Akeelah and the Bee - James W. Ellison [29]
It took Akeelah three weeks to get up the nerve to ask Dr. Larabee anything resembling a personal question. She picked a moment when she thought he might be distracted. He was pulling weeds from his flower garden, and she stood on the patio watching. A neighbor’s dog was barking and soon was joined by a wailing chorus of other dogs.
“I was wondering something,” Akeelah said. “Teaching comes so naturally to you. So how come you don’t teach anymore?”
“I do teach,” he said, without looking up. “I told you. Online.”
“But isn’t that kinda boring, sitting in front of the computer all day? No kids to interact with.”
“I’ve got you, Akeelah. That’s enough.”
“I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t have a change of scenery. Start to talk to myself, not that I don’t do that already.”
“When I want a change of scenery, I come out here.”
“It seems so strange to me—having students and never getting to really see them.”
“That’s all right. Most of them aren’t…as committed as you.”
Akeelah smiled. That was the first compliment she had ever received from Dr. Larabee and she cherished it. She realized how much she craved his good opinion, and she was beginning to wonder if she was doing the National Bee as much for him as for herself, to fulfill something in him that she sensed he needed.
“No more dawdling,” he said. “Let’s keep going. Spell ‘effervescent.’”
The sound of the dogs barking rent the air. Akeelah gritted her teeth. She wondered if they had barking dogs in Woodland Hills. Somehow she was certain the dogs out there were better behaved.
“…e-r-v-e…”
Dr. Larabee watched Akeelah’s customarily tapping hand as it wavered and paused on her thigh.
“Uh… s-e-n-t…”
“Oh, come on. You know the word.”
“The dogs are distracting me.”
“Don’t blame the dogs. When you get to the National Bee, you’ll have bigger distractions than a bunch of canines howling at the moon.”
He decided that the moment had come to delve into her mysterious habit. “What’s that you do with your hand? I’ve noticed it since the first time you spelled for me.”
“What?”
“Your hand. When you spell a word you go”—he began rhythmically tapping his thigh—“like that. Are you keeping count?”
“I don’t know,” she said, confused. “I don’t really know I’m doing it.”
He looked thoughtful.
“Come with me,” he said.
She followed him to the back of the garden, where he pulled a large dusty cardboard box out from a shelf where he kept a vast array of tools. He gently lowered it onto the hood of his car. Akeelah watched him open the lid to reveal a cache of old toys. She felt she might have exhausted her luck by asking him some personal questions earlier, but she couldn’t help herself. A question burned in her and she had to risk asking it.
“What do you got all those toys for?”
“Let’s rephrase the question. ‘What do you have all those toys for?’ They used to belong to my…niece.”
“Oh.” She felt that he wasn’t telling the truth, or not all of the truth. “So—you got any kids of your own?”
He looked at her, mildly irritated. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“I’m naturally inquisitive.”
“That’s often confused with being naturally obnoxious. You shouldn’t pry so much.” He found what he was looking for in the box. “Ah, here we go.” He pulled out an old jump rope.
After he folded it neatly in his hand, they returned to the patio and he handed it to her.
“Okay,” he said, “let me see you jump rope.”
She looked at the rope and then at him. “Just jump?”
“Yes, jump.”
She started to skip rope and, as Dr. Larabee watched her closely, she felt a sudden surge of joy and a wave of remembrance. Until the age of nine she had skipped rope with Georgia for hours at a time, and then for some reason she had given it up. She wasn’t even sure she had a jump rope anymore. Maybe she would look for it when she got home. She was soon breathing hard (I don’t remember