The Trouble Begins

by Linda Himelblau

  “You should practice reading, Du.”

  “You should wear socks, Du.”,

  “Do you know your multiplication tables, Du? You should practice.”

  “You should comb your hair, Du.”

  “What's this called in English, Du? Do you know?”

  “Talk English, Du.”

  I just watch TV and don't listen to them after a while. I look for pictures on TV that look like the Philippines. When I see kids outside and go to mess around with them they look at me funny and ride away on their bikes. In the Philippines kids would be excited and yell, “Here comes Du.” We all messed around together even if we didn't know each other. Here there are mostly just cars outside.

  The Trouble Begins

  On the first day I know I don't like American school. When I get a chance I'm going to leave. I don't like the teacher because I don't know what she's saying. She points at me and motions for me to stand up. Then she says a lot of words and one of them is Du. Everyone laughs. She smiles a big fake smile. She points for me to sit next to a Mexican girl who eats too much. “This is Veronica,” the teacher says. “She'll help you. Can you say, 'Hello, Veronica'?”

  I think I know what she wants but I don't want help from this girl. I don't say anything. The teacher repeats what she said and kids are starting to giggle. Finally I mutter, “Hello, Veronica,” so she'll quit asking and Veronica reaches out and grabs my hand with her sweaty one and says, “Hello, Du.” Everyone laughs again. I'm not saying stuff like that ever again. Veronica whispers to me about what stuff to put in my desk and where to write my name on papers until the teacher gives her a mean look. I wasn't going to do it her way anyway.

  There are lots of other things I don't like about school the first day. I don't like how the tag on my new T-shirt scratches my neck, so I rip it out. “Ohhh, you made a hole,” whispers Veronica. I stuff the tag into her pencil case. I don't like how the teacher talks and talks and then writes “Assignment: Four beautiful paragraphs about your summer vacation” on the blackboard. Underneath she writes what kids tell her they did.

  “We went to Disneyland twice in one week,” says a girl in pink shoes.

  “We camped out for three days at Yosemite.” I know Disneyland but I don't know Yosemite. I quit listening. The teacher writes other places: grandparents' house, Girl Scout camp, Sea World. Everyone starts writing but me. I don't know how to write English. I know what vacation is but I never had one.

  “Please try, Du,” the teacher says as she walks by and taps her finger on my blank paper. I still can't write English no matter how many times she says please even though earlier she said it was a magic word.

  I don't like it when a lady comes to take me away from the class. “Come with me, Du,” she says, smiling. “This will be fun. I'm going to test your reading.” It isn't fun. We sit in a little room with books and papers piled everywhere. She gives me a paper with hundreds of little words, close together, and says, “Just start here.” I can't read the words. “That's fine, Du,” she says after a while even though I didn't read anything. “Now try this.” She gives me a paper with fewer words in bigger letters. I glance at it and shrug and look away. At the end she gives me a paper with just a few big words on it. I know some of the words but I don't read because then she'd know I couldn't read the others. She shakes her head and writes on her papers. She leads me to the door. “You know the way back to class, don't you, Du?” she asks. I nod because I know the way but after she closes the door I sneak between the office building and the first bunch of classrooms. I climb over the high wire fence before anyone sees me. I don't need to go to school, I think. I'll save my parents' money and I'll go to school later when I can learn important stuff instead of what I did on my summer vacation.

  I walk by the market store on the way home. The first time I went to the store with Thuy I couldn't believe how big it was or how much food was there. The aisles were as long as streets and food was stacked from our feet to above our heads in every direction. I asked her about some black kids hanging around by the door. “They make money helping people carry out their groceries,” she said. “Don't look at them. We don't need any help.” I saw one push a lady's cart to her car.

  “I can do that,” I said.

  “No, you can't,” Thuy exploded. “Stay away from here. They won't like it if you take their job.” Now when I walk by I see that the black kids who worked there are all gone. They must be in school too. I'll help people and make money, I think. It'll be better than going to school. I run up to people coming out the door and say, “Help, lady, help.” Most of them shake their heads or say, “No thanks,” but finally one lets me push her cart. She gives me two quarters. I learn fast which people will want help. One lady gives me a dollar. When I see the black kids coming after school I go home with my pocket full of money.

  From down the street I see people on our front porch: white people, Thuy and Lin and Vuong, a man in a brown uniform, and my dad. I know by now it's never good when my dad has to leave work during the day so I reach into my pocket to hold the money I made. He will be happy to see that, to see how easily I can make money here. I jog down the street and they all turn to look when Thuy points at me. That old white man from next door is leaning over the fence looking too. Everyone talks at once, English and Vietnamese, when I walk up the porch stairs. Angry voices tell me how I shouldn't do this and that and how much trouble I cause. I know Vietnamese kids wait to talk until the adults are finished but everybody on the porch sounds like they'll talk forever.

  “I'm making money,” I announce loudly over the talking. “Vuong can teach me school stuff at home and I'll make money.” I hold out my hand with all the coins in it. There' a sudden silence. Then the last thing I ever expect happens. My dad slaps my hand and the coins clatter all over the porch.

  “You go to school!” he shouts back at me. He turns, stomps down the stairs and screeches away in his car. The school people talk and talk to me and my mom, who probably doesn't know what they are saying much more than I do. When they leave I go to the back of our house. I leave the money scattered all over the porch.

  I'm tired of hearing talking and I don't know what my dad wants. He says he wants money but then he wants school. Does he know the dumb stuff they do at American school? Later I sneak in but Thuy and Lin and Vuong hear me.

  “What are you doing to Ba and Ma?” growls Thuy in English but she gets mixed up and uses Ba and Ma for Dad and Mom. Then she switches to Vietnamese even though she said before she would only talk to me in English so I'd learn. “You're a stupid,” she whispers. “Why do you think you can just run away from school?”

  “You make it so hard for Ba!” Lin butts in. “He hates fixing toilets and working for Mr. Vronsky and if he has to keep leaving work because of you he can even lose that job. Then we won't have any money.”

  “I got money,” I argue.

  “He owned land in Vietnam and he rented his land to farmers and now you come here and pull him down to the bottom again,” whispers Vuong. I can tell he's proud that Ba had land in Vietnam.

  “In America school is free but you have to go or they put your parents in jail,” adds Thuy.

  “No, they don't,” I scoff.

  “They do too,” all three of them snap at once.

  “They could have brought Ma's sister and her mother but they saved and saved and brought you and you're just a bad-luck kid,” Vuong says.

  They keep repeating themselves in that bossy, hissing whisper. Suddenly I understand. They are whispering because Grandma is home. I run out of the kitchen and into her room and there she is. She opens her eyes and she sees me and reaches out her hand and smiles. I take her hand, like a little bird claw, and I hold it. I'll ask her about all this stuff later, I think. Everything is okay if she is alive and she is here.

  That night on the couch I remember the night my dad stood over me while I pretended to sleep. “You go to school. You work hard,” he said. I worked hard today becau
se I thought he wanted money the most. Now I know he wants me to go to school. Even if they just do stupid things there. What the others said is true. In America school is free but you have to go. He thinks I brought bad luck with me but when I see my family I don't think they were so lucky before I came either. My grandma says I'm a dragon and dragons are the luckiest.

  I go to school now every day even though I hate it. I'm still not talking there. Except I talk just a little so they won't know that I'm not talking. They'll just think I'm stupid and don't know any answers. They think I'm stupid anyway. We read a story about a “dear little mouse” that saves food for the winter. In the Philippines I squashed the “dear little mice” so they wouldn't ruin the food and my grandma and I would have enough to eat. Veronica, who's really stupid, always tells me when it's time to go to my superdumb reading group in Room 10.

  “You better go, Du,” she whispers even though my teacher, whose name is Mrs. Dorfman, has forgotten. If I'm quiet she'll forget all about me.

  “You better go doo-doo, Du Du,” whispers Jorge. When I jump up to hit him Mrs. Dorfman remembers.

  “Time for reading, Du,” she says. She's glad when I leave.

  Everybody in Room 10 is really dumb except me and I'm not talking. I'll read when I have to but I won't talk. Thuy and Lin and Vuong talk just like Americans and sometimes they talk so fast I can't understand them and neither can my mom and dad. My sisters say they think in English but I don't believe them. It's too hard. Everybody talks Vietnamese to my grandma. If they heard that at school they'd really laugh. At recess Anthony pushes up the corners of his eyes and goes, “Ching ching chong dong.” It's supposed to be Vietnamese but he's so stupid he doesn't even know what it sounds like. But everybody laughs. Then I grab his dumb baseball hat and throw it on the roof. The playground aide sees and I get sent to the Counseling Center. I write “I will respect the rights and property of others” one hundred times. Then I go back to the class and crunch Anthony's pencil when it rolls under my desk.

  Mrs. Dorfman smiles at the end of the day. “Don't forget, students. Jamestown dioramas are due tomorrow. Check your homework assignment sheets so you have all the components.” I hear her say due so I listen but it's not about me.

  I walk with some guys from my class on the way home but they don't talk to me. They laugh a lot and I make sure they're not laughing at me by giving them mean looks whenever they start. If I hear Du or Du Du they're going to be sorry. Before my street they all turn and go a different way. I go down the alley behind the houses because it's more interesting.

  “Free Cooper Farms Chicken!” say the big red letters on the newspaper. I can read free and farm and chicken easily because they're in even bigger letters than the ones in my dumb reading book. Lots of stuff in America is free. I pick up the newspaper near the trash can and shake off the dirt. I tear off the “Free Chicken” part. I'll take home a feast for everybody, free. I open some trash cans even though they're smelly, and I find another “Free Chicken” paper. By the time I get all the way down the alley I have six free chickens. I know the free chickens are at the big market on Fortieth Street because I see the name when we shop. I jog over there to get my chickens.

  Inside I pick six of the biggest chickens to put in my basket. When I wait in line there's a kid from school behind me. I know him even though he's in another class because he doesn't play softball or Three Flies Up at recess. He stands around like me. He doesn't say hi so I don't either. He's with his dad, who's way too tall and skinny and has a big hairy beard that's so ugly I can't look at it. It looks dirty. They talk and talk to each other while we wait and sometimes they laugh but I can't understand what they're saying. My dad never talks to me like that, like he's just a kid himself, and he never talks to Thuy or Lin or Vuong either. He works too hard to just mess around chattering like a kid.

  My turn finally comes. I heave my six chickens onto the counter. The lady drags them across the scanner. “That'll be forty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents,” she says. I hand her the “Free Chicken” papers.

  “What's this?” she demands.

  “Free chicken,” I answer loudly so she knows I can read it.

  She pounds on a little bell on her counter. People turn and stare. A man in a brown jacket with the store name on it hurries over. The lady talks to him so everybody can hear.

  “Where did you get these, young man?” He waves my “Free Chicken” papers in my face. I don't want to say that I got them out of trash cans so I shrug. He rips them in two. “Come with me,” he commands. He keeps talking about taking things from mailboxes and calling the police. When we walk by the front door I run for it. I'm out the door and down the street before he can grab me or get anyone else to grab me. I hear him yelling behind me. I'm glad the kid from school didn't know me or he might tell the man my name. This country cheats. They say things are free when they're not.

  When I get home I sneak in the back door but Thuy and Lin are in the kitchen. “Get some soda,” they order me. “Clear off the table.” I clear the dirty dishes and the teapot and the potato chips off the table. My grandma is still too sick to cook good food and my mom works late every day. I don't have any chickens for a chicken feast. We have to eat American frozen food with slimy cheese. Thuy and Lin and Vuong tear off big pieces of pizza even though Thuy didn't cook it long enough. I pull strings of cheese off mine. I eat little bites. “Du, do you have homework?” asks Thuy like she's my boss.

  “Nope,” I say, the way Anthony always says it at school with a tricky smile and my head tipped back.

  “Then you do dishes,” orders Thuy. I don't care. Pizza plates and soda glasses. When they're done I pour hot water over dried-up American noodles in a white foam cup. I slurp up the noodles and go see if my grandma wants some. She's asleep.

  I watch the TV while American people laugh and laugh but I don't know what's funny. Nothing, I think. Channel eleven has a bear running around at night getting into people's garbage cans. Vuong comes in. “Gimme the remote,” he orders. I sit on it. The channel changes. I bounce up and down on the remote and the channel changes again and again. We laugh.

  “What's a Jamestown diorama?” I ask him.

  Forty minutes later we have a shoe box with one side cut off. Inside there's a paper fort leaning over and some trees leaning further over and a river made of foil from the pizza that looks like pizza foil.

  “There,” says Vuong. “You've got a Jamestown diorama to turn in tomorrow.”

  “It's ugly,” I say.

  Vuong laughs. “You waited too long to start,” he says. “Better ugly than not at all.”

  Vuong would never take anything that ugly to school. Thuy and Lin laugh when they see it. I wait until they go to bed. Like the bears I sneak out to the garbage cans. I push my Jamestown diorama deep down under the garbage bags. I'm not taking that ugly thing to school. Maybe I'll make a good one. The best one in the class.

  I still see that old man from next door spying on our house through our window. If he spies on our house all day when I'm at school our fat Buddha with his big wide smile is going to be laughing back at him. The Buddha will sometimes give you things if you ask right but he wouldn't give anything to that old man. That old spy must wonder about the pictures of people from Vietnam and the red lights that look like candles. I wonder about the pictures too but when I ask, Thuy says, “Shut up, Du.” When I ask Lin she says not to ask because they're all dead from the war and it makes Ba and Ma sad to talk about them and it might bring the evil from over there to here.

  When I look in the old man's yard I can see great big fat juicy blackberries growing up his back wall. He's got a shed back there where he keeps his lawn mower and he's the only one on the alley who has a big cement block wall to keep everybody out. The cement blocks are like they had in the Philippines and I know they can't keep me out. I'm going to get some of those berries. That's the price he has to pay for looking in our window all the time. I could vault over the wire fence between
our side yards in one second but he might see me from his spying window. I'll climb over the big alley wall. I'll eat berries and I'll even bring some home. If he sees me and yells I'll be over the wall before he can get his old man legs down the back steps.

  I scraped my knee and my elbow but I got here. I hope Ma doesn't notice the hole in my new pants. Hey, cat! I'm not the only one up here. “Here, cat-cat. How did you get up here? Do you belong to that old man? I think you're wild like a tiger except you're gray like the wall. That old man can't catch either one of us. Watch!” I jump down into his yard so I don't wreck any of the berries climbing down.

  These berries are good American food. I never saw any like them before. In the Philippines we'd raid banana trees. I was the leader. We'd run in every direction if the farmer saw us so he didn't know which one to run after. We'd meet on the field behind the market road. We'd eat bananas and sometimes they were green and made us sick. But this old man's berries are sweet and juicy. They're so juicy I drip some on my shirt.

  “Du, answer the door. We're studying,” Thuy yells. No one comes to visit us except people selling stuff. I lift up the corner of the blanket I tacked over the living room window so I could see the TV better and sleep later in the morning. Now I see a police car in front and two policemen at the front door.