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Overview
At twelve, Janelle wants nothing more than to be a writer. "Write what you know," advises her aunt Barbara. That seems like a riddle to Janelle: all she knows is her mama and her two little sisters, playing Pioneers when the electricity gets cut off, waiting and hoping for Daddy to find a job and come back home. Who'd want to read about a life like that?
But as Janelle starts putting it all on paper, she finds she does have something to say–about friendship, about getting through, and most of all, about what makes a family rich.
Melrose Cooper writes from the heart about a young girl who, step by step, makes her dream come true.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781627799492 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) |
| Publication date: | 11/10/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 90 |
| File size: | 175 KB |
| Age Range: | 10 - 14 Years |
About the Author
Melrose Cooper was inspired to write Life Magic after someone dear to her lost a close friend to AIDS. As a frequent speaker at urban elementary schools, Ms. Cooper is always surprised by the number of children whose lives are affected directly or indirectly by AIDS. She hopes that writing about the subject will make it a little easier for young readers to understand a very painful and difficult illness.
The mother of six children, a granddaughter, and many pets, Ms. Cooper lives in Hamburg, New York.
Read an Excerpt
Life Riddles
By Melrose Cooper
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 1993 Melrose CooperAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62779-949-2
CHAPTER 1
A swarm of butterflies was flapping away in my stomach. The couldn't-wait feeling had ahold of me good. The radio didn't help, the television either, with Mama and my baby sisters due home from work and Latchkey any minute and me wanting to tell them all about beating Leonard Williams in the essay contest for the third year in a row. Aching to tell them how I was probably going to get the shiny gold trophy on Awards Day in June, not Leonard Williams, even though it was only October now, because nobody had ever won three years in a row and I had more poetry points than anyone else in the whole seventh grade, too. Dying, actually, to scream "I'm the winner!" soon as Mama opened the door.
Boy, would they all be proud when they found out I wrote the best piece, called "Where I'd Go to Follow My Dreams," I thought. Mama would burst, I knew. Crystal would see then how keeping a journal every day pays off. Maybe, I hoped, she'd even stop saying "Do you have to write everything down?" every night. Maybe Roxann'd stop complaining about the light being left on for an extra fifteen minutes.
I ran to my room to find my essay copy. I opened my top dresser drawer where I kept all my important things. It was right under the card I got from Daddy for my birthday last month. Seeing that kicked my daydreams into high gear.
I wondered where he was and what he was doing right that very minute. I wondered if he ever thought about me at the same split second I was thinking about him, like right now.
How many minutes went by I don't know when finally I heard footsteps coming up the apartment stairs. Closer. Closer. I flung the door wide and yelled "Mama!" then swallowed back her name fast as I had sung it out.
It was nobody's mama and nobody's baby sisters standing there. It was the meter man from the electric company with a shut-off notice for Mama.
He explained that this was it. The first notice, he said, had gone unheeded. Unheeded. Well, I know Mama, and she wouldn't unheed a message like that. She might not be able to pay right on time, but that's not the same thing.
Last time it was the phone. She was putting a little bit away each week for it to get back on.
That electric man went downstairs. Next thing I knew, the radio and TV died, right along with my excitement.
I sunk down into the green beanbag and thought about how it was before Daddy lost his job and we lost Daddy soon after. With him and Mama quarreling all the time, I used to be wishing on stars and rabbits' feet and lucky clovers that he'd just leave. Since he'd been gone, I'd been rewishing all the time with just my plain heart and soul for him to come back.
That's how life is, Aunt Barbara says. I should have listened to her saying, "Be careful what you wish for; it might come true."
Aunt Barbara was full of life riddles. Some she made up, and some she got elsewhere. I never understood them till something happened to point things out.
When Daddy was here, times were tough. We scrimped and scrounged. We never had a car. Still don't. We wore our jeans till the knees poked through, then turned them into shorts. Same with our sneakers and the toes. We didn't have a lot, just like now, but at least we had a daddy.
I heard the footsteps, the right ones this time. Right footsteps, wrong message. Before Mama even took off her coat, I blurted out, "The man from the electric been here."
My baby sisters knew the meaning of that.
"Mama, can I sleep with you tonight?" whined Roxann. She was five and scared of the dark.
"Sure, baby," Mama said.
"Yippee, I can't do my homework!" Crystal cheered. Crystal was nine, three years younger than me, but she wasn't near as mature acting. Aunt Barbara had a life riddle for that, too. She said, "The older you are, the older you are." I guess that had something to do with me being firstborn.
Mama slumped into the flower-print chair. Her face got dark underneath her blush. I felt guilty giving her the news, almost like I was the one that shut off the power.
I wanted to say "I take it back," but even if I took back the words, it would make no difference to the radio or television.
Mama allowed herself one minute of slumping. Then she straightened up and said, "Come on, pioneer ladies. Round up them tallow candles and some matches while I stoke the hearth for our fire."
Super-Duper Stupid, I mumbled under my breath. Pioneer ladies, sure. Well, we weren't living in covered wagons in the olden days, and I hated pretending about it. You could call it any name and play a cute game about it, but it still came out Modern-Day Suffering in my mind.
I was at an age where worry starts to stick, and events like this one worried me bad. The feeling kept me squirming uncomfortably, like there was an army of inchworms crawling all over my skin.
"Candles, Crystal," I said. "You know what that means."
She figured it out. "Hush, Janelle," she said. "I forgot about that. Ain't no TV without the electric anyway, so I can't watch programs instead of homework. Shoot."
And I can write in my journal. Ha ha, I thought.
Crystal turned to Roxann. "Let's get them candles," she said. Those two ran off in the spirit again.
They look like twins, my sisters, except for their sizes. Teachers we had and tenants who know us for just a little while are always calling Crystal Roxann and Roxann Crystal. Roxann and Crystal say "hello" politely anyway like Mama tells them.
They look like Daddy and Mama both, funny as that sounds. They both have wide brown eyes, round faces, and skin the color of coffee with double cream. Me, I'm more like a Hershey bar, and nothing about me is round or short. I've got lanky legs, long arms, high cheekbones, even long eyes. Mama calls me her "wee Watutsi woman."
Mama changed out of her nurse's aide uniform and into her jeans and cut-off purple sweatshirt. She winked at me and whispered, "Good thing our pioneer hearth is gas powered."
I laughed and said, "Good thing." Suddenly I was ashamed I even thought Super-Duper Stupid before, but that's how it is with thoughts. They're like uninvited guests, some of them, just popping in.
I told her about the essay contest. She hugged me fierce and said that she'd switch days if she had to so that she could come to my Awards Day. Just make sure to remind her as the time got closer, she said, so she could make the arrangements.
It wasn't exactly how I was planning on telling her, but it was nice enough.
She asked, "You have a copy of your prizewinning words?"
"A scrap copy," I said.
"Good enough," she answered.
I ran back and snatched it off my bed, where I'd left it when the meter man came.
She wiped her hands and sat at the table. I watched her read. She bit her lip and shook her head and sighed and smiled. I could tell she liked it. Then her eyes got all teary and it dawned on me. I should have remembered to cross out that part, but it was too late now. I knew the sentence that was in her eyes, the one that said, And if I could follow my dreams, I'd follow them right to my daddy's doorstep and ask him if he ever had any dreams about coming back home and what are the chances that they'd ever come true.
I held my breath. The tears went back behind Mama's eyes; they never did spill over her cheeks. She finished up with another sigh and a click of her tongue and said, "Janelle, one thing you don't need to dream anymore about is becoming a writer someday. You already are one."
She had that distant look like she gets when memories sneak up on her. I guessed she was probably remembering her own essay-and-poetry-contest days. Mama never told us about them, but Aunt Barbara did. She said Mama could write circles around most modern-day authors, but Mama just laughed and said, "Too late for that now. Real families need real food. That's why I have a real job."
CHAPTER 2We ate hamburgers on white bread slices. Mama called it buffalo steaks and cornbread, seeing that we were pioneers.
When we were through, I said, "Mama, I'll take the dishes to the stream and wash them in the waterfall." Talk about getting into the spirit!
"Janelle, you got some imagination!" Crystal said.
That sure made me smile. It made Mama smile, too, because she knew where my imagination came from.
Soon after supper, Aunt Barbara came knocking. Roxann yelled, "Who is it?" through the door like I should have done earlier in the day.
As soon as Roxann knew the caller, she shouted, "Aunt Barbara! Aunt Barbara! We're pioneers!" before our aunt's feet were even on our carpet. Aunt Barbara lived in our same apartment building, two floors up.
Aunt Barbara saw the candles. "Your power been shut off again?"
Mama nodded and said, "We'll get through."
Crystal said, "Pioneers didn't have TV anyway, Aunt Barbara," like that was the most important thing.
Mama said to Aunt Barbara, "Before you go, take the milk and the Muenster cheese, or they'll spoil." The refrigerator ran on electricity too.
"You got enough?" Aunt Barbara worried.
"A whole box of powdered milk in the cupboard for such emergencies," Mama said.
In our family, we didn't eat out at restaurants and we never got extras like fruit bits and ice cream and potato chips. There were days in a row when we all ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for breakfast and supper and thanked our stars for free lunch at school in between. Lots of kids wrinkled up their noses about school food. Not us.
Mama always said that no matter what is or isn't under it, the most important thing is to keep your roof, meaning that rent was the most important bill.
I wondered if she ever thought that the most important thing was keeping a whole family together, daddy and all, but I didn't ask. Didn't dare. She'd wince and get that hurting look in her eyes every time we said Daddy's name, almost like somebody stabbed her.
Maybe someday when some more time went by, I'd bring up the question, but not now. Even though she always told us we could talk about anything anytime, I figured that Mama needed time for sorting out and not explaining.
Funny thing was, I knew how she felt. I hated it when Crystal and Roxann got to mentioning Daddy. Bad enough he'd be in the back of my mind. Then they'd say his name and he'd take front and center and block out everything else.
I had real yo-yo feelings about Daddy, too. Up, down. Angry, sad. Hurt, confused. Probably better to just let it ride till it evened out some.
Aunt Barbara smiled at Mama and said, "Girl, you oughta write it down." Here she goes again, I thought.
"Write what down?" Mama asked, rolling her eyes as usual.
"All of it. Everything you go through. Folks'd love to hear your stories," said my aunt.
She's Mama's sister. They look like twins, like Roxann and Crystal do, except for their styles, which make them night and day.
Mama's sporty, with short cropped hair. Aunt Barbara lets her hair free and loose like a big, unpruned bush. She wears billowy clothes in vibrant colors, Africa hues she calls them, and jewelry that always leaves behind a wind-chime tinkle in my ears.
"Ha!" Mama waved her hand in a shooing gesture.
"Ha!" Aunt Barbara cut Mama off. She imitated her, waving her hand the exact same way. "I know, I know; real families need real food and that whole bit. That's a lame excuse if ever I heard one! You do your writing on the side."
"I've never been to college," Mama said. "You can't be a writer with no education."
Aunt Barbara laughed. "No education? You got knowledge they don't teach in any college."
"Listen to that poetry, will you?" Mama joked.
Aunt Barbara ignored her. "Heck, you'd be doing the world a favor, teaching a course in survival, in spite of what you say."
Aunt Barbara was still standing. Mama too. She motioned to the chairs, and they both sat down. The candlelight made wavy patterns on their faces and monster shapes on the wall.
I washed the dishes slow, to listen. Too many times Mama said, "Girls, let us grown-ups be," and we'd have to find other things to occupy us.
"Who'd want to read about struggling anyway?" Mama asked. "Seems to me folks got enough of that in their own lives."
"Ain't the struggling that's interesting," Aunt Barbara said. "It's the way you pull it off."
"Well," said Mama, "I've really got no time for such dribbling and scribbling."
"You oughta make time," Aunt Barbara insisted. "I'm telling you, girl. You oughta write it down."
"We'll just leave the pulling off the struggle to me and the writing to the writers, like Janelle here." She nodded my way and told Aunt Barbara all about my essay award.
I thought Aunt Barbara's mouth would crack from smiling and our floor from her jumping up and down and my ribs from all her hugging. She cried, too, when she read my winning entry.
She finally calmed down. Then she and Mama chatted about hospital business where Mama worked and about library business because Aunt Barbara worked there. I joined my sisters in our bedroom.
They were playing house. "Shh. Freeze. Don't make a sound. It's the 'lectric man," Roxann was saying to her dolly.
Aunt Barbara has a favorite saying for that: "A child learns what he lives." She said it's from a poem. I sure didn't have to figure that one out in my mind. I felt it in my heart, and it made me sad.
I got to wondering why Aunt Barbara wasn't a writer herself.
I stayed up doing my homework long after I could hear my sisters' sound-asleep breathing. The candle flame made the words flicker over the pages, so my reading went slower. My worries kept the drowsiness away. I wished I had some answers, wished that there was something I could do.
I finished my social studies and put the day into my journal. I looked at the entry. It wasn't just a collection of words. It was happiness, sadness, and worry. It wasn't simply sentences for folks to read. It was living, breathing life for folks to feel.
When I finally blew the candle flame out, a trail of smoke curled up. It seemed like it wrote a message in cursive in the black night air like sparklers do on the Fourth of July.
I squinted to see the words: Girl, you oughta write it down, it said. Was I dreaming? Soon as I blinked, the words were gone. I sniffed their smell and inhaled extra hard, and then I knew they hadn't really disappeared. They had taken on a different dimension and burned right into my brain.
Aunt Barbara's message wasn't meant just for Mama. All of a sudden, I knew it was meant for me!
CHAPTER 3Two days later, Friday, Mama got her paycheck. She cashed it at her lunch hour and got the electric turned back on. Crystal and Roxann were in a glorious state because they could watch all their favorite television programs after all. Friday was their stay-up night.
During the wee hours, Roxann woke up sick, throwing up and burning with fever. Mama slept curled on one end of the couch and Roxann on the other with a pot for when she started gagging.
Mama couldn't get a thing to stay down her. Not liquid painkiller, not cherry Kool-Aid, not even a sucked ice cube. Roxann's tummy kept tossing it right back up.
Crystal slept through, but I heard it and came out every time. Mama kept saying, "Janelle, go back to sleep. No sense in three of us getting worn down."
Worn down was what Mama got for sure. By the time dawn came, she was frazzled with worry.
"Girls, get moving," she called at eight-thirty. "No time for breakfast today."
Not that I was hungry anyway, thinking about what was the matter with Roxann. I had other feelings for other needs besides breakfast, like wishing we had a car to drive in or a phone to call on. Or a daddy to make us feel more at ease. Especially a daddy. Our own daddy.
Once I told that to Aunt Barbara and she said, "There are all kinds of hunger, not always in the belly." I didn't understand it then. It sure made sense now, though, seeing as how I was hungering for Daddy more than food, even on an empty stomach.
"Good thing the doctor has Saturday morning office hours," Mama said, wrapping Roxann in a cozy afghan because she was shaking so hard off and on from the chills, even though the Indian summer sun was already shining warm and gold.
"How are you gonna pay?" I asked Mama.
"You let me do the worrying over money," she said. "I've paid part of the bill from last time already. And I pay a little bit every month."
I leaned back in my seat. Mama had a way of making me feel safe even when there was nothing to feel safe about.
We jostled on the bus the whole fourteen blocks. I thought sure Roxann's tummy would toss again, but she just slept across Mama's lap.
Mama signed in Roxann's name and waited at the reception window. The reception lady opened it. "Do you have an appointment?" she said.
"No, ma'am," said Mama.
"We'd really appreciate it if you'd call first in the future," the lady said, as if Mama had coleslaw in her head instead of brains.
"I'd be happy to call ahead if I had a phone to call on," Mama answered.
"Please be seated," the reception lady said. Good thing, because Roxann was weighing heavy in Mama's arms.
Next thing we knew, the reception lady was calling Mama's name. Mama went back up to the window. She put Roxann in my lap first.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Life Riddles by Melrose Cooper. Copyright © 1993 Melrose Cooper. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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