Jakarta Missing by Jane Kurtz

“We need to get the tender bulbs like the gladioli out for winter. Dig carefully like this. No, she played basketball. She only weighed eighty-five pounds when she started high school, but she was a quick little guard, or so she said, and her team won all but one game in four years—and they tied that one!”
    â€œI thought women in the olden days sat and embroidered samplers,” Dakar said.
    â€œYes. Well, not Grandma, apparently. She went on playing in college. She once told me that her coach had called her the most natural basketball player he had ever seen. By then she was a running center, and she once told me proudly that she made twenty-eight points in one game. Four boys asked her out that night.”
    â€œIs that how she met Grandpa?” Dakar couldn’t remember if she had ever felt more contented than sitting here with her hands in the dirt and bulbs, listening to Mom tell family secrets. Mom said Great-Grandma’s parents were sure she’d marry one of her classmates, but she fell in love with someone who was wonderful at breaking horses—and hearts. “Nothing that ever happened to my grandma made her lose her spark,” Mom added, “and her kids were all adventuresome.” Her only son went off to the navy in World War II and died in a prison camp. Rose had a career in radio for a while. “Lily …” Mom chuckled. “Well, you’re too young to know the old song about the daring young man on the flying trapeze, but Lily actually did fall in love with a trapeze artist when the circus came to town, and she ran off to marry him.”
    â€œWhat about your mom?” Dakar asked.
    â€œI wish you could have known her,” Mom said sadly. “She surprised everyone and married a farmer. My dad could find more adventure in a square plot of prairie than most people find in all of Africa. My mother collected National Geographic magazines, and we’d study them together. ‘I should have joined the circus when I had the chance,’ she once hollered at my father.”
    Dakar remembered the voices from the night before. What did Mom and Dad holler about in the middle of the night? She didn’t dare ask.
    â€œMama adored her sister Lily’s visits,” Mom said. “So did I. My uncle Otis was a very poetic man, and when he talked, I could imagine what it felt like to soar through the air. His hands felt like the hooves of the lambs I fed every spring—that tough and calloused. One time I asked him if he was ever afraid he would fall. He told me that when the circus was in Los Angeles, by sheer chance he came upon the grave of the Great Cadona, the King of Trapeze. He looked for a long time at the sculpted angel on Cadona’s grave. That night, when he heard the hep and flew into the catcher’s hands, he felt Cadona with him. He came to believe Cadona was living out his own life dreams through him.”
    Dakar felt an electric excitement squeezing her throat. This had to go in her list of synchronicity.
    Mom stood up. “I listened to Uncle Otis’s stories, and I promised I would soar. While my friends were trying on lipstick, I was busy dreaming of adventure.”
    Dakar stood up and stretched her arms. “And you did soar, Mom.”
    â€œYes, I did,” Mom said uncertainly. “My poor adventuresome family.”
    â€œWhy? What happened to them?”
    â€œI’m sure you remember my mother was killed in a plane crash on her way to Maji to see me. My uncle Otis fell from the trapeze bar one night and died. The only one left is your great-aunt Lily, and she’s living in my parents’ house about five or six hours from here. I don’t know why I haven’t written to her yet.” She started to walk toward the house, her hands full of bulbs. “We should go in. Your dad’s almost home.”
    Dakar nodded. Mom had a weird telepathy about Dad and always seemed to be able to