Tam Calls the Numbers

Tam liked numbers. She liked reading them in her head, quietly, where nobody could hear her get one wrong.

So when Rima handed her the call book on their first night at the river fair and said, “Tonight you call,” her mouth went completely dry.

The fair was strung with paper lanterns. Thirty people sat on low plastic stools around long tables, cards in front of them, dried beans in little bowls. A grandmother at the end had a baby on her knee. Two boys in football shirts were already arguing about who would win.

Ama turned the cage. A ball rolled out. She held it up for Tam to read.

“Thirty-two,” said Tam. It came out like a whisper.

“What?” called one of the football boys.

“Thirty — two,” said Tam again, and her voice wobbled in the middle like a bike on a bumpy road. Her face burned. She wanted to give the book back.

Rima leaned close. “Look at the end of the table,” she said quietly.

Tam looked. The grandmother with the baby was squinting at her card, her finger hovering over the numbers. She hadn’t heard. She was waiting for her.

“You’re not calling for the people watching you,” Rima said. “You’re calling for the people who need to hear.”

Tam took a breath right down into her stomach, the way her swimming teacher had taught her. She looked straight at the grandmother.

“Thirty-two,” she said, slowly and clearly. “Three — two. Thirty-two.”

The grandmother smiled and pushed a bean onto her card.

The next ball was easier. “Seven. Just seven. Seven.” The one after that was easier still. She found a rhythm: say it, pause, say it again. She stopped looking at the football boys and started looking at the faces that were still searching their cards. When someone looked up, she knew they’d found it.

By the twentieth ball, her voice had stopped wobbling. By the thirtieth, she said “Sixty-six, clickety-click!” just to see what would happen, and the whole table laughed, and it was a nice laugh, not a laughing-at-her laugh.

When the game ended, the grandmother came over with the baby on her hip.

“You call like my teacher used to read,” she said. “Nobody gets left behind.”

Later, walking back along the river with Ama, Tam tried to explain it.

“I was still scared,” she said. “The whole time. It’s just that the scared got smaller each time I did it.”

“That’s what brave is,” said Ama. “Doing it scared.”

Tam thought about that. Then she opened the call book and, very quietly, read the last line of numbers out loud to the river, just to practise.