27 Magic Words

by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  As the lights dimmed for a long, slow minute and booming thunder made Kobi jump, the word that was left bouncing around in her head as the lights came back was dilettante. She saw the way to protect Uncle Wim from knowing something that would make him sad. The conference was for parents. Uncle Wim wasn’t her parent, so she wouldn’t tell him. Problem solved.

  It was still raining at morning recess, so they stayed in. Norman sat at his desk writing. He kept his stories in a ring binder that he didn’t allow anybody to touch.

  Kobi decided to draw a picture of Norman. He could put it on his ring binder like the author photo on the dust jacket of her mother’s books. She asked him if it would be okay if she drew him.

  “Sure. Make my shirt striped,” he said. Today his T-shirt was navy and gray, the perfect rainy-day colors.

  Kobi liked the rain. It was cozy and nobody was making her play stupid games or stand in line. Dante was in his cage, gazing at her, making her remember San Francisco. Norman bent over his work.

  “My mother is a writer,” Kobi told him.

  “Oh yeah?” Norman said, looking up. “A famous writer?”

  “No.”

  “Does she write fiction or nonfiction?”

  “She creates characters,” Kobi said, “and makes them do exactly what she wants them to.”

  “Yes!” Norman said, pumping his fist in the air. “Made-up things are way better than real things. So does your grandmother live with you?”

  Why would he think that? “My grandmother lives in Paris.”

  “Then who’s the older lady in the car with your mom every day?”

  “Oh! That’s not my mom. That’s my uncle’s girlfriend. And Ms. Hancock is her mom.”

  Norman cocked his head. “Hancock as in the famous artist? You get to ride in the same car with the famous artist every day?” His voice rose.

  Kobi nodded, smiling. Norman was weird, but she liked him.

  “You are so lucky!” he said.

  She really was. Sometimes another person flashed out of Ms. Hancock’s gray eyes. Somebody interesting and fun and very smart who Kobi wished could come out. Ms. Hancock was like a beautiful picture that had been rained on, then driven over by a car, then left under a pile of leaves to be nibbled by squirrels, and the only beautiful bit left was a tiny patch of incredible blue in one corner.

  Last night, Kobi had started using the word ragout to make Ms. Hancock get well. But it was like temporarily—a person had to be patient to know for sure. Kobi and Brook had been helping Sally follow a recipe called Eight-Vegetable Ragout. When Brook asked what rag-out was, Sally corrected her, saying it was rah-goo. Kobi had been saying the word her mother gave her wrong all these years. No wonder it hadn’t worked! She said ragout to herself the right way and Ms. Hancock stood, walked briskly to the door, got mail out of the mailbox, laid it on the counter, and sat back down in her chair. Sally had looked so surprised.

  “So why does your uncle bring you to school and his girlfriend pick you up?” Norman asked. “What happened to your parents?”

  “Nothing happened to them!” Kobi’s heart leapt into her throat, and she was being too loud. Ms. Carlson was looking at her. “They’re on a sailing trip, that’s all,” Kobi said quietly.

  “To where?”

  “The South Sea Islands.”

  “Really?” Norman looked overloaded with amazement.

  Kobi nodded.

  “When will they be back?”

  “I don’t know. It could be tomorrow or it could be longer.”

  “Don’t they tell you?”

  “They can’t always stay in touch.” It was nice to talk about her parents with somebody who didn’t give her funny looks. It was like kicking off shoes that were too tight. “Sometimes they’re in places where they can’t get a satellite signal. Sometimes they’re about ready to start for home, and then something happens and they have a new adventure.”

  “Wow!” He let out a big breath. “My parents raise organic goats.”

  “There are goats on the island where my parents are now. My parents milk them.” She told him about the wild pig that her dad had speared with a handmade weapon.

  Norman gazed at her.

  She told him how her parents wove a net from sea grass and used it to haul fish out of the surf. She told him about the steps that wound around the gnarled tree to the rooms where her parents lived. She told him how the rooms swayed ever so gently in the wind. She told him about the floor mats her mother made from grass.

  “Man, it’s like you’ve been there,” Norman said. “The way you describe it!”

  She wished she could tell him she’d been there many times. But not even Abnormal Norman, as the kids called him, would understand that.

  “You must be really proud,” he said. “They should make a National Geographic special about your parents.”

  “They’re going to,” she said, smiling, feeling so warm and happy the lie slipped out.

  Norman gazed at her as if she were a rock star.

  She hadn’t meant to lie. She could explain that to Norman. She wanted to explain.

  “Way better than organic goats,” he said, shaking his head. “Way better.”

  At lunch, Anna put down her tray beside Kobi’s. Norman was on Kobi’s other side, and he was asking questions about her parents’ trip. Anna offered to trade her peach half for Kobi’s oatmeal cookie. “Okay,” Kobi said, even though she really liked oatmeal cookies.

  “Was it hard to wash away the famous artist’s work last night?” Anna asked between bites.

  “Yes. But I had to.”

  Lily, on the other side of Anna, was listening. Everybody around them was. Kobi liked the way the kids were looking at her today.

  “Her parents are the subject of a National Geographic special,” Norman announced.

  Montpellier, Montpellier, Montpellier. If only the word that worked in cavernous places would get her out of this awful situation.

  “And although I never watch TV,” Norman said, “you can bet I’m going to watch that program.”

  Anna looked amazed. “When? Why?”

  Now the kids at the table were really interested.

  “When?” Norman said to Kobi. Before she could answer, he said, “Why is because her parents are on a sailing voyage to the South Seas and they’re making their own tools for hunting and fishing and live in a tree house . . .”

  A girl across the table said, “Norman, is this another one of your stories?”

  “No,” he said, his face turning almost as red as his hair. “It’s the scout’s honor truth. Tell them, Kobi.”

  She couldn’t humiliate Norman now by revealing that he’d fallen for a whopper.

  “National Geographic is making a special about my parents’ trip when they return,” she said dully.

  “When are they getting back?” somebody asked.

  “Soon,” Kobi said, hoping with all her heart that this was true. When her parents got home, they’d take her away from Horace Mann Elementary, and she’d be gone before the lies caught up with her.

  “Are your parents anthropologists?” one of the lunchroom ladies who had been listening asked.

  Kobi didn’t think so. And she didn’t want to tell any more lies. “My dad is an amateur magician. My mother is a writer.”

  “Are they famous, too?” Lily asked, her tone sour. “Should we Google them?”

  Anna shot Lily a look.

  “They’re not famous,” Kobi said. She was going to walk the straight line of truth from now on, no1 matter what.

  “Does your dad let you help him with his tricks?” someone asked.

  “No. But he lets my mother.”

  “Does she wear a fancy evening gown and let your dad saw her in half?” Anna asked. “Is she beautiful?”

  “She’s very beautiful. She has long, wavy hair. But my dad doesn’t saw her in half. He says that trick is too advanced.”

  “Do you know any magic?” someone asked.
<
br />   “Our dad keeps all his magic secret,” she said. “It’s more fun that way.”

  “Let’s go play Around the World, since it’s raining,” Anna said, standing up and looking at Lily and Kobi. Norman stood up, too. “Just girls,” Anna said.

  Norman sat back down.

  “Has he ever told you why he wears striped shirts all the time?” Anna asked Kobi on the way to the classroom.

  Of course he had. The first day.

  “So he blends in,” Lily said with a laugh before Kobi could answer. “He has goats, you know. And in second grade for show-and-tell his dad brought a goat to school in a truck, and we had to line up and go outside and see it.” She smiled and began to sing, “Norman had a little goat, little goat, little goat . . .”

  Anna joined in. “I’d forgotten that,” she said when they were done, and she smiled at Kobi.

  Although she didn’t want to, Kobi smiled back. The smile felt worse than the lies.

  FOURTEEN

  GRANDMAMMA called on Saturday. It was four o’clock in Paris and she had awakened from a nap feeling she simply had to talk to her babies.

  Kobi explained that Brook had slept at Isabel’s last night and wasn’t home yet. Kobi hated the thought of Brook and Isabel, in their pj’s, having breakfast together.

  “It’s nice that you girls are making friends,” Grandmamma said.

  Kobi didn’t want Grandmamma to know she was so jealous of Isabel it gave her a stomachache. She didn’t want Grandmamma to know that her only friend was an odd boy who had no other friends, and whom she was thinking of dumping because Anna and Lily made fun of him.

  “Are things going well after school at the Hancocks’?” Grandmamma asked.

  “Yes.”

  Kobi was glad Grandmamma seemed to be getting over her irritation that Uncle Wim had chosen the Hancocks for after-school care.

  She told Grandmamma about the garden with bean teepees and rows and rows of colorful zinnias. “It’s like an enormous painting,” she said.

  “Do you like Patricia?” Grandmamma asked.

  It would make Grandmamma happy to hear that Kobi didn’t, but Kobi said, “She does beautiful art.”

  After a pause, Grandmamma said, “Old habits.”

  Grandmamma wouldn’t be jealous of Ms. Hancock if she knew about the Alzheimer’s, but Kobi was sworn to secrecy.

  “Grandmamma, are you famous?”

  Grandmamma laughed. “Did somebody tell you I was famous?”

  “No. I just wondered.”

  “Famous isn’t necessarily a good thing to be, Kobi. The best things are to be good. And happy. And healthy.”

  Kobi hadn’t been very good lately. And she couldn’t be truly happy until her parents got home.

  “That’s what I want for Wim and for you girls,” Grandmamma said with a catch in her voice. “That you be good. And happy. And healthy. That’s enough for anybody.”

  It sounded like Grandmamma was crying. But why would she be?

  “When are you and Mr. Gyver leaving on your trip?” Kobi asked.

  “As soon as I feel a little better.”

  After she got off the phone, Kobi helped Uncle Wim fold laundry in the basement. He wasn’t as careful as Madame Louise, and some days Kobi wore wrinkled clothes.

  “Things going okay at school?” he asked, folding jeans that had been left in the dryer with towels too long and looked like a fuzzy animal had napped in them.

  “I guess,” Kobi said. She had thrown away the paper with Uncle Wim’s conference time written on it.

  “Anything coming up? Anything I should know about?”

  “No,” Kobi said.

  “You’ve got a nice desk now,” he said.

  The desks and chairs had been delivered last night. Brook hadn’t seen hers yet. They were identical—white, with curved metal legs, a middle drawer, and two drawers on one side.

  “And since you’ve got that desk,” Uncle Wim said, “maybe you’d like to spend a little more time on your school-work.”

  Kobi tried not to look away. Looking away was a sign of guilt. But Uncle Wim couldn’t possibly know about the math. She changed the subject. “Maybe we could have a couch for the living room, too, if you can afford it.”

  “What’s wrong with the black couch?”

  “It smells like a rhinoceros,” she said. “And it’s scratchy. But if you don’t have the money, it’s okay. We won’t be here long. And you pay Sally to keep us.”

  Uncle Wim looked surprised. “I’m not paying Sally to keep you. She likes you. And she thinks it’s good for Patricia to be around children. I’m giving her money because her web design business has tanked since Patricia’s Alzheimer’s has progressed so much.” He cleared his throat. “I can afford a new couch, Kobi. One that doesn’t smell like a rhinoceros.”

  Kobi suspected from the way his eyebrows moved that he might not be telling her the truth. And her own guilty conscience made her mean. “Can you afford furniture for the dining room? Or the foyer? Or a table for the kitchen that doesn’t wobble? The house echoes when we talk.”

  Uncle Wim gazed at her as if she were molting. Finally, he said, “Kobi, I can afford furniture.”

  So temporarily had worked! “Then why don’t you have any?”

  “Between you and me?”

  Kobi nodded.

  “I hope Sally will marry me soon. If she does, she’ll want to decorate the house.”

  Kobi could imagine what Sally would do with the house. She would paint the dingy walls with brilliant colors like eggplant purple and morning glory blue. And she would fill the place with Ms. Hancock’s artwork. She’d plant a beautiful garden in the scraggly backyard. And she’d be right here when Uncle Wim came home every night. Razzmatazz popped into Kobi’s head as she thought about what an exciting, magical place it would become.

  “Have you asked her to marry you?”

  “I asked her to marry me years ago.”

  Kobi felt grown up talking to Uncle Wim about this. “What did she say?”

  “Maybe someday. For half my life she has been saying that. That’s why I bought the house. I thought she was on the verge of saying yes, and then—” He stopped. But Kobi saw the rest of the story in his eyebrows.

  And then Grandmamma dumped her and Brook on him.

  “So you’re not unfortunate?”

  An eyebrow went up. “Unfortunate? As in a poor unfortunate?” He ruffled her hair, which had grown half an inch since the stove disaster. “I used to be more unfortunate than I am now,” he said.

  She smiled to herself. Phyllo bundle. She felt toasty warm in the chilly, damp basement with Uncle Wim. The magic was working.

  FIFTEEN

  ALMOST a week went by before Uncle Wim said on the way to school, “I’ll be a little late getting to Sally’s this evening. I have Kobi’s school conference.”

  Kobi’s eyes flew to his in the mirror. Then she looked away to stare out the window as if she had never before seen the Presbyterian church that they drove past twice a day. How had he found out?

  “You’re not supposed to go,” she said. “It’s for parents.”

  “Call me Dad,” he said, winking at her in the mirror.

  It was like a knife in her heart.

  “Oh, Kobi. I was just messing with you. It was in bad taste,” Uncle Wim said. “I’m sorry.”

  She tried to blink back the tears.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. Why didn’t her parents get the boat seaworthy? If only the Great Alighieri would come home, everything would be fine.

  When Ms. Carlson had them get out their worksheets as usual, Kobi almost didn’t bother with her fake one. She glanced up at Ms. Carlson as she passed. Ms. Carlson put her hand on Kobi’s shoulder.

  Kobi’s heart stopped. Was she going to be marched out of the room in shame?

  Ms. Carlson gave Kobi’s shoulder a little squeeze and smiled at her, and then moved on to glance at
Norman’s worksheet. Today he was wearing a green-and-gold-striped shirt. He would blend in well with Sally’s zinnias.

  What did Ms. Carlson’s smile mean? That she agreed with Kobi it was silly to worry about math when Kobi would be leaving at Christmas, if not before?

  At lunch, Anna put her tray by Kobi’s, which she had been doing all week. “Scoot over,” she said.

  Anna had plenty of room.

  “Hurry,” she insisted. “Scoot!”

  When Norman arrived at his usual spot on Kobi’s other side, there was no more space.

  “This table is full,” Anna said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Norman said. “There’s room. Move over, Kobi.”

  She tried to slide to the left, but Anna wouldn’t budge and Kobi didn’t try really hard.

  “Come on, Kobi,” Norman said again. “Scoot over.”

  “This table is full, Goat Boy,” Anna said.

  Norman’s face turned fiery red. He looked at Kobi. When she looked away, he moved on to another table.

  Kobi felt sick. She should get up and follow Norman. Anna had been terribly cruel.

  After lunch, when they traded papers to grade each other’s science quizzes, Kobi penciled a note, very small and pale, in the lower corner of Norman’s paper. It said, Would you like an autographed copy of one of my mother’s novels?

  He was watching her write, but when she handed his perfect quiz back to him, he didn’t look at her note. He acted like he blended in so well, he didn’t exist. Or she didn’t.

  It wrenched her heart. He’d been nice to her the day she’d fallen on the playground. He was always nice.

  “Please read it,” she whispered. If he were Brook, she could say pantaloons and things would smooth out between them; forgiveness would come with a giggle. One of the words she’d never cracked the power of, buoy, came to mind. They’d been studying homonyms.

  “Buoy,” she whispered.

  He acted as if he didn’t hear, but eventually his eyes drifted to the corner of his quiz. When he looked up, his blue eyes shone. He grinned. He nodded.

  Monday, she penciled upside down and backward on the corner of her notebook.