Back in August, Jamaican independent publisher Blue Banyan Books (formerly Blue Moon Publishing) released Dancing in the Rain, Américas Award winning Trinbagonian author Lynn Joseph's third young adult novel. Here is the publisher's description:
Twelve year-old Elizabeth is no normal girl. With an imagination that makes room for mermaids and magic in everyday life, she lives every moment to the fullest. Yet her joyful world crumbles around her when two planes bring down the Twin Towers and tear her family apart. Thousands of miles away, yet still touched by this tragedy, Elizabeth is swimming in a sea of loss. She finally finds hope when she meets her kindred spirit in 8 year-old Brandt and his 13 year-old brother, Jared.We are pleased to exclusively share this never-before-published excerpt from the novel.
Brandt and Jared, two boys as different as Oreo and milk and just as inseparable, arrive on the island to escape the mushroom of sorrow that bloomed above their lives in the wake of the tragedy. Elizabeth shows them a new way to look at the world and they help her to laugh again. But can Elizabeth and Brandt help their families see that when life brings showers of sadness, it’s okay to dance in the rain?
Set against the dazzling beauty of the Dominican Republic, Dancing in the Rain explores the impact of the tragic fall of the Twin Towers on two Caribbean families. It is a lyrical, well-crafted tale about finding joy in the face of loss.
Dancing in the Rain won a Burt Award for Caribbean Literature (2015) prize.
Brandt
in the beginning...
Every day after school, Jared and I wait for Mommy to come home from work. On September 11, we go home early. Jared picks me up from my new classroom and holds my hand all the way home. Jared never holds my hand. Jared doesn’t talk to me at all. He doesn’t turn on the computer. He doesn’t let me turn on the television. He doesn’t do anything but lie on his bottom bunk bed and stare up at the top bunk. When I try to turn on the computer, he shouts at me, “Turn it off.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Mom might call,” is all he says.
Jared never cared about Mommy calling before. It is a constant fight they have. She complains that he’s always on the internet so she cannot get through on the telephone. She asks him to at least wait until she calls to see if we are alright and then he can go on the internet. Jared never listens.
“It’s important,” she tells him, her voice rising when he shrugs his shoulders at her. Her face gets red and she takes deep breaths and then goes to her bedroom and closes the door.
But on September 11, Jared doesn’t turn on the internet to check out his newest Neopet. I sit on the floor next to our bunk beds. I look at Jared and he turns away so I can’t see his face. Something weird is happening. At school, the teachers had been scurrying in the hallways and lining us up to leave a half-day early. Ms. Feliciano had been extra nice and had asked the class if any of us had parents who worked in or near the World Trade Center.
I raised my hand proudly because my mother worked right there. I said that she was a lawyer in a big company and I had visited the tall towers and ridden the elevator up those bridges to the sky many times. Then, I saw the look on Ms. Feliciano’s face. Why was she scrunching up her eyes and frowning? I said my mother worked there - wasn’t that the right answer? She came over and patted my head and then left the room. When she came back, Jared was with her. He’s in the eighth grade. He’s been diagnosed a genius and got to skip third grade. I wished I could skip second grade. But I haven’t been diagnosed anything as yet. Jared told me quietly to get my back pack and come on.
Now, here we are – waiting for something. At least, Jared is waiting for something, so I wait, too.
Except pretty soon, my stomach starts growling and I go into the kitchen to make a peanut butter and grapes sandwich. Jared doesn’t say a word when I smash the grapes between my bread. Usually, he says it’s gross. I say it’s the same thing as putting grape jelly on bread. I just skip the jelly part and go straight for the grapes. He says it’s a baby thing to do. I hate it when he calls me a baby. But I get him back. I tell him I am Mommy’s joy. That’s what she calls me, her joy.
But then Jared always snaps back, “You might be her joy, but I’m her heart.”
He’s right. Mommy calls Jared her ‘heart’ and she calls me her ‘joy’. I’m not sure which is better. Heart or Joy? I mean, you love with your heart, so she really loves Jared. But you’re happy if you feel joy so I make her happy. But not everything you love makes you happy. Sometimes, the person you love the most makes you the saddest. Life is funny and I have a lot to figure out and all this waiting for something to happen is making me hungry, so I eat.
Brandt
there is sadness...
Mommy does not know it, but Jared loves her best of all. I know because of him not going on the internet on September 11. Mommy cries and cries on the sofa as she listens to her cell phone messages, as if the messages starting at 8:48 a.m. that day sums up her entire life. But it’s the message she didn’t get that means the most.
Mommy doesn’t actually have her cell phone. She lost it on September 11. It disappeared like a lot of other things that day . . . people, buildings, and the stars I used to watch at night with Mommy when we took our walk to the park, which she won’t do anymore.
A week after September 11, Mommy figures out that she can check her cell phone messages from our regular home telephone. She calls the number for a phone that had been obliterated. I learned what ‘obliterated’ meant this week. It means completely destroyed. Like the Towers and Mommy’s cell phone.
Mommy listens to her messages over and over, and then she writes them all down, every word, filling up the blank spaces around her with information to stop her tears. It doesn’t work.
- Message received at 8:48 a.m. Her father calling from Sosúa. “Honey, please call me and tell me you’re okay. I’m looking at the News right now. A plane just crashed into your building. I remember when we went to the salsa concert under the stars there. Please call me and let me know you’re okay.”
I can hear the worry even in the written message.
- Message received at 8:50 a.m. Mommy’s work friend Alison calling from the office. “Izzy, where are you? We’ve got to get out of the office now. Meet me and Phil at the elevators. Now!”
- Message received at 8:53 a.m. Rudy calling from the office.
“Izzy, tell me you’re at Court and not here. Something horrible has happened. We can’t tell but they’re saying we should stay right where we are for now. I don’t think so. We’re leaving. We’re at the stairs by the Women’s bathroom. Meet us there.”
- Message received at 9:05 a.m. Mommy’s sister, Sonia, calling from the Republica Dominicana. “Isabella, I am praying for you. I am praying real hard. I know you are fine. I know it.” Auntie Sonia lives in Samana next to the beach and fishes every day. She stands upside down on her head to pray, which she calls meditating. I imagine her standing on her head praying for Mommy.
- Message received at 9:09 a.m. Rudy calling from the office. “Izzy, it’s me again. This is not an accident! We’re on the stairs. It’s jammed. We need to get out of here now. Where are you?”
- Message received at 9:16 a.m. Grand Pop calling again. “Isabella? Call me back.”
- Message received at 9:23 a.m. Mommy’s best friend, Alex. “Isabella, I’m in Philly at a deposition and just saw the News. Please call me and let me know you didn’t go to work today, or you’re having a late tea at the shop on Broadway or you’re in Court at trial . . . or something!”
- Message received at 9:37 a.m. Tony Hernandez calling from? “Princessa, I hope you’re okay. I’m worried about you. I know you’re still mad at me, but call me and let me know you’re okay.” Hmmmmm. Who was that? Mommy has secret friends who call her princessa?
- Message received at 9:41 a.m. Mr. Sola calling from where? “Isabella, I am asking everyone from the office to call in to my cell phone or home phone as soon as they get out of the building. There are just no words for this. Good luck.” Mommy’s boss. He doesn’t mind if I come into the office on Saturdays with Mommy to help her make copies and staple piles of papers together with Exhibit tabs. I feel something fierce and sad in his words.
- Message received at 9:45 a.m. Grand Pop calling back. “Isabella, call me as soon as you can. I am waiting.”
- Message received at 9:48 a.m. Daddy calling from the Brooklyn Bridge on his cell phone. “Izzy, call me and let me know where you are. I’m walking over the Bridge. I’ll go get the kids from school as soon as I get home.” Daddy never came to the school to get us. He did not make it to his home where he lives with his new wife until the sun was almost setting. He walked the entire way in his hard, black polished shoes and his feet hurt for a long time but he said that was nothing. Nothing at all.
There were many more messages. Messages with people crying. Messages with people sounding dazed and stuttering, and not making any sense. Messages from all the people who loved Mommy. She has a list. It is numbered and she holds it close to her.
Then, one day, Mommy turns with her eyes full of tears toward Jared and whispers, “Why didn’t you call me?”
Jared stares at her.
“Why didn’t you call me at work, or on my cell, or something? Were you too busy playing on the internet?”
Jared doesn’t answer her. He looks back at her and she looks at him and in between them shimmers a light that wavers up and down trying to catch them both in its rays but it can’t.
I watch them and I want to shout at Mommy that Jared loves her more than everyone on that list because he didn’t even turn on the computer that day. Or the television. Or anything. I want to tell her that Jared had laid on his bunk bed and closed his eyes and turned his face so that I couldn’t see he was crying.
That was the only day Jared hadn’t called me a baby when I made my peanut butter and grapes sandwich. It was the only day he held my hand. It was the day I knew that even though he talked back to Mommy, even though she threw up her hands and yelled at him, even though they seemed as if they were two panthers looking crossways at each other, deep down they loved each other more than anyone else. Jared was Mommy’s heart. But what Mommy didn’t know was that she was Jared’s, too.
And, in the days following September 11, I began to understand that your heart is never wrong. It is only your mind that gets confused. Your heart tells you much more than what your mind is thinking. But Mommy isn’t listening to her heart. She’s keeping lists and crying.
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