Double Dutch

by Sharon M. Draper

  “They pushed me against the lockers when they passed me in the hall,” Delia offered next. “I don’t like feeling scared and I don’t like people who are rude.”

  “You bring up an important point, Delia,” Mrs. Parks said. “Rather than talk about any specific people, let’s talk about fear and aggression and what it does to us. If you look at events in our history book, you’ll see that wars have sometimes started simply because of some folks who were too aggressive and others who were too fearful. Look at what Hitler did,” she offered.

  “So we gonna have a war here at school?” asked Aziz, the tallest boy in the eighth grade.

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Parks assured the class. “But if we understand what causes problems, perhaps we can work to fix them before the situation gets out of hand.”

  “So what do we do?” Delia asked.

  “Has anybody ever talked to the Tollivers, tried to make friends with them?” asked Jesse, who had transferred to the school shortly after the twins.

  “No way, man!” Aziz told him. “You want to get iced?”

  “Wait. Jesse has a good point,” Mrs. Parks insisted. “Sometimes the best way to destroy an enemy is by making friends with him. It’s probably very hard to transfer into a school when the school year has already started.”

  “You got that right!” said Jesse. “But everyone was really straight-up with me, helped me find my way around school, told me what teachers were stupid and which were cool—they told me you were one of the cool ones, Mrs. Parks,” he added with a grin. Mrs. Parks rolled her eyes and called on Aziz again, who was waving his hand wildly.

  “Yeah, but Jesse came in here without an attitude. Nobody was scared of him from day one,” Aziz reminded the class.

  “We keep going back to the idea of fear,” Mrs. Parks commented. “From what I can see, all of you are excited about being afraid. It’s like it’s the cool thing to do. I’ve known people to be frightened of me when they see me in an elevator!” The class chuckled.

  “If I hadn’t done my homework and I saw you in an elevator, I guess I’d be scared too!” joked Quinn, a boy who rarely did his homework on time.

  Mrs. Parks laughed and told him, “Anytime YOU see me, Quinn, you’d better be afraid, because one of these days I’m going to show up at your house, right around dinnertime, and ask your mother why you can’t remember your homework!”

  Quinn jumped from his seat and fell on his knees. “Oh, please! Not the visit-your-mama-at-dinner torture! Anything but that! I promise I’ll be good!”

  “Get up, Quinn,” Mrs. Parks said, laughing, “which reminds me—class, get out your homework.”

  Everybody groaned as they dug for their papers, but it seemed to Delia that everyone felt better because Mrs. Parks had loosened a bit of the tension they all felt. Quinn, of course, didn’t have his homework, but Delia was glad that the attention was on him. She had not done her homework either. It was a reading assignment on Egyptian culture, along with several questions to answer. Delia figured that she could learn as much as she needed by listening in class, and would make up for the missed homework grade by offering to do an extra project—maybe a model of a pyramid or a mummy. But most of the class period had been taken up with the discussion of the Tolliver problem. Mrs. Parks had time only for a brief discussion of Egypt before the bell rang. The homework was to read the next chapter. She might never get the class help she needed to fake it on the test. Delia sighed as she walked down the steps to English, where she saw Yolanda just closing her locker.

  “You ready for English?” Yolanda asked her as they pushed their way slowly through the crowded hall.

  “Yeah, I guess. Hey, Yo Yo, are you scared of the Tollivers? You make a joke out of everything.” They were standing outside of the classroom door.

  “Not really,” Yolanda replied. “I think this whole thing will blow over. I remember when me and my parents were living in Africa and a roving band of tigers had us cornered and all we had were the pencils from the mission school to fight them with.”

  “Yolanda!” Delia interrupted with a laugh. “Tigers come from Asia, not Africa, and you never were there, anyway!”

  “It might have been a dream,” Yolanda replied with a grin, “but it seemed very real. It’s not a lie if you really believe it, is it?”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the truth and a lie,” Delia mused. “And it doesn’t really matter who believes it.”

  seven

  YOLANDA BOUNDED INTO THE CLASSROOM, BUT DELIA hesitated a moment outside the door of her English class. The Tollivers, even though they said very little, seemed to dominate the spirit of every class she shared with them. Delia took a deep breath, walked in, and headed to the cluster of chairs where her group sat. The class had been divided for something Miss Benson called “cooperative learning groups.” Delia figured it was something her teacher had learned in a college education class, but Delia liked working in groups because it was easy to hide her problem. They had been allowed to pick their own group members this time, but sometimes Miss Benson assigned people so the kids wouldn’t always work with their friends. Delia figured Miss Benson let them pick their own for this project so she wouldn’t have to deal with the Tollivers. Nobody had chosen them to be in their group, which seemed to please everybody. They worked together in the back of the room, talking to each other with their books closed. They acted as if the rest of the class did not exist.

  Miss Benson walked around to each group, offering suggestions and comments, sometimes making little jokes. When she got to the Tollivers, she simply said, “The group project reports are due next week.” They ignored her as if she were an insect buzzing near them. She walked over to Delia’s group, which included Randy, Yolanda, and Jesse. “How’s it going here?” she asked cheerfully. “Any problems?”

  Delia had watched the video of Lord of the Flies after she got home from Double Dutch practice, so she basically knew the story. But she also knew from experience that movie-makers often changed characters and even major events in a book just to make the movie more interesting. So she listened carefully to the other students in the group, comparing what she had heard about the first few chapters they had read with what she had seen in the video at home. So far, they seemed pretty similar.

  “So you got a bunch of schoolboys stranded on a desert island. How fake is that?” Randy was asking. “There’s no such thing as a desert island anymore. There’s people everywhere on this planet!”

  “This book was written a long time ago,” Yolanda said. “Back then there were lots of available islands! My grandfather discovered the last desert island, you know. It was just before I was born, on one of his explorations of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Here she goes again, Miss Benson,” Randy complained with a laugh.

  Miss Benson wisely chose not to deal with the tale of Yolanda’s grandfather. Instead she asked, “Jesse, do you think that boys that age—nine, ten, eleven—could survive without adults?”

  Jesse shifted in his seat. “I doubt it. I’ve got a little brother who’s nine, and I think his brain cells are made out of oatmeal. He got lost in the mall last week. But then, if the desert island had a food court and a McDonald’s, maybe he’d survive. That’s how he found his way out of the mall.”

  “I don’t think this island had food courts,” Randy said, laughing. “I read the whole book already. These kids were into more gruesome stuff, like killing and eating pigs.”

  “What would you do if you were all alone, Randy?” Delia asked quietly.

  The smile faded from Randy’s face. “I’d do just fine,” he said quickly. “I know how to take care of myself.” He turned his attention to his book bag on the floor, and began rummaging through it.

  “I’d be scared,” Delia admitted. “My mom gets on my nerves sometimes, but I need her.”

  “All I need to survive is electricity for my hair curlers and television and stereo, and a bag of money, and I’d be ju
st fine!” Yolanda asserted, while grinning at Jesse. “When we lived in London, I lived alone for six months while my parents worked as missionaries in the outback of Australia. I was the same age as the kids in this book.”

  “For real?” asked Jesse, who was new enough not to know about Yolanda’s history of colorful storytelling.

  “Yeah, for real,” she replied with a look of innocence on her face. “And I did NOT become a savage like the kids in this story. Civilized folks don’t do that.”

  “Yolanda, you think ‘civilized’ means hot tubs and helicopters. ‘Civilized’ has something to do with how folks treat each other. Right, Miss Benson?” Randy asked.

  Miss Benson smiled with relief that at least one student seemed to be getting the idea. “Good point, Randy,” she said with encouragement.

  Randy nodded at the teacher, then turned back to Yolanda to blast her. “Besides, Yo Yo, you’ve never even been to London! And you ain’t got sense enough to live alone!” Yolanda ignored him and got her mirror and lipstick and brush out of her book bag. “You gotta watch Yo Yo,” he told Jesse. “Believe only half of what she says—maybe even less.” Jesse didn’t seem to care, Delia thought. He was busy watching Yolanda brush her long black hair.

  Miss Benson tried to redirect their discussion. “Without adults,” she began, “the children in this book turn to fear and violence. Jack and his hunters take over.”

  “See, Yolanda!” Randy said gleefully. “One of these days you’re gonna go too far! Gonna have us all hunting each other!”

  Yolanda turned her chair so her back faced Randy. She pretended she had not heard him. Jesse laughed and looked at Yolanda with eyes of admiration. Delia said nothing, but listened carefully and remembered everything.

  Jesse announced with authority, “Seems to me that things got really bad for them ’cause they couldn’t figure out what was true and what was just a nightmare. Bunch of little kids running around so scared, they got things really messed up. Seems dumb to me.”

  Miss Benson sighed and tried once more to get the group back on track. “Here’s an idea for your group project,” she suggested. “Why don’t you do something on truth and fear? Use ideas from the novel, but make it apply to the world we live in today.”

  Jesse raised his hand. “Miss Benson, I know what we can do. How about if we do a skit on modern-day fears and lies?”

  Delia immediately liked Jesse’s idea. It would be fun, easy, and involved no reading. “And I’ll draw a poster to go along with it,” she volunteered.

  “And I’ll do one on lies,” Yolanda said with a grin.

  “Good choice,” Randy teased.

  “This sounds wonderful,” Miss Benson said. “Get busy.” She moved on to the next group, who wanted to make their project a quiz show using questions about the book, and the next group, who wanted to bring squirt guns to class to demonstrate violence. That one she rejected—loudly and emphatically. Delia noticed that she never did get back to the Tollivers to ask them what type of project they would do.

  eight

  THAT EVENING AT DOUBLE DUTCH PRACTICE YOLANDA AND Delia sat on the sidelines, waiting their turn while the Little Bees jumped. Charlene and Misty sat on a bench behind them. It was hot in the gym, but Yolanda had on a heavy warm-up with a hood.

  “Why you dressed like that, girl?” Delia asked.

  “I saw on TV last night that satellites out in space can see everything you do. I’m dressed in disguise just in case somebody from another country is planning to steal my moves as I jump. I’m a national treasure, you know.”

  “You’re a trip, Yo Yo.” Delia laughed as she tied the laces on her tennis shoes.

  “That’s your life story, Yo Yo,” Charlene added. “I’ll never forget that time in sixth grade when you made that substitute think you were dying. Ketchup all on your clothes. Looked real for a minute.” Charlene laughed, remembering the look on the substitute’s face when she saw what she thought was blood.

  Yolanda cracked up and screeched in a voice imitating the unfortunate sub, “Oh, my STARS!” Yolanda laughed so hard, she had to bend over. “Then she fainted, poor dear. The principal had to call the life squad. That was TOO funny!”

  “That was cold, Yo Yo,” Charlene said, still laughing. “That woman never came back after that day.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Yolanda said. “The woman couldn’t handle kids. I probably saved her life!”

  “Double Dutch saved my life,” Misty said quietly.

  “How you mean?” Yolanda asked, her laughter stilled by Misty’s voice. She pushed back the hood of her jacket and turned to face Misty.

  “Nothing,” Misty replied, suddenly embarrassed. But as the girls continued to stare at her, she went on. “It’s just that Double Dutch is always there for me—my daddy’s dead, my mama isn’t able to work since she was in that car accident, and I got four little sisters to look out for, but Double Dutch gives me something to hold on to. Something good. I used to get really bad grades, but now, since I gotta have good grades to stay on the team, I got a reason to keep going.” She bent down to tie her shoes, her cheeks flushed.

  “I feel ya,” Delia said, nodding her head, sensing Misty’s discomfort. “Double Dutch even got me a good grade once in a class in school.”

  “Yeah,” continued Yolanda. “Last year in social studies, when we had to do a stupid project on American cultural practices, me and Delia and Charlene did a class presentation on Double Dutch.”

  “Talk about an easy A!” Delia chuckled. “Ooh! That was dynamite! I wish all school projects were so much fun.”

  Charlene laughed. “Yeah, I remember that backwards flip you did into the ropes, Yolanda. You coulda broke your neck, doin’ that fancy jump in that small space.”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t,” Delia reminded Charlene. “I gotta give her credit—the girl is good. You looked like sliced ice that day-really slick, Yo Yo.”

  “I always look good when I flip,” said Yolanda, who had removed her heavy jacket. “I still have the written report. I think I’ll save it so I can use it again. I did a report on snakes in fifth grade. I’ve used it, with a few improvements, every year since then in science class. The teachers never know.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?” asked Delia.

  “Look who’s talkin’,” Yolanda replied with a sharp glance at Delia.

  “I don’t need no written report-I got it memorized,” Delia said, glancing at Yolanda.

  “You do not!” Misty challenged. “Dollar bet says you can’t recite all that stuff.”

  “I have a photographic memory, dahling,” Delia said with a voice like a movie star. “Make your bet a pizza and you’re on!” She grinned at Charlene and Yo Yo.

  “You got it! I don’t believe you can do it!”

  “You better hope Bomani gets here soon, Misty. Delia can memorize anything,” Yolanda warned. Misty ignored her and waited for Delia to begin.

  Delia grinned and took a deep breath. She spoke like a newscaster reading the news. “‘Double Dutch is a jump rope sport that involves two rope turners turning two ropes in an eggbeater motion around one or two jumpers. Double Dutch requires an intricate display of skill, agility, and strength. It encourages creativity, teamwork, and sportsmanship, and develops physical fitness and mental discipline.’”

  Charlene and Yolanda were rolling on the floor. Misty stood with her mouth agape as Delia continued in her news reporter voice, this time holding her nose to make her voice sound artificial.

  “‘The sport,’” she continued, now prancing down the sidelines, “‘believed to have originated with ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, and Chinese rope makers, has grown in popularity as a competitive sport. The American Double Dutch League was officially organized in nineteen seventy-three by two New York City police detectives.’ Cops! Can you believe it?” she added in amazement.

  Returning to her fake newscaster’s voice, she continued. “‘On Valentine’s Day in nineteen seventy-four, the first
Double Dutch tournament was held in New York City. Almost nine hundred children competed. Today in the U.S. more than one hundred thousand athletes nationwide and in foreign countries participate in Double Dutch programs for the chance to compete in the World Invitational Championships for honor and for scholarships.’” Delia paused, took her hand off her nose, and took a deep breath. “Want more?” she asked, laughing.

  Yolanda said, “I told you so!”

  Misty laughed and said, “You win! How do you remember all that stuff?”

  Delia’s smile faded. “Just smart, I guess. I don’t know. Stuff just sticks.” She sighed. Why was she so smart in some ways and so dumb in others?

  Bomani arrived, as large and cheerful as ever, and announced, “Jumpers, are you ready? Let’s begin this practice! Break into three groups. Group One-in the front of the gym. You know the routine. Everybody hop to it! Let me hear you shout it out!”

  The gym echoed with the chants of three dozen jumpers as they began the first compulsory jumps.

  “One-TWO

  One-TWO/Three-FOUR!/Five-SIX/Seven-EIGHT

  One-TWO.”

  Bomani then cried, “Okay! Let’s try a couple of speed tests, jumpers! Two minutes on the clock, Randy. Little ones, take your time. Accuracy is as important as speed. Remember, you get ten points taken off your jump score every time you miss, so take your time and concentrate. Ready, Little Bees? Ready, Junior Bees? Ready, my Queen Bees?” They all signaled that they were ready. “Randy, hit it!” The gym resounded with the sounds of dozens of synchronized tapping feet.

  Bomani gave them all a short break, then regrouped everyone into practice teams so they could work on individual skills for the various events. He walked over to Delia and the Queen Bees. “Let’s work on the doubles freestyle first tonight, ladies. That’s going to be key at the state meet. Misty, Charlene? Are you ready?”