by Jamie Gilson
I couldn’t imagine what my parents would say. I didn’t want to try. The sirens in my head moaned louder.
“My mother’s probably asleep,” I tried.
“I expect this’d wake her up.” The policeman leaned back against the squad car and got out a notebook. “That must be …” He nodded to Tom.
“Right.” I didn’t know what name to give. “He’s the kid from Vietnam, and he doesn’t speak much English yet. He didn’t do anything. I mean, you know, they just escaped from … Please, don’t tell. My dad would be mad.”
“But what’s the reason for all this?” Resting his hand on his holster, he nodded toward the pink, green, and blue.
“We were …” I began. I was going to say, “having fun instead of vocabulary,” but then he’d have locked me up for bonkers. “We were … see, you know how they’re always TP’ing football players’ trees?”
He nodded.
“Well, I thought we’d kind of … decorate the … pigskin.”
Either it was a twitch of the mouth or I saw him smile. “You ever do this before?”
“No, officer.” I stood at attention. “And we won’t again.” I meant it, too. Tom stared at the policeman as if he was a ghost.
“All right. I tell you what you do.” The policeman narrowed his eyes. “You clear up as much of this mess as you can, and hope for rain to wash the rest down from the branches. But … if I catch you again, it’ll be a different story.” He got back into the car and sat there for a minute looking at us before he turned on the ignition and drove away.
We didn’t say anything. Just stood there, still scared, in the quiet square. I waited for him to round the corner again, this time on two wheels, blue lights flashing. The courthouse clock struck the first note of ten. And I began to pull paper. The fifth bong by, I realized he still hadn’t come back with handcuffs and our parents. I kept pulling. But toilet paper is harder to take down than to put up. A lot harder. It tears on the dotted lines.
When the tenth bong had faded out all the way, I stopped pulling, one square of pink paper broken off in my hand. Turning to Tom, I said, “You know what? He didn’t write our names down. He didn’t take a phone number. And you know what that means?” Tom was leaning against one of the oak trees, his shoulders drooping. “It means he’s not going to call home! We’re free!”
The sirens in my head stopped completely and the bells started, high and happy. I looked at Tom and began to break up, hoping he would see how very, very funny the whole thing was. I felt as light as a hot-air balloon.
Scooping up as much paper as I could, I crammed it into the trash can on the corner and ran like wild, pulling Tom with me. Pittsfield has, after all, a second squad car.
We’d only gone a block, though, when Tom broke loose and dashed ahead fast. As I huffed along at a trot, calling after him, a car pulled up, driving slowly beside me. It was Quint and his uncle. Quint lowered his window. “Now, wasn’t that fun, Zilch? Better even than TP’ing Caroline’s house. But your guest has only been here a week. You really shouldn’t get him arrested so soon. Naughty, naughty.”
Wayne called out, “If the kid’s old man doesn’t do OK, I get his job.” And they drove off, honking.
When I got home I looked in Tom’s room to make sure he’d made it back. He lay curled up on the floor, eyes closed tight. Probably, though, he wasn’t sleeping.
8
And That, You Guys, Is the News
AS WE WALKED TO SCHOOL on Monday, Tom was not smiling. Neither was I. “You laugh a big mouth at me,” he said. “Quint say.”
“Quint lied. I laughed because the policeman let us go. I was happy is all.”
“Ba Noi say it bad. She say fingers one time dipped in ink not clean again.”
“You mean you told her?”
He nodded. “I tell about policeman. She no understand why.”
“What did you do?” Julia asked. “What police? What ink? I won’t tell.”
“Nothing. Nothing happened. Now, run ahead and play with your little friends.” She stepped on my foot.
“We throw”—Tom didn’t remember the words, but he tossed an imaginary roll of toilet paper in the air—“in tree and on … pork.”
Julia’s face lit up. Almost everybody had seen our streamers sometime over the weekend. “You did it? You’re the ones who TP’d the pig?” And I could tell by the way she said it that we were going to be her Tell of today’s Show and. She dashed off, arms wide, full of the story.
All weekend long Tom hadn’t mentioned Friday night. Quint had talked to him on the phone Saturday morning. Then he’d gone off to their new house with his dad and grandmother and my mom to learn how to work their new washer and dryer and what the smoke alarm was like. The church was renting the place and fixing it up. The furnace was almost installed, so in a week they were moving from our place to theirs. They’d live in it free for six months and then start paying the rent themselves. That was the deal.
Mom showed Ba Noi what she could, but a Vietnamese man from Jacksonville, who’d been in the country more than a year, drove over to translate the hard stuff. I spent the day as a drugstore drone. Dad said he needed me more than they did.
Sunday the Quackenbushes invited the whole Nguyen family over after church for dinner and a drive in the country to see the maple leaves. So, what with one thing or another, no time seemed right for talking about important things—like their new last name.
I wasn’t sure what Tom was going to make of his first full day of school. I knew it was going to be different from the school he’d known before. My dad had asked about the one in Vietnam, and Tom had told him they always stood up when the teacher came into the room there, but then they sat at their desks memorizing facts and writing out problems and working on handwriting. It sounded like they mostly sat. Girls sat in the front rows, boys in the back. My dad thought it was terrific. I got tired just listening.
Anyway, I knew he hadn’t had anything like our Social Studies class. Or Ms. Ward. She’s young and pretty and always doing stuff to make us argue about what we’re learning. “Try to see both sides,” she says, “before you decide.” The small wooden sign on her desk is painted, I SAID MAYBE, AND THAT’S FINAL.
“OK, folks, get out your reports,” she said crisply when we’d settled down for our first class of the week. “The Monday Morning News Special is about to begin. Who’s scheduled to anchor today?”
Two hands went up. “Splendid,” she said. “Quiet on the set.”
Every Monday morning we do a TV news program in Social Studies. Actually, it’s just current events, but it’s fun that way, and it keeps us pretty much up on the news.
“Thirty seconds!” Ms. Ward raised her hand, palm out. Charlie Gofen dashed up to her desk. His red and white T-shirt had a very long tie pinned to the neck, pulling it way down, very anchor-person.
“Fifteen seconds.” Cammie Maclean joined him. They sat down and put on smiles. Ms. Ward pointed to them with a flick of the hand.
“This is Cammie Maclean …”
“… and Charlie Gofen reporting from PJHS News.”
“Our first live report is from …” Cammie surveyed the class. A lot of hands waved. “Caroline.”
Caroline stood up. “A man flew a single-engine plane through the Arch of Triumph in Paris last week. He said he did it to complain about taxes. They arrested him.”
I told about how the Pittsfield village board was going to vote on an ordinance to keep kids from skateboarding in the main business district, which would be a real bummer. There were a few reports on national and international disasters and near disasters.
“And now a special message from Ed Bood.” Ed had been waving his hand like crazy. He stood up and shifted his paper from hand to hand. “Pittsfield residents were shocked Saturday morning when they saw that their world-famous statue, Pitt Pig, and the trees around it had been covered with … toilet paper.” The class giggled, and everybody stared at Tom and me. Quint had been
telling anybody who’d listen. I wondered if he’d called the police on us. “The TP’ing happened the night before the annual hog-calling contest at Chestnut Farms, which my Uncle Polk just happened to win by giving the biggest ‘SUUUUUUUUUUU-EEEEEEEEEEEEE!’ that Pike County has ever heard.” His uncle Polk couldn’t have had much volume over Ed. That call would have knocked any real television station off the air and into Texas.
Ms. Ward cleared her throat and looked a warning at him.
“All Saturday morning,” he went on, “rain congealed the yards—the miles—of pink, green, and blue streamers that covered the trees and world-famous pig, so that when it came time, newspaper reporters could not get a good clear shot of the renowned ‘Pork Capital of the World’ statue and the best hog caller in Pike County—as it turned out, my Uncle Polk, who had given the biggest …” He gathered up his breath.
“That’s fine, Ed,” Ms. Ward broke in. “Very interesting in-depth local report, but I’m afraid if you call again, the pigs would start answering, and we, frankly, don’t have space in the room for both them and us.”
Nodding, he went on. “No one knows if the hog-calling contest and the TP’ing were related because the culprits”—he turned to Tom and me—“were not apprehended.”
Leaning over, I said, “See, it’s OK, Tom. Everybody thinks it’s funny.” But he wouldn’t look up. I put my arm on Caroline’s desk behind me and, before I could pull it back, she’d written her name on my wrist in blue ink.
“Anybody have a commercial?” Cammie asked.
Rachael did. “Hi, I’m Rachael Warshaw talking to you about deep-down shine. Now, a polish made especially for braces. It’s Moon Beam Brace Polish. Ummmmmm, what a great feeling, a bracing glow. It’s Moon Beam from …”
“And next …” Charlie peered out over the raised hands. “Suzanna Brooks.”
Suzanna stood up with her report. “Refugees are still leaving Vietnam.” Kids shifted to glance at Tom, who was studying the top of his desk. It was hard to tell how much he understood. “A lot of people escaped when the United States left the war there in 1975. And they’re still escaping. There isn’t enough food, for one thing. And they’re afraid of the Communists, whom they used to be fighting against. Some of them get shot when they try to leave in little boats. Or they get attacked by pirates on the South China Sea.” Tom rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “They were just people we heard about in the news until Tom came. Anyway”—she looked up—“we-are-glad-you-are-here.” He understood that, for sure, and smiled back.
“Any other commercials?” Cammie asked. There was one. It was about an electric kite, just the thing for dull days when the wind isn’t blowing. Four skill levels, from calm to tornado.
“And that, you guys, is the news,” Charlie announced. We got out our books and moved on to Central America, its Crops and Conflicts.
All day Tom was quiet. I wondered if he really knew anything about pirates. Pirates were from old movies, the bad guys with eye patches, swords, and chests of gold. What would pirates want with my kid? All he had was marbles.
In gym he stuck mostly to Quint. When I tossed a ball to him, he bounced it off his head and passed it to somebody else with a kick from the side of his foot.
“Hey, Tom,” the gym teacher yelled. “That’s great. You’ll have to help us with our soccer. It’s a super game.” The kid grinned. But it wasn’t until math that he seemed easy again.
Mr. Tandy put him, Suzanna, and Quint in a group by themselves at the back of the room. He gave them books different from ours. “Let’s see if we can get you three ready to jump ahead to freshman algebra next year. I think you’re all up to it.”
So, while the rest of us scratched and erased on our baby seventh-grade problems, those three sat back all smug, doing stuff the rest of us couldn’t understand. Hot dogs.
After school, the kid disappeared upstairs with his math. He wouldn’t even go to the basement with Felix and me. And since having fun hadn’t worked out, I’d thought maybe we could do past tense.
At dinner that night, Dad said he’d pay Tom to work with me at the store. “Not many jobs out there for twelve-year-olds. Thursdays and Fridays after school. Most of the day Saturdays. You can show him the ropes, Harvey.”
“Ropes?” Tom asked, leaning into the conversation, trying to understand.
Ropes, I thought. I don’t know why you show people ropes instead of Blistex or boxes of baby aspirin. We didn’t even stock ropes. A week ago words didn’t seem at all bizarre, but even plain ones had started to have tilted meanings. By the time I’d thought what to answer, Tom was already translating a conversation between his dad and mine about how work was going at the Starlight.
The Vietnamese part sounded more like a song to me than talk. “Things fine, OK, good,” the kid told my dad. Didn’t sound like Wayne would be taking over right away, at least.
“And how were things with you today, Tuan?” Mom asked. “Did you like school?”
“The best,” he told her, smiling politely. I’d heard Quint tell him after math, “Our group is best and I am best of the best.” “No kidding,” he added, and my mom smiled at me.
“You want to hear about my day?” Julia asked. “Has everybody forgotten me?” She took a gulp of milk that left a fat moustache.
“Oh, my dear, how could we possibly,” Mom said, ruffling Julia’s hair.
“All right, mite,” Dad said as he pushed his plate away and gave her all his attention. “You just tell us what you learned today.”
She glanced at Tom and me. “Nothing,” she said, grinning wickedly.
“I pay good tax dollars for nothing,” Dad fake-grumbled. “Shall I go to school and complain? You want me to raise Cain with Mrs. Broderick and her famous singing dog?”
“Well,” Julia began fast, “if you really want to know. I learned that George Washington was the first president of the United States. I learned that he’s on the dollar bill. I learned that he was the father of our country. I also learned something disgusting!”
I gave her the evil eye.
“I learned that Sandy Lazar has warts.”
The kid was listening carefully. “Mr. Washington have many sons?” he asked.
Julia nibbled on her meat loaf and thought. “I don’t know. Nobody said. He had false teeth and liked cornmeal mush cakes. Did he have kids, Harvey?”
“I don’t think so. I know he didn’t. No sons,” I told Tom. “No daughters, either.”
“How is he father?”
“I guess it’s because he was there when the country was born. I’ll show you his picture after supper. I’ll show you pictures of all the presidents. You can learn their names.”
“Father of Vietnam is a dragon,” he explained.
“You’re kidding.” Quint had said they believed in dragons.
“A real one?” Julia speared her peas with her fork.
He nodded. “Father of Vietnam come from China many thousand years ago. He find green mountain, warm air. Banana, berry, rice. In forest is tiger, elephant, snake. In water is alligator. Place he find is Vietnam.” He said something to his family in Vietnamese, and they both nodded. “Dragon like new land,” he went on, “but he is alone.”
“No lady dragon?” Julia asked.
“No. He find …” Tom closed his eyes, trying, I guess, to remember the words. He took a deep breath before saying, “… fairy princess. Mr. Larkin in Galang call her fairy princess. OK?”
“I guess.”
“And did the fairy princess like the dragon?” Mom asked, clearing away the dishes.
“No kidding, she do.”
“Did,” I explained. “Past tense. Did.”
“She did. They marry. Have one hundred sons, brave like dragon, good to see like fairy princess.”
“Now, that’s a lot of sons,” Mom said. “It would take a great deal of meat loaf and peas for a hundred part-dragon sons.”
“Dragon leave princess,” he went on.
“Dragon take fifty sons and go south to place of waters. Fairy princess take fifty sons and go north to place of mountains.”
“Then everything was OK.” Julia was waiting for the happily-ever-after.
“No. North fight south. South fight north.” He pushed away from the table. “Still fight.”
All that was over there, I thought. Not here. It was then. He should forget it. He doesn’t need it, and I don’t want to hear it.
But he kept going. “Many war. Many. Banana still grow. Tiger, elephant, snake, some still live in forest. Some forest die, some animal die, some people die. Many people in—” he took the sticker that said HELLO, MY NAME is TABLECLOTH, and drew a stick man on it with bars in front of him.
Dad leaned over to look. “In jail,” he said.
“In a dungeon,” I told him. That sounded nicer.
“Four year my father in … dungeon,” he said, taking my word. His father nibbled at a chocolate-chip cookie, not understanding. “He fight for south. Communists from north win war and keep him. Four year. He run away in suit of dead soldier. He make the soldier dead. Run at night. Sleep at day.” The words were rolling out like he needed us to know. “He come home to Nha Trang. We hide him. We cannot stay in Nha Trang. Many people leave …” He took a breath as if he meant to go on, but he glanced at his father, and whatever he was going to say got stuck in his throat.
I stacked the dishes in the washer, put in the powder, and pushed the button, not knowing what to say. Maybe I should teach him future tense. Most of his past tense was war, running away, and sad. But it wasn’t going to erase. He wasn’t going to stop remembering. Some things you just can’t forget.
9
Boo!
“I’M TOOTHPASTE,” Julia said. “Squeeze me.” The funny thing is, she was toothpaste. At least she was dressed like a giant yellow tube of lemon-flavored PURE with a face hole cut in its cardboard cap. I‘d pasted on a big red price sticker for $1.79. Halloween fell on a Saturday, and so, since school parties were Friday, Julia was in her first of two days as a tube of toothpaste.