“It’s kinda hard at first.” Lucy giggled, holding on to my arm.
I tried to roll. It was like walking in the pig yard, heavy and sloppy. But I felt so tall. Like a giant! The tallest girl in the world! Like my mama!
“Let’s go outside,” I said.
Lucy looked toward the door. “We’re not supposed to.” She shuffled her skating feet. “Mom’ll get mad. We’re supposed to stay here while she’s working in her office.”
Perfect. I was grounded, so I was supposed to play inside. But I had to make Mrs. Buckworth really, really mad. Maybe it was even possible to run away on roller skates, like a circus star. To roll and roll and roll and roll away. “Just for one minute?”
“Well, I guess a minute is okay. We have to be quiet though. Okay, Betti?”
I nodded and threw my orange bag over my shoulder, and then we tiptoed into the hallway in our roller skates. I clunked behind Lucy, holding on to the wall. My circus dress was getting all clumped up around my knees. Rooney woke up from his nap on the sofa and Puddles stretched and itched herself. We passed a door that was open a crack. Lucy looked back at me and said “Shhhh,” but I had to peek inside.
Mrs. Buckworth was sitting in front of a machine that stared out like a strange square face. Her hands were moving fast. And then they stopped. She sighed and mumbled things to herself and chewed on a pencil. And then her hands moved fast again. Click click click.
Mrs. Buckworth didn’t even notice as Lucy and I slipped out the front door and hobbled down the front steps. Lucy was already ahead of me, rolling back and forth down the sidewalk, with Roller Derby Tina clutched tightly in one hand. “Look at me,” she tried to squeal quietly. “Watch me, Betti!”
I wanted to go faster. Step step, roll roll, but Lucy had no idea how clumsy I was in my own country. Rooney kept biting at the jaggedy threads on the bottom of my circus dress, which made things worse. My hands swatted at the air. “Shoo, shoo!”
Lucy skated around in circles; she went toward the sidewalk and over the cracks. “Betti, watch this!” She held one foot up and then the other.
We skated down the cement path to where the Buckworths’ yard ended. Then we kept going, down the block past all the houses that looked like the Buckworths’ house. I felt happy for a second, rolling away. Unfortunately I didn’t know that the sidewalk was a small hill. And we were rolling down. Not much, just a little. But my rolling feet started to move on their own.
Faster ...
And faster ...
And then even faster ...
When Lucy saw me, her mouth made a little “o” as my arms started waving in huge circles. “Wait, Betti!” I heard her scream. “Wait for me!” She skated super fast to catch up and her free hand reached out for mine. Finally ... she grabbed it. Her fingers squeezed my hand.
Rooney caught us too, and Puddles was barking like crazy.
“Help!” I said, but I was too late and my voice was too small. “Help,” I tried again. “Help! HELP!”
“Hellllllp!” Lucy squealed, as if we were playing, as if she’d never had so much fun in her whole life.
“HOLD ON, GIRLS!” A voice suddenly called behind us. “I’M COMING!”
Lucy and I were probably going faster than an airplane. My hair was flying and so were Lucy’s ponytails. Rooney’s ears flopped and flapped as we flew past trees and yards, and we dodged a lady walking with a pink baby.
“EEEEEEEEEK!”
I made a flying leap. Lucy had to fly with me because her hand was attached to mine. We landed in a jungle. My head was on a dirt mound, and tall grass was all around us.
Perfect quiet. It was as if I’d flown straight home to my country.
“Betti Babo? Are you okay?”
Then I saw the thick pink glasses and the knotty hair. Mayda was holding a plastic blue dog in her hands and she looked like a giant. “Hold on, Betti!” She disappeared and I heard her holler to the porch next door, “Nanny!”
“Girls! Are you okay?” Mrs. Buckworth’s face was hovering over us.
“Are they okay?” Nanny called out as she inched her way over to us in her slipper shoes.
My enormous roller skates had flown off and disappeared into Mayda’s jungle grass. Roller Derby Tina’s head had flown off too.
One of my arms had a little blood on it. It hurt, a little, but at least now Mrs. Buckworth would really know that she picked the wrong leftover kid. Betti gets in trouble even when she’s grounded. Betti probably broke something else. Betti probably lost more toes or poked out her good eye. Horrible.
But it turned out that Mrs. Buckworth wasn’t mad at me. She was worried about Lucy. Lucy was crying and whimpering and holding her leg against her chest. “Ow ow ow ow ow ow.”
It wasn’t supposed to go this way at all. I was supposed to get in big trouble but I wasn’t supposed to make Lucy broken.
Another Broken Kid
“HOSPEE TALL.”
That’s where Lucy had to go. That is where broken people get fixed.
Mayda found the lost roller skates, and my orange bag, and the doll head in her grass, while Mrs. Buck-worth took Lucy’s skate off her foot, which was suddenly fat and ugly.
Nanny told Mrs. Buckworth that they’d watch out for me while Mrs. Buckworth took Lucy to the hospital.
“It’s no trouble,” said Nanny. “We’re quite fond of Babo Betti. We met her at Day Camp.”
“I want to teach her English,” said Mayda.
Mrs. Buckworth looked at Mayda, and then at Nanny, and then at me. Totally confused. “Well, okay. If you’re absolutely sure.”
“Of course,” said Nanny.
“Okay,” I said. Because I was afraid that Mrs. Buck-worth would make me go to the hospital too. I did not want to get fixed.
I stood in the tall grass and checked my circus dress for damage. Only a few new small holes and a green streak down the arm from grass. After Mrs. Buckworth took Lucy to the hospital, Mayda walked toward her house and looked over her shoulder. “Don’t you want to come in, Betti?”
I sucked in my breath. “Okay.”
So the three of us, Mayda and Nanny and I, walked slower than turtles up Mayda’s porch steps. There was an old crooked swing on the porch and a dead plant in a can. When Mayda opened the front door I was afraid that it might fall off, like the door on Big Uncle’s taxi.
The inside of Mayda’s house was small and everything looked like it was about a hundred years old. Nothing looked fluffy like the Buckworths’ house. The sofa didn’t match the pillows. It had holes in it and some metal wires stuck up from the bottom. The fluffy stuff on the floor didn’t look like grass at all. It was stained, and there were pictures on the walls but the pictures all looked faded and lopsided. I didn’t even see a TV anywhere!
I loved Mayda’s house!
Mayda gave me some flip-flops to put on, and Nanny had me sit on a chair in the kitchen. Mayda got a wet warm cloth and wiped off the spot of blood. Nanny ran her old wrinkled hand gently over my arm and put some medicine on my wound.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweet girl, if this stings.” Nanny put a plastic square on my arm that stuck. “It’s not more than a scrape, but it’ll sure be sore for the night.” Then she patted my arm and said: “Now, how about helping Mayda and me bake some cookies? Cookies might be just what the doctor ordered.”
I wondered if the doctor ordered Lucy to get cookies too. Maybe that was an American cure to make her better. I hoped she was eating a lot of cookies so she wouldn’t die.
I got to crack three eggs into a bowl. Mayda dropped in little pieces of dark candy called “choclit chips.” We both put in flour and took turns stirring. Mayda had flour all over her face but I tried not to giggle. We dropped balls of cookie onto a pan and then Mayda said we got to lick our spoons. Ick. Yummy.
Then Mayda and Nanny started asking questions about my country. I didn’t know how they even knew about my country, or how they knew that I came from my country. But somehow they did.
“Nanny and I have read all about it in the newspaper. We read every day.”
“Absolutely horrible!” Nanny clenched her wrinkled, spotty hands and her face turned sad. Or mad. It was hard to say.
“Yeah.” Mayda nodded. “It sounds so dangerous.”
“It is not bad.” I shrugged, even though I was thinking about the BOOMS and hiding in the dark. “It is very, very beautiful. I live on a big ... moterr sickle.”
Mayda looked confused. “A motorcyle?”
“I mean, palace. My dad is Royal Prince. He is green.”
“Goodness,” said Nanny.
“Green?” asked Mayda.
“And ... I am just ... on a trip. A tour.” I tried very hard to show a fake smile like the pretty people in the Buckworths’ book about my country. “Here. In America.”
“A trip? Really? You’re going back there?” Mayda’s mouth was wide open.
“The war ... will end,” I told her. “After summer. Summer is best time in whole year.”
“This summer? After so many years? Well, I certainly hope so,” Nanny said.
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Fortunately that’s when Mayda handed me a cookie and a cup of milk. I took a long time chewing my manure patty so I wouldn’t have to answer their hard questions. I said “Ick” and “Yummy.”
Nanny shook her head sadly. “Well, we’ll miss you after the summer if you go back home. We certainly will.”
Mayda sighed. “Yeah, I thought you might be in the fifth grade with me. When school starts.”
“Mayda’s going to be a new student at Betsy Ross Elementary.”
Mayda looked at her feet. She played with her fingers. She didn’t look happy about being a new student. Not happy at all. “Yeah. Another new school.” She rolled her eyes and looked into space. “Ugh.”
Which must’ve been the word for when you get the locked lip sickness and you can’t talk anymore.
Nanny was knitting a green and yellow sock. She patted a spot on the sofa for Mayda and me to sit next to her.
Mayda sat down, and I was starting to sit down too, but I tripped over a big pile of books next to the sofa and stubbed my toes.
“Oh! Are you okay, Betti?” asked Mayda. “Sorry, our house is kind of messy. My dad and I don’t have much time to clean.”
“That is okay. I like messy. My country is messy.”
Mayda smiled, just a little. She didn’t care about the mess either. Not really.
“It is my eye.” I pointed at my fish eye as I sat down right between them. “Sometimes my eye makes me fall. It is very broken.”
Nanny touched my knee with her hundred-year-old wrinkly hand. “Oh, I’m in the same boat, Betti! My eyes. I’m practically blind as a bat!”
I didn’t know what boats and bats had to do with being blind, but I nodded.
“No.” Mayda smiled at me. “I think Nanny secretly sees things better than most people, Betti.”
“Well, I do have a good imagination, that’s true.” Nanny tapped my knee. “Even though my eyes don’t work, I’m sure that my imagination sees things better than they really are. Maybe that’s the same with you, Betti. With your eye? I think that colors are brighter in my bad ol’ eyes. Reds are redder and greens are greener. And the sun shines most of the time, even on rainy days.”
Nanny stared off into space as if she was looking at something very important. Her eyes were milky and they didn’t even blink.
That’s when I knew that Nanny had a magic nation, where the sun shined all the time.
“Do you know what’s weird?” Mayda said to me. “Nanny says that she knows exactly what I look like even though she can’t really see me.”
“I know that you’re a very beautiful girl.”
“Ha! You’re so wrong!”
Mayda and Nanny laughed a private laugh, just like Auntie Moo and I used to laugh.
My good eye got watery. Suddenly I dug around in my orange bag and found my Empty Book. My letter from Auntie Moo fell on the floor. I quickly picked it up, dusted it off, and returned it to its important place on the last page. I opened my book on my lap, and Mayda and Nanny leaned in to see.
Mayda pointed to the very first picture. “It’s a very tall woman, Nanny,” explained Mayda. “And she has a tail.”
Nanny put her hand on my picture as if she was seeing everything: the circus lights, and the smell of the trees. The sounds and the colors and my mama.
“A tail? My goodness!” exclaimed Nanny. “You do see very pretty things with your eyes, don’t you, sweet girl. A marvelous imagination!”
My face turned pink. I really wanted a marvelous magic nation, just like Nanny!
Mayda carefully turned the pages. “What’s this, Betti?”
“It is a ... Merrr-made. And many shoes.”
“How ’bout this one?”
“It is a fairy pulling out teeth.”
Mayda smiled.
“This is a teeny-tiny puppet head. In my hand.”
Mayda nodded and thought about things. Then she pointed.
“And this is ... mush. Mrs. Buckworth made mush. I said ‘ick’ and ‘yummy’ and ate it all.”
Mayda and Nanny laughed, nice laughs, and I had to smile too, just a little.
Then Mayda ran to the kitchen. She rummaged through a whole bunch of mess on the table and ran back with a colored pen. Starting at the very beginning, she wrote new words in my Empty Book next to my old words.
Empty Book.
Microwave
Refrigerator
Kitchen
Television or TV
Living Room
Basement
Mermaid
It was almost like when Auntie Moo gave me English lessons.
Cookie.
“Koooky?” I repeated.
“Cookie,” said Mayda. Then she wrote: “Betti likes to eat cookies.”
I took a big bite of my chocolate chip cookie, and smiled with puffed-out cheeks. “Yummy.”
Mayda taught me lots of new words, and lots of new sentences on paper. “Fifth grade” and “Betti is visiting America,” and “Betti hopes the war ends soon,” and “Mayda hopes that Betti stays here so they can be friends.” I asked Mayda how to spell some very important sentences too, like “Betti thinks that America is too big,” and “America is crazy.” These sentences made Mayda and Nanny laugh a lot.
Auntie Moo was my school, but I didn’t think it would hurt if Mayda taught me just a little. Just for now.
Fat Feet and Disco
MR. BUCKWORTH CAME to pick me up in the wagon and drove me back to the Buckworths’ house. He made me something called “peeeza” in the oven. Pizza was round and cut up in slivers like pieces of the moon. I ate lots of slivers, but Rooney and Puddles liked pizza even more because they chomped half the box when Mr. Buckworth wasn’t looking.
Mr. Buckworth told me about his day as Vice President and he asked me questions about Day Camp. “Are the kids nice? How do you like Ms. Stacy? Did you do anything fun, Betti?”
I took a deep breath and began: “Ms. Stacy, she said I was a pig. A boy has bars on his teeth, like this.” I put my fingers in my mouth so I could show Mr. Buckworth big scary fangs. “There is dudes with hats. We play kickball. But my games is better. Cindi and Snake Lady, but girl named Tabitha say, ‘I am not an elephant.’ She get mad because I am very mean girl. Then I kick ball and dude say, ‘You are out.’ So I was very, very horrible, Mr. Buckworth. I kick dude. No reason. I get grounded. And then ... I was very bad again because I make Lucy roller-skate. I say, ‘Let’s go outside.’ She got broken. It is because of me. Horrible.”
Mr. Buckworth’s eyebrows tilted and he itched his head.
“And I got broken too.” That’s when I held out my wounded arm.
Mr. Buckworth made a tsk tsk sound. “Roller skates ...” He shook his head as he looked at my tiny scratch up close. “They’re pretty fun, aren’t they? But they cause some bad accidents.�
��
I nodded. I was all ready for Mr. Buckworth to tell me that he wanted to choose another leftover kid. Immediately.
Instead, he said, “It’s not your fault that Lucy got hurt, Betti. Don’t think that. But, you girls definitely need to have one of us with you while you’re skating, okay? From now on?”
I sighed.
Then Mr. Buckworth forgot about horrible me in about one second, and he got a little smile on his face. “Did Lucy tell you that your mom and I used to disco skate when we were your age?”
I scrunched my eyes. “What is ‘disss-ko’?”
“Like this.” Mr. Buckworth danced around the kitchen as if he had baby mice in his fancy bank suit. Laughing, he grabbed my hand and made me disco too. My feet were clunky as he twirled me around the table and waved his arms all over the place and hummed some strange disco song. Mr. Buckworth was sort of funny.
And definitely crazy.
While we were pointing our fingers at the ceiling and shaking our hips, the front door opened with Lucy in Mrs. Buckworth’s arms. Lucy’s foot was wrapped in a brown cloth and it looked about five times bigger than her other foot.
“She’s sound asleep, poor thing,” whispered Mrs. Buckworth.
The Buckworths walked into Lucy’s pink room and laid Lucy in her bed. I followed, and so did the dogs.
“What did the doctor say?” asked Mr. Buckworth.
“It’s a sprain,” answered Mrs. Buckworth.
I had no idea what a sprain was, but it sounded horrible.
Everyone I knew was broken, and now Lucy was broken too.
Soon I walked to my yellow room and slid my Empty Book out from under my pillow. I had to draw before I forgot anything: a kickball with a jaggedy frown face. A doll with no head. Flying girls. My bloody wounded arm. Auntie Moo would definitely be worried. She’d understand everything. I touched her letter in the back of my book. I wished she could see the world as I was seeing it.
After I finished picture number five—Lucy looking like a freaky monster with an elephant foot—the Buckworths tapped softly on my door and poked their heads in.
Betti on the High Wire Page 12