by Jon Scieszka
My mother, hoarse from screaming, whispered that from then on at least one of my brothers must escort me to school and back home every day. They were to take me everywhere, so potential bullies would see that I had tall, sinewy brothers. They were to buy sugarcane cubes until I requested something else, which I never did. And most of all, they were to be nice to me.
These conditions were to exist until my hair regained its bowl shape. I kept my hat on much longer than necessary.
A Family Song
Anyone watching us this one evening would have glowed with fuzzy feelings. An almost cool spring night. A satisfying dinner. We were listening to the radio before bed. Elton John came on, “I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words how wonderful life is while you’re in the world.” One brother joined in. They all had chosen to learn English instead of French at school. Another brother joined in, voice as high as Sir Elton’s.
Somehow someone flipped “I hope you don’t mind” into Hà đô thì to má. The lines really did sound alike. Hà is my name at home. Translation: Hà is chubby, thus has fat cheeks. Over and over the refrain went. Elton John would not stop. Neither would my brothers. Howling and singing, pausing just long enough to let me in on a secret: They had sent my school picture to Elton John and inspired this song. Now the world knew the size of my face.
My mother watched me, waiting for tears. My brothers gained momentum even after Elton John was long gone. I started to cry but instantly recognized an opportunity. I inhaled and stopped my tears. Pretending their lyrics were hilarious, I sang louder than all of them. What were hurtful words when I could be one with my brothers?
Reading
No matter how busy my mother was, she always came home in the evenings. After a dinner filled with quick-math calculations and radio time filled with deafening interpretations, my mother was ready for quiet. So we read. My brothers were responsible for selecting books from the library.
For themselves they brought home every book about every animal. For me and my twinsy sis, books about fairies and girls who won praise by doing chores. I was in first grade, reading but not fast. Vietnamese required sounding out not just every letter in a word but also every little diacritical mark around the vowels within that word. The good thing was every word looked exactly the way it should sound, so once you learned the phonetic scheme, reading was as easy as breathing.
Usually my mother got her wish. Quietly we would brush teeth, read in bed, and glide into sleep. This one time my brothers brought home Tintin, a comic about a boy with hair in the shape of a fishhook. A little white dog was forever by his side. I picked it up on my way to bed, intending to browse the drawings then comment on how my brothers were still stuck in picture books. But . . . the boy was clinging to a branch over a cliff, his dog climbing toward him with a rope in its mouth. The boy was on a raft surrounded by sharks, his dog barking at the fins. Wow!!! I ran to the bed shared with my sister and hid under the sheer sheet. I read as fast as I could, but every word took forever.
My brothers pounced. Sheet, pillows, my sister went flying. I curled into a ball and held on to Tintin. My mother, whose sighs rang out between my brothers’ yells, rubbed my back. I would not unfurl, so she leaned down and we whispered.
“I must read it or I might die.”
“Let’s leave death be, my child. The book is your brothers’ choice, correct?”
“I have to. I have to. I have to.”
She sat up. More sighs. “Could you allow your youngest sister this book, only for this night?”
A pounding force of explanations that undoubtedly conveyed “Noooooo!”
They said: The book was a one-night loan. Too many boys wanted it. It was the latest one translated from French. If they didn’t return it tomorrow, they would lose their rank to be among the first ten to read the next translated issue. I had my own book. Get my sweat off theirs. They had to read it now and get to sleep. Did our mother not want them well-rested for school?
“Perhaps you can read it to her,” our mother attempted.
“Nooooo!”
I too joined the chorus. I was not a baby; I can read to myself, slowly, but I can do it.
Sighing extra loudly now, our mother stated a compromise. For just that night, my brothers and I would take turns reading one frame at a time. The reader was allowed the parts of the narrator and the speaking bubbles. Tomorrow my brothers would check out a back issue of Tintin for me and whatever else for themselves. We would all deal with future translations later.
“Either that or we all go to bed right now.”
I agreed immediately. My brothers did so only after our mother threatened no soccer for a week.
We read. I couldn’t really pay attention to what my brothers read because I was counting ahead to my frame and practicing each word to myself. When it was my turn to read out loud, I still stumbled while my brothers twitched and paced and groaned. What I caught of the story danced off the pages. Even my twinsy sis put down her fairy tale to listen. For once, the universe took a minuscule turn in my favor.
A Swim
Hot did not begin to describe summers in South Vietnam. The humidity dragged down your bones and enlarged your pores. A constant sticky film enveloped your skin. Add to that a dry spell where just dust and heat waves poured down from the sky, and your skin began to trap every dirty particle in the air, the way gluey tape trapped flies. The only cure was a swim. If I only knew how.
We lived near a river, making my mother very nervous. She reiterated countless times that none of us were to swim there or anywhere else. We could not even venture onto the cement bridge that spanned the river. To insure that we listened, she never bought us bathing suits.
As if that would stop a sweaty pack of boys. They learned to swim; I don’t know how. While spying, I had seen them not only swim in the swirly, brown water but also dive in the shape of a croissant off the forbidden bridge. Being boys, their shorts doubled as swim trunks.
That hottest of summers I was in second grade. My baby fat was melting off, my muscles firming, and I was certain I could do anything my brothers could.
At the end of our street was our friends’ house, which had the river as the backyard. Boys my brothers’ ages lived there, and also a girl named Lulu, my best friend.
Not only could Lulu swim, she could hold her breath underwater longer than any of the boys, and she could climb on top of an inflated inner tube and dive deeper than them all. I cheered while standing on shore.
She knew my mom’s rule, and usually she swam just a little, then climbed out and played with me. But it was an especially hot day. And she had an extra bathing suit.
In blue-and-white polka dots, I inched down the bank. The gravel stabbed my feet, but I told myself to be brave. The others had stepped on the same sharp pebbles and survived, and they were swimming and laughing, so by universal logic I should be able to too. I went in up to my knees. The water was not cool, but cool enough to instantly suck away heat. When I was up to my chest, the weight of the summer lifted. A jolt of happiness ran up my spine.
My brothers by now had noticed me. They swam closer but did not speak. I knew better than to ask for help from the pack, still mad that I had permanently invaded their Tintin time. It was Lulu who gave instructions. “Pedal like you’re riding a bike, and claw at the water like a dog digging for a bone.”
I did and sank. Somehow I could no longer find the bottom of the river. One minute I stood on mushy earth and the next I was clawing and pedaling in an expansive wet space that became wider and looser as I tried to hug it. So this was floating. It felt great. The only problem was every time I needed to take a breath, I drank the river. By the time my stomach could hold no more, I was thrashing around like a bird caught in a net.
Hands yanked me up. My body was thrown on an inflated inner tube. Voices yelled for me to hold on. I took my first breath without water. Air, it was delicious.
I looked out at the crowd; each face
was ashen, especially my brothers’. One of them said something about waiting to see if my body would float. Obviously it had not. Another said don’t tell our mother. Duh! Another said quit trying to force what can’t be. I got mad.
My brothers pulled my float ashore. As soon as I could touch squashy mud, I let go. They could have dragged me out of the water, but there were witnesses. They could have abandoned me, but what would they tell our mother if I went missing? They narrowed their eyes and calculated the fastest solution. I narrowed mine with equal determination. By then I was learning fairness could be maneuvered all sorts of directions.
We stared. They said something about how drowning was an awful way to go. I stood firmly on mud and folded my arms. Finally a compromise. They would teach me how to swim if I would get out within an hour. So began instructions that greatly varied from Lulu’s. Not bicycle pedals but duck feet. Not doggy claws but butterfly wings. I stayed above water, mostly. The times when I did drink more of the river, I was glad to have my brothers nearby.
Learning to Bike
That sweet scene from childhood. A bike, training wheels, a helmet, a hesitant child, a soothing adult hanging on to the bike, not letting it wobble, reassuring the child that learning comes in steps and with each step the adult will let go only a little more.
I didn’t get that.
It was the end of the monsoon season but not yet chokingly hot. I was in third grade and had been nagging my brothers to let me ride one of their bikes. In my memory all bikes in Vietnam came in one style—big.
This one day my brothers finally agreed, but no matter what happened I was to suck it up and not cry. Yes, yes, I screamed. They even told me to forgo my nap and follow them. My mouth fell open while my feet shuffled behind theirs.
That they kept pushing their oldest, rustiest bike up a long, long hill should have been a clue. But remember, I was enchanted. At the top of the hill was a bridge choked with mopeds, bicycles, pedestrians, and occasional cars, jeeps, trucks, all letting up only during nap time. A paved road ran downhill alongside houses where people lived upstairs and set up shops that faced the street: bicycle-tire repair, watch repair, French bread, fried dough, fruit shakes, and numerous offerings of sweet beans and coconut milk. These shops were closed in the afternoons.
We stopped at the highest point on the paved road, right before getting on the bridge that our mother said I could not yet cross. My brothers turned the bike around, facing it down the hill, and in unison said, “Get on.”
I should have been alarmed. The paved road started high and ran on and on, but my brothers’ words rang out like a spell, so I got on. The bike wobbled while they held it. I couldn’t reach the pedals, but my brothers said I wouldn’t need to. They had me hold on to the handlebars but neglected to mention the hand brakes. I had never sat on a bike before, so I also did not think about the brakes.
I envisioned they would hold on to the bike and run alongside me as I smiled and glided and enjoyed the wind in my hair.
I didn’t get that.
Instead my brothers let go. That my hair immediately whooshed back surprised me. That I was actually sitting upright on a bike, a huge one at that, thrilled me. The paved road was long. The bike gained speed. I could feel not just my hair but my skin whooshing behind me. I was still upright. At that point my brothers yelled something about brakes. I might have replied, “Wheeeee!” Then I left them behind.
I finally must have lifted my gaze beyond the fast-spinning front wheel because, with the road going down down down and the bike going faster faster faster, I began to panic. How would I stop?
The bike helped out by crashing into a dessert stand. Sweet beans and coconut milk flew up and found my hair. Little bowls and spoons became birds; chairs and tables flipped over; the owners ran from the back of the house, eyes still puffy with sleep, and screamed alongside neighbors, non-napping kids, my breathless brothers, and soon the police. Let’s not describe the rest of the afternoon other than to say by the time our mother returned home, the gooey beans and tapioca threads and coconut milk had congealed into a sticky hat hardening on my head. And a gigantic, blue, bloody knot was growing out of my right knee, which had hit first.
In the end our after-nap snacks ended. Those coins contributed to repairs. My brothers did not touch their, or anyone else’s, soccer ball for an entire dry season. I had to spend hours bettering my vinelike penmanship.
Later, when I did learn to ride a bike, I would glide down a long hill and try to reenact that first joyride. It had happened so fast, that whoosh down the hill, my hair, skin, spirit touching the clouds. Try as I might, the feeling couldn’t be recaptured. Biking was now more steady, more grounded, more predictable at every turn. At this point we had resettled in Alabama.
In April 1975, when I was ten years old, the Communists from the north rolled their tanks into Saigon and won the war. Because my father had fought for the south, my family and I had to flee Vietnam. I can’t say precisely what would have happened if we had stayed, but according to my mother, my siblings and I would have become second-class citizens, not allowed into colleges, not allowed careers.
We ended up in Montgomery, Alabama, and felt as if we were second-class citizens there. In the mid-1970s it seemed we were the first Asians anyone in town had seen outside of television, which was showing continuous images of war refugees screaming and crying. The first day of school, classmates pulled my arm hairs to make sure I was real. Some shouted at me, but I didn’t understand English yet. Within weeks I could guess that they were making fun of me. Probably everyone in my family was experiencing something similar in school or at work. But we didn’t talk about it. We were in shock.
The kind of laughter that had made my brothers so irresistible suddenly faded; in its place lingered a tired silence.
I was no longer following my brothers around. Instead I spent hours with the Vietnamese-English dictionary in a maddening rush to cram a new language into my brain. When I did look up, I noticed my siblings were doing the same.
Within a year we were speaking English well enough to be understood. Each of us had branched out and made our own friends. My two oldest brothers went off to college, officially ending what had once been a loud, sweaty force. Even if they had remained a pack, just being in Alabama diluted my brothers’ appeal. For one thing heat was missing. Alabama was actually cold during some months, forcing us into our first winter coats. Without heat we relinquished naps, wake-up snacks, year-round swims, and, without truly being conscious of it, our old selves.
Now, almost four decades later, we have all established individual lives. My brothers are scattered along the coast of California while I live north of New York City. The northeast is not known for heat waves, but once in a while in July or August this region does get slammed with a Saigon kind of heat—humid, sticky, heavy, hot. On those days I wander to Croton Landing, which overlooks the Hudson River. No one swims in the Hudson, but sitting there, with noise and laughter coming from park goers, I can easily relive my one Saigon-river swim and my childhood days with my pack of brothers.
MOJO, MOONSHINE, AND THE BLUES
BY ELIZABETH PARTRIDGE
It was a sweltering Sunday in August 1941 when word reached Muddy Waters: A white man was looking for him. Uh-oh, thought Muddy. This is it. They done found out I’m sellin’ whiskey.
Muddy was twenty-eight years old, living and sharecropping on the Stovall Plantation, deep in the Mississippi delta. Besides working the cotton and corn, trapping furs, and hopping freight trains to harvest nearby crops, Muddy made a little cash on the side selling moonshine.
It was a hardscrabble life, and what he lived for was music. Lunchtime he’d leave the fields and head to the nearest house with a radio, so he could hear Sonny Boy Williamson play live on the radio station for fifteen minutes. Muddy listened to any show with blues or church music—King Biscuit Time, Mother’s Best Flour—he loved them all. At the local hardware store, he bought “race records”—albums
made especially for African Americans—and played them on a neighbor’s phonograph or at the local juke joint. If there was live music anywhere close enough to ride a horse to, Muddy was sure to show up. He learned to play the harmonica, then the guitar, sliding a bottleneck over the strings with his left hand and strumming with his right.
But today, with the white man looking for him, Muddy was worried about his moonshine, not his music. Muddy didn’t want the white man finding him at home, near his bootleg whiskey stash. He headed down to the plantation store to meet him on neutral ground.
The man introduced himself, said he was Alan Lomax, and he was collecting songs all over the South for the Library of Congress. He’d heard Muddy was a good blues player, and he asked where his guitar was. Muddy was thrown off. Was this a trick by the white man to act friendly and trap him? Lomax pulled out a guitar from the back of his car, played some blues, and said he wanted to hear Muddy play. Muddy was still suspicious but agreed to go with Lomax back to his house, where his guitar was.
At the house the man asked for a drink of water and then drank from Muddy’s cup. Not a white man doing this, Muddy thought. Whites never drank from the same cup as blacks. This is too much, he’s going too far. In his mind Muddy was still thinking, Oh, he’ll do anything to see can he bust you.
Lomax showed Muddy the contraption he had in the backseat: a huge recording machine. The recorder was too big to move, but Lomax pulled out the long batteries, set them on the front porch, and ran a wire to a microphone in Muddy’s front room. Finally Muddy was convinced: This white man was for real. Sitting in the front room, Muddy recorded a song he’d made up earlier, “Country Blues,” onto the thick glass disc spinning on the machine out in the car.
Lomax played the song back. Muddy was astonished. He thought, Man, I can sing. It sounded as good as what he heard on the radio. Lomax wanted to know how he’d come to make up the song. “Well, I just felt blue, and the song fell into my mind,” Muddy replied. “I started to sing and went on with it.” For the next few hours, Lomax recorded Muddy singing songs, some he’d made up himself, like “I Be’s Troubled” and “Number One Highway Blues.”