Free Ola Shakes It Up by Joanne Hyppolite

forgotten about how awful school had been. I started complaining right away. “They stuck me with Anna Banana and the ding-dong girls and nobody except this girl River talked to me.”
    “That's nothing. They're making me take a modern-dance class,” Khatib muttered between mouthfuls of rice. “For PE. I have to wear tights.”
    I dug into the plate of rice and peas that Mama placed in front of me. “That's nothing. Everybody stared at me in homeroom, and the ding-dong girls acted like they were scared of me.”
    “That's nothin'.” Khatib put his fork down. “After my try-out I heard one of the guys on the team say that I would make the team 'cause I'm black.”
    “Small potatoes,” I said. “Some boy at school called us ‘stupid new kids,’ and then some other boy on the school bus said, ‘Bye, black girls,’ when we got off the bus. And this girl River said everyone thinks we came here because our old neighborhood was too dangerous. The whole school probably thinks we're gangsters.”
    Mama sat down on the stool next to me. She was frowning. “Are the two of you okay?”
    Khatib and I looked at each other carefully. I was okay, I guessed. It didn't so much hurt me what people at school thought about me, but it did bother me a lot. I could tell Khatib felt the same way.
    “Because you know that all that comes from just plain ignorance.” Mama put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed gently. “When people get to know you for who you are, those perceptions will die down.”
    “What if they don't?” Khatib asked quietly.
    “Then we'll deal with it.” Mama nodded. She said it just as quietly as Khatib, but I knew that Mama's kind of quietness meant business. I started to feel a little better.
    “Did anything
good
happen to you two today?” Mama picked up the list of rules and started frowning again.
    Khatib and I looked at each other.
    “I made the team.” Khatib shrugged.
    “The school has a swimming pool.” I shrugged, too.
    Both of us were quiet after that. Lillian had finished unpacking one of the boxes and went to the other side of the kitchen to get another one. She picked it up like it weighed nothing and carried it back.
    Then I heard Mama sigh and say, “Well, it's a start.”
    But the start of what? So far it had been a horrible day, and worrying about what everybody thought about me at school had left me feeling restless. Watching Mama read the rules, I started to get an idea. Mama wasn't the only one around here who could take care of business.

t four o'clock in the morning it was pretty dark outside.
    I looked around our huge backyard and shivered. It was freezing. The wind was making a soft rustling sound as it blew through the trees, and my sneakers made a squishing noise as I walked across the wet grass. It was kind of scary out here in the dark. All the lights in the house were off, and the little bit of moon that was out made everything look shadowy. I was breaking two of the neighborhood rules by being out here, but I was gonna show this neighborhood that the Bensons didn't have to follow anybody's rules but their own. For now, this house was our house and what we did in it or around it was our own business.
    I reached down to pat Grady, glad that I had thought to bring him along. It made me feel better that I wasn't out here all alone. I had given Grady careful instructions to let me know if he smelled anyone or anything.
    I moved toward the right side of the yard, close to thefence, which went all the way around the yard. Grady followed behind me. He sat down and watched while I pulled my old super-deluxe long jump rope and a black T-shirt out from under my jacket and tossed them on the grass. Grady stood up and went to sniff them, then looked at me with his ears perked. I could tell he wanted to know what was going on.
    “I'm gonna hang up our new clothesline, Grady,” I whispered. I wasn't sure why I was whispering, but it seemed appropriate.
    Grady smiled. Or at least he