After forever, Officer Pete got out of the car and came over to where Nancy and I were shivering.
“We have a little problem,” he said.
Eight
Officer Pete Baker
“You see, I don’t know where the pandas are either,” Officer Pete said.
I nearly exploded with relief. “You’re not going to arrest Ben?” I asked.
“No. Why? Do you think I should?”
Behind him, Ben was getting out of the police car.
“Bit of a misunderstanding,” Officer Pete said. “Ben explained what you’re doing here, and I’d like to help, but it’s awfully late and you two girls should be getting home.”
“But what about all this bamboo?” I said. I could still see the pile in the back of Ben’s truck even in the dark.
Ben scratched his head. “I have to pick up a load of ferns tomorrow. I can’t carry this around.”
I thought really hard, but my brain wasn’t working very well, maybe because I had been so scared a few minutes before. But then I remembered there was only one gate into the shipyard.
“What if we make a trail?” I said.
“A trail?” Officer Pete said.
“What for? What kind?” Ben said.
“Like in Hansel and Gretel,” Nancy said. I could have kissed her. I really didn’t have the energy to explain what I meant, but she said it right in one fairy tale.
Ben drove us back to the main gate and we laid out a branch of bamboo, then another a few feet away, then another and another. Finally, deep into the shipyard, we unloaded the whole pile. I hoped real hard that someone would understand and not think the bamboo was just garbage and throw it away. I hoped someone from the Chinese ship would find the trail, follow it to the bamboo pile and take the bamboo to the pandas.
I hoped most of all that the pandas would eat it and be okay.
By the time we were finished, it was real late. Officer Pete took us to a phone booth so we could call our moms. Nancy’s mom said she hadn’t even noticed Nancy wasn’t there because her brothers had been banging pot lids all night. My mom said she was going to ground me back to the time of the dinosaurs and then make me do the dishes and the laundry for a week. I told her that was unfair and dinosaurs didn’t use dishes or wear clothes anyway. So she said, “Fine! Two weeks!” Then I shut my mouth and kept it shut.
Officer Pete looked like he was trying to hide a smile when I told him what Mom said. I didn’t see what was so funny about two weeks of dishes.
Then Ben Wallace called Miss Bickerstaff. From the expression on his face, I think he was facing two weeks of dishes and laundry too. He jumped in his truck and drove off, waving to us with a guilty-looking smile.
As Officer Pete drove us home, it started to rain. The streets of the Eastside look neat when it rains, all shiny and glossy, like black satin and rhinestones. But the people on the streets don’t look so good. Not many people can afford umbrellas or raincoats, and some don’t have homes to go to, so they just stand in the rain, hunched over like birds on branches. We saw Kentucky Jack and I thought, Well, at least the rain will wash his coat a bit—that’s something.
We saw Kellie Rae. She looked real sad standing in the rain, and when she turned and saw Officer Pete’s car, she moved into a doorway and out of sight. A few other people disappeared into dark corners as we passed by.
I thought it was strange. I’d walked past these people a million times, and they never ran away from me. Sometimes they said hello, and sometimes they didn’t seem to see me at all. I felt sorry for Officer Pete that all the people on the street that night were afraid of him. But I guess when you’re a policeman on the Eastside, that’s part of your job.
I think a lot of jobs are hard on the Eastside.
“Do you like being a policeman?” I asked Officer Pete.
“Sure,” he said. “Sometimes it can be tough, but I get to work outside, and I get good pay and a pension. Most people respect me.”
I thought the outside part was good. My mom worked in an office all day, and she didn’t like it one bit, except when it rained or snowed. Then she was grateful for being inside. I knew that good pay was important. My mom only stayed at her job because she got paid nearly three dollars an hour, which was better than what Nancy’s mom made—she’s a waitress and relies on tips. I didn’t know what a pension was, and I didn’t think it was a good time to ask. And anyway, then I started thinking about respect.
It seemed to me that a lot of people on the Eastside were afraid of Officer Pete, but I wasn’t. I mean, earlier that night I’d been a little afraid, but mostly, when he came to our school I respected him.
“Can girls be policemen?” Nancy asked.
“Sure,” Officer Pete said. “We need ladies on the force. They’re a great help because sometimes criminals are ladies and sometimes even male crooks or witnesses will talk more to ladies than to men. You could be a cop, Nancy.”
I pressed my lips together, but Nancy already knew what I didn’t want to say.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I can’t read or write, and I don’t think I’m ever going to learn. So I couldn’t write those little notes you give people. And I couldn’t fill out forms and stuff. Plus, I don’t really like guns because they’re too loud. But Journey would make a good policeman.”
I had no idea why Nancy thought I would make a good policeman, and I didn’t really want to find out, because sometimes Nancy’s opinions about people are expressed by telling real embarrassing stories that I can’t even believe she remembers. Like the one about the time in kindergarten when I went to school with pajamas under my dress.
I decided to change the subject.
“Is Ben Wallace in trouble?” I asked.
Officer Pete didn’t answer straightaway. I didn’t like that. But then he said, “Ben isn’t somewhere he’s supposed to be.”
“You mean because he doesn’t want to fight in the war?” I said.
Officer Pete parked the car outside Nancy’s apartment building. He turned and looked at us. “Ben has good reasons for not wanting to fight in the war. And he’s a hard worker. And he didn’t lie or nothing when we talked. He told me straight out what his deal was. He’s a good, honest man.”
“But you didn’t trust him at first,” I said.
“No, I didn’t, but that’s because I thought…well, you never know. There are some bad people in the world who would take advantage of girls like you.”
“But you realized Ben Wallace is not one of them.”
“That’s right.”
“And you don’t mind that he’s a different color than Miss Bickerstaff?” I said.
“Well, when I was younger, maybe I would have,” Officer Pete said. “But nowadays I think love comes in all colors and sizes, and we should be grateful for it however it looks. Though he should marry that girl. I don’t approve of them not being married.”
“But you’re not going to tell on him?” Nancy said.
“Tell on him for what?” Officer Pete said with a grin and a wink.
“For not going in the arm—” Nancy said, but I elbowed her and she stopped. “Oooooh, I get it,” she said. Then she got out of the car and ran up the stairs of her building.
“Now, Journey, I better get you home before that two weeks of dishes turns into three,” Officer Pete said.
Nine
Mr. Huang
I felt weird going into Mr. Huang’s the next day, what with having sort of gotten arrested the night before and all. Also I didn’t have any money, and Mr. Huang hated that. He would shoo me out into the street by waving a rolled-up newspaper at me like I was a bad puppy or something. Then he would feel sorry later and give me a day-old donut. Or sometimes not. It was hard to be sure with Mr. Huang.
But I needed Mr. Huang’s help. At least, I thought I needed his help. It was strange to think that I had known him my whole life, and I knew he obviously wasn’t from around here, but I wasn’t really sure if he
was Chinese. And I needed him to be Chinese.
“Good morning, Mr. Huang,” I said real politely.
“No donut today,” he said, not even looking up from his newspaper. For the first time, I took a proper look at that newspaper, which was easy because for once it wasn’t being waved in my face. That was definitely, probably, possibly Chinese writing on it, I told myself.
“Oh no, I don’t want a donut,” I said, even though I really did. But I needed something more important, so the donut-shaped emptiness in my stomach would just have to wait. “Mr. Huang, are you Chinese?” I asked.
Finally he looked up. His brown eyes were magnified by his reading glasses, so he looked a bit froggish. I kind of like frogs, so it didn’t bother me. He frowned though.
“Taiwanese!” he said.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said. “I need someone who speaks Chinese.”
“I speak Chinese,” he said.
“I thought you said you were Taiwanese,” I said.
Mr. Huang rolled those frog eyes behind his glasses. “Taiwanese speak Chinese. Why?”
I was pretty excited about my plan, so I stood up straight and tried to talk to him like a grown-up might, so he would keep listening.
“There’s a Chinese boat down at the docks. You know about it?”
“I heard, yes.”
“I need to speak to someone from that boat,” I said. “I need to ask them about the pandas.”
Mr. Huang folded up his newspaper and took off his glasses. Then he looked at me the way he looks just before he gives me a donut, kind of sad and gentle.
“That boat crew is Hong Kong. Speak Cantonese. I speak Mandarin. Different language,” he said. “You understand?”
“No,” I said honestly. “They’re Chinese. You said you speak Chinese.”
Mr. Huang sighed. “What languages do we speak in Canada?”
“English,” I said. “Oh, and French?”
“Right. What about Belgium?”
I knew this from school. “Dutch and French!”
“Right. In China are many languages but two big ones. Cantonese and Mandarin. I speak one. Boat crew speaks other. Sorry.” He put his glasses on and went back to his paper.
I couldn’t help it. I was so disappointed that my face must have just crumpled. Mr. Huang looked up again.
He sighed. “Donut?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no. I just want to write a note about the pandas. The ones from the boat. I want to make sure they’re okay and ask if they need any more bamboo.”
“Note?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling the tears start to fill up my eyes. “I thought we could put it somewhere near the boat or maybe make posters of it and stick them up around the docks so they would know that we care about the pandas and want to help.”
“I can write note,” Mr. Huang said.
But I was really upset, so I just kept right on going. “I only want to make them understand that the pandas belong in that nice zoo in Washington, DC, and that I’m sure the president didn’t mean what he said and that the war is dumb and Ben Wallace won’t even fight in it and that Jack curses like anything if you even mention the war and that my dad came back to see me and I don’t really even know him, but he doesn’t like the war either, or turtleneck sweaters, so those pandas need a good home, not some old stinky shipyard warehouse where they’re probably hungry and cold and lonely.”
Mr. Huang waited patiently until I finished. Then he handed me a tissue. Then he waited while I blew my nose.
“I can write note,” he finally said. “Mandarin and Cantonese are the same in writing.”
“What?” I said.
“Hard to explain,” Mr. Huang said. “Here, donut.”
While I ate the donut, Mr. Huang got out four sheets of paper and a big black felt pen. I told him what I wanted the note to say.
“Dear crew on the ship with pandas. We need to know if the pandas are okay. Did they like the bamboo we left? Do you need more bamboo? Please don’t take the pandas back to China. They must be tired of being on a boat. They will have a good life in Washington, DC, and maybe even meet the president. If you need anything or have any news, leave a message with Mr. Huang in the corner store on Hastings Street, in the Eastside. He can’t speak your language, but he can read it, which I think is pretty groovy.”
“No word for groovy,” Mr. Huang said.
“Oh, okay then. Skip that,” I said.
Mr. Huang wrote the note on each of the four sheets of paper. At first I thought he was doing it wrong, because he was writing from top to bottom instead of left to right. But he told me that’s how Chinese is written. There was a bit of space left at the side of the paper, so Mr. Huang went out to the back of his store and came back with a little jar of ink and a paintbrush. Then he painted a twig of bamboo down the side of each page. It was as light and delicate as a wisp of cloud and looked real nice.
I stuck three of the pages up around the docks, one near the entrance gate and one as close to the ships as I could get. I stuck the third one on the wall near where we had left the bamboo pile. The pile was gone, which made me happy, even though I wondered if maybe the garbagemen had just hauled it away. But I hoped they hadn’t.
I put the last note up on my bedroom wall, next to the picture of the spaceship landing on the moon.
I didn’t think Mr. Huang would mind.
Ten
Kellie Rae
I woke up to the sound of giggling outside my window. There were always lots of weird noises outside our apartment. Sirens, of course, or coughing or crying or even fighting sometimes. I’d never heard giggling before though. It was dark still, and in between the giggles I could see weird flashes of light on the glass. So I had to get up and check it out.
I stepped into my sneakers and wrapped my blanket around my shoulders like a cape. Then I tiptoed over to my window. I don’t know why I tiptoed. Maybe because checking something out in the night seems like detective work. I slid my window open and shivered as the cool night air blew in along with all the great and nasty smells of the Eastside. I could smell pork buns steaming, so I knew it must be nearly morning. I could smell stale beer and cars and, faintly, garbage that needed collecting.
Down on the street I saw another flash. I leaned out the window to get a better look. There was Kellie Rae, standing by a mailbox. She was wearing denim shorts over red tights, with high-heeled boots and a shiny silver jacket that I thought was nifty. She was smiling and giggling because someone was taking pictures of her with a flash camera.
I nearly fell out of the window when I realized it was my dad.
Next thing I knew, I was trailing that blanket down the stairs and out onto the street. I don’t know why I was so eager to get out there and talk to him. Maybe I didn’t like that he was taking pictures of Kellie Rae and not me. Maybe I didn’t think he should be up so late. Maybe I was just mad that the giggling woke me up. Whatever the reason, I burst out onto the street and walked right up to him.
“What are you doing, Dad?” I said.
He spun around so fast that his camera swung out and nearly choked him before slamming back into his chest.
“Oof!” he said.
Kellie Rae just giggled. “What are you doing out here, Journey?” she said.
“Your giggling woke me up!” I snapped. It wasn’t her fault. She practically lived on the street at night, and she had never woken me up before. This was all my dad’s fault, and I sure wanted to let him know.
“Why are you taking pictures of Kellie Rae anyway?” I asked.
Dad was still rubbing his chest where the camera hit him. “That’s what I do. It’s my job,” he said.
Of course, this was news to me. Up until a few days ago, all I’d known about my dad was that he wasn’t around. Now all I knew was that his parents were Cuban, he’d been in jail, and he didn’t like turtlenecks. So part of me wanted to hold this new truth about him, and part of me wanted to throw it back in his fa
ce.
“Well, what the heck kind of job is taking pictures in the middle of the night?”
He sighed, while behind him Kellie Rae lit a cigarette. When I scowled at her, she put it out.
“I’m a photojournalist,” Dad said. “I’m thinking of putting together a piece about the, uh…ladies who, uh…work in this neighborhood.”
I’m not even sure why that made me so mad. But suddenly I was madder than Kentucky Jack on a Sunday morning before the bars open. I looked at my father and saw a silly hippie who didn’t know anything about anything and was pretending to be someone important. He didn’t know anything about the Eastside. He didn’t know anything about the people who lived here. Most of all, he didn’t know that I could see through his sad little lie. He was taking pictures of Kellie Rae because he thought she was pretty. I’d spent the whole day with him, and he hadn’t taken one picture of me. Which told me that he thought more of pretty “ladies” than he did about his own daughter. He was just flirting with her. And that was disgusting because I knew something about Kellie Rae that he didn’t.
“Kellie Rae, how old are you?” I asked.
“Nineteen,” she said too quickly.
“Kellie Rae…” I gave her my best evil eye.
She pushed her bottom lip out and slouched against the mailbox. “Okay, fifteen,” she said. “Happy?”
The expression on Dad’s face was worth at least a hundred ice-cream cones. He went grey as a cloud and, without saying a word, took the lens cap from his pocket and screwed it onto his camera.
“Now give her some money,” I said.
Dad pulled out his wallet and handed Kellie Rae a ten-dollar bill. She grinned and tucked it into her pocket in a flash.
“Bye, Journey,” she said with a wink. “Bye, Journey’s dad.” Then she teetered down the street in those high heels, her fringed purse swinging behind her.
Dad was just standing there with his forehead in his hand.
I was beginning to understand why Mom didn’t like talking about him. I crossed my arms.
Pandas on the Eastside Page 4