grinned. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt and a baseball cap that said WALCOTT WARRIORS on it. “That was my no-good son-in-law, Just Ola.”

  “What's so bad about him?” I asked.

  “Why, Just Ola, he's responsible for all of this.” Mr. Elijah spread his arms wide and waved them up and down.

  “For what?” I asked, looking around. All I saw was a nice hallway with a gray carpet and black-and-white photographs on the wall. Mr. Elijah's hous
e was built just like ours, with the stairs in the front and the kitchen in the back. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

  “For this neighborhood, Just Ola! He's the one that designed it,” Mr. Elijah grumbled, leading me to the kitchen. He went to the pantry and pulled out a bag of lemon cookies.

  “Really?”

  “Went to some fancy architect school—Walcott College wasn't good enough for him.” Mr. Elijah continued grumbling. “Came back home and built this cookie-cutter neighborhood.”

  I smiled at that. Mr. Elijah was right. The houses in this neighborhood did look like they had all been cut with the same cookie cutter. And Mr. Jones had designed them. No wonder Mr. Elijah had been giving his son-in-law such a hard time.

  “And now,” Mr. Elijah said in an injured tone, “he won't do anything about it.”

  I sat down at the wooden kitchen table. It had a pretty yellow gingham tablecloth on it. “But he doesn't look too happy either, Mr. Elijah.”

  Mr. Elijah grinned and plunked a plate full of cookies on the table. “That's because he's consumed with guilt. Want some hot apple cider?”

  I nodded eagerly. “Mr. Elijah, I saw the strangest thing this morning. One of your neighbors was putting leaves back on her lawn.”

  Mr. Elijah picked up a large green pitcher. He brought it to the table and poured apple cider into two big green mugs. “That must have been Mrs. Angelo. She does like her leaves.”

  I picked up a cookie. “That doesn't make any sense.”

  Mr. Elijah sat down. “Makes plenty of sense, Just Ola. That neighborhood board has fixed it so they have a company that cleans up all the elderly residents' lawns. Mrs. Angelo woke up last week and found all the leaves on her lawn had disappeared. Came to the graybeard committee meeting sniffling and talking about leaf-stealing thieves. So we arranged to get her a few bags of leaves.”

  I took a small bite out of a cookie. The graybeard committee was the neighborhood senior citizens' club. Mr. Stern used to be in charge of it, but last year the other seniors voted him out and made Mr. Elijah president. “But Mr. Elijah, she put more leaves out there than she had before. You can't even see the grass anymore.”

  “She'll be jumping around in them later on, too,” Mr. Elijah added.

  I looked up. “But it's against the rules to play out in front of your house.”

  “That rule's for children. It doesn't say anything about grown adults frolicking in some leaves.” Mr. Elijah smiled slyly.

  I stared at him for a minute. “Mr. Elijah, you all are breaking the rules in the neighborhood on purpose.”

  Mr. Elijah sat back in his seat and crossed his arms. “Not breaking them, Just Ola. Stretching them. If we stretch them so far they break once in a while, well, then we're real sorry.”

  I smiled. Mr. Elijah was just like me. He liked to shake things up, too.

  “We could use a person such as yourself, Just Ola. To organize the kids in this neighborhood.”

  “Me?” I shook my head glumly. “I don't even know any of the kids in this neighborhood except Otis — and that's 'cause of Aeisha. I don't think they like me.”

  Mr. Elijah put his mug down. “That's 'cause they don't know you. Not a single one of them has the kind of fire you do, Just Ola. They need you around here to help them out. Shake things up a little.”

  I shook my head again. “I couldn't help even if I wanted to, Mr. Elijah. I'm restricted from using my planning powers. You saw how mad Mama was after my fall.”

  “Now, Just Ola, I'm surprised you'd let a little thing like parents stop you.”

  “Mama's no little thing, Mr. Elijah. And now that Dad isn't around as much, she'd probably be the one who'd end up punishing me. She'd probably pack me up and ship me to Greenland.” I got to my feet. I didn't feel like talking anymore. It was making me feel bad that I couldn't help Mr. Elijah.

  Mr. Elijah escorted me to the door. “The offer's good for a little while, Just Ola. You think about it.”

  I nodded and walked out the door. It was nice feeling like somebody needed and wanted me, but I didn't have to think about Mr. Elijah's idea. I couldn't help Mr. Elijah without any friends, and I didn't have any in this town. But there was more to it than that. I wasn't so sure I wanted to help. I hadn't realized it until that moment, but I was still hanging on to the hope that we might move back to Roxbury someday. If I made friends here in Walcott and helped to change the whole neighborhood, then I wouldn't have anything to complain about anymore. I'd really be stuck here. For good.

  got up bright and early on the next Saturday to get to the newspaper before Dad did. I dragged Grady down the stairs with me and opened the front door. Our rolled-up copy of The Walcott Sentinel was lying at the bottom of the stairs. It only came twice a week, since Walcott was so small it didn't have enough news to fill a daily paper.

  “Fetch, Grady,” I ordered, letting go of his collar. Seeing Grady do all those tricks the other day with Lillian had convinced me that some of my training must have finally sunk in with him. That was why Lillian had been able to get him to do those other tricks —I had already broken him in for her.

  Grady perked up his ears and looked at me.

  “Go get it!” I commanded, patting him on his back.

  Grady looked at the newspaper and groaned.

  “We're just gonna get colder sitting here with the door open,” I said, shivering. I knew he could do it. “Come on, boy, fetch it!”

  Grady sat down.

  I sighed and ran down the stairs to get the paper. I was gonna have to ask Lillian what her secret for training Grady was. I lifted my head as I leaned down to pick up the paper. I could hear the faint sound of a baby crying. I figured it must be Davis, Otis s little brother. Poor Otis. That baby had to have some powerful lungs for me to be able to hear him. I looked across the street. I could see Mrs. Spunklemeyer standing in front of the windows on the second floor, holding the crying baby. She looked as tired as she had the day she dropped off the pie at our house. Aeisha said Otis was such a genius that he didn't have time to care about things like clothes and looking good, but I had my own ideas about that. I thought Otis s looking so bad had more to do with his mama. She was so tired from taking care of Davis that she didn't have time to see to Otis. Mr. Spunklemeyer was in the navy and was on a ship for six months, so Mrs. Spunklemeyer was taking care of Otis and Davis all by herself. I looked at her for a few more seconds before I picked up the paper and ran back into the house, where it was warm and comfortable. If we'd still been in our old neighborhood, I would have gone over there and helped Mrs. Spunklemeyer, but things were different here.

  Grady barked and gave me one of his open-mouth dog smiles as I closed the door.

  “You're useless, Grady,” I lectured him, heading toward the kitchen. “You and me have to have a long talk about whose dog you are.”

  Grady whined.

  When we entered the kitchen I saw that Lillian was already up, cooking breakfast. She was singing something under her breath that sounded like a church spiritual. I was glad to see she was in a good mood. She was dressed better, too, because Mama had taken her shopping for new clothes. But it wasn't just her new clothes that Lillian was happy about. She had been saving the money Mama and Dad paid her for working for us, and yesterday she had sent some of it home to her mother and sisters, along with a long letter written in Kreyol. I knew Lillian was happy that she could help her family. That was the main reason she had come to the United States, and it made her feel better about leaving her home.

  “Bonjou, Lillian,” I said in my best Kreyol accent. I climbed up on a stool and spread the paper out on the counter.

  “Good morning, Ola,” Lillian said slowly and formally. She was practicing her pronunciation. We had made a deal where I would help her with English and she would teach me Kreyol. Lillian liked her English class. She had even made a friend there who was from Romania, and they called each other on the phone all the time to practice speaking English.

 
; Lillian walked over to put a plate of toast on the counter. There must have been fourteen slices of toast on the plate. Some of them were toasted light, some were medium, and some were almost burnt. Lillian must have gotten carried away with using the toaster.

  “Thanks,” I said. I was glad Lillian was in a good mood, but I was hoping she didn't expect me to eat all of that toast.

  “What are you doing?”

  I looked up and saw that Aeisha had come in, still wearing her pajamas and red bathrobe. She was barefoot, as usual. “I'm reading the paper.”

  “Since when did you start reading the news?” Aeisha squinted at the paper from behind her glasses. “Boy, you must be really bored.”

  I started to shake my head, then stopped. Aeisha was right. I was dying of boredom here in Walcott. That week had been especially bad. I'd given up on all my plans for school, and I'd stopped snooping on the neighbors now that I knew what they were up to. I was afraid that if I saw somebody else stretching a rule, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from joining in. I'd even kept away from Mr. Elijah so that I wouldn't be tempted. The only fun I did have was when Lillian had decided to keep me busy one day after school by teaching me how to cook. We had to hold our noses to eat the burnt rice, but everything else came out good.

  Aeisha hopped up on one of the stools and took a piece of toast from the plate sitting in the middle of the counter. “Morning, Lillian.”

  Lillian looked over her shoulder and gave Aeisha a smile. “Good morning.”

  Aeisha dropped her toast.

  “She smiled at me,” Aeisha whispered, leaning toward me. “What did you do to her, Ola?”

  I shrugged. The rest of the family was only just beginning to notice the change in Lillian. “I don't know. She's in a good mood or something.”

  Aeisha looked at Lillian one more time and picked up her toast. She took a tiny bite out of it. Aeisha even eats like an old lady. She has toast and coffee for breakfast every morning.

  “Listen, Ola. Don't worry so much about school,” Aeisha said in between bites of her toast. “You just gotta hang in there. Eventually people will learn to like you.”