Chapter 20 2004
I waited at the bottom of the school’s steps for Profe to arrive to drive me home for Thanksgiving break, feeling surprisingly torn at the idea of leaving. While I was excited to see Profe, Mother, Boodo, and Astur, I was already missing Dylan, my kitchen family . . . and gymnastics.
Gymnastics was the best thing to ever happen to me.
For the first time in my life, I was part of a team, something bigger than myself and to which my birthmark had no relevance.
All that mattered was how hard I worked and that I had the courage to get back up no matter how many times I fell, two things I excelled at.
There were twelve “groms” in the program, and I was the youngest. The age requirement was eight, and I was only seven, but the coach had made an exception.
Her name was Coach Blood, which was a terrifying name for a woman who wasn’t scary in the least. Short as Tiny but with bulging muscles, she bounced when she walked and always wore a smile.
The first day, as the college girls tumbled, flipped, and vaulted around us, she said, “It doesn’t matter your size, your beliefs, or the color of your skin—on the blue mats, everyone’s the same.
” The twelve of us leaned in, iron filings to her magnet.
She was one of those sorts of people. “Respect. Your teammates and your competitors. The fact that they’re here doing this incredibly difficult thing is worthy of that.
You can start by introducing yourselves to one another. ”
The girl beside me turned. She was tall, skinny as a beanpole, and with darker skin than Boodo. She tilted her head as she took in my birthmark, and my heart tightened as I waited for her to turn away. But she didn’t. She smiled an extra-large smile that filled her entire face and said, “Turbo.”
“Patch,” I answered.
She smiled impossibly wider, approving of the name.
We shook hands as if agreeing right then and there that we were going to be great friends. Patch and Turbo. Turbo and Patch.
Her name turned out to be as fitting as my own.
Turbo was the fastest girl I’d ever met.
She was also the most talented of the groms, able to twist and turn her body at will.
She’d see one of the college girls do a flip and, with no thought at all, mimic her nearly perfectly.
Though it was clear from the start she was probably going to end up too tall to make it very far in the sport.
At eight, she was already taller than Coach Blood and almost as tall as some of the college girls.
I had the advantage of being short, but the disadvantage of having spindly arms with hardly any strength at all.
Coach Blood encouraged us regardless of our potential. “Very few make it to the top. It doesn’t make the rest any less noble for trying.”
She had been at the top once until she injured her shoulder, which ended her Olympic dreams when she was nineteen.
From the day I started, I dreamed of being at the top, of going to the Olympics and standing on the podium like Carly Patterson.
Our first competition was scheduled for the weekend we returned from the break. It was a team competition, and desperately I wanted to do well and not disappoint Coach Blood and the other girls. Which was why I was so torn about going home, knowing it meant I was missing a week of training.
The Lincoln came into view, and I forgot about gymnastics as my heart leaped at the idea of seeing Profe.
He pulled to a stop at the curb and stepped from the car.
“Swim back to where you came from, spic.”
I swiveled my head to see Bart on the top step, leaning against the railing.
I didn’t know what spic meant but figured it was the same as when Farts Often called me gaal.
Bart didn’t like people from other places.
He was horrible to the Somali cooks, and I’d seen him purposely track mud in the halls for the Haitian janitor to clean.
Since starting gymnastics, I’d managed to avoid Bart almost entirely.
I only saw him at meals and was always careful to get to the cafeteria before him and to leave before the bell.
Once, he managed to corner me in the hall, and he dumped my backpack on the floor and was about to do worse when Dylan appeared and hurried over to help me.
“Don’t,” Bart hissed, but Dylan ignored him and continued to collect my things.
It was very brave, especially since outside the kitchen Dylan and I pretended not to be friends. Dylan was popular. And I was me. It wouldn’t have done either of us any good to let on that, when we were alone, out of sight of the others, we had more fun than anyone.
“Ice is coming for you,” Bart said.
Ice? A chunk of ice was coming for Profe?
I looked at Profe, expecting him to be smirking at the odd comment, but his expression was hard as stone as he retrieved my suitcase and carried it to the car.
I climbed in the back seat, and as we drove away, I noticed how tightly he gripped the steering wheel.
It was clear what Bart said had rattled him.
I had no idea at the time that Ice was a newly formed agency of the Department of Homeland Security, designed specifically to round up people like Profe and deport them.
“Who was that boy?” Profe asked as we drove through the school’s gate.
I told him, and his grip tightened even more.
When we were a block from home, Profe’s eyes found mine in the rearview mirror, and he said, “Things at home are different than when you left.”
“Different how?” I asked, knowing by the way he said it that they weren’t different in a good way.
He didn’t answer.
A moment later, Profe stopped the Lincoln behind a small silver car parked in front of the house. He took my suitcase from the trunk and carried it up the steps to the porch.
“I’ll be at my cottage if you need me,” he said.
I went inside to find Mother in the living room with the minister from our church. They sat on the couch, teacups in front of them.
“Darling!” Mother exclaimed. She popped to her feet and opened her arms wide as if inviting me to walk into them. It was very strange. “Come,” she said, wiggling her fingers in encouragement.
I released my suitcase and walked into her embrace.
She hugged me tight. “I’ve missed you.”
I had no idea what was happening.
Her arm still around my shoulders, she said, “You remember Minister Mulvany?”
The minister had stood and was smiling a wide, toothless smirk.
He was a tall man, with feet and hands too large for his body.
His face was red and scrunched so his eyes were little more than two black creases beneath a bushy pair of brown brows.
That morning he didn’t wear his minister clothes but instead wore a blue golf shirt that pulled tight against his belly and tan pants that were slightly too short, so his black socks showed above his white Adidas tennis shoes.
“Hello, Vivien,” he said, his deep preacher voice booming. “I’m glad the Lord has seen to return you home safely.”
“Yes, praise the Lord,” Mother said.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, unsure how else to respond.
“You must be starved,” Mother said, then she bellowed toward the kitchen, “Rebecca!”
A cold feeling ran through me. Boodo was the one who cooked for us, and Boodo was always home when I returned from school.
A middle-aged brown woman poked her head into the room.
“My daughter is home, and she’d like some lunch.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where’s Boodo?” I asked.
Mother tilted her head as if the name took some searching to place. “Oh, your nanny.” She waved her hand in the air. “With you off at school, I realized you no longer needed someone looking after you.” Seeing my stricken expression, she added, “Look how big you are. Seven. All grown up!”
My heart pounded, for myself but mostly for Boodo. I knew how much her job meant to her and the entire Blue House family.
I took a step back, and Mother’s lips pursed, and the phoniness dissolved for an instant as she said sharply, “I prayed for her and asked the Lord to guide her toward the light, but it was no use.”
The minister nodded, and Mother, emboldened by his support, went on, “And when I learned about the voodoo she’d exposed you to. Well, frankly, it was unacceptable. I can’t have you influenced by such nonsense. I’m sorry, darling, but there really was no choice.”
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
Her lips pursed again, the frosty pink forming a pucker before she said, “The witch doctor.”
“The chief?” I said as I realized what she was saying.
“Yes. Chief, medicine man, shaman. Whatever you call the blasphemous swindler.”
My blood pumped wildly, anger and guilt swirling along with a desperate sense of helplessness, knowing it was my fault Boodo had been fired and that there was nothing I could do to fix it.
“The Lord is our savior and provides for us,” she went on, “and believing in false idols is a sin.”
Tears filled my eyes as a well of anger rose inside me of the sort I’d never felt, and I yelled the only thing I could think of that I knew would hurt her. “I hate God!” I shouted, then whirled and ran from the house.
I ran to Profe’s cottage. The door opened before I reached it.
“Oh, Cielo,” Profe said and led me into his cluttered living room, where I collapsed and sobbed against him and told him what happened.
“Will you take me to see her?” I whimpered.
“I can’t.”
I pulled away and looked at him.
“Boodo’s gone home. Back to Somalia.”
I couldn’t believe it. The blow was nearly as devastating as the news that she’d been fired. Boodo used to tell me her love was never ending. “My love for you is great and strong as the Jubba River. It will never slow, and it will never end,” she would say. And just like that, she was gone.
“It’s good for her,” Profe said, pulling me back against him. “While I know you . . . and I . . . don’t like this ending, I believe Boodo was happy for a new beginning. This was never her true home.”
“Did they all go?” I asked, the loneliness stone returned hard and cold in my stomach.
“Only Boodo and Tiny.”
“So Astur’s still here?” I said, my heart leaping in hope a moment before he dashed it.
“In war, sides are chosen. Or in our case, a battle line is put between us.”
“So I can’t see her?”
“Things didn’t end well.”
“So, that’s it? I’m never going to see them again?”
“Never is a very long time, but for the time being, we need to accept things as they are.” He kissed the side of my head. “Now, you need to go and apologize to your mother.”
I shook my head against his shoulder. I hated her.
“It will be worse if you don’t.”
I set my jaw tight.
“You want to stay in gymnastics?” He pulled back to look at me and lifted one of his bushy brows.
I didn’t answer. He knew how much gymnastics meant to me.
“To do that you need new leotards and money to enter the competition you’re so excited about, and your mother controls that.”
My skin grew hot, and I hated how easily my loyalty to Boodo had been checked by my selfish desires. I wanted to say I’d give it all up, but before I could, Profe said, “There’s nothing to be done about the past, so instead you need to think about what’s ahead.”
“I’m so pleased you’ve chosen to take Jesus into your heart,” Mother gushed with genuine tears in her eyes when I apologized for my outburst. “You are never too young to meet the Lord and be born again.”
The idea of being born again quite frankly terrified me, unsure how it happened when I was already so big.
She hugged me, then dug in her purse and gave me too much money for leotards and the entrance fee for the gymnastics meet. I asked Profe if he would send the extra to Boodo in Somalia so she would know how much I loved her.