Akeelah and the Bee - James W. Ellison [42]
Akeelah slept poorly that night, tossing and turning and wrestling with her pillow. She was waiting for morning to come, and the time crawled by an agonizing moment at a time. She knew what she had to do. She had to go see Dr. Larabee. Her mother was right—her friend, her mentor, was holding something dark inside and it was festering. She wasn’t sure what she could do, if anything, to help him, but she had to try. She had to accept the truth: he meant more to her than she could say—and it was way beyond spelling. He gave her confidence in herself, something she hadn’t had entirely since her father’s death. He made her feel that she counted. He had done so much for her since they had begun working together; the question that faced her now was, What could she do for him?
She knew that Dr. Larabee was an early riser and she arrived at his house at eight o’clock, cradling a box of flashcards in her arms. He was already at work in his garden, planting flowers. She quietly set the boxes of flashcards on the ground next to him. He glanced at them and then turned to Akeelah, a welcoming light in his eyes.
“Five thousand,” Akeelah said. “Learned ’em all. But I had some help—my mom, Kiana, and Terrence, neighborhood people, and other kids, even the Crenshaw football team.” She grinned. “It seems like everybody wants a piece of the action.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “You should be very well prepared, then.”
Akeelah nodded, then took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “You know, Dr. Larabee…a few years ago my daddy died. It hit me really hard—harder than I knew at first, but when I understood he was gone, gone forever…well, that was when things got really bad. I used to cry all the time. But then I found something that helped.”
Dr. Larabee was standing with a spade in his hand, staring at her. The expression in his eyes was new to her. She wondered if it was fear.
“What was that?” he said.
“I spelled.”
“You spelled?”
“Yeah. Over and over again. When I spelled words, I felt better. My daddy had always loved words, he read all the time, and I think I learned the beauty of words from him. I learned Scrabble from him when I was seven, and we used to play it all the time together.”
Dr. Larabee nodded, absorbed in what she was telling him. “But I wonder why spelling words would make you feel better.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just did. It seemed like words were my friends.” She paused, stared directly into his eyes, and said slowly, “Maybe when you’re thinking about her, you can try spelling. It might help.”
He returned her stare, and now she could see the vulnerability, the hint of fear.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the wound-up jump rope. She set it down next to the boxes. “Thanks for the loan of it, Dr. Larabee.” She then turned to leave.
Dr. Larabee reached for the jump rope, saw the initials, and felt the sadness welling up in him. He called out to Akeelah’s retreating back: “Wait a minute. Come back.”
She stopped and turned to him.
“Who…told you?” he said.
Akeelah walked slowly back to him. “You did,” she said. “You called me by her name—Denise. That’s her jump rope, isn’t it?”
Dr. Larabee studied the dug-up soil at his feet, his face etched with sadness. He nodded.
“Was she your little girl?”
Again he nodded.
“What happened to her, Dr. Larabee?”
It was the question he did not want to answer. He had never discussed Denise’s death with anyone, and for years he had managed to keep his anguish to himself. But Akeelah’s simple honesty was hard to deflect. He moved away from the garden and sat on a bench. For a moment he sat in silence while Akeelah waited for him to speak, knowing that he would, but in his own time.
“She got very, very sick,” he said finally. “There was nothing the doctors could do. She was a few years younger than you when she passed.”
Akeelah sat on the bench next to him. “Where’s her mama?” she said.
“She lives in another city now. After it happened, my wife, Patricia, and I slowly… found things to be difficult. Denise was a shadow that blotted out any lightness and