Pandas on the Eastside

by Gabrielle Predergast

  “What? That’s awful!” I said. “Are they just going to turn the boat around?” I couldn’t believe it. I knew I was never going to see those pandas, but now no one else would get to see them either. Well, except for people in China, but they had lots of pandas, and we had none. It wasn’t fair. Plus, Miss Bickerstaff said that when you gave something to someone, it was wrong to take it back.

  But Dad was talking again. “No, they can’t turn the boat around,” he said. “They needed to refuel and resupply, so they had to dock. But there’s also a whole lot of other stuff on the boat that was supposed to go down to the docks in Seattle, so they have to figure out what to do about it all. The pandas are just going to have to stay where they are.”

  “Where are they?” I said.

  Dad looked at me with surprise in his eyes. “What? You don’t know? I thought that’s why you were asking. They’re right here, in a warehouse,” he said. “Right here on the Eastside.”

  Six

  Kentucky Jack

  No one at school asked me why I had been absent the day before. We had a substitute, who barely looked up from the lesson plan, so of course she didn’t care. And Mr. Hartnell was busy with some people inspecting the plumbing, which leaked and made funny noises.

  It was just as well. I didn’t think I was eating ice cream with my father was a very good excuse not to go to school. Even though it was really tasty ice cream.

  Nancy had noticed I was gone, of course. Nothing slips past Nancy. She would notice an extra freckle on your nose on the first day of summer. So when I sat next to her at recess, she said, “You weren’t at school yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. I was trying to act cool, but really I was burning to tell someone, and Nancy was the perfect someone. She’s the only person I know who can be amazed and keep a secret at the same time. “I met my dad,” I said.

  Nancy just nodded. “I figured it was something big like that. I mean, you like school, don’t you?”

  That’s Nancy. She understands everything. At that moment she understood that I wanted her to know but wasn’t ready to talk about it. Other people would have said, Really? What’s he like? What did you do? What did he say? Where did you go? Where has he been all this time? Why hasn’t he called before? Other people wouldn’t know that this last question was the one I wasn’t ready to talk about. But Nancy knew not to dig too deep.

  “I have a mustard sandwich for lunch,” she said.

  After school we decided to go see Miss Bickerstaff. She was taking time off because of her brother and all. But I wanted to tell her about my dad and the pandas, and I didn’t see why that wouldn’t cheer her up. Nancy wasn’t so sure.

  “Maybe she’s still crying. Grown-ups don’t like us to see them crying,” she said.

  I didn’t think anyone could cry for that long. I mean, it had already been two days. But I still stopped in the girls’ bathroom and filled my pocket with toilet paper, just in case. There’s nothing worse than crying and not having anything to mop up the tears with. Your face gets all slimy and salty. It feels bad. Plus it’s not pretty.

  Miss Bickerstaff lived just beyond the edge of the Eastside, in a neighborhood called Grandview. And there is a grand view from up there on the hillside. You can look down onto my neighborhood, and sometimes it looks quite good, actually, not sad and dusty but tidy and sensible. That’s what it’s like when you look at something from far away. All the rough edges disappear.

  Grandview was a bus ride from our school, and once again Nancy and I didn’t have any coins. We started walking. Halfway through Chinatown, we saw Kentucky Jack begging outside Mr. Huang’s.

  “Jack, you better move,” I said. “Mr. Huang will call the police, like last time.”

  “Wait until I get enough for one bottle,” Jack said. It was no use arguing with him. His kind of alcoholism made Mom look like one of the nuns from The Sound of Music. So Nancy and I decided to help him get his money faster. That way he was less likely to be arrested. Last time Jack got arrested, he had a broken arm when they let him out.

  Nancy was real good at helping Jack beg for money. She had a way of looking like a pathetic orphan, even though she was living pretty good, all things considered. She sucked in her cheeks and opened her eyes wide and stood there wringing her hands, with an expression on her face that would make a spoiled poodle cry. It was quite something.

  My job was the talking. Excuse me, mister, I’d say. Can you help us? My dad needs money to clean his coat. Last night on the train, this horrible man threw up on him while he was sleeping. He’s come all the way from Yellowknife, where he works in the mine, just to see us. It’s my birthday, see? And so on.

  It wasn’t long before Jack had enough money to get his bottle. I told him to buy beer instead of whiskey so we would have enough coins left over for us to take the bus to Grandview.

  “Where you goin’, Sacagawea?” he asked me. I figured Sacagawea was an Indian name. Jack was always calling me Pocahontas or Minnehaha or some such thing. He was convinced I was from the rez, like his cousin’s girlfriend. I hated to break it to him that I’d just learned I was half Cuban, and anyway, I still didn’t want to talk about it, so I said, “We’re going to see our teacher. Her brother just died in the war.”

  Jack cursed the war in a way that you should never curse in front of children, a real bad curse, and Nancy laughed behind her hand. Then Mr. Huang came out of the store and told us all to go away. Nancy and I left Jack with his coins and got on the bus.

  Miss Bickerstaff was in her front yard when we came up her street. She was sweeping some leaves from the path and looked up at us when we got to the gate.

  “Nancy, Journey? What are you doing here?” She didn’t look mad or anything, just surprised.

  “We wanted to come see how you are,” I said.

  Miss Bickerstaff set down her broom and looked down the hill, back toward the city. If you knew where to look, you could see our school from Miss Bickerstaff’s yard.

  “I’m okay, I think,” she said.

  I wasn’t too happy about the I think part. I mean, if you have to think about it, you’re not really okay, are you? It’s just like in that song on the radio, “I Think I Love You.” If you’re thinking about it, you probably don’t. So of course I was thinking Miss Bickerstaff probably wasn’t okay.

  All of a sudden I wanted to tell her about my dad so badly that I thought I might crack open all over the newly swept path. But I also still didn’t want to talk about it. Then I realized that thinking you’re okay is like being stuck between okay and not okay, because clearly that’s where I was about my dad. So we talked about the pandas instead.

  There was a little metal table in Miss Bickerstaff’s front yard. It reminded me of one I’d seen in a movie Mom took me to in which the people spoke nothing but French. We sat down, and Miss Bickerstaff’s boyfriend brought us some hot chocolate, because it was getting cold outside. Mom had told me that Miss Bickerstaff’s boyfriend lives with her. I tried to be scandalized that Miss Bickerstaff was living with her boyfriend when they weren’t even married. Mom said some of the parents at the school were scandalized, but no teachers want to work on the Eastside, so they didn’t dare try to get her fired for it.

  Actually, I’m not even sure what scandalized means, but I sure don’t see the connection between being a good teacher and living with your boyfriend. Anyway, her boyfriend’s name was Ben Wallace, and he was real handsome and made great hot chocolate that was mostly marshmallows. So I thought nothing but good things about him.

  After we’d finished our hot chocolate, he played basketball with Nancy in the next-door neighbor’s driveway.

  “Do you know where the pandas are?” I asked Miss Bickerstaff.

  “I heard they’re in one of the grain terminal warehouses off Powell Street,” she said.

  “Wow, that’s close to our apartment!” I said. “I hope they’re okay in there.” It seemed to me a warehouse wasn’t the right place for t
wo pandas. They needed fresh air and sunshine and crunchy bamboo to eat. “Wouldn’t they be happier outside? Maybe they should let them out in Stanley Park.”

  Miss Bickerstaff did one of those cough-laughs you do when you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

  “Um, they can’t do that, Journey,” she said. “Those pandas have been in captivity a long time. They could never survive in the wild. Not here or in China. The best place for them is a good zoo.”

  We sat there quietly while I thought about that, and then someone, who I know must have been me, because it came out of my mouth, said, “Miss Bickerstaff, are you going to go to your brother’s funeral?”

  Miss Bickerstaff just looked at me. It was one of those times I wished words were cupcakes so I could just gobble them back up. That happens to me a lot. I could see Miss Bickerstaff was hurting inside, and she probably didn’t want to talk about it, just like I didn’t want to talk about my father. But now that the words were out, she really didn’t have much choice.

  “We can’t go back there,” she said. “We can’t go back home.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Miss Bickerstaff looked over at Ben, and he smiled at her as he dodged the basketball that Nancy had thrown straight at his head. “A whole bunch of reasons,” she said. “My family doesn’t like Ben, because, well, he’s the wrong color and he doesn’t want to fight in the war and we’re not married…” Then she stopped. “Gosh, I’m sorry. That’s too grown-up for you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know I’m only ten, but in the last few days I think I’ve aged about twenty years.”

  Then I told her all about my dad. I told her about him being Cuban and going to jail and about the ice cream and the turtleneck sweaters at the Woodwards store. I told her that he hated the war too, and that he hadn’t called or written to me for practically my whole life.

  Miss Bickerstaff listened and nodded. I didn’t have any questions, so she didn’t offer any answers. She is good like that. She knows sometimes kids just need to talk.

  Sometime while I was talking, I noticed that the leaves Miss Bickerstaff had swept into a pile next to us looked familiar. I looked up at the bushes that surrounded her front yard and realized something.

  We were sitting between two huge dense groves of bamboo. We were in the middle of a panda buffet.

  Seven

  Ben Wallace

  Miss Bickerstaff said she didn’t like the bamboo because it shed leaves all over her path and blocked the afternoon light into her kitchen. So her boyfriend brought over some giant garden shears and started hacking away at the hedge.

  “How are we going to get the bamboo to the warehouse?” Nancy asked when we had already gathered a huge pile. Of course, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s another thing I do a lot—make a plan that has a beginning but no end.

  “I can drive y’all down there,” Ben said. I knew Ben had a big old truck. I’d seen him picking up Miss Bickerstaff from school on rainy days. His job was something to do with trees, so he needed a big truck. We started to pile the bamboo in the back, on top of his saws and axes.

  It ended up being a big pile, and Miss Bickerstaff seemed pretty pleased with the way her garden looked and how much sunlight was shining in now.

  “Do you want me to come with you, Journey?” she said.

  “We’ll manage fine,” I said and climbed into Ben’s truck. Nancy got in beside me. Of course, we’re not allowed to take rides from strangers, but he was Miss Bickerstaff’s boyfriend, and he had just made us all hot chocolate that was mostly marshmallows, so I figured he wasn’t a stranger anymore. Anyway, his truck was real neat.

  It was old. I think it might once have been green. Or maybe blue. Now it was gray, and parts of the metal were brown and looked like mice had nibbled at them. And the inside smelled funny. Not bad, like sweat or smoke. It smelled like cut grass and sea water and that smell you get just before it rains.

  “This truck is inside out,” Nancy said. I expected Ben to say, What are y’all talking about? but he just nodded. I nodded too. I could understand what Nancy meant. It smelled more like outside inside the truck than it ever did outside on the Eastside.

  Just thinking that made my head hurt a little.

  We drove down to the shipyard. I had walked by the entrance a lot and gone by on the bus too, but this time we went through the gate, which, luckily, had no guard. The shipyard was huge and packed with giant warehouses, containers, empty trucks, piles of discarded crates and lots of things I had no idea about.

  We drove down narrow streets and through laneways and before very long we were lost. Also, we didn’t quite know what we were looking for or where we were going, so that didn’t help. Ben pulled over by a gigantic tin can kind of thing.

  “Is that full of soup?” Nancy said. I tried so hard not to laugh that a little tear came out of my right eye. I wiped it away quickly.

  “It’s probably grain,” Ben said. “Or maybe fuel.”

  Nancy looked disappointed. She really likes soup.

  We sat there thinking for a little while. Then someone asked a personal question, and yes, I admit it was me. I think because I was so confused about my own personal life and the things I did and didn’t want to talk about, stuff just leaked into my mouth and came out as questions that no one wants to answer.

  “Why don’t you want to fight in the war?” I asked Ben. What a stupid question! But Ben didn’t seem to mind. He just sighed and tapped his hand on the steering wheel.

  “I’ve thought about it a lot, and it seems to me that this is just like when two kids you don’t know are fighting in the schoolyard,” he said.

  “That happens at our school every day,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “And do you interfere?”

  “No way,” said Nancy. “That’s a good way to get kicked in the head.”

  “Even if one side is smaller and weaker?” Ben asked.

  “Then we go and get a teacher,” I said.

  “And when the teacher comes, what do they do?” Ben asked. “Do they pick a side and jump in and start throwing punches?”

  Nancy and I laughed. “They stop the fight,” I said. “They don’t make it worse.”

  Ben nodded. “Wars happen. The more people who join the fight, the bigger the war gets. This isn’t a fight I want to join. I don’t think that’s the right way to help.”

  “So you ran away?” Nancy said.

  “Grown-ups don’t really run away,” Ben said. “They just leave, if they have somewhere to go. Lucky for me, I could get a job here, and so could Betty.”

  I never knew that Miss Bickerstaff’s first name was Betty. Somehow, knowing it seemed important at that moment.

  “But was it hard leaving your families?” I said.

  Ben just nodded and didn’t say much for a good long time.

  It was starting to get dark, and we still had no idea where the pandas were, so Ben tried a different strategy. He drove around the shipyard until he saw a Chinese person. Then he followed him. We did this a few times but only ended up at the edge of the water or at the exit.

  Now Ben seemed like a smart guy, so he should have realized that nobody, least of all a Chinese ship worker on the Eastside, likes being followed around at dusk by someone in an old truck. I was going to say something, but I was determined to find those pandas, so I just hoped I was imagining the nervous looks we were getting. But I guess having us two girls in the truck didn’t make things seem any less threatening, because before we knew it, the police arrived.

  It was almost completely dark by this time, so the policeman shone his flashlight into the cab of the truck.

  “Journey Song, is that you?” he said. It was Officer Pete Baker. Officer Pete comes to our class every few months to tell us not to steal, skip school or do drugs. Also, he actually caught me stealing and skipping school, but I would never do drugs because that’s for losers. Even the people I know who do drugs tell me that. And the thing I
stole was just gum, and Mr. Huang called Officer Pete because I cried so hard when he caught me that he was worried I wouldn’t be able to get myself home without falling under a bus. And I only skipped school one time, when I couldn’t find Mom after one of her slips. So all in all, Officer Pete had no reason to say what he said next.

  “Journey, you’re not getting into trouble again, are you?”

  I was about to object when he shone his light on Ben’s face. I knew that Officer Pete must have seen some things in his time as a policeman on the Eastside, and I thought he probably worked real hard at keeping his feelings from showing, but when he saw Ben in the driver’s seat next to me and Nancy, his face kind of turned to ice, all white and hard and cold. And suddenly, as quick as a traffic light turning red, I knew what he was thinking.

  “No!” I yelped. “This is Ben Wallace. He’s our teacher’s boyfriend.”

  Officer Pete moved one hand down and put it on his gun.

  “Don’t shoot us,” Nancy said in a voice as tiny as a ladybug.

  It was one of those terrible moments that seem to go on forever. “What’s your name, son?” Officer Pete said, his voice low and serious.

  “Ben Wallace, sir,” Ben said. He had his hands on the top of the steering wheel.

  “And how do you know these girls?”

  “Like she said, sir. I’m Betty Bickerstaff’s boyfriend.”

  Officer Pete made Nancy and me get out of the truck. Then he made Ben Wallace get out, and I begged Officer Pete not to put him in handcuffs before he made him sit in the back of the police car.

  Nancy and I stood beside the police car, clinging to each other, trembling, even though we knew we hadn’t done anything wrong. But there was something going on between Officer Pete and Ben, something sharp and mean, and Ben was scared. I could tell from his face. I started thinking maybe he was a criminal or something. Maybe we had been in danger taking a ride from him. I forgot all about the pandas and just wanted to go home.