Hold Fast (9780545510196)

by Balliett, Blue

  Aisha sat up straight for the first time. “Well, I want to have my own hair salon one day. And I like to play with dolls, except my favorite, Chocolate Cake, fell out a window and is gone. Got pushed out a window.” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked rapidly.

  “Yeah, all my favorite things are gone, too,” Early said. “All but one old book. Losing stuff stinks.”

  Aisha looked at her gratefully. “Yeah. I think sometimes the grown-ups don’t get how much our things matter. Plus we lost our home.”

  “Us, too.” Early nodded. “That feels superbad.”

  The other kids at the table nodded. “How you spell your name?” one boy at the table asked. “That’s one crazy name — I like it!”

  “E-A-R-L-Y, like the opposite of late, and our last name is Pearl.”

  “Ooh, that’s real pretty!”

  “Que lindo.”

  “Nice sounding, like a movie star!”

  “Uh-huh, real smooth!”

  Suddenly Early felt like she belonged, at least a tiny bit.

  “And my real name’s Jubilation,” blurted Jubie. “It means loud! And cheerful!”

  “That’s a church-goin’ kinda name, isn’t it?” another boy asked.

  Jubie looked at his sister for help. Early shrugged, saying, “I dunno — we only go to church a couple times a year, but I know my parents liked the word, you know? They think a word or a name can be worth noticing. Like it’s free but valuable.”

  “That’s what my grandma says,” another girl piped up. “You want to be remembered.”

  The other kids nodded, and suddenly Early and Jubie were inside a circle.

  After she and Aisha finished two more pocket notebooks, Early tried to get her new friend to keep one, but she didn’t want it. “I’d waste it,” she explained.

  Early took Jubie over to look at the books, on the side of the room. Most seemed brand-new, as if they’d never been opened. She asked Mr. John if she and Jubie could each borrow a book, and when the tutor hesitated, Early made two homemade library cards, one for her and one for her brother. She wrote Treasure Island and the date on the bottom of hers, and The Lion King on the bottom of Jubie’s.

  “We’ll bring them back soon,” she promised.

  The other kids watched, and although no one else asked to borrow a book, no one said anything nasty, either.

  On the way out, hugging the homemade notebooks, a pencil, and the two borrowed books, Early felt sad that shoe-rockin’ Darren hadn’t made it. She asked if anyone had seen him that afternoon. The other kids looked blank.

  One shrugged as he zipped up his backpack. “Sometimes a family gets pulled out and sent to another shelter, bang! and there’s no warning. Or something happens to one of the older boys who weren’t allowed to stay here, and the mom makes the whole family move. Dang! We’re draggin’ those Hefty garbage bags again. This here’s a tough life,” he said.

  Mr. John reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “But we’re here for you guys,” he said.

  “That don’t always do much good,” the kid said, turning away. Early’s heart sank. What’s the rhythm, Langston? she asked in her head. What’s the rhythm? Suddenly she felt lost.

  As they left the tutoring room, she looked at the clock. It was 4:44. A shiver raced down her spine, and she reached for Jubie’s hand.

  Circle

  “Presto! A wall, our own light, a wild reading corner, and a laundry line!” Sum swept her arm out and bowed, as if stepping into their cluster was a special event.

  While Early and Jubie had been in the tutoring room, Sum had hunted through a new load of donations that had arrived at the shelter. Out popped a sheet covered with clouds, a battery-powered flashlight, and a new pink-and-orange pillow with a zebra-skin pattern, one big enough for all three Pearls to lean against. She’d tidied up, adding the sheet as a wall and hanging their clean underwear to dry on a bathrobe tie stretched between the upper bunks. Things looked almost homey.

  Darren and his family weren’t at dinner that night. After eating, the three Pearls did sit-ups and stretches in the second-floor hallway, as they hadn’t left the shelter since they’d arrived the day before. Then they showered, brushed their teeth, and cuddled in the lower bunk while Sum read Treasure Island, Early on one side and Jubie on the other.

  Dash had already read it aloud to the family, skipping parts that were confusing or too scary, so it was more or less familiar. They tried to ignore the other sounds in the room, until a cough, right behind Sum’s head, on the other side of the cloud sheet, made her sit up straight and bang her head on the top bunk.

  “Yeow! Second time I’ve done that! Who’s out there?” She jerked the sheet aside, and there were four faces — three girls and a boy — all sitting on their knees, listening.

  “See? You stupid!” the oldest said, swatting at the youngest, who had a terribly runny nose. He started to cry, which made the coughing worse.

  Saying, “Keep our place,” to Early, Sum went around the side of the bed and asked the kids where their mom was. They pointed. She walked over, bent to talk to a woman lying down on a lower bunk with a baby, and came back smiling. “She says you can listen,” Sum said to the kids, her voice soft.

  She beckoned and they followed, stepping on one another in their eagerness to get into the Pearls’ cluster. When she patted a lower bunk, all four obediently sat down. She handed the littlest boy a piece of toilet paper to blow his nose.

  “Please wash your hands afterward,” she murmured. “We’ll wait for you.” The boy trotted off to do as she’d said, and as soon as he was settled back on the bed, Sum explained that the book was about pirates and added, “Okay, we’re going back a couple of pages, so you don’t miss the beginning.

  “This is happening over two hundred years ago, and it’s about looking for stolen treasure. And parts of it, I have to warn you, are about too much alcohol, murder, and mean, scary men. Stop me if it gets too frightening; I don’t want to give anyone bad dreams! But it is a great story. It’s being told by a boy who lives in a small guesthouse run by his parents, by the seashore in England. That’s on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The boy has to help out a lot; he doesn’t have it too easy.”

  The four visitors nodded, and the oldest girl said, “Is it, like, X-rated?”

  “Well.” Sum paused. “I think it’s okay for us. It’s been around for many generations and people all over the world have grown up reading it.”

  “Go, Sum!” Jubie said impatiently. Early thought Darren would like hearing this scary story, one told by a young boy. Too bad he couldn’t be here, too.

  Sum began, in an unhurried, listen-to-each-word voice:

  “I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

  ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest —

  Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!’ in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Part of a ship,” Sum explained. “Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

  “‘This is a handy cove,’ says he, at length, ‘and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop.’ That means a bar,” said Sum. “‘Much company, mate?’

  “My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.

  “‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘this is the berth for me.’ A berth is a bed on a ship,” Sum explain
ed. “‘Here you, matey,’ he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; ‘bring up alongside and help up my chest.’ A sea chest was what they used for a suitcase in those days. It looked like a treasure chest and sometimes was! ‘I’ll stay here a bit,’ he continued. ‘I’m a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want…. Oh, I see what you’re at — there,’ and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. ‘You can tell me when I’ve worked through that,’ says he, looking as fierce as a commander.”

  Sum went on to read about the pirate bullying everyone at the house for the next few weeks, telling terrible stories about “some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea,” and then demanding to be fed and taken care of, but without more pay. He was too frightening to refuse. Plus, he never bathed or washed his clothes, and as he had arrived in rags, he was looking pretty bad. He kept his sea chest, which he hinted was filled with valuables, locked at all times. Sum also read about the pirate telling the young boy to keep a “weather-eye open,” meaning to look out all the time, for a “sea-faring man with one leg.” It was clear that the pirate was worried about this man.

  “And here I’ll stop,” Sum said. “Hope it isn’t too much. Just fiction, you know!”

  One of the kids on the bunk said, “Where’s the man’s home?”

  Sum looked sideways at the kids and sighed. “Probably hadn’t had one for years. Maybe never. I’ll bet he just lived on ships when he went out to sea.”

  “Must’ve smelled sumpin awful!” another kid said. “As bad as that guy who lives in the doorway down the street. Once we said hi to him when he was shaking out his sleeping bag, and peeee-uw!”

  “Poor soul,” Sum said.

  “I could live on a ship!” the boy with the runny nose said, his voice high with excitement. “And have a sea chest! With my stuff inside!”

  “No toilets or running water,” Sum said. “Lotta rats and bugs. Worms in the food. No toilet paper.”

  “Aw, nasty!”

  “Pirates didn’t got it easy!”

  “Pirates don’t work, they just steal, right?” asked Jubie. “So they don’t get a home. They’re baaaaad!”

  “Sometimes bad people get homes and good people don’t,” Sum said lightly. “We’ll find out who gets what if we keep reading. Off you go, kids.”

  That night, with the three Pearls still curled into one bunk, Early hoped Dash wasn’t being bullied, wherever he was.

  Good night, Dash, she said, in her mind. Sweet dreams. We’re working hard to find you. But I have a question: What does 4:44 mean? Did you make me see it today?

  I remember what you wrote in your notebook, the last page, about the times. If 4 + 4 + 4 = 12, and 1 + 2 = 3, is 3 a clue? Or is it just that when you add and re-add those lines of repeating numbers, they turn into a rhythm of 3, 6, 9 and that’s what matters? But why?

  I don’t like 3. We Pearls are a 4, not a 3, and I don’t want to notice 3s! I wish something in your notebook had added up to 4.

  Tears rolled off into the pillow under Early’s cheek. And then she felt it: Dash’s hand cupping the side of her head, just a light touch, the way he did at home, checking on her and Jubie before he and Sum went to sleep. She felt it!

  Her eyes popped open, and she sat up on one elbow. Sum’s back was to her, and Jubie was curled against Sum. Sum turned her head.

  “You doing okay, Early?” Her voice was sleepy.

  Early knew she couldn’t tell what had just happened, not without making Sum sad. She forced some cheerfulness into her voice. “Yeah, night.”

  When she’d settled back on the pillow, she whispered in her head, Thanks, Dash.

  She lay awake for what felt like ages, listening to the murmurs and occasional crying, sneezing, and sniffling in the big room. Snow with a steady wind made plitt-plitt-pishhhh sounds against the windows, and every once in a while a radiator wheezed steam. The guard in the corner read a magazine with a flashlight and occasionally walked the length of the room and back, one of her sneakers squeaking under her weight. Each time someone tiptoed by to the bathroom, he or she crossed the light in the open door, dragging a panel of shadow across Early’s face, first one way and then the other.

  Who could help them?

  And then, suddenly, she remembered a name. Someone from Dash’s past, someone who might still be around. She tucked the thought beneath her pillow.

  “I can do this, Dash,” she whispered.

  Circle

  Early opened to the first page of one of her new notebooks and wrote, each letter spy-style neat: Find Skip Waive, Dash’s old teacher. Check telephone book first.

  By midmorning, she felt ready to try the new school, more than ready. Time dragged, the hands on the shelter clocks seeming barely to move.

  Early and Jubie walked by the room Darren had been in, but it was quiet, too quiet. He might be in school, but then where were his mom and the littler kids? They hadn’t been at breakfast this morning. Early sighed, and wondered if she’d ever see Darren again.

  The tutoring room was locked and empty until three o’clock, when the bigger kids came back from school. Early hoped there was a phone book in there; she could do this on her own. She’d tell Sum when she had good news to share.

  Her mother spent what seemed like endless hours waiting in the phone lines, hoping to be prepared for her trip to the police station the next day by getting free legal advice ahead of time. Most of the places she reached forced her to leave a message giving her name and the main number of the shelter, and she’d been told those calls hardly ever got returned. She also met with the shelter employment counselor, who wanted a promise that she’d put Jubie into affordable day care before she was offered a job, something she and Dash had agreed they wouldn’t do with their kids. Not that there was much work around, these days, for people who’d only finished high school! Sum was in no mood to sympathize with Early and Jubie’s feeling bored.

  Early had read The Lion King to her brother three times when Jubie found another boy to play with up in the sleeping area, a kid who’d been wandering around the edges of the room. Early breathed a sigh of relief. She’d just picked up her notebook again when Jubie was back.

  “He pulled my shirt, Early!” Jubie whined. “He’s not being nice, and we got nothing fun to play with! Just his little sister’s baby toys.”

  Early sighed. “Come on, we’ll play red-light-green-light in the hall.” As soon as they started, more kids about Jubie’s age showed up. Early explained the rules. Soon she had ten small people looking at her.

  She turned her back and covered her eyes. “Green light …” she said, then spun around. “Red!” This went on with one four- or five-year-old after another becoming the leader until someone gave an earsplitting shriek and a guard came out and told them all to quiet down.

  “You-all running a play group here,” the guard said. “You somebody’s good daughter,” she added, and patted Early on the shoulder.

  That helped. Early went on to organize a game of statues, which was quieter, and then a game of telephone, in which the kids sat in a circle and each whispered a name in the next ear. She was exhausted by the time lunch rolled around and Sum came downstairs.

  Her mother looked thunderous right when Early wanted her to smile and give her a hug. “I took care of a lot of kids while you were up there,” Early began.

  “That’s good,” Sum said, in a flat voice. “Wish I’d done something that worthwhile.”

  Lunch was icky, greasy meat with green noodles on the side. Jubie was whining again. Early started to feel desperate. “Couldn’t you take us out for a little walk, Sum?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it feel good to see the sky and get some air?”

  Sum looked blankly at her daughter. “Yeah, but I need every minute I have to find out what our rights are before I sit down with those police people again. I gotta make this appointment tomorrow count, you know?” Then, as if seeing Early’s unhappy face for the first time, she said, “I’m sorry, baby. I
t’ll feel refreshing to get to school tomorrow, and if you can just keep an eye on Jubie for a few more hours, that’ll be the best help ever.”

  Early nodded numbly. She thought of all the fun things they’d had at home — Play-Doh, paints and crayons, paper, toys … and, of course, books. They’d gone on trips to the local library, sometimes twice a week. Made cookies with Sum. Had blocks and Legos to build with. It had all felt normal then, but so much choice now seemed like luxury.

  Circle

  Early spread her clothes carefully on one of the bunks and ironed them with the palm of her hand. She got a sock from the dirty laundry, wet it, and cleaned the sides of her sneakers. Once dressed, she sat quietly on the bed and wrote in her new notebook, Hoping for hope today. She paused and looked up. Sum was watching, her eyes gentle and like-old-times warm. Tears suddenly prickled in Early’s eyes, and she turned her head.

  “Love you, Early Pearl,” her mother whispered.

  Early got busy putting her notebook away and blinked like mad before answering, “Yeah, me, too, Sum.”

  Sum and Jubie were downstairs when Early left with a group of twelve kids to go to school that morning with Mrs. Happadee. No other parents were there to see them off. Sum stepped up and tied Early’s scarf extra tight around her face. “Cold out there, now!” she said. “You keep those gloves on, too.”

  Early nodded.

  “Your mom’s real nice,” Aisha said as they stepped outside. “Mine’s always been tired. Sometimes we kids had to call her lots to get her up for breakfast. Before here.”

  Early nodded again. Weird, she hadn’t seen any other kids at mealtimes with Aisha and her mom. “There’s other kids in your family?” Early asked.

  Aisha tucked her chin deeper into her scarf. “They died in the fire, with my grandma,” she said. “Used to be. Just me and my mom now.”