3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (2 page)

Bob had by this point moved on to bending a paper clip that had fallen off the papers.

“It looks like they messed this up,” Ama finally declared. “It looks like they gave me a scholarship to this outdoor trip -where they have you hike and climb mountains in national parks.” She looked at her parents. She shook her head as though the foundation had mistakenly sent her a pet skunk. “This is all wrong. I’m not going to do it.”

Our plants did survive third grade. Even Jo’s. She tried to act like she couldn’t be bothered to take care of it, but I could tell she could. I spent a lot of time at her house with her and Polly that year, even though my parents disapproved of going to friends’ houses when you had homework. My sister, Esi, never did that, they reminded me. So I know Jo played her violin to her plant and even got it some special food.

The plants magically turned from cuttings to actual tiny trees, and the roots grew and wound all up. There was barely enough soil in the pots anymore, so we had to put them in bigger pots. You had to water them practically every day.

Polly had the idea of planting them on the last day of school. She found the perfect spot in a little woods with a creek behind a playground at the end of my street. It was the woods at the bottom of Pony Hill, the best sledding hill in the world, where we used to play a lot. There was a clearing where we planted all three in a row with enough space between them to grow deep roots. We dug with our fingers because we forgot to bring a trowel. We pulled out the rocks and tried not to disturb the worms too much because Polly insisted we needed their help. We carefully undid the root balls. It was like untangling hair. We tucked them into the dirt.

It was weird taking the plants from the tiny world of soil in their pots and putting them into the ground, connected to all the other things in the earth. They looked kind of shy and vulnerable, and it was hard to leave them. They didn’t seem like they belonged there. Jo looked like she was going to cry when we walked away.

We checked on them a lot that first summer. Jo often brought her violin and the plant food. And in fourth grade, we met up almost every day after school. Sometimes we got Slurpees and candy bars at the 7-Eleven and checked on our trees on the way home.

Jo was really good at violin back then. She practiced with her dad, who also played, but she quickly got better than him. He was really proud of her and said she could be a professional if she worked hard.

She could play along with Top Forty songs on the radio. Even rap songs, which was really hilarious. She could figure out almost any tune. She played so loud she could blow your ears out.

For some reason, Dia, Pollys mom, got a tattoo when we were in fourth grade. It was a spiderweb that went all around her belly button. I thought it was very cool. I thought it would be awesome to have a mom with a tattoo.

Polly slept over my house that night, and when we were falling asleep she was crying and said she wished her mom hadn’t gotten it. I couldn’t understand that at the time, but as I get older I think Ido.

Jo hoisted her duffel bag onto the pile of her stuff ac cumulating in the front hall. Her mother’s suitcases were lined up in the corner, neatly topped by a couple of sun hats and several shoe boxes. They weren’t leaving until the next day, but it was a big job to pack for the whole summer.

Her mother drifted into the hall to survey the progress. “Jo, what’s with all this junk? I -wish you’d clean it up. Do you really need your skateboard?”

“It’s not junk. It’s my stuff. Anyway, we’re just going to pack it in the car,” Jo said. Her mom did not like messes or disorder of any kind. Not even the temporary messes that were unavoidable when packing or moving.

“Where’s Dad’s stuff? Where are his golf clubs?”

Her mom plucked a straw sun hat from atop her suitcase and began restoring its shape.

“Mom?”

“I guess he’ll bring it when he comes out,” she said.

“When’s that? I thought he was coming -with us.”

Jo’s mom lowered the hat and looked at her. “He’s not.”

“Why not? Is he on call?”

“Yes.”

“All summer?”

“Jo, please.”

Her mom didn’t want to talk about it, and that made Jo need to talk about it.

“So when’s he coming, then?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Why, because you two can’t talk to each other?”

Her mom averted her eyes even more quickly than Jo expected her to. Her voice got quieter. “You should discuss it with your dad.”

Jo tried to remember -when exactly it was that her mom had stopped calling him “Dad” when she spoke of him to Jo and started calling him “your dad.”

“Really, you should talk to him before we go. You should ask him about his plans,” her mom said again.

What’s that supposed to mean? What are you trying to tell me? Jo wanted to say, but she closed her mouth. Was torturing her mother really worth torturing herself? Did she really want to know?

“I can talk to him -when he gets to the beach,” Jo said blithely, turning away and running up the stairs. “I can talk to him all summer.”

•••

Ama’s sister, Esi, got into Princeton when Ama and Polly and I were in fourth grade, and she went there the next year. That’s a big reason the family moved to the United States from Ghana in the first place. They wanted Esi to go to the best possible college without having to send her across the world from them. So it was a really big deal when Esi got in, and her family had a celebration and everything. Ama’s mom is an incredible cook. I should know, because I ate dinner there almost every night in fifth grade and even probably a lot of sixth grade too. My dad was working a lot then, and my mom wasn’t in much of a mood to cook.

Esi started college when she was sixteen, because she skipped two grades. You’d think that would take the pressure off Ama a little, having her genius sister gone, but if anything that made it worse.

Jo’s older brother was Finn. He had wavy hair and turquoise eyes. He tried to teach us how to skateboard. He died at the end of the summer, right before fifth grade. He was going to be in eighth grade.

Finn had a problem with his heart. Two times before he died he’d blacked out. Once when he was ten and the second time at the beginning of the school year when he was twelve—the same time Jo and Ama and I met. He’d gone to the hospital, and they’d done a bunch of’ tests but hadn’t figured out what was wrong. It didn’t seem like a big deal back then.

The week he died is a blur to me, but I remember the burial. Jo left before it was over. She was supposed to pour a shovelful of dirt on the coffin after her parents, but instead she put the shovel down and just walked away. Ama and I followed her. We sat on the hood of her uncle’s car in the parking lot, throwing pebbles at a metal sign. I can still hear the clink clink clink of the stones when they hit.

It was really lucky that the three of us were in the same classroom that year, because Ama and I could stay close to Jo. She didn’t talk about it and we didn’t ask her anything. We were her friends; we knew what to say and it seemed like nobody else did. I felt like we made a wall around her. That was what she needed us to do.

We knew how it was at Jo’s house, so the three of us spent most afternoons and a lot of weekends at Ama’s, even though Ama’s parents made us do our homeowrk all the time. I never got so many As as in fifth grade.

Ama promised she wouldn’t skip any grades because she wanted to stay with us.

Jo stopped playing the violin because she said it was too loud.

Two or three times a year Polly -went to visit her uncle Hoppy at the old-age home a mile from her house. Sometimes when he felt spry they walked to the diner around the corner and ordered soup.

Hoppy might not have been her uncle. She wasn’t precisely sure what he was. But he was some kind of much older relative on her dad’s side—the only relative she’d ever met on her dad’s side—so it seemed important to stay in touch. Hoppy might have been her great-great-uncle or her third cousin five times removed. He was very hazy about the family tree, and Polly didn’t want to press him too hard on it. It was just nice to think there was someone.

That was why -when other kids were packing up and heading off to camp or to the beach, Polly was sitting in a red Naugahyde booth in a greasy-spoon diner across from a very old man -with hair fluffing out his ears.

The two bowls of chicken noodle soup arrived, and Polly held up her spoon. “Hey,” she said. “They really do have greasy spoons here.”

“What’s that?” Uncle Hoppy s face creased up on one side and he leaned toward her.

“My spoon is actually greasy,” Polly said buoyantly. She didn’t want to say it too loudly in case she hurt the employees’ feelings.

“Your spoon?” he barked. “Your spoon is what? Do you need a new spoon?”

Polly put it down. “No, it’s fine.” She wondered if the ear hair -was getting in the way of Uncle Hoppy s hearing.

“Hows your mother?”

“Very-well, thanks.”

“She still making those … ?” Hoppy cocked his head like a Labrador. “What are those things she makes?”

“Sculptures.”

“What’s that?” Hoppy put his hand to his ear.

“Sculptures! Yes. She still makes them.” Polly nodded broadly to help with the hearing problem.

“Very pretty girl, your mother,” Hoppy said.

Polly’s mother had spiky black hair and a pierced nose, but Polly didn’t argue.

“You too.” He sized Polly up through squinting, cloudy eyes. “You’re a very pretty girl.”

“Thank you,” Polly said. She didn’t put huge faith in his eye sight, based on the amount of help he needed with the menu.

“Very pretty. You could be a model.”

Polly laughed. “You think so?”

“Yes. Your grandmother -was a model, you know.” He bobbed his head at the memory. “Now, there was a very pretty girl.”

Polly swallowed her mouthful of soup without chewing the noodles. “My grandmother?” Those were normal words to most people but startling -words to her. She’d never had a grandmother. Dia hadn’t spoken to her mother since she left home at seventeen. “I don’t know if she’s alive or dead and I don’t really care” was pretty much all Dia had ever said about her mother. Polly had never heard a word spoken of her father’s mother. She forgot that there had to have been such a person.

“She was a looker, all right.” Hoppy waggled his eyebrows suggestively. He was just too old to be really offensive. “Your grandmother looked like Sophia Loren. You probably don’t know who that is.”

“Yes I do,” Polly said with a touch of pride. Polly knew her movie stars, especially the old ones. In fact, his words struck Polly. Of all the truly beautiful and glamorous movie stars, the only one Polly had ever secretly believed she resembled was Sophia Loren. And also maybe Penélope Cruz a tiny, tiny bit.

“You look like your grandmother,” Hoppy pronounced. “Like a model.”

Polly was fascinated. She wished Hoppy could hear better. “You mean she was, like, a professional model? Like in magazines?” she nearly shouted at him.

“What’s that?”

“Was she in magazines? Do you have any pictures?”

Hoppy knocked his bowl around in its saucer. “Yes. All the magazines. She was in all of them.”

“Really? Do you have any pictures of her?”

“Do I have them? No. I don’t think I have them. That was a long time ago.”

Polly nodded, her mind flying, her heart swelling. She had a grandmother and her grandmother had been a model. She had a grandmother -who was beautiful and she looked like Sophia Loren.

Polly -watched as though from a distance, a floating perch near the ceiling, as Uncle Hoppy wrestled with the bill and means of payment. It became such a confusion that Polly eventually had to come down from her reveries on the ceiling and settle it herself with her own ten-dollar bill.

She walked with Hoppy around the corner to his senior residence, bouncing along beside him. She knew with the traffic rushing along Wisconsin Avenue he wouldn’t hear a word she said, so she didn’t try.

A part of her -was burning to ask him -whether this grandmother -was still alive, and how her life had gone, and -what her name -was. But another part of Polly -was content to stay dreamily quiet.

This knowledge -was a gift, shimmering like a cloud in front of her eyes. She -was afraid that if she tried to hold it in her hands she -would be left, again, owning nothing.

Mrs. Sherman, assistant director of the Student Leader Foundation, -was admirably patient -with Ama on the phone -when Ama finally reached her a few hours later. Almost too patient.

“Ama, as I said, this is not an error. This is your placement. It’s an excellent scholarship. In fact, it’s one of the most valuable -we offer.”

“But it’s not valuable to me. I don’t really like the outdoors. I’m not outdoorsy. I’m more … indoorsy. I really didn’t—this really isn’t what I was hoping for.”

Mrs. Sherman sighed for about the forty-fifth time. “Ama, not everyone gets one of their top choices. Our committee members think long and hard about what will be the best fit for our leadership scholars.”

“But this is not the best fit,” Ama said imploringly. “This is the worst fit. Anyone who knows me knows that.”

“Ama, maybe you can keep an open mind about this. I hope you’ll realize that it represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Ama couldn’t keep an open mind. She didn’t have an open mind. She didn’t even -want an open mind. She wanted Andover! She wanted books and libraries and classes where she could get good grades! She wanted A-pluses and gold stars and extra credit.

“I need credit,” Ama said, trying to sound practical. “I need a program that gives high school credit.”

“Oh, this gives credit,” Mrs. Sherman said triumphantly. “It gives full course credit. Read the description. You’ll see.”

Ama felt herself shriveling and shrinking. She hated being -wrong, and she hated being -wrong on account of poor preparation even more. “Oh … really?” Ama said quietly.

“Ama, I know it’s not what you wanted, but it’s a fantastic program. One of our best. I know it doesn’t seem like it to you now, but you are very fortunate to get it. …”