“Danny. What about you? Your dad will be at the bakery, right?”
He looks away, jaw clenched. “I’m not going back.” He wipes his eyes real fast, and I know he hopes I don’t notice. “There’s nothing I want. There’s nothing I need. I got everything I want and need right here.”
……
Forty minutes later, we’re parked beside cars plastered with MAGA bumper stickers. Jane’s neighborhood is divided into lots, each with two trash cans waiting for pick up, a mailbox, a front lawn, and a rancher with an American flag. These are the kind of houses little kids draw with a lemon-yellow sun shining over them. In the back are small fenced yards, each containing a doghouse and a barbecue grill. We instantly consider suicide.
“Oh my God. I’m having a desperate desire to go to a mall!” Baldwin acts like they’re flying backwards, pulled by an invisible vortex. “I need to buy clothes. Help me!”
Sarah grabs them by their suspenders and brings them back to safety.
“Tell me about it. I had to live there. It’s that one.” Jane points to a rancher on the west end, with a sign that reads “God and Country” on the porch.
“So help us God.” I sign the cross. “Let’s give this a shot. What’s your goal?”
“Besides my favorite flannels? Like personal stuff? I want a picture of my brother. He went into the army. I’m so proud of him. I miss him so much. If I’d want to see anybody again, it would be him. He’s stationed in Virginia last I heard.”
The door to Jane’s house opens and out walks an old man collecting firewood. I pray so freakin hard this is another relative Jane didn’t mention. But Jane’s facial expression tells us all that he’s a stranger.
“Hey! Hey!” Jane barrels at full speed to this man’s porch, and we follow on her heels praying we won’t all be shot dead.
The old man jumps up fast and backs up to his door and hopefully not the rifle he’s got behind it.
“Who are you?” Jane says.
“Who am I? None of your damn business, and I believe you are the strangers on my property.”
“Where are the Redfields?”
Something in her tone makes the man’s eyes seem to soften. His voice is quieter when he says, “Why don’t you all come up here and we can talk without shouting.”
A neighbor steps out onto his porch. “You all right, Bert?”
“I’m all right.”
We advance on the leafless lawn onto the perfectly swept porch. Bert’s neighbor, apparently the neighborhood watch, gives us a once-over and plants himself on his porch.
“So,” Bert says sitting in a rocking chair, “the Redfields moved. They got stationed in Germany.”
Jane doesn’t say a word. We all wait to see what will happen. Then she erupts.
Wailing, Jane runs off the porch and down the street with Baldwin in tow.
“Hey, sir,” I say. “Did they leave any forwarding information? That’s the Redfields’ kid.”
“Yeah? He looks like his dad. Or did.” Crackly laugh.
“Sir?” I ask, steering him back from the road to dickdom.
“I collected their mail for a while, so I can give you their forwarding address.”
We all meet up at the car. Baldwin warms it up. Jane’s crying in the passenger seat.
Sarah and Prisha rub her shoulders. Jane closes her eyes and leans back. “I knew it. In the back of my head. I feel like an abortion or something. I never really felt homeless until now.”
More to God than any of us, Baldwin says, “At least I know my parents didn’t go back to Korea. Fuck!”
Jane blows her nose on what looks like an old sock and tosses it on the floor. “Oh my God, Baldwin, what if we go back to your house and it’s the opposite? What if they want you back?”
“Nah.” Baldwin takes off their glasses and their eyes are squinty and raw. “They told me, this is what we come to this country for? For you to become an outcast? A freak?”
I am clinging to Danny. My moms may be pissed, but leaving-the-country-without-me-pissed? No—I don’t think. “I am so sorry, Jane.”
“Thanks, Verdad, but I needed to know the truth and I’m glad I didn’t find out alone.”
Everyone gets buckled, which amuses me because driving a Lego car would be safer, and Baldwin turns the ignition key.
……
Baldwin lives in an apartment building where everybody and their mama knows your business. When the place gets gentrified, these will be the last people standing.
“I feel like I need to say something before this round,” Jane says as we stand at the bottom of the steps. “We go in together. We leave together. No matter what.” I pity anyone who tries to take Baldwin away from her.
Baldwin walks up to the third floor in a trance.
Almost every door has a neat mat flanked with a Buddha or a highly breakable vase with stark dried plants inside. I want to have a god statue by our door at home. Shit, what happened to all our gods?
Baldwin stops in front of a door and presses their head against it, hugging it like it’s a raft after a shipwreck. “Oh that kimchee. I can’t take it!”
Of course the door opens and Baldwin falls into some viejita’s entryway.
“Can I help you?”
I can’t identify what the teeny tiny lady with the giant wooden spoon is cooking, but I’m feelin Baldwin. It smells so good I want to eat my face.
“Uh, no!” Baldwin backs up into the rest of us. “Sorry!”
“Wait. What’s your name?”
“Baldwin?” Baldwin tries to deflect her paralyzing gaze.
“Your given name.” I think she’s doing a retinal scan of Baldwin’s brain. She and my mother share that superpower.
“Ji su Pak.”
She nods. “I thought so. I’ve lived in this complex for twenty years. I know you.” The woman’s black eyes focus on Baldwin, but somehow see us all. “And who’s with you?”
“Just some friends. Um, everybody, this is Mrs. Joung, my neighbor.”
“You look hungry.” The wooden spoon is now a scepter. “Why don’t you come in—why don’t you all come in? Have a bite to eat.” She smooths her blue dress and bows slightly. Baldwin nods and bows lower. Oh God. There will be bowing. Do I bow?
“Thank you, Nanimaa!” Prisha does a sort of head dunk and signals everyone to toss their shoes in a pile.
Sarah follows Prisha—always—and whispers to me, “That’s a term of respect in Hindi.” Baldwin gives Jane a helpless look and follows the smooth-skinned, iron-haired woman into a long sunlit hall full of black-and-white photographs. I want to look and see how beautiful she has always been. I love old people. I wish we all started old and grew young.
“Help.” Jane lowers herself to the ground as gracefully as a bulldozer and attempts to yank off her size-too-small shoes.
I come to her rescue.
Yes! I get Jane’s right shoe off. But she knocks over the Buddha at Mrs. Joung’s door. I try to catch it. She tries to bear-hug it.
“You two!” Mrs. Joung scolds at us from above. “You two are not in the right bodies. You come in and sit still!” We scurry inside. Danny helps her right the jolly fat immortal.
She inspects Sarah and Prisha. “You two, help me in the kitchen.”
Jane and I breathe a sigh of relief because we are seated at a plastic-covered table but freak out when Prisha and Sarah come out carrying trays with loads of tiny ceramic bowls.
Me to Danny: “Why is the rice in a silver bowl? That’s got to be hot. Why is there only one bowl of soup? Why is there one spoon? Do we just like take a whole bowl for ourselves? Do we just stick our hands into it?”
Danny to me: “Should I slap you? You are totally losing your sh—itaki.”
“For tasting,” Mrs. Joung says to us all. To Baldwin, “Tell everybody what they are eating.”
“This is banchan, appetizers. Here you have Tteok Kochi, rice cake skewers. Here, radish pancakes. There, Swiss chard fritters. I’ll p
our the soup into the rice. You all choose something and spoon it onto your side plates.” Baldwin pats Jane’s hand. “We don’t pick up the bowls. No handles for a reason.”
Mrs. Joung and Prisha talk shop about the types of chili paste in Indian food and gochujang—fermented chili paste in Korean food. Once we’ve all chilled out and started filled our plates, Mrs. Joung says, “So Baldwin,” surprising me by using their new name. “You’ve come home. I told your parents you would.”
Baldwin eyes the door.
Mrs. Joung lays her hand on their arm. “Stay. Tell me your story.”
While we empty bowl after bowl on the table and Mrs. Joung signals the girls to refill them, they talk in Korean. I’m instantly a hater. I want to speak my native language, erect it around the gringos like a wall. But it’s so hard. If a white person learns how to speak Spanish, it doesn’t matter if they mess up. They’re expected to. But if I do? How am I supposed to get my feet wet when everybody is always expecting I’m an Olympic swimmer in the pool?
I’m finally full, but Baldwin and Mrs. Joung are in no rush and the rest of the Underdogs are still stuffing their underfed faces. Mrs. Joung is just like Blanca’s abuela, getting full from what other people eat. Her first taste is a tiny sip of soup after everybody is onto the thirds. She lowers the spoon. “I suggested we have a funeral.”
That was plain English. (Which, I realize as I think it, is a racist term.) All you could hear is munching and slurping before, but now silence.
“What Mrs. Joung means is a funeral for Ji su,” Baldwin explains. “Not me.”
“Your parents need to mourn. They need closure. They need to bury old ideals and expectations. I have spoken with your father many times. What is a disgrace is fighting to keep your family together only to tear them apart.”
Baldwin covers their face. Tears spill through their fingers. Jane grips their hand. Possibly breaks their pinky.
“Ow.”
“We already have buried so much. Our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams. I reminded your parents what we came here for. That is wasn’t for themselves, it was for you to be you.”
Mrs. Joung lifts up Baldwin’s chin. “Such a dashing young person, you make.” She picks up a napkin and dries their tears. “But not in those glasses.”
Baldwin looks up at Mrs. Joung and laughs, giving us all permission to breathe.
“We actually came to get his glasses,” I say with a mouth full of spicy, sticky chicken, “and a few of Baldwin’s things.”
“I can get what you need. I have everybody’s keys in case of emergency. But on one condition.”
Jane is hovering protectively over Baldwin. I know she is ready to attack if Mrs. Joung threatens to take away her boo.
She looks directly at Jane. “On the condition you bring Baldwin back here to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Pak, I’ll arrange it.”
Mrs. Joung leaves to collect a few of Baldwin’s things, and we get ready to head out.
“So all’s well that ends weird, huh?” I say to Danny, who is helping me with my coat.
“We are the WE in weird.” He stretches his long, lean, muscley back that I want to. . . “I don’t think I can handle two more houses today.”
“We have to. We promised.”
Mrs. Joung does the most complicated exit of all time. She catches Baldwin mid-bow and hugs every fiber of them. She and the girls exchange bows and hand clasps. The woman kisses me on the cheek. “All the quiet was killing you. Good job.”
I smile. I get an A for not being an asshat!
“Mrs. Joung, how come you had all that food? I mean that was unreal.”
She smiles and folds her arms. “Well, you never know who’s going to show up.”
……
We’re standing in front of Prisha’s sprawling house, the perimeter surrounded by beautiful dangerous rose bushes Prisha says her mother planted. In the giant backyard there’s a greenhouse and a soon-to-be harvest of peppers and tomatoes. She points out a butterfly garden and talks about her parents’ beekeeping hobby.
I’m trippin. “Like with the suits and everything?”
“My mother’s been stung over twenty times! But it’s all for the good.”
“Too bad she didn’t show you the same love she showed bugs,” Sarah whispers and gets a nod from Jane.
Prisha fishes a key out of a rosemary plant at the top of the steps. I’m trying to process Prisha’s story, but my brain is rejecting pieces that don’t fit. “I’m sorry, gang,” I interrupt as Prisha talks about her dad running away screaming as her mom rescued a freakin snake, “but none of this makes any sense. Prisha. Your parents—are vegan, right?”
She turns the handle of the door. “Yes.”
“And they basically have the circle-of-life conservationist thing going on here.”
Now the whole crew is staring me down in annoyance.
“Hello! Do these sound like people who would kill a dog?”
Sarah looks like she’s about to throw down. “What the fuck do you know? The things people are capable of—just because we want to exist?”
My brain revs up and I slam on the gas. “Fuck you, Sarah. You ever take a bullet aimed at you simply because you exist? Every person of color knows that the minute they step into your world. And that ain’t even counting being queer.”
Baldwin: “Tone it down, you two. The whole turn-against-each-other thing is played out.”
Jane puts her hand on Sarah’s shoulder and eyes me warily. “What’s your point, Nancy Drew?”
“My point is, did you,” I say, looking at a very teary-eyed Prisha, “ever see the body of the dog?”
Prisha’s all choked up. “I saw the—burial mound . . .”
She bursts into tears. It’s possible everybody, including Danny hates my guts right now.
But no—Danny rolls up his sleeves. “Where’s it buried, Prisha?”
She points toward the greenhouse before she’s enveloped in Sarah’s arms.
Danny says, “Verdad, you’re digging.”
Jane and Sarah sandwich Prisha on the porch steps while Danny grabs a couple of shovels leaning against the greenhouse.
We tromp down a grassy slope behind the sunlit greenhouse. He’s speed-walking ahead of me.
“This is taking things to a whole other level,” he mutters. “Have you thought about the fact that we could get arrested?”
I stop short. “Is that what I need to do to prove I’m on your side?”
“No! But—I do need to know that you’re not treating this like a game. It’s serious for us. And we don’t like people flaking out on us when things get tough. We do the leaving these days, not the other way around.”
“Look, I know I’m not really one of you. But even if I do have a home, I’m not gonna leave you behind.”
“That is a huge.” Danny looks into my eyes and I look straight back.
“It’s the first promise I’ve made in over a year. Now let’s start digging,” I say, pointing to a mound of raised dirt.
No more than ten minutes later, we’re carrying a dirty collar up the hill.
I hand it off to Danny and let him go talk to Prisha. From the distance, I watch as Prisha jumps into Sarah’s arms and they all hug. The grave, as I suspected, was empty. Her parents lied to her.
“Verdad,” Danny calls from the porch, “get your hot ass over here!”
I take my time strutting my hot ass over because I’m feeling like a left-out kindergartner, and I still don’t like seeing Danny all hugging up on Prisha.
“So Velma,” Jane says, apparently still bitter about me calling her LumberJane, “what’s the plan?”
“Well, jinkies, Jane,” I say, “I guess now we can case the place. For money, jewelry, and info on wherever that dog might have ended up.”
……
Baldwin drives us to the Maheshwari residence. According to Prisha’s mom’s emails, this is the family who got Prisha’s dog.
Base is blasting through the wall
s of the townhouse, and I’m feeling nostalgic for home. There are two cars in the driveway, and through the windows we can see toys in the living room. A dude on the phone, a woman typing away at her computer.
“Oh my God! Tavi! That’s Tavi on the balcony!”
Prisha almost slams the car door on Jane’s fingers in her eagerness to get out of the car. We follow in her hyper footsteps, and I’m crossing my fingers that the base is loud enough that the lady inside doesn’t register our motley asses assembling under her balcony.
“Tavi, it’s Prisha! I miss you so much!”
Over our heads, the dog is wiggin out, whining and pacing and whipping its tail so hard it knocks over a potted plant.
“I need to get up there!”
“Prisha, babe,” Danny pleads, “there’s no way!”
He called her babe. This negates all the times he’s called me babe.
Oblivious to my brewing wrath, Danny lays his arm around Prisha. “Tavi is happy. Safe. It might have to be enough.”
“No fucking way,” Prisha screams. “Jane, let me get up on your shoulders.” Before we can determine who’s gonna catch Prisha when Jane inevitably drops her on her ass, music blasts even louder through the front door.
“What in the hell are you kids doing? I will call the cops!”
I freeze. Danny’s words echo in my brain: You know we can get arrested? I’ve been flippant about it. But now I’m thinking back to the police questioning me after the shooting. Asking me why I’d been out so late at night. Was I pulling my hair out because I was on something? Those memories deal me the next card: the Underdogs hearing the siren and trying to run.
I face the man—Mr. M, I assume—who’s glaring at us from the front step. “Please. Please don’t. We’re here because our friend thought her parents murdered her dog because she is a lesbian. But they gave it to you. And she’s homeless now and how the hell could she possibly take care of a dog—”
Danny wraps his arms around me. “Okay! So we’ll be getting the hell out of here.”
“Wait!” Prisha says. “Can I please, please just see Tavi for a minute? Just to give him a hug! I know I couldn’t take care of him now even if you would let me have him back, but could I at least say a proper goodbye?”
The Truth Is Page 19