by Silas House
I’m looking forward to your next letter.
Sincerely,
River Dean Justice
October 17, 2008
Dear River,
I am sorry such trouble has come to you. I think if the top of Town Mountain is cut off, you and the rest of the people of Black Banks will be homesick forever. It is so sad about the trees. I have been thinking of them as they must have been when they were alive: birds singing from little nests, ants running up bark, squirrels sleeping in the shade of leaves, worms clinging to long, deep roots. It is terrible those creatures have lost their homes. It is terrible the trees have been burned and wasted. I don’t understand why those men in bulldozers didn’t at least save the wood.
I did not know that such things as mountaintop removal happened in America. I asked Ms. Bledsoe to teach our class about it. (Remember how Ms. Bledsoe was my Summer Program teacher? Now she’s my regular teacher!) Even though she is an English teacher, I think she will do it, because she is someone who cares when bad things happen — not just to herself but also to people she has never ever met. She had not heard of mountaintop removal before, so I showed her the photographs you sent. She said, “My God,” and went online and started reading. I have noticed that whenever she is upset she bites her lips and blinks a lot. She was doing that when I left to go to history.
I could see and hear and smell everything in your letter, as if I were right there with you. That made some parts extra nice and some parts extra scary. You are a very good writer. You are also realllllllllly brave. I have never been to the principal’s office. If I did go, I would be in trouble in two places — at school and home, both. Nobody would stand up for me like your mamaw stood up for you. At home, they would just yell and say I have to get good grades and do whatever the teacher says and be a good girl, no matter what. Even Kiku would say this, although he himself is always breaking rules in little ways. He will not admit it, but he thinks boys do not have to behave as good as girls.
I found an old cookie tin yesterday that someone had left out by the trash. I cleaned it and am using it to keep your letters safe. In New York City, when you don’t want something, you leave it on the sidewalk so someone else can find it. Mrs. Lau got a lot of her furniture that way. A long time ago she found a ficus tree in a little ceramic pot sitting on the sidewalk next to the trash. The ficus is very big now, on its third pot, and it stretches almost to Mrs. Lau’s ceiling. Cuba used to lift his leg and pee on it, looking very proud of himself, but he got such scoldings that he finally stopped. It seemed like it was a real pleasure for him, but I guess you can’t have a dog peeing indoors. How is Rufus, by the way? Please tell him I say hello.
I am worried the bulldozers will come even closer to your house with ten windows. I hope you will be careful in the woods and on the cliff where you feel nervous. Where I come from, even little children of two years run on the mountain paths without feeling scared. Dadi says when you are born on the edge of a cliff, that is where you always walk best. When she and I were in Delhi, walking on flat pavement made our knees ache, but I have become used to it here in New York.
Thank you for saying you might have thought me and Kiku were terrorists, too. That sounds funny but what I mean is that I am glad we tell each other the real whole truth, and I am glad we can change each other’s mind. I feel like I am learning a lot from you about Americans and what they’re really like. I would have been afraid to go to Kentucky before I met you. Kiku says that everyone in the South wants to hang us by our necks from trees. But since meeting you, I have told him he’s wrong. He doesn’t believe me, of course, because he thinks he’s never wrong.
I will say “close call” from now on. It didn’t make me mad that you told me the right way to say that. And I would definitely tell you if you had a booger hanging out of your nose.
You asked if things like your mountaintop removal also happen in Garhwal. They do. My family lost its farm because of a big dam that took twenty years to build. The farm was small, but it had been in our family so long that no one remembers the name of the ancestor who first turned its soil.
Even though the government came and moved all the people from our village, they didn’t flood the area right away. So we used to go back and visit the land and harvest the crops. The vegetables grew without us, especially the turnips. I only remember a few things about the farm. I remember Dadi and me picking beans in our bare feet and the cool dirt between our toes. I remember falling asleep under a banana tree and getting bitten by a spider. And once, Dadi and I were walking to the river and we saw big crowds of purple flowers on the hillside. I asked Dadi their name, and she said, “They are wildflowers. They would not want a name.”
I guess there are some things that are not meant to be tamed. Like mountains and wildflowers and my dadi.
When the dam came, Dadi had to move to Mussoorie, where Mummy-Daddy were teaching. I was not yet born, but Kiku remembers leaving the farm. He said everyone in our village cried. They shut the doors to their houses and left in a big group, herding the goats and buffalo. When they got to the Naya Road, some people went left and some people went right and then they were separated forever.
There is a big lake there now, and tourists come and rent boats that bob up and down in the water. They pose for pictures right above the spot where our village used to be. What’s weird is that the power from the dam goes to people in Delhi, which is five hundred miles away. Meanwhile, the lights in Mussoorie go out all the time. Often this would happen while Dadi and I were eating dinner. We would feel our way through a meal in the dark and keep talking and eating as if nothing had happened. Later we would light a candle and set it on the table, and I would do my homework and Dadi would practice her letters or knit. I love candles and the way they make a room peaceful when they flicker.
Did you know that the English word “jungle” is the same as the Hindi word for forest? There is something nice about two different languages sharing a word, don’t you think?
I told Mum about the trees you had seen, and she said that a long time ago, in the 1970s, when she was little, Dadi and many other village ghasayi (grass-cutting) women fought for the trees. They were led by a woman named Gaura Devi, who was Dadi’s childhood friend and who started the Chipko movement.
Mum said Gaura was the smartest person she ever met and was the one who taught her that the trees are our brothers and sisters. (Oh, and “chipko” means to hug.) What happened is that when the contractors came to cut the forest, the women and their children held hands and stood in circles around the trunks of trees. They hugged pine and oak and devdar and saved them with their own bodies. They sang songs and shouted, “First cut us, then the trees!”
The women did this after working all day, taking care of their families and animals, cutting grass and gathering wood and planting crops. The contractors were too ashamed to hurt women and children, so they left. Later some men came from the city and heard about the women, and they talked to the government and a law was passed that stopped the businesses from taking trees.
Most people have forgotten that the village women started the change, though. Most people have even forgotten Gaura Devi. Mum says this is how it is all over the world. She says often a woman does the work but a man gets the credit. She says the Chipko women were also forgotten because most of them did not know how to read and write, so people did not believe in their intelligence.
My dadi learned to read and write when she was fifty-two years old, and she is the smartest person I know.
It is funny how the government that stopped the bad tree cutting is the same government that created the bad dam. If a government can do one good thing, why can’t it do good things all the time?
Writing this to you has made me remember a song Dadi used to sing. I will translate it for you:
Come, rise, my brothers and sisters,
Save this mountain
Come plant new trees, new forests,
Decorate the earth
&nbs
p; I have just sung it aloud. I feel as if Dadi is close, and I also feel hollow inside, as if I am hungry but no food will help.
Today is Karva Chauth, which means Mum is fasting for Daddy to be healthy and safe. I should go and make dinner. The city lights are bright, and it takes a while for the moon to rise above the buildings here. Mum will be eating late. She can only stop her fast once she has seen the moon. This is the first year she will do Karva Chauth. She says it is not something Garhwali women follow, but this year she will do it because her husband is far away.
I have written a lot about home but I have not yet told you what is happening in Chinatown. You and your mountains remind me so much of Dadi. Some days I feel like I am living in two places at once. Garhwal in my mind and New York in my body. I do not yet know where my heart is. Good night for now, River.
October 20, 2008
I also don’t like when people wear too much perfume. I always know when the college girls on the fourth floor have come home, because I smell their tangerine scent coming in through the window. They own their apartment, but Kiku says they did not buy it themselves. Their daddies are rich, and that is why they have loud parties and put out cigarettes in the hallway.
We do not have the Piggly Wiggly in New York City. I was taking the subway with Kiku when I read your letter for the first time. Piggly Wiggly is such a funny name, I laughed out loud and couldn’t stop. A few people on the subway looked at me and either smiled or frowned, depending on their mood. Mostly, though, everyone just kept doing their own thing. You could stand on your head in the middle of a New York subway and no one would ask what you were doing. Piggly Wiggly. Piggly Wiggly. It is fun to say.
School is going pretty OK. I like English class with Ms. Bledsoe the best. I also like history and science and maths. I do not like homeroom because everyone talks, so it is hard to concentrate on reading. In science, I am lab partners with a girl named Valentina. She is from the Dominican Republic. She showed it to me on the classroom map. It is an island near Florida. She speaks Spanish and English and is always singing. When I tell her she sounds beautiful, she says, “Oh, forget about it,” and smacks me on the arm. She was in the school play last year and is auditioning this year. I had a lot of fun helping her “run lines” the other day.
This year, they are doing a show called A Chorus Line. It’s a New York City story about a bunch of actors auditioning for a play. Valentina says the Broadway version is realllllly dirty, so the drama teacher cut a bunch of songs and changed the words to others.
Valentina is trying out for the part of Maggie because she is what is called a soprano. If she gets the part, she will have a solo. Her big competition is Marvel Jenkins, who scares me because she is sooooo confident. Even when she makes a mistake, Marvel manages to look strong. Like the other day in science, we were comparing buoyancy in plain and salt water, and Marvel dropped a beaker and it broke. Glass went everywhere. I would have been very embarrassed if this had happened to me. In fact, I am always careful with the beakers because I do not want to drop one and have everyone stare. Marvel was texting when she dropped the beaker, so she should have gotten in BIG TROUBLE. But she just slapped her own cheeks and rolled her eyes and said in a cartoon voice, “Oh, no, Marvel, look what you did!” It was really funny and everyone started laughing — even the teacher. I don’t know how Marvel changed something naughty into something funny. I wish I could do that.
I am too shy to sing and dance in front of people, but Valentina saw me drawing in my notebook and said I could paint backdrops for the play. I am going to ask Kiku about it. I think I would like to be in the Drama Club. All the drama kids sit together at lunch, and I have heard that people kiss backstage. Apparently Jeffrey Mazano and Amanda Fritz got caught doing that last year. I don’t want to kiss anyone (blech) but it is interesting to hear about.
Today, as I was coming back from school, I saw the exterminator leaving the building. When I went up to Mrs. Lau’s, she said the exterminator had not come to her apartment or to ours or to the Woos’, on the second floor. She said the building manager must have said not to spray the rent-controlled apartments. They are hoping we will be overrun with bugs and will move out, so they can sell our apartments for a half million dollars each. That is also why they do not fix Mrs. Lau’s broken windows or the crack in our ceiling that leaks.
I still have not gotten The Outsiders from the library. All the copies are lost or missing. But I have put in a request for Old Yeller. I have finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the third time. It taught me a lot, and I cried all over its pages because it was so real. When I returned the book to the library, I thought about how maybe someone else will cry over it, too. I like that library books have secret lives. All those hands that have held them. All those eyes that have read them.
I keep forgetting to tell you that Mrs. Lau uses something called Tiger Balm when she has a headache. It is a minty kind of oil, and when you rub it on your skin, you feel warm and tingly and the pain goes away. If you do not have this in Black Banks, I will ask Mrs. Lau if I can put some in a bottle and send it for your mother. Mrs. Lau also puts Tiger Balm on her hands, which have arthritis from sewing in a factory for thirty-three years. The factory used to be on the next block, but it closed down after Mrs. Lau retired, and now there are fancy shops there and a high-rise luxury building.
I was very glad to read about you making friends with Mrs. Patel. Her first name, Chandra, means moon. I knew from her last name that she was Gujarati. Indian last names tell you things about a person, like what part of the country they are from or what their religion is. Now that you and Mrs. Patel are friends, I am thinking you will not make fun of the way I talk. And if you ever go someplace where you are the only person like yourself, you’ll see how it feels to be stared at, and maybe then you will better understand what I was saying.
Today I am writing from Mrs. Lau’s apartment. Cuba is lying across my feet and the parakeets are angry. Mrs. Lau is at the senior citizen center on Gold Street. On Monday nights, they have ballroom dancing. Now that Mrs. Lau is retired and in her “golden years” (this is what she calls them), she goes out and enjoys life. She eats dinner at the senior citizen center two nights a week. It is only $1.25 for a plate of food, either chicken and vegetable, beef and vegetable, or baked fish. Mrs. Lau likes that they have disposable plates. She used to go to the senior center on Essex Street, but they used real plates and didn’t clean them properly.
The sun sets so early these days. This week, the ivy on the building across the way has changed from green to red. The delis on Delancey are selling pumpkins and gourds, and the big oak on 12th is full of acorns. The mannequin in the new boutique next door is wearing a wool hat and a scarf and a big red sweater. Right now, at Mrs. Lau’s apartment, there are six pigeons looking in the window at me. They are wanting Mrs. Lau because she feeds them seed every morning and night. Whenever there is not seed on the fire escape, the pigeons wonder what is wrong, and they look in the window to see if Mrs. Lau is home. If they don’t see her in the living room, they fly to the bedroom window and look for her there. If she is not in the bedroom, they fly back to the living room and wait.
When the parakeets see the pigeons, they get reallllly mad. They scream and flap around their cages. I think it upsets them to see birds that are free. Parakeets are also very jealous animals. They don’t like for Mrs. Lau to love anyone but them. They pull on poor Cuba’s tail with their beaks if he stands too close to their cages. He wants so badly to be friends. He wags politely and tilts his head and cups his ears forward when they squawk. But only Xie-Xie will be his friend. She is a white parakeet with a yellow crest, and when she is out of her cage, she sits on Cuba’s rump and cleans herself. Sometimes she even lets Cuba lick her. She looks a little bit sick about it but also like she knows he does that because he is a dog. When Cuba comes back from a walk, she flaps prettily to show him she is glad, and she makes a crackling sound in the back of her throat. She doesn’t make that sound f
or anybody but Cuba. Mrs. Lau says if a dog and a parakeet can love each other, then so can anybody. I think she is right.
October 22, 2008
I don’t know if it is OK to tell you this since you are a boy. Mum and Dad and Kiku would say it is not OK. But I would like to tell you since we agreed to be our real true selves with each other. Well, here goes. Yesterday it was very hot, as if it were the middle of summer. I had on a pair of culottes that came up to my knees. A boy in my maths class said my legs were nasty and hairy and asked me if they had razors in India. Everybody laughed, and I pretended I didn’t care and kept on working. Reepa, an Indian girl who was born in New York, was sitting near me in class and she laughed, too. Later I saw her in the bathroom, and while I was washing my hands she stood next to me and said that her cousins in Bengal also didn’t shave their legs, but no one noticed because they kept them covered. I didn’t say anything. It made me mad that she laughed at me in front of everyone but tried to be nice in private.
When I got home, I was upset and told Kiku what had happened, and I asked if I could borrow his razor. At first he said no, but all of a sudden he changed his mind. We only have a shower, not a bathtub, so he filled the bucket we use to catch leaks with warm water, put the lid down on the toilet, and told me to sit there with my legs in the bucket. He showed me how to apply the shaving cream and how to shake the razor in the water to get the hairs off. Then he left and shut the bathroom door, but he stayed just outside and talked to me about a fight he’d had with Ana Maria. It really helped me to hear his voice. . . . Oh, my gosh, River. Shaving was kind of scary. I thought I would cut myself and bleed to death. I know boys have to shave their faces, but faces are small and legs are long. It took forever to do one leg, and then I still had the other to go! When I was finished, Kiku came in and checked my work. He said, “You missed some hairs on your knees. Girls always do that.” So I shaved them off and wondered if he has seen Ana Maria’s knees up close. I think he has.