Ola Shakes It Up (2 page)

Dad listened to all I had to say, then said we would do good things in the new house and the new neighborhood, too, and that's it, the end, no more discussion, which made me real mad at Dad. What's all this talk about how everybody has their own say in this family for, if it doesn't count for anything? So me, Khatib and Aeisha got together and had our own family meeting. We knew how important this job was to Dad, but our school and our neighborhood here were important, too. Khatib would have to quit the basketball team. Aeisha would lose her record of perfect attendance and I wouldn't be able to go on our class trip to Canobie Lake at the end of the year. Karen, Margarita and I had been looking forward to it since school started.

That's when I decided to come up with a plan. A good plan can solve anything and everything and can get you almost anything you want. And it just so happened that I considered myself to be the best planner this side of Roxbury. I decided that the first thing we needed to do was some research on Walcott. Aeisha found out that there was a commuter train to Earlington and that it would only take Dad four hours each morning to get to work from Roxbury. Aeisha and Khatib thought that was too much, but it didn't seem so bad to me. Dad could get a lot of work done on the train, and when the economy got better he could get a job in Boston. Plus, we knew that Dad felt bad about making us move our whole lives just because of his job. That's how I came up with Plan A of Operation No-Move. First we moped around the house for the whole month, which wasn't too hard to do whenever we thought of having to say goodbye to all our friends. I even told Mama that I thought the psychological ramifications (Aeisha looked that one up for me) of this move on me personally were not worth the risk, but she just laughed. I think I pronounced it wrong. But Plan A was a complete disaster, 'cause instead of letting us stay in our old house, Mama and Dad decided that a visit to the new house would make us feel better about moving. Ha. Luckily, I had a backup plan ready to go.

It seemed like we had been driving for hours by the time Mama said, “We're here,” and we all looked out the window to see what here was all about. A big blue sign with a bunch of flowers and birds painted on it announced that we were entering W
ALCOTT
CORNERS
: A C
OOPERATIVE
C
OMMUNITY
. Then we were driving on a really wide street that looked like
it could fit six lanes of traffic. All around us were gigantic two-story houses with huge brownish green lawns and big, bare trees like the ones on Route 128. The houses all looked the same, with brick stairs that led up to the front door and tall brown fences that went around the sides and the back. It was kind of eerie how organized everything looked. Every house had the exact same football-field-sized lawn and the exact same trees planted in front of it. All of the houses were painted either this sick blue and white or a disgusting peachy pink and white. They all looked like they had been painted yesterday, too. Looking around, I saw that there were no cars parked on the street, like there were in our real neighborhood, and that there was a lot more space in between the houses. It would take a few weeks just to cross the street.

“This place doesn't look very historic,” Aeisha commented, frowning against the window.

“That's 'cause this is a new development, Aeisha,” Dad said. “All these houses are brand-new.”

“It's very unique,” Mama added. “In relation to the rest of the town, that is. But it was one of the few places where houses were for sale.”

“How come?” I asked suspiciously.

“All the other houses in the town are owned by families that have lived here for generations. People just tend to stay here.” Mama smiled brightly again, which made me even more suspicious. I couldn't tell whether she was hiding something from us or just telling us this stuff so that we'd give in and act better about moving. “Wait till you see the inside of the house.”

“Where is everybody?” I asked, 'cause there didn't seem
to be anybody outside, though it looked like some stupid kid had left his bike on the lawn across the street. It was definitely too quiet.

“At work or school, Ola. It is a Thursday,” Mama answered.

Hmpf, I thought. There was always somebody hanging around in our old neighborhood. If it wasn't Mrs. Petry down the street, then Mrs. Gransby or old Mr. Roland was around to stop you and ask about your family or to make sure you weren't ditching school.

“Which one is ours?” Aeisha asked, pushing her big owl glasses back up her nose. Aeisha's nose is so small that her glasses are always sliding down it.

“Hold your horses, we're almost there.” Dad slowed the car down and looked at one side of the street, then the other. “This one,” he said, stopping in front of one of the blue-and-white houses. But he didn't open the door. He looked sideways at Mama for help.

“Number seven-twenty-seven,” Mama whispered, prodding him to move forward.

“This is number seven-forty-one, Dad,” Khatib shouted from where his face was pressed up against the window. He looked back at me and winked, and I nodded, smiling. Aeisha rolled her eyes at us. She thinks my plans are stupid and never work, but what does she know? She doesn't do anything unless she reads about it in a book first. My plans are the kind of thing people
write
books about. Plan B was simple. We had to be as difficult as possible so that Mama and Dad would see that we didn't like the house and would be really unhappy in Walcott.

Dad pulled the car back out into the street, and in a few seconds we pulled into the driveway of another blue-and-white house. “Number seven-twenty-seven. Home.”

I stared out of the car window at the house. It made our house back in Roxbury look like a beat-up old shed. This house had big, wide windows instead of the small, tight windows in our old house. This house had a tall, polished wood double door instead of a too-low single door with peeling paint, like our old house. I felt like I was looking at a blown-up-to-life-size version of those dollhouses we used to see in the store catalogs. Aeisha had always wanted one of those dollhouses, but they were too expensive.

Then I looked at the other houses. They looked like dollhouses, too. In fact, they all looked like exactly the same dollhouse. How was I going to find my way home from school in this neighborhood? Even Dad didn't know his own house.

“It's all wrong,” I said. Khatib and Aeisha nodded with me. They put on their most sorrowful expressions to show Mama, except that Khatib s expression looked more like he was sick than upset.

Mama twisted her neck to look at us. “It'll look prettier in the spring, when the grass gets back to being green and the trees fill out.”

Ha, I thought. What about the humongous front lawn? It looked like it was the size of Franklin Park. Who was gonna take care of it? Dad hated doing yard work and Khatib was always at basketball practice. Who was gonna shovel all the snow in the winter? Who was gonna rake the millions of leaves that fell off those big trees? Not me.

“Come out, all you.” Mama held the car door open for me. “At least you can have a look inside.”

Khatib, Aeisha and I glanced at each other. I could tell they were wimping out, 'cause neither of them looked me in the eye.

“Guess it wouldn't hurt.” Khatib shrugged.

“We're already here,” Aeisha pointed out.

“No way!” I whispered loudly.

They looked at each other again, and the next thing I knew they were climbing all over me to get out of the car and running up the front lawn to the house. Traitors.

“Come on out, Ola,” Mama coaxed, still holding the door open. “It'll do no good to sit there by yourself.”

I decided to get out of the car. Plan B was ruined, anyway. Dad, Aeisha and Khatib had already disappeared into the house. Mama put her hand on my shoulder and we walked up the stairs to the door, which had a big sign with yellow balloons on it that said, W
ELCOME TO
Y
OUR
C
OOPERATIVE
H
OME
.

“What does that mean?” I asked suspiciously.

“This is a cooperative neighborhood, Ola.” Mama opened the door and pushed me inside.

“What does that mean?” I repeated, looking around. We walked down a long hallway into a big square room with white walls and dark wood floors. There was even a fireplace at one end of the room. Dad was standing in front of the tall, wide windows with his hands in his pockets. Everything looked new—like it had never been touched before. Our old house, with its worn-down wood floors and faded yellow-flowered wallpaper, looked more homey.

“It means that everyone in the neighborhood does things to keep it a nice place,” Mama explained, going over to stand by Dad. I could see their faces reflected in the window.

“Like what?” This whole cooperative thing sounded fishy to me.

“Like cutting your lawn regularly—”

“Hear that, Dad?” I said, and had to move before his hand reached down to swat my behind for being fresh. “What else?”

“Little things, Ola, like keeping the house in good shape, not parking your car out in the street, not hanging clothes out in the yard—”

“What will they do if you don't do all that stuff?” I asked, but Mama and Dad were smiling at each other, and I decided to get out of there. They were crazy, expecting us to leave our home for this strange place where they had rules that forced you to mow your own lawn. Whose house was this, anyway? The more I thought about it, the more fun I decided it would be to break one of those rules. I could see the headlines: “Nine-Year-Old Ayeola Benson Arrested by Neighborhood for Hanging Out Purple Leotard.” If this was really our house — if I thought for a moment that we were gonna stay here —I'd put something out there right now.

I wandered around the house until I found the kitchen. Dad was right—it was much bigger than our real kitchen. It had a long counter with tall black stools, and the tile on the floor was black and green. Off to the side was a little room with our new washing machine and dryer. I went further into the kitchen and looked out the window over the
sink. The backyard was even bigger than the front lawn. Someone had cemented part of it and put in a basketball hoop. Now Khatib would never want to leave. I climbed up on one of the stools and sat down.

There were too many corners and too many white walls. Aeisha would be able to find a million places to hide and read her books without me pestering her to come out and live a little. (If it wasn't for me, Aeisha would be the world's only twelve-year-old hermit.) We wouldn't be able to sit together in the kitchen doing our homework while Dad prepared for one of his classes and Mama hummed under her breath. We wouldn't be able to lie down on Mama and Dad's bed all squashed together to watch TV. This house was so big we would never see each other. And nobody in the family was talking about how different it would be for us here. Back in the car I'd seen how Aeisha put down her book and Khatib took off his Walkman to look out the window at the town. They'd been thinking the same thing I was. Walcott was a historic old town, all right. A historic old
white
town. We hadn't seen a single other black or Hispanic face.

Dad came into the kitchen, looked at my long face, and sighed. “Ola, you got to give the place a chance, now.”

I shook my head. “It's all wrong for us, Dad. I don't think we should stay here.”

“Well, then, what are we gonna do about Grady, huh?” Dad put his hands on his hips and cocked his head.

“Who's Grady?” I asked, but before Dad could answer I heard the barking, and Aeisha rushed into the kitchen leading a big yellow-gold dog with a bright red bow around his neck.

“Look, Ola!”

“A dog!” I shouted, before I could help myself. I jumped off the stool and went to look at him. He had floppy ears and a black nose. I reached out to touch his fur. He felt really soft.

“This is blackmail, Dad,” I said, putting my hand behind my back quickly. I looked away from Grady to Dad, who was smiling his big-teeth smile again. We couldn't have any pets in our other house because it was too small.

“A golden retriever, too, Ola,” Aeisha added.

I glared at Dad. He was cheating.
I
was the one who always asked for a dog every Christmas. Each year I asked for a different kind of dog to see if maybe that would change their mind. Last year I'd asked for a golden retriever. One year, when I was real little, I'd started crying because they gave me a stuffed dog instead. Dad had hugged me and said he was very, very sorry.

“Now what are we gonna do if we have to go back?” Dad asked. “The pound is keeping him until we move in.”

“You got him at the pound?” I asked, kneeling down in front of Grady. I looked into his brown dog eyes. Grady looked back at me and started whimpering. Even the dog was in cahoots with this move.

“An old lady had left him there, Ola.” Dad had turned his lips down at the corners, so it looked like he was sad instead of happy. “She said she couldn't take care of him anymore.”

“Poor Grady,” I said. I couldn't help myself. I had to pat him again.

“Are you ready to give this place a chance now?” I heard Dad ask from behind me. I pulled my hand back quickly. Then I shook my head and stood up.