Keisha walked into the gym at Aberdeen Elementary and tapped the rubber mat three times for good luck. The stands were already full. There were seven schools in their district, and since she’d started jumping in third grade, the crowds at the district meet had grown bigger every year. Only one team would advance to the district regionals. Last year, it was Cesar Chavez. But this year, Langston Hughes had a good chance to win.
Keisha was competing in three events: single speed, double-Dutch speed and freestyle. She took a belly breath and looked up into the stands. Grandma Alice was in her cheerleading uniform, a snazzy tracksuit she’d found at Encore Consignment and sewed “Steppers #1” onto in the school colors. Mama and Daddy were next to her. Daddy held Paulo, sucking his fingers and looking wide-eyed at the crowd. He must have just awakened from his nap. Mama was scanning the stands for Razi. Her eyes met Keisha’s and she waved to her daughter.
Where was Razi? Keisha shook her head. Not her problem. She went over to her teammates, huddled together in the corner, and pressed in between Marcus and Jorge. Everyone put their arms around each other and leaned in so that Coach Rose—who was kneeling in the middle of the circle—could give his last instructions.
“Marcus, Aaliyah, Jorge, I’m hoping for a personal best in the speed jumping. Keisha, Wen, Lindsey, you all have the potential to place.” Coach Rose went through every member of the team and gave them a goal to shoot for.
When he got to the freestyle jumping, Keisha noticed he didn’t mention her name first, as he usually did. Instead, he said, “Marcus, even though it’s new, your routine can place if you ace it.”
Marcus stepped on the handles of his rope and smiled at the ground. “Keisha’s the one who made it up.”
“And you’re the one who’s going to nail it.” Coach Rose put a hand on Wen’s and Keisha’s shoulders. “FFGGs”—the extra G was for the girls—“now is your time to show these other jumpers what fierce competitors you can be—here and in Detroit.”
When their coach had finished, the Steppers dropped their ropes and piled their hands in the center on top of his head. “One—two—three.” Coach Rose signaled the cheer.
“Steppers, step out! Gooooooo, Steppers.” The Langston Hughes side of the bench erupted in cheers. Grandma gave Keisha a Grandpa Wally Pops whistle, high and shrill; it always got her looks.
Aaliyah threw her arm around Keisha as both girls put their hands over their hearts for the playing of the national anthem. The music made Keisha think of Sarge and the other vets at the facility. Maybe, if they scored top points today, she’d ask Daddy if Sarge could ride along to the district regional meet in Detroit.
As the music died down, people took their seats, but Grandma remained standing, making her hands into the shape of a megaphone. “Cat walk, dog run, get out there and have some fun!”
This brought a big cheer from the crowd. The meet had officially started. The girls went over to the far corner of the gym where the speed-jump heats would be happening. Aaliyah and Wen would compete here first. Keisha had her freestyle event first, but she could warm up for that anywhere.
Aaliyah started jogging up and down, bringing her knees up to her navel. Wen used her rope, alternating slow and fast rotations.
The jumpers from Aberdeen were fast. So were the kids from the Southeast Academic Center. They seemed to have gotten even faster since the individual meets. Aaliyah didn’t appear to notice the other jumpers at all. She’d grabbed a rope and was doing easy double unders.
“Want to warm up on double Dutch for speed?” Aaliyah asked. Keisha could see that her friend’s forehead was already shining. She grabbed a towel out of the bin.
“I want to do a few moves from my routine first.” Keisha patted Aaliyah’s forehead. Her hair was braided with her lucky competition beads. “At least the advanced ones,” Keisha said. Coach Rose wouldn’t let them put a move into their routine until they could hit it nine times out of ten. Keisha faced the wall and went through the harder parts of her program: side-step crisscross into a scissors crisscross, sideways bell, knee-to-shoulder, drop-down squat jump—
“Keisha Carter, Renee Proha, Emmarene Johnson.” Keisha listened to the names being called out over the loudspeaker, an indication that it was time to report to your event. She felt something heavy squeeze in between her tummy and her throat. As she trotted over to the freestyle event, Keisha tried to remember to breathe.
She sat cross-legged at the edge of the mat, waiting for the judges to finish scoring a jumper from C. A. Frost. When they looked up and motioned to her, Keisha stood up, tapped the rubber mat with her foot three times for luck and jogged to the middle of the taped-out square.
Just as she was about to say “Judges ready?” she caught a glimpse of her brother swinging from the side of the bleachers. He dropped to the floor, ran around, scrambled up three stairs and launched himself into Daddy’s arms.
“Go, Key! Go, Key!” he screamed, waving his tiny parasols in crazy circles.
Keisha focused her eyes on the floor, trying to block out the distraction. “Judges ready?” she asked the table.
“Judges ready,” came the answer.
She looked over at Coach Rose. He started her music. Keisha took a deep breath and swung the rope. Grandma whistled.
After that, it was all a blur. Later, she remembered doing the basic jumps she’d included to get warmed up: tiptoe skip into a twister for four beats, then a half turn, then a crisscross. But somewhere near the beginning, a thought crept in. She’d kept the cancan turn into a heel skip in her routine. It was coming up. Just the thought made her swing her rope faster. Before she knew it, the rope caught her toe. Keisha started again. She moved into her cancan turn. Her legs felt like lead! After three kicks, her rope caught her toe again. Keisha wanted to run off the mat, but the music kept going. She had to finish.
“Go, Key! Go, Key!” she heard Razi yell just before she finished. She tried to lift her head up and smile at the end, but all she could manage was a nod before scrunching up her shoulders and running off the mat.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a couple of the Aberdeen Skippers watching her. They didn’t make fun of her bad performance. You could see they felt sorry for her.
That was almost worse! If only Razi hadn’t distracted her!
The rest of the meet rushed along. Keisha did all right in single speed jumping, but she got tangled in the rope twice during double-Dutch speed. That had never happened before. The way Aaliyah yelled encouragement had never bothered her before, either. In fact, hearing her friend’s encouragement every few swings had always kept Keisha’s energy high: “Hit it! You got it! Harder, Key!”
But today, the way Aaliyah yelled put her off her rhythm.
“Next time, don’t shout out,” she told Aaliyah as they walked off the floor.
“What? That’s my job. All the twirlers shout out.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Girl, if you’re looking for someone to blame for messin’ up, point that finger back at yourself.”
Razi was the first Carter to reach her. He threw his arms around Keisha.
“You got tangled up in your nerves again, Key. Here’s a hug.”
Keisha shrugged him off. “If you weren’t fooling in the bleachers, I might have done better. Mama, Razi acting crazy messed me up! Don’t let him come next time.”
“What about me?” Grandma asked. “I was yelling louder than Razi. Should I not come, too?”
Daddy handed Paulo to Mama. “Fay, can you get a ride with Mr. Sanders and the boys? I promised the folks over at the V.A. facility that I’d put up some decals to protect the birds from their picture window. They’ve already had one collision. I’ll take Keisha with me.”
Despite her poor performance, Marcus, Jorge and Aaliyah had all scored personal bests, giving Langston Hughes just a few more points than Cesar Chavez and winning them a spot in the district regional meet in Detroit.
High fives, chest bumps, back claps were traded back and forth. But not with Keisha. She was so mad she didn’t even say good-bye to her friends. Once she was in the truck, she realized she was still holding on to the jump rope she’d used in the speed jump.
“Daddy.” Keisha smacked the rope against the glove compartment. “You can’t let Razi come to the district regionals. He made me mess up.”
Daddy didn’t answer for a moment. He fiddled with the heater and rolled down the window, using his gloved hand to wipe the ice crystals off the side mirror.
“Something for you to think about, Key,” he said, backing out of their space in the school parking lot. “Razi ran all over the gym last year, just like the other kids his age. It’s a long time to sit still. But most important, honey …” He paused and, without taking his eyes off the road, put his hand on Keisha’s arm.
“It’s never bothered you before. Are you sure Razi is what’s making you—”
“I don’t know what it is! Everything is making me jumpy—”
Daddy laughed. “That’s a good thing. It is a jump rope competition, after—”
“Not in a good way.” Keisha wished Daddy wouldn’t laugh … or give high fives to Marcus and Jorge, who both placed in speed jumping even though it was their first year on the team.
They entered the drive to the V.A. facility. As they drove toward the main entrance, Daddy spotted Sarge all bundled up, sitting on a bench in the sun.
“Why don’t you visit with Sarge while I install these decals? It will be good for you to get some sunshine and fresh air.”
“Fine.” Keisha jumped out of the truck without another word.
“Well, hello, Miss Carter. How nice to see you. How is the squirrel situation going over at the Mt. Mercy campus?”
“Okay.” Keisha didn’t bother to brush away the snow. She hopped onto the bench and studied her mittens. “Well, not okay, really. One got into the president’s office with a peanut, and he’s allergic.”
“Still …” Sarge gave a long, cat-like stretch and closed his eyes. “You should never take your job too seriously. Or it can affect your not-job. At the moment, it’s a beautiful February day. The sun is shining, the snow is sparkling. But you look like you have a storm cloud over your head.”
Sarge re-arranged himself on the bench to try to find a more comfortable position. “Unless this has nothing to do with squirrels at all. I see you have your jump rope with you.”
Keisha looked over at Sarge. His kind eyes were all it took to make her pour out the misery of the day. “It’s the safest routine I’ve done all year! Coach just wanted me to jump clean. But I couldn’t even do that.”
“I’m sorry, Keisha. I know how important it was for you to do well for your team.”
A fat teardrop balanced on Keisha’s eyelid. She had wanted so much to be the backbone Coach Rose had asked her to be.
“Does this mean you don’t get to go to Detroit?”
“No. We still won because Marcus and Jorge got first and second in speed jumping. We just beat Cesar Chavez.”
“That’s great!” Sarge held up his hand and Keisha got a high five after all. “When do you go?”
“The district regionals are two weeks from Tuesday.”
“So you have another chance. That’s excellent news! I have some good news, too. I got my new sleeve.”
“Really?” Keisha brushed her cheeks with the backs of her mittens.
“Yup. This baby brings new meaning to the phrase ‘perfect fit.’ ” Sarge tugged on his pant leg to show Keisha. “Wanna hear how they made it?”
Keisha nodded. She scooted closer to Sarge and examined the shiny plastic cup that fit snugly to the end of his leg, just below his knee.
“A doctor took a wand filled with sensors and rubbed it all over my stump. Like this …” Sarge demonstrated by rubbing his left hand all over his right fist. “I watched on the computer screen as the wand communicated information about the contours of my stump and built a three-dimensional model in the exact same shape. Every little mole or fold of skin was included. So now there’s no rubbing at all. Pretty soon, my new walking foot will arrive and I can start learning to walk again. I mean, I do know how to walk, but I’m going to learn with my custom-made foot.”
Keisha sat back. Sarge was like a little kid, so excited to be learning how to walk again. She crossed her arms and tilted her chin to feel the sun on her face.
“But what’s even better is that since this sleeve fits my leg perfectly, I can attach all kinds of artificial feet to the other end and each one will feel comfortable right away. They have special feet for different uses. When I’ve saved up enough money, I can buy one that will let me climb again.”
“You can climb up mountains again?”
“Sure I can. Climbing mountains is the same as walking from here to the entrance of the building, Keisha. One step at a time. Hey, look. It’s Larry.”
Keisha followed the direction of Sarge’s finger to the moving puffs of snow that Larry kicked off the branches as he leapt from limb to limb.
“I don’t know what it is about these guys … but they lift me up, you know? They’re carefree. And they don’t mind doing the same darn thing over and over and over. They’re always straining and struggling to climb the bird feeders—did I tell you that Lt. Washington had to install raccoon guards because the squirrels here are so tenacious that the regular squirrel guards didn’t work? I think about how stubborn they are when I’m trying to bend and stretch in physio.
“Problem is, I can’t really see them from inside. That’s why I come out here whenever it’s not too cold. We haven’t had too many days like this one.” Keisha and Sarge watched Larry find an acorn still clinging to the tree. He smoothed his tail along his back like a big, fluffy scarf. After he’d finished nibbling the acorn, he pressed his body flat along the limb, as if he was going to take a nap.
“You know what, Keisha? I just thought of something. When I was a climber, I competed a lot. I wanted to be the best. After a while, I found that it meant so much to win that I started getting nervous before a competition. So nervous that sometimes I threw up. That would sap my energy and make it harder to scale the verticals.
“Somewhere along the line, I realized I’d gotten off track. I mean, I didn’t start climbing as a young kid to earn trophies. I decided that at the next event I would just enjoy myself—basically that I would let myself lose if that’s what having fun cost me. Having fun became my goal—not winning. So I relaxed and just got into it.”
“Did you go with the flow?” Keisha asked, remembering her conversations with Savannah and Marcus the day before.
“Yes, exactly!”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t win. Not even close. But I had more fun at that meet than I’d had in the whole past year. I liked climbing again. The same as when I was a kid. And after a while, I started winning, too.”
Sarge re-adjusted his pant leg so that it fell back down around his false leg. “Now, going back, my challenges will be different. I know I can’t do things the same way. I’m going to have to learn to think differently … be a little better about taking my time. But I can still have fun. Like our friend Larry up there.”
“Keisha!” Daddy had stepped out the door of the V.A. facility and was waving his arms at his daughter. “Want to come in here and check my decal placement?”
Keisha was ready. She couldn’t even feel her rear end, it was so numb from sitting on the snow.
She hopped down and gave Sarge a big hug. “Next summer, I’ll bring my friends Aaliyah and Wen and we’ll teach you how to double-Dutch,” she promised before skipping up the sidewalk to join her dad.
“What did you and Sarge talk about?” Daddy asked as he led her down the corridor and past the nurses’ station to a big sunroom with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides.
“The flow,” Keisha said, smiling at Daddy’s puzzled expression.
Whatever the flow was—and Keisha wasn’t sure she could describe it yet in words—it was happening outside the windows of the new sunroom at the V.A. facility. Men and women sat in their wheelchairs beside low coffee tables, observing the birds flitting from bush to tree to feeder. Goldfinches clung to the thistle netting, and nuthatches climbed the suet feeders. Bright red cardinals swooped in for a quick bite at the sunflower-seed platform.
Keisha searched the woods for squirrels. Sarge was right. The ones on the ground were too far away to admire their bright eyes and bushy tails and silly squirrel antics. If only there were a way to bring them close without their messing with the bird feeders so that Sarge and the other vets could enjoy them year-round.
“What do you think?” Daddy put his arm around his daughter.
“I love it. It’s like a wildlife show.”
“All birds, all the time. But I meant, what do you think about my decals?”
“I think you need a few more down low. Remember the cardinal that ran into our courtyard window at school? That was right near the bottom.”
“Good point.” Daddy peeled another decal from its backing.
“Then I think maybe we should go home so I can say I’m sorry to Razi.”