Lizzie!

by Maxine Kumin

  “Gross,” Josh said.

  “Yep, and the next day was awful. I had to have all these scans where they make you lie flat and they slide you into a machine like a coffin and then you really do think maybe you’ve died until you come out the other end.”

  “So did you, like, fracture your skull?”

  “Absolutely. I came down on the back of my head. And mashed my spinal cord which is why I’m … well, you know.” I drummed on the arms of my chair a few times to sort of ease the tension I could feel building up in the room.

  Then Josh did this incredible thing. He reached over and took hold of my hand and squeezed it.

  I squeezed back and then he let go.

  Then I showed Josh my American Heritage Dictionary. You can find anything you want on the web just as fast but I like turning real pages. I flipped to the d’s and scanned down to diplegia, which is what he has. It comes from the Latin plangere, to strike. Just so you’ll know, it means paralysis of matching parts on both sides of the body. The reason he started school late was because he was having surgery for it. He’s had three operations so far.

  Then Josh told me some of the background to his diplegia.

  “I was a preemie. A premature baby, nobody knows why. Mom says I only weighed two and a half pounds when I was born. I had some trouble breathing in the beginning but I outgrew that. They say that a lot of the kids with diplegic CP may have some learning problems but my only problem is learning when to shut up in class.”

  We both laughed at that. “And eventually I’m going to be able to walk almost normally, though right now I’m just fighting off some knee and ankle problems.”

  “But See Pee, what’s that?”

  “It stands for cerebral palsy.”

  I felt stupid not to know that, but Josh didn’t seem to notice.

  He told me about his PT sessions every week and that they were painful because his muscles had shortened and it would take a long time to get them to lengthen and get stronger.

  “Boy, can I relate to that! My PTs just about killed me with all their pushing and pulling me. But Mom says they saved my leg muscles and that’s why I need to keep doing these crummy exercises every single day. Even though I’m never going to walk, really walk, it’s important to save every little bit of muscle I’ve got. That’s so I can sit up straight and make all these transfers, in and out of cars, out of this chair and into the ocean. You know. I’m supposed to practice getting up with my quad canes every day too, but sometimes I just don’t … have time.”

  “You’re supposed to make time,” Josh said sternly.

  “You too, buddy.”

  And we high-fived each other.

  CHAPTER 9

  I somehow got through the next few days in a fog. My heart was heavy from carrying around my big secret. And then, one night, Mom and I ended up going out to eat with my honorary grandparents.

  Digger said he loved Thai food and there was a little hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant hardly anybody else knew about in Woodvale. Teresa found it the first week they moved in and they’d been going there about once a week ever since. Lucky for me there weren’t any stairs and nobody acted surprised to see somebody in a wheelchair. The Martinezes were patted and exclaimed over in Thai because they went there so often, and we were given a very warm greeting too. They took away one chair and wheeled me into place with a flourish. Everybody else had beer. I guess it’s sort of a tradition to order Thai beer to go with the spicy food. I got a ginger ale. It came with a section of orange on the rim and a red cherry floating on top of the drink, which made it the most unusual ginger ale I ever drank.

  Teresa and my mom were deep in conversation about a community action project to provide activities for the immigrant children whose parents were fruit pickers not far from Woodvale, so I had a chance to talk to Digger sort of alone. I took a deep breath and began. “Digger, I have to tell you something only my friends Trippy and Josh and I know, and even Josh hasn’t seen it firsthand.”

  “Your secret is safe with me, angelita,” and he sort of crossed his eyes in a joking way.

  “No, this is really something dangerous. Something I saw at Wilderwood last time while Mom went into Henry’s house to check on his mom because she never comes out.”

  “Whoa. Slow down, chiquita. Wildwood? What is it?”

  “Wilderwood. It’s where there’s a petting zoo. Mom drives me there once a week. Henry, who owns it—well I think he owns it, but he may be giving it to this other rich man we met—he has two orphan bear cubs and I get to go in their space and play with them. I get to carry them around with me in my chair, or I used to, but now they’re too big to cuddle and he’s going to take them off somewhere and probably shoot them to get rid of them. But that’s not the secret part.”

  Right about then Teresa and Mom finished their conversation. The food came and we all started to eat. Everybody had ordered something different so we’d all have a chance to taste all the dishes. Luckily, Thai people use forks and spoons and not chopsticks or I would have been in a pickle. There was a ton of rice and almost too much food to finish. I did taste everything, though I probably wouldn’t have, except we were in a restaurant with our sort of still-new friends who were now my honorary grandparents, and I was the only kid. I would have been embarrassed not to but frankly, I wish I could have had a slice of pizza instead.

  But Teresa hadn’t forgotten what I was telling Digger. “What’s this about who’s shooting what?”

  So then I had to start over about Henry. Mom says he has country ways and she doesn’t think he would shoot the bear cubs. It’s just part of his act, his bluster, she calls it.

  “He’s not really running a zoo. There’s hardly anybody else who comes there except Mom and me. Does this mean he’ll get into trouble about the cubs?”

  The grown-ups agreed it was a shame. Fish and Wildlife would have to be alerted. My mom said, “Henry needs guidance, but he’s somewhat limited mentally.” And the three of them agreed they would make an effort to deal with this matter without Henry being taken to court.

  I caught hold of Digger’s shirtsleeve and pinched him hard enough so he flinched and turned toward me. “I have to talk to you.” He caught on. “I’m taking Lizzie into the kitchen to meet Arun and his wife,” he told Teresa. After he wheeled me in and introduced me, we shook hands all around. They smiled and made little bows with their hands folded pointing up in a churchly way and went back to the stove where several pans were sizzling. “Okay. Now tell me.”

  “But what about—?”

  “Arun and Siriket? They won’t be able to follow what we say.”

  So then I told him about the big warehouse and the tamarins I saw in cages. I barely mentioned the big skinny kid who told us to go back the way we came.

  He whistled. “¡Madre mía! Are you sure?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “How many would you guess?”

  I tried to think. Their little golden heads flashed and blurred in my brain. “Maybe thirty or forty?”

  Digger frowned. “Lizzie, this is too big to keep secret. We need to notify the police.”

  “But wait! Henry is friends with this rich guy. I think they’re friends, though maybe Henry just works for him. His name is Jeb Blanco and Josh and I Googled him and found out—”

  “Slow down, slow down, chica. Jeb is a name?”

  “It’s short for Jesús Ernesto Blanco. That’s what we Googled and we found out he owns a company called Imp-Ex—it stands for import and export—get it?”

  “And how do you know he’s a rich guy?”

  “He has his own private plane, it’s a Learjet and he lands it on a dirt strip out in Henry’s cow pasture.”

  “And so you think he’s bringing in these tiny little monkeys you saw.”

  “Well, they had to get there somehow.”

  Digger said, “They could have come by boat also. We’ll have to find out.”

  “But what do you su
ppose he’s planning to do with them?”

  “I’m not sure. Anything he does with them is illegal unless he has a permit to import them, which I doubt. I do know there are some fancy people in Hollywood and Reno and Las Vegas and so on who will pay a lot of money. Tens and tens of thousands to have a little tamarin as a pet.”

  “But they’re a very … social species, they can’t be separated just like that. They would die of loneliness!”

  Digger sighed. “Chica, there are crazy people who have leopards for house pets. Pumas and jaguars, you name it. And they pay a lot of money, like half a million dollars just to have an exotic animal to call their own.”

  I looked at him. I couldn’t say anything because I was trying so hard not to cry, just thinking about the tamarins so busy in their cages, climbing up and down and trilling and chuckling to each other and curling up in a group to nap in the wicker baskets and then to be taken out and stuffed in a bag of some sort and flown to a rich person’s mansion and probably put in a cage all alone. “Chiquita, this could be a nasty business. We need to call the police before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Oh please, Digger. Think if you break this case open what a big story it will make! Please, please figure out a way to drive out there with me just once.”

  CHAPTER 10

  This is going to be a very short chapter. I asked Mom if she thought it was possible to love and hate someone at the same time. She said yes, of course it was. “That’s what we call mixed feelings, Lizzie. There’s a word for feeling that way, ambivalence.”

  Of course I looked it up and no surprise, it comes from the Latin ambi, meaning both sides and valeo, strength or vigor. To feel strongly two ways at the same time is exactly what is going on inside me.

  I am strongly ambivalent about Henry the Huge. I love him for running his petting zoo where he feeds his animals every day and gives them freshwater whenever they need it and makes sure they have shelter from the sun when it’s burning down on them and from the rain when it pours. Especially I love him for looking after the bear cubs. I love his vegetable garden, though I know he doesn’t work in it even if he pretends to.

  But then I hate him for having those bear cubs at all. They don’t belong in a roadside petting zoo. I don’t know how he got them but I’m sure he didn’t just find them lost in the woods. I hate him for being friends with Jeb Blanco. There is something spooky about Jeb Blanco. I hate that every time Henry’s cat has kittens he drowns them in a pail of water. This last time, though, Mom got him to let her take them to the SPCA after they were weaned. That’s how I got Tigger. And then we took the mama cat to the vet to be spayed. Guess who paid for it? Right.

  To be honest, I have a bunch of other ambivalent feelings. I love my mother but sometimes she makes me so mad that I wheel into my room and slam the door as hard as I can, which isn’t very hard because I have to turn my body halfway around to reach the doorknob, and then to give it a real whack I have to stop and lock my wheels or I’ll skid forward into my dresser. Usually it’s over doing my exercises or not wanting to go down to the beach or why do we have to have macaroni and cheese again.

  I’m mixed up about myself too. Most of the time I’m perfectly happy being left alone so I can read or look up words to find out where they come from or work on this autobiography. Some days I think I’m going to become a professional writer and write my own column in a major newspaper and answer all the letters people send me. There will be more letters than Dear Abby gets and I’ll have to hire someone to help me keep up. Some days I miss my old life and my old friends from before the accident so bad that I just want to go back to bed and cry. I have days when I feel so lonely that all I want to do is lie down and weep like somebody in Louisa May Alcott but I try not to let anybody know it.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning while I was eating my cereal and bananas, Digger called Mom. He said he had dialed the wildlife emergency hotline about the bear cubs last night. He told them he was retired Chief of Police Diego Martinez from Montandino, California, and they were very interested. They asked him to check out the situation and report back. So he would be making a separate trip to the petting zoo today on his own. I knew it wasn’t just about the cubs. I felt like somebody who got all dressed up for the party and then didn’t get invited. I didn’t even finish my cornflakes. By the time Mom dropped me off at school I was in a bad mood. Right in the middle of algebra class the principal sent for me. I hadn’t done anything wrong that I could think of but I wheeled down to the office with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “It’s nothing bad, Lizzie,” the secretary told me. “There’s a message from your mom that a man named Diego Martinez will be picking you up after school today. He’ll have to sign in. We have to be very careful about strangers, you understand. Do you know who he is? Is that going to be all right?”

  I knew she meant that any stranger is a security issue. You can’t just drop in at Graver Academy, so I said, “He’s my honorary grandfather, he’s a very important man. And it’s very all right.” But now I was all confused. If Digger was going to investigate Henry and the cubs this morning, why was he coming to get me after school this afternoon? And where was Mom going to be? I hope I remembered to say thank you before I went back to class. Graver is big on manners. At lunch I just had time to tell Josh where Digger had gone this morning and how confused I was that he was coming to get me after classes.

  He agreed. “But you’ll see. There’s bound to be a reason.” Then the bell rang. “Catch up with you later.” Digger met me at Graver and there was a reason. It turned out that Henry had called Mom just after she took me to school. He’d asked her for a favor. Would she come and get him and drive him and his mother to the hospital in Dirk Isle? His mother’s legs were very swollen and he’d finally convinced her that she needed to see a doctor. Of course Mom said yes.

  “So who’s going to take care of the animals?” I asked Digger.

  “We are, chica.”

  With that, I cheered up. Feeding the animals was super easy and it would be fun to show off for Digger. Kibble for Buddy and Blossom. Hay for the goats and burro. Chicken-scratch feed for the fowl and two or three lettuce leaves for the iguana and tortoise, if they were interested.

  Henry had left the key to the bears’ enclosure under the yellow brick, as promised. I felt very proud as I unlocked the gate and Digger came in with me to admire Buddy and Blossom.

  “Chica, I have a confession to make. I have never been this close to a bear before,” he said as he doled out pecans one after the other. “This is my first and probably my last time.”

  After we’d fed all the animals, Digger helped me back in the car. We didn’t turn left where we usually do. Instead, we went right past the HENRY’Z sign. “According to my GPS there has to be a little road about half a mile from here,” Digger said. In case you don’t know about GPS, that’s Global Positioning Something, go look it up, because a lot is happening these days when it comes to directions.

  And there was a little road. It was dirt, no sign.

  “This looks hopeful,” Digger said. We went slowly around one bend and then another and there was the old wooden warehouse so overgrown with kudzu that it could have been mistaken for an enormous thicket. Just as we pulled over, a tall skinny kid came out—the same shy one Trippy and I had met.

  I leaned out the window and said, “¡Hola!” He jumped about a mile and looked like he was about to take off like a scared rabbit. Then he recognized me.

  “¡Hola! You’re Lizzie, right? Te llamas Lizzie, ¿no?”

  “Yes, and this is my honorary grandfather, Diego Martinez. He’s a chief of police.”

  Julio looked terrified. “But you promised me … Pero me prometiste… .”

  “No, no, he’s a retired chief from California and he’s a good person, he’s a friend.”

  “Is there somebody else coming too?”

  “No. We came alone. My mom came early this morning to drive Henry and his mo
ther to the hospital.”

  “Well, you’re too late. Llegaron demasiado tarde. They’re all gone. Ya se fueron todos.”

  Then Digger said, “What’s all gone? Who are you? Do you work here?”

  “My name is Julio Blanco. Trabajo aquí. I do all the work, I looked after the monkeys from the day Jeb brought them.”

  I gasped. “Are you related to Jeb Blanco?”

  “He’s my uncle. Es mi tío.”

  “So you’re saying you work for him?”

  “I don’t want to, believe me. But what can I do? I broke out of juvie and had no place to go. No tengo casa.”

  I said, “What’s juvie? What’s that got to do with the monkeys?”

  “Lizzie, you don’t know how it is, living on the street, en la calle. I never knew from one day to the next where I’d eat, where I’d spend the night, where I’d end up. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I get it now,” I said. “You’re the one who weeds the garden, you keep everything watered, you mulch the plants. I didn’t think Henry could do that all by himself.”

  “Right. I do the garden. And until yesterday I did all this.” He gestured to the now silent warehouse. “My uncle and his helpers came for the monkeys. Todos los monos. Stuffed them all into two bags and took off. Left two dead ones on the floor.”

  “Hold on here,” Digger said. “This uncle of yours, Jeb, and his whatever-you-call-them, his accomplices, took the monkeys and what?”

  “Jammed them into his jet and flew out of here, en su avión. I don’t know where they were taking them, I just know there was a big fight about money. Not with this one guy Oskar, but with the guy who brings them in by boat.”