The Trouble Begins

by Linda Himelblau

  A New Home

  A bunch of people I don't know pat me on the head, which I hate, and tell me what a lucky boy I am and how happy I must be. I don't feel lucky and I'm not happy. I am shaking even though the sun is shining but when they pull a scratchy blanket over me I push it off because I am suddenly as hot as a lizard lying in the sun. I wish I was a lizard. I could lie down on the ground and not move for hours and sleep and sleep and not talk and I would run if anyone tried to pat me on the head.

  My mother is in a hurry to go. “I need to get home before dark,” she tells the people. “We must hurry. Good-bye. Good-bye.” I wonder what bad thing will happen in the dark. A few minutes ago I saw my mother for the first time since I was a little baby so I stare and stare at her but she just looks like a regular woman to me. Maybe it is because my eyes are blurry and want to close and my ears are ringing so all the talking is blurred too. In the crowd of people that shouted at us in the airport she was the one who leaned down to me and whispered, “I am your mother, Du,” so I could barely hear her. She stared at me too until a man who said he is my uncle pushed me toward the car. The American air outside smelled like gasoline. Five lines of cars crept by, starting and stopping, and the car they put me into blocked one of the rows. Car horns honked.

  I see how carefully the woman who is my mother helps my grandma into the backseat next to me. We came together on the plane and my mother has not seen my grandma for all those years either. My grandma is sick but she has been sick for a long time. I am sick from riding on the airplane while days and nights went by outside the little window. Being in America will make my grandma better, everyone says. When she was sick I took care of her. I don't tell them I'm sick in case she needs me to take care of her here.

  “Hurry,” pleads my mother to the girl who says she is my sister. Thuy or Lin? I don't know which one and no one tells me. She is hugging everyone and saying good-bye too many times. I don't know her either. When she gets in the front seat next to my mother I know she talks too loud. She shouts back at my grandma about food she cooked for her and a room she fixed for her but all my grandma wants to do is sleep. Me too. My loud sister can't see this.

  The faces of the uncles and aunts and cousins come close to the window. “Good-bye, good-bye,” they yell through the glass. I make sure my grandma is okay. I fold up my jacket to make a pillow for her. Her eyes are closed. As the car jerks away my stomach feels funny and I hear a high pinging noise in my ears that won't stop. I want to see America but when I look out the window my head sways and my stomach is tight like it's tied in a knot. I close my eyes.

  “Fasten your seat belt,” orders my loud sister. I keep my eyes closed. “You better do what I say, Du!” she says. “You don't know how dangerous it is not to fasten your seat belt.” Days ago, on the way to the airport in the Philippines, my grandma and I rode in the back of a rattly truck crowded with people and bags and boxes. The bumpy road made us fly off our seats. I got in fast to get a good place for my grandma near the front but then I had to hang on sitting on the edge of the tailgate. Nobody had a seat belt. I don't do anything.

  “Please, Du,” says the woman who is my mother. “I am not used to driving a car and especially driving on the freeway. Please fasten Grandmother's too.” The seat belts are like on the airplane. I dig behind the seat to find them and fasten my grandma's carefully so I don't wake her up. I don't fasten mine. I'm not scared.

  My mother leans forward as she drives. I can see that the knuckles of her hands are white where she holds on to the steering wheel like we would fly away if she let go. She jerks the car one way and then another. My sister grabs a little handle above the door with one hand. Her knuckles are white too. She talks in a shrill excited voice. “Get in the right lane. Put on your turn signal. We have to get on here. We have to go south. Look out, look out.” Other cars swerve fast around us. One of the drivers honks. My blurry eyes close. I think that I will learn how to drive. I will drive fast and swerve around all the slow people. I will drive my mother wherever she wants to go.

  I wake up sometimes but we are always in the lines of cars, either going fast or suddenly slowing so we don't move at all. Finally I wake up to my sister calling out, “Wake up! Wake up! We're almost home.” I open my eyes. I am hot and hair is plastered to my forehead, wet with sweat. Behind my eyes there is a steady pounding like a deep drum. I have dreamed of this coming-home moment ever since my grandma told me the tickets had come. I stare out the window. I don't see the tall sky-touching buildings of America. I see a skinny street with cars parked on both sides. I see little houses shaped like boxes, each with a fence around it. Inside their fences the doors of the houses are closed and the windows are covered, shutting out the air and the sun. Some have metal bars across the windows too. Sometimes there is a house where the front is green with grass and bright with flowers but most of them are weedy and brown waiting for the rain. The car jerks to a stop. The knot in my stomach tightens. The front of the car is in a little space but my mother, jerking the car back and forth, can't get the back in. The house where she stops is one with green grass and flowers and a tall shady tree in front. I touch my grandma's hand. We are home.

  The door on my grandma's side of the car is pulled open. A short angry-looking man is there. He bows to my grandma with both hands pressed together at his chest. It is my father, my grandma's son. I see that the angriness in his face hides tears. I know and my sister knows that it is not our time to speak. My father helps my grandma out. She is so tiny he almost lifts her off her feet. I am dizzy and my head pounds. I push open the door on my side and step out into the street. My sister screams. There is a screech of brakes and a truck horn blares. Where I stand in the street I look into the angry red face of the American truck driver. He bangs the side of his truck with his hand. He yells at me but I only understand a little English from my Philippine school. It was more fun to play marbles than it was to listen to English. English puts me to sleep. With little screeches of the tires the driver lurches his truck around me and drives off. Now four people yell at me in Vietnamese.

  “Watch out! You'll get killed doing that.”

  “Du, you've got to be careful here.”

  “Why'd you do that? This is a busy street!”

  “Get out of that street!”

  My mother and my grandma look at me too but the don't yell. I look back at the family that I have only seen in a few pictures. The sister from the front seat who looks older than the other and must be Thuy. Another sister with glasses and her arms wrapped around a fat book she holds to her chest, who is Lin. A big brother who looks like he eats too much, who is Vuong. A father who holds out a hand to me while he supports my grandmother with his other hand. I walk over. I shake his hand. We learned at school that this is what you do in America. My head whirls like I am turning fast in a circle. I don't want them to know I am sick. They talk in Vietnamese but even then I can't understand because of the dizziness.

  A big white truck with writing on it pulls up behind the car. Again a horn honks. My father carefully gives my grandma to my mother and sister to support. He is my father; I try to believe this through the blur, watching him, seeing how he loves my grandma too. Happiness mixes with my dizziness and fever. Then, as he turns from my grandma, he changes. His face turns grim and hard. He yells in English to the truck driver, jumps two steps at a time to the porch, but not the porch of the bright house with the green grass and the tree and the flowers. He runs up the broken steps of the house next to it where the paint is peeling, and dusty brown weeds fill the front yard. He grabs an old suitcase and runs to the street. The truck screeches off almost before he closes its door behind him with the heavy suitcase balanced on his lap. My happiness disappears. All those
years he left us in the Philippines and now he leaves again after a few minutes. Sometimes I thought my grandma stayed alive just to see him. I am scared for a second. I took care of her in the Philippines but I don't know if I can do that in America without knowing English, without money or a car. Me, who never was scared in the Philippines. I would do anything to get stuff my grandma needed. Now I just want to lie down. We turn again to go into the house. I wish I could just lie down outside on the stairs.

  “Lady!” Now another angry voice shouts in English. A stream of bossy-sounding words follows. A tall old man leaning over the wire fence between the beautiful green yard and the one that is my father's is yelling at my mother and pointing at the car.

  My mother beckons for my big brother to support my grandma. “Sorry, sorry,” she whispers, bowing to the tall old white man. She hurries to move the car. In spite of my blurry eyes and my whirling head I give the old man a mean look. I follow the others into the house. My sister is excited. She shows my grandma a little room with bright curtains and a bed where she can lie down. I lie down on the floor in the corner. They tell me I can't sleep there but I cover my head with my jacket and I don't listen to them and I try to stop the whirling in my brain.

  I sleep for a long time. When I wake up someone has moved me to my brother's room to sleep on one side of his bed. I sleep some more and sometimes the window is light when I wake up and sometimes it is dark. Now I pretend to sleep so I won't have to eat the terrible food they bring to me. My sister, the one called Thuy, brings noodles in salty yellow-colored water with little tiny squares of chicken floating in it. The noodles are so small and squishy they look like pond scum. The other sister, Lin, brings a green drink in a plastic bottle. I drink it so fast I throw up.

  “He can't sleep in my room anymore! He smells and he's a bad-luck kid,” whispers my brother, Vuong, who thinks I am asleep.

  “Give him a chance,” Thuy answers. “He just got here.”

  “That's what I mean,” argues Vuong. “He just got here. He's had English lessons for years over there but he's so stupid he doesn't know how to speak it. He got Grandma sick so she's in the hospital and now he got Dad so sick he can hardly walk. What if he can't go to work and Mr. Vronsky fires him? All he cares about is money. He'll be hard on all of us.”

  “That's not true,” Thuy answers so softly I can hardly hear her.

  “Well, even if the kid doesn't get Dad fired, he's throwing up in my room. He's a bad-luck kid. He can sleep on the couch.” Vuong pushes me with his toe. “Wake up, Du,” he says. He holds his nose away from me and gives me a rag to wipe up the floor. He leads me down the hall to the room with the couch and the TV. For the first time in my life I will sleep in a room all by myself. “Don't you throw up on that couch,” he warns me as he leaves.

  Bluuh! Cough, cough! Bluuh! I make sounds just like throwing up.

  Vuong whirls around. He sees that I fooled him. He stomps out. I go back to sleep worrying about my grandma. We couldn't come to America for all those years because we had something called TB. Now we are cured of that but she has gotten this new sickness from me. I want to see her more than I want anything. More than I want to be back in the Philippines. But she is in the hospital and I can't go. Vuong says our dad cares most about money. It cost a lot to bring us here and hospitals cost a lot too. I wonder if I can pay him back.

  I wake up later still hot and dizzy and not knowing where I am but I am aware somebody is looking at me. I keep my eyes squeezed shut until I hear him cough. I open my eyes the tiniest slit and I can see my dad standing there looking down at me. I squeeze them shut again because I don't know what to say. He knows, though; he knows I am awake. “You go to school,” he says in his voice that is hoarse like mine from the sickness. “You go to school. You work hard. You'll be all right.” I hear him turn and shuffle away to bed but there is still nothing I can think of to say. I'll be the best at school, I think.

  After a few more days I get better. I eat the food because I am so hungry. Most of it comes from cans because my grandma is still in the hospital and my mother is at the hospital staying with her or at work or sleeping. When she sees me in the early morning, she smiles kindly at me and asks me if I want food. She sees that I love peaches and cherries so she brings them especially for me. Vuong complains. My father is usually angry when I see him. His face is grim and furrowed and he slams doors and walks with heavy feet. I think he blames me for getting my grandma sick and for getting him sick and for costing extra money. I stay away from him. Later he will see how smart I am and how I can make money too. Ever since I was little my grandma has called me a dragon. Everyone knows dragons are smart and lucky.

  When I go in the dining room I can see that tall old white man spying on us through the window from his house next door. I sit on the floor and look from behind the pot on the window ledge. He doesn't know I can see his wrinkly old hand pulling back the curtain. He's an American with a big nose and bushy eyebrows. He should take those eyebrows and grow them on top of his head where he doesn't have any hair at all. If he wants to watch something why doesn't he watch TV?

  Nothing interesting ever happens here. My sisters and my brother sit there studying from big fat books even though it's summer vacation now. That old man won't see me sitting there studying because I won't do it even when they boss me. I decide to give him something exciting to watch. I get a big knife out of the kitchen and sneak up behind my big sister, Thuy, like I'm going to murder her while she's reading. I walk very softly in my bare feet. I raise the knife high over my head so the old man's sure to see it.

  “Du, you get out of here right now! I'm trying to study. Go someplace else and fool around,” Thuy shouts. She's mad because I made her look up from her big fat book. I check the window. She jumps up from her chair and chases me back into the kitchen.

  “Don't run with a knife,” shouts my other sister, Lin. That old man still doesn't call 911. Vuong told me that's the number to call if something bad happens. The old man doesn't call even if somebody might get murdered. I'm getting mad at him watching us all the time like we're some sort of TV show. He's been watching since the first day my grandma and me came when he yelled at my mom about the car. I saw him spying outside then, hanging over his fence. I'm gonna figure out a way to fix him. I go sit on the window ledge with my back to the old man's window and I bounce Thuy's big eraser from one of my feet to the other. Once I get up to eighteen times in a row.

  “Du, stop that!” Thuy yells.

  “What?” I yell back, because I'm not doing anything.

  “Smacking on a banana and kicking the wall,” says Lin with a sniff. She's a year younger than Thuy but just as bossy. I fall off the window ledge and stomp around the table. Vuong swats backward at me with his hand. I'm quick. I stick out the bottom part of the banana. His hand mashes against it. He jumps up. I run. This is fun. He's so slow he can never catch me. He chases me out the front door. I wait until he almost grabs me. Then I take the fast way down. I vault over the railing on the front porch. Crack! The no-good railing breaks. I crash to the ground with pieces of the railing all around me. I jump up to laugh at him so he knows it didn't hurt and he still can't catch me.

  “Now you've done it!” he shouts as he slams the door. I hear him turn the lock. I try to put the railing back but some of the posts broke right off. I can see little holes in the wood. I crouch down where there's sun to see better. Little bugs made the holes. I blow in them. Wood dust comes out. I stick a little stick in the hole to see if a bug will come out.

  “Your dad's gonna have to fix that.” It's that old spy from next door yelling from across his fence. He's been watching me the whole time. I don't even look up. “You better get some shoes with all those splinters around.” I'm not sure of all the words he says but I know what he really means. He hopes I get splinters in all my toes. I still don't look up. Americans wear shoes too much. They wear them in their own houses. My mom says it's dirty. I wonder if that old man wears shoes wh
en he goes to bed. I prop the railing against the broken posts on the porch.

  Our street is empty except for some little kids behind a fence in a front yard. In the Philippines there were kids everywhere but in America the kids are all hiding. When I hear the roar of an engine I trot down the street. I've seen a guy who fixes his truck in his front yard. My sister says he's from Mexico and I should leave him alone but I don't think it will hurt anything if I just watch. Today he's straining and groaning to pull something out from under the hood of his truck. He doesn't even see me. Sweat runs down his face to his bushy black mustache. I go close enough to see what he's pulling on. It's a big round heavy thing deep in the engine. His hands are black with grease. Crack! “Oof!” He falls backward; the part he was pulling on comes loose and crashes down on the fender. He whacks into me because I'm trying to see from behind him.

  “Cuidado!” he yells. It's Mexican so I don't know what it means but he looks angry, like what happened is my fault. I run away around the truck. He heaves the round thing on the ground and shakes his hand because he scraped it pulling out the heavy engine part. He doesn't come after me so I lean over the front end to see what's inside. “Hold this,” he says in English. He tosses me a plastic piece with three wires hanging out. I hold it until he reaches out his hand. We both lean into the truck engine to see. I help him hold the wires in place while he connects them. I wish he would tell me what everything is called. I know some of the words in Vietnamese. When it's too dark he wipes off his hands. “Gracias,” he says with a nod. I know it's Mexican so I say, “Chao tam biet,” good-bye in Vietnamese. I go home.

  Vuong doesn't tell my dad how the railing broke. My dad's too busy to worry about an old railing because he and my mom have to hurry to visit my grandma in the hospital.

  I just watch TV for days and days. My mom and dad go to work, then to the hospital, then to sleep. I can't go to the hospital with them because I'm too young. When they're home sometimes I see them staring at me. I stare at them too when they aren't looking. I say to myself, “That's my mom and dad,” so it will seem real. When he has a little time my dad teaches me American stuff like red-light crossing and shopping in stores with aisles so long I get lost once. My mom buys me American clothes, just like the Philippine clothes only brand-new. The shoes feel like heavy weights on my legs. But mostly my mom and dad are busy. Thuy and Lin and Vuong go someplace every day too. Summer school, they say. I am glad because when they are home they try to boss me around.