Amelia only has to say five words at her first practice today, and she says them to Coach Okeke.
“Here to r-run. Not t-talk.”
He smiles big and teaches her the secret team handshake, which she practices with Ana and at least five of the girls on the team, and no one makes her say anything else either, because doing a team handshake says enough.
We do a different loop for practice, running through the park and down the steep stairs, but this time across a footbridge over a river into the Bronx.
Ana runs next to Amelia the whole way and says, “I can’t believe this is your first practice ever! You’re good.”
At first I want to cut in and tell her that Amelia’s not here to talk, but before I can, she responds, “I j-just n-needed a little p-push.” Then she looks over at me and smiles, and I get such a happy feeling I could hop hurdles over all the fire hydrants.
After practice we walk side by side by side by side down Broadway, weaving around groups of kids speaking Spanish and moms pushing strollers and doctors and nurses in their scrubs carrying Starbucks cups back toward the hospital where my mom is researching the brain right now.
Frankie and Ana turn toward Dacie’s house and Amelia stops and puts out her fingers—one, five, three because she lives on 153rd Street. Frankie waves her to come on and that we’re all going to Ms. Dacie’s house and she should come too. Amelia raises her eyebrows like, Who is Dacie? And even though she sighs like she just wants to go home now, she pulls out her phone and sends a message with the fastest thumbs I have ever seen. We all follow Frankie down the street and climb the stairs to the big wooden door with all the stickers that show everyone’s welcome.
Casey answers the door and keeps his eyes down toward the welcome mat like last time. He yells, “Frankie, Ana, and Rain are here! They brought a friend!” And why that makes me feel so good is a big who-knows, but it’s like I belong already.
When we introduce Amelia, Dacie looks over her purple glasses and right through Amelia’s aqua frames and says, “Those glasses are the coolest. I’m going to have to get myself a pair.”
Amelia smiles and nods.
“Welcome, Amelia. Let me show you around.” Dacie takes Amelia by the arm and hurries her into the kitchen, and the next time I peek in, I notice that Ms. Dacie has an old landline hanging from her kitchen wall too, and that Amelia is kneeling on the counter and pulling down a bag of Hershey’s Kisses from the top shelf.
Yasmin and Edwin pour out flour and sugar, and Ms. Dacie is glopping a big spoonful of peanut butter into a measuring cup.
Frankie sits with Ana, who is pulling all of Dacie’s art supplies out of a big plastic bin and spreading out the panels of her superhero comic across the floor. She has one more panel than she did yesterday. The superhero, whose hair is pulled up into the same two tight buns as Ana’s, is holding the hand of a tiny girl with matching hair, and they’re soaring through a dark sky.
Trevor is working with a tutor who’s wearing a City College sweatshirt and counting out blocks to balance an algebraic equation, but he stops before he comes to a solution and tells Ana that her art is really good.
“Thanks,” she says, and continues to shade the dark night sky.
I start helping Casey organize the DVDs that are stacked beneath the TV. “Who even watches these anymore?” I ask, and it makes him laugh.
“She has records too,” he tells me, and points to five milk crates and a record player.
Her voice rings out from the kitchen, “I can hear you! You sure know how to make a lady feel old!” And that makes us both laugh even more.
“And you have a landline!” I call back. “I thought my mom was the only dinosaur alive who insisted on having a landline.” And everyone laughs, and that makes me feel even more like I belong right there.
Then Ms. Dacie comes out of the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder. “Funny, funny,” she says. “You all laugh now, but I bet my memory’s sharper than all of yours! How many phone numbers do you have memorized?” She can hardly keep from laughing herself, and all of us are giggling when Jer says he doesn’t even know his mom’s number by heart.
“See?” she says. Then she taps the side of her head with her flour-dusted finger.
It makes me think of Mom and that even though she’s probably right that my brain is better off without a cell phone, I still kind of want one so I can message fast back and forth with Amelia.
“And,” she adds, “music sounds better on one of these.” She shows us how the records slide out of their sleeves and how to load them onto the player and how they spin around and around. I don’t tell her that I already know all that because Guthrie listened to records too, and he used to say the same thing about music sounding better on vinyl.
Casey could watch the spinning all day, and I could too, because I want to count how many rotations make a song and I want to know how all those little grooves remember the melodies and harmonies and all the words to every song.
I remember pulling the records from Guthrie’s shelf, sliding them out from their covers, running my fingers along the grooves, and pushing them back in exactly where they belonged. That remembering rises up and up.
Then Casey puts on a Michael Jackson record and that gets Cris to tapping her foot and then Jer, and before the fifteenth rotation they’re both up and trying to moonwalk across Ms. Dacie’s wood floors. “Who can listen to Michael Jackson and not dance?” Jer exclaims.
Frankie and I snort and shake our heads, because there is no way I’m dancing, and that’s a fact. But for some reason it feels good that they are.
In the kitchen Amelia is showing Yasmin and Edwin how to make the peanut butter cookie dough into balls and roll them in sugar. “Th-these are my f-favorite.”
Then they’re pulling a batch out of the oven and pressing Hershey’s Kisses into the warm dough. “L-let them sit for a m-minute,” Amelia tells them. “They get all m-m-melty.” And I don’t know if it’s because there aren’t any pens or paper in Ms. Dacie’s kitchen, or if everything just feels easier here, but Amelia doesn’t seem to care how much she talks or how long she stutters on her syllables. And neither does anyone else.
I take out my poetry notebook because even if it’s not going to be a poem, I have to have something on my page about Izzy for English class tomorrow so Mrs. Baldwin can see I at least tried and it didn’t work. Then maybe she’ll let me write an essay.
Ms. Dacie sees me tapping the eraser of my pencil against my temple at one hundred twenty beats per minute, and sits down next to me.
“I don’t really write poetry,” I tell her.
She pulls a purple pen out of her curly gray hair and says, “Sure you do.” Then draws six long dashes across my page.
“Just six words,” she says. “Start there. See what happens.” Then she walks off to check on the kids in the kitchen.
I stare at the six purple dashes, and my brain is immediately calculating words about Izzy.
——————
I try a few out in my brain first to see how they sound. Then I jot them in a list on my page.
Izzy is my best friend ever.
I miss Izzy. She misses me.
Then Ms. Dacie is back and asking me all about Izzy. What does she look like? What kinds of things did you do together? When did you meet? What do you miss most? What’s your favorite memory? And I’m telling her all about the tree house and our sleepovers and how she’s always been there for me, since kindergarten, and how I didn’t cry once about moving until I hugged her goodbye.
“Now try another six words,” she says. “Describe a memory. Don’t worry if it’s a complete sentence or not.”
Tree fort sleepover. Please no squirrels!
Goodbye to her was hardest ever.
There for me after that night.
Even she doesn’t know my secret.
I scribble out the last ones, even though they’re the only ones that kind of sound like poems to me because poems are always mysterious and hard to understand and make people say oooo or ahhh after reading the last line.
Dacie points to the scribbled-out ones. “I wouldn’t throw those out just yet,” but she doesn’t ask me about that night or my secret or anything, which is good, because I wouldn’t have told her anyway.
Then she tells me about a couple of different kinds of poems that she thinks I might like. A haiku, where I have to count the exact syllables per line, which sounds more like my kind of poem, and a way to rhyme that has rules and a pattern that I could follow. I’m excellent at rules and patterns.
“And if those don’t feel right, you can always give yourself a number. Try writing that many words, or that many syllables, or that many lines. Make up the rules,” she says. “Then follow them.”
I nod and say thanks and all of a sudden poetry isn’t feeling quite so impossible.
An hour passes fast and Ms. Dacie signs our community service sheets and hands Ana a plastic bag with foil-covered plates that she takes from her refrigerator. “I made your mom’s favorite last night, and have just too many leftovers to tackle by myself,” she says. “Pass them on for me?” Ana takes the bag and thanks her and they both nod like they’re sharing a secret little message too.
Ms. Dacie walks us out. There are fliers on the bulletin board about an art camp here this summer, and a study group for the SATs. When I see Frankie and Reggie’s track meet picture I try not to feel bad, but I can’t help it.
Ms. Dacie sees me looking and puts her hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “We miss our Reggie, don’t we?” she says. “Change is hard.”
And that’s a fact.
We’re all standing on the stoop looking over the tangled garden when Dacie breathes out big and says, “I’m afraid I have some hard news about change too.” She pushes her purple glasses up on her nose. “I received news that the funding for Ms. Dacie’s House is ending,” she tells us. “And I’m not sure how long I can keep this old door open on my own.”
“What?” Frankie snaps. “How can—who took it?”
“Change is hard,” she says again, and pats Frankie’s shoulder.
“That sucks,” Amelia spits out in one whole piece.
Ms. Dacie chuckles and says, “When you’re right, you’re right. This sucks.” It feels weird hearing a grown-up say sucks, but that’s the best word to describe it.
She tells us we can talk more about it tomorrow and hands us each one of Amelia’s peanut butter Hershey’s Kiss cookies. “Maybe this can help sweeten your walk.”
When Dacie closes the door, a big lump rises up in my throat and I can’t help but think about Dad’s closed bedroom door and how all the people that make me feel good and OK are closing big, heavy doors right in my face.