The Trouble Begins

by Linda Himelblau

  Here are his tools. My dad says Americans all have tools but they can't fix anything. I'm gonna fix that old man's lawn mower for him. His lawn should look just like everybody else's around here. I won't take it all apart. I'll just loosen all these places so it falls apart when he pushes it. He'll think it just got so old it died. It's easy to loosen these bolts because he oils it so much.

  I wonder what else is in here. I think my cat has a way to get in. When she comes for the fish or other stuff I give her she often comes running from the back of the shed. I hope the old man doesn't hurt her if he finds her inside. I better get out. It wasn't very smart of him to put this old trunk here so I could climb back out the window easier. I wonder what's in it.

  A lot of old junk is what's in it. I'll make sure there's nothing good at the bottom. Old toys. This little truck is so heavy. I wonder if that old man played with a truck. Can it be that old? Here's a football and a baseball and bat. I have to be careful so I can remember where all this stuff goes back. The whole bottom's covered with boxes. They could have good stuff in them. I'll come back later. He just went walking down the street. I don't want to be stuck in that window when he gets back. I'll fix the plywood back over it just like it was.

  “Boys and girls, today we're going to be authors again. We're going to write another personal narrative piece for our portfolios.” Everybody groans. On the overhead projector Mrs. Dorfman puts a big plastic page with “Personal Narrative” in fancy writing. She covers up the bottom part. Then she talks and talks and talks. I look at car pictures in a magazine I found on the rack in the Counseling Center. I read it in my lap so Mrs. Dorfman and Veronica can't see it. Anthony's squirming around trying to shoot a miniskateboard over to Jorge with his foot.

  “And the subject will be …” Mrs. Dorfman stops in midsentence. I look up. She's waving her pencil around like something wonderful is about to happen. She uncovers more of the writing on the projector. “Write About a Family Journey,” it says. She reads it in a loud excited voice. There's a picture of an American family waving from their car. Kids who usually write stuff raise their hands. “We wrote about that already,” someone blurts. That's what Mrs. Dorfman calls it when you just yell something without getting called on. I'm not a blurter because I don't talk. Sometimes Mrs. Dorfman makes the blurter stand up and apologize to the class. This blurter doesn't get in any trouble.

  “Relax, relax.” She smiles. “All your questions will be answered in due time.”

  “Du Du time,” whispers Anthony. Jorge laughs. I kick the mini-skateboard down the aisle.

  “Paragraph one will be about where your family planned to go and why you decided to go there. It doesn't have to be a vacation. We're writing about the journey, there and back, and the destination, what we did there. Does anyone have a good idea he or she can share?” Kids raise their hands. One kid says, “We went to La Mesa on the bus.” Some kids snicker. I don't know why.

  Alan raises his hand in the front of the room. “We rented a RV to go to Carlsbad Beach for my brother's birthday,” he says.

  “Wonderful! That's a story,” says Mrs. Dorfman, smiling. She talks again about paragraphs and stuff like that.

  Mrs. Dorfman smiles at the hand-raisers. “Those are wonderful ideas, boys and girls.” She pulls the sheet on the overhead down so we can see another line. “Paragraph two will be about the trip itself. Did you enjoy it? How did you pass the time? How did you think about your destination— where you were going?

  “Paragraph three. Describe your destination, the place to which you went. Tell about your activities. What did you do there?” Mrs. Dorfman's talking faster now because almost everyone's yawning and wiggling around in their seats. Not just me. Her voice is getting louder. “Paragraph four.” She forgets to uncover the last line. She's staring at Jorge. He's leaning into the aisle to get back the mini-skateboard. Angela won't let him have it. She moves it with her foot just when he almost grabs it. Angela's in the high reading group.

  Suddenly everybody looks up. We are all interested. A little bug is walking across the overhead projector over the words. Kids elbow each other and whisper. Mrs. Dorfman doesn't know. She looks confused for a moment. Her eyes sweep across the room and land on me. She thinks I'm messing around. A good kid tells her about the bug. She squishes it with a tissue. Her voice is sharp now. “Write about the trip home and how you feel about your trip. Would you like to go back? Any questions?… Put on the proper heading. Let's get started.” Mrs. Dorfman shuts off the overhead.

  “How long do the paragraphs have to be?”

  “What if we never went anyplace?”

  “Is this a rough draft?”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Kids are blurting questions from all over the room. Jorge snatches the miniskateboard from under Angela's foot.

  “Write a personal narrative,” snaps Mrs. Dorfman. “Anyone who does not have a rough draft of at least two pages will stay after school. No talking.” I look down at my magazine, where there's a picture of a blue truck with big wheels and lightning bolts on the side. Then I remember. It's Tuesday. I want to be there to laugh when that old man goes out to mow and his old mower falls apart all over his nice green grass. I rip a piece of paper off my pad. I write “Du” at the top. I write my personal narrative. “I went to Disneyland. I went with my mom and dad and brother and sisters. We went in the car. It was fun. I saw people dressed like big mice. I went on rides. I ate lots of food. I would like to go again.” Mrs. Dorfman is walking up and down the aisles. She taps her finger on my paper. “Good job, Du,” she says. I've never been to Disneyland.

  Anthony and Jorge have to stay after school but I get to go even though my personal narrative was just a little bit of one page. I run. I see that the old man hasn't mowed his grass yet. I get an apple and a banana. I look out the back window, where I can see the shed. Now I'm the spy. Finally he comes out his back door. He's so slow. He stoops over to pick up a little bit of nothing on his grass. He puts it in his shirt pocket. He looks over at our yard. I bet it was something that blew over there from our yard because we never mow. Our yard's full of high weeds and tall brown grass that hides rusty tools and cracked pots people left there long ago. Some places you can hardly walk. That's why the cat is my cat. She hunts in my yard. I see her crouched low and silent with just her tail twitching and I've seen a lizard tail out there and bird feathers she left in the shaggy bushes in back. In the old man's yard she'd never catch anything.

  At the shed the old man tips the lock this way and that, trying to see. He does everything like slow-motion stuff on TV. I just want to see that mower fall apart. The door is open. Here comes the mower. It's just out of the shed when the first wheel falls off. He doesn't see it. He thinks it's stuck on something so he gives it a big hard push. He's standing there holding the handle and the rest of the mower is in a mess on the ground. I burst out laughing. He looks at it with his mouth puckered up. Then his head stays still but his eyes under his bushy eyebrows move toward my window. I duck. I wait a few minutes. I look again. He's not there. Just that old pile of lawn mower parts. He's probably calling 911. He can't prove anything. I go away to watch TV.

  “What are you laughing about?” asks Lin from the dining room. She's in there even more than Thuy and Vuong now, taking care of some plants she grew like they were little babies.

  “Nothing.” I shrug. It's so funny I wish I could tell somebody but not Lin. She doesn't like anything I do.

  Cartoons are over. I go look out the window again. There he is. He's made a table with some old boards. He has the lawn mower parts up on the table with a bunch of rags and oil and wrenches. He's kind of whistling, putting the lawn mower back together. He's sharpening the blades. I wish I could watch up close.

  I go outside. I pretend I'm washing my feet at the outside faucet. I don't look at him but I look around for my cat. I see her on the roof of the shed. “Hey, Cat, come here,” I say in Vietnamese. She's fat now because I feed her every day. I hope
she doesn't get so fat she can't run from the old man.

  “You better leave that cat alone,” the old man calls. “She could have rabies.” I shrug. I don't know what that is but I won't ask him.

  “You left the water on,” he says when I walk away, like he's telling me what to do. He can't tell me what to do.

  “Your mower broke?” I ask as if I didn't know.

  “I'm just doing some maintenance,” he says. “You'd need a scythe to cut that yard of yours.” I don't know what maintenance is and I don't know what scythe is. I go inside. I slam the door. Later I ask Thuy about rabies and maintenance and scythe. I know my cat doesn't have rabies. I hope he's not trying to catch her so they can kill her. She's too smart for him to catch her anyway. It would be fun to have a scythe and go swinging it all over the yard.

  I swing a pretend scythe a few times but Thuy and Lin and Vuong keep reading. I swing it over near the window, where all of Lin's science experiment plants are lined up in their little pots. Lin keeps her head down in her book. This is odd. I make a whooshing sound and take a few more swings at the plants. I come as close as I can but I don't have a real scythe so I don't hurt them. Lin jumps up. Her eyes are red. Tears stream down her face.

  “Knock them over! Throw them out! It doesn't matter,” she cries. She runs out of the room.

  “What'd I do?” I protest before Thuy and Vuong can yell at me too.

  “You're teasing her and she's already heartbroken,” Thuy answers.

  “Why?” This is interesting. The plants looks fine. All exactly alike and about five inches tall in their little matching pots. I didn't hurt them.

  “As if you care!”

  “I care,” I argue. I would care if something bad happened to Lin but why would she cry about little plants?

  “Lin cares about school. Unlike one of us,” Thuy answers scornfully. She means me, of course. “She's in a special Young American Scientist program and the plants are for her science project. She's supposed to find mutant speed-seed plants and then she grows more and more until they're all mutants.”

  I don't know about speed-seed plants but I know about mutants from TV. They're usually giant blobs with crooked teeth and noses and their hands growing out of their foreheads. I shrug. I can see from the cute little plants that she doesn't have any mutants. “So?” I say.

  “So?” Vuong mimics me. “So she doesn't have any mutants and the first part of the experiment is due tomorrow. She did all that work and wrote the report and now she won't have time to start growing them again and finish on time.”

  “How about finish late?” I suggest. How much difference can it make?

  Thuy stands up with her hands on her hips to argue. “She can't be in the science project class if she doesn't keep to the schedule and have a project to turn in. And Lin cares. She wants that more than anything.”

  They're both acting like somehow it's my fault just because I wouldn't cry, boohoo, about her school project. I go to Lin's room to see if she wants to go to the market with me but she won't open the door.

  I like to be out in the yard in the morning when it's just getting light. The weeds are wet on my feet and the bottom of my pants but I don't care. I watch for Cat. I leave her some noodles and tofu mixed up on a piece of newspaper. Later when I check, the food's always gone because she's such a hungry cat. I decide to check the alley for any good wood or metal stuff people have thrown out. Even our trash can is piled high today. I wonder why.

  It's full of Lin's speed-seed plants. She took such good care of them she even put them in the trash carefully. Speed-seed plants must mean they grow fast. What if I planted them in the old man's yard under the berries, and huge ugly mutant plants spread all over his yard? He'd be out there trying to pull them up or chop them down but they'd just keep growing too fast for him. Lin says they're not mutants, though, because they're all the same. To be a mutant one has to be different but maybe she's wrong and they're not all the same when they get older. I'll just rescue them all and line them up here by the shed. I'll get them all ready so I can plant them in his yard tomorrow.

  I go in the kitchen for something to eat. “Du, you're all wet. What are you doing out there?” asks nosy Thuy.

  “Nothing,” I say. Lin might tell me I can't have her plants even though they were in the trash. Her eyes are still red and she doesn't say anything. She trails off after Thuy and Vuong to school. I see Thuy wait at the bottom of the steps and put her arm around Lin's shoulders. I've got time to plant a few now if I go over the little side-yard fence and hurry. I don't think the old man's up yet.

  I like these little plants. They look like they really want to grow. Bigger leaves near the bottom, close together, then smaller ones up the stem, until there are the little tiny growing leaves at the top. They look exactly alike, even more than outside plants do. Even these little tiny, tiny hairs on the stem that I can see if I hold them up to the light.

  Wait! Not this one. This one doesn't have any little stem hairs at all…. This one doesn't either. I wonder if that's mutant. Little tiny hairs! They're hidden under the leaves and really hard to see. Too bad Lin's already gone to school.

  No, I won't just say too bad she's gone. I'll take them to her. It won't take long if I run. I'll be late for school but late just means make up double time in the Counseling Center after school. I don't care about that.

  I can't run too fast with these plants, hairy on the right and no hairs on the left. I don't want to wreck them. The high school's one block down now but there's nobody hanging around out front. Classes must have started.

  I find the office by asking a girl in the hall. I park the plants outside the door. I tell the lady inside it's an emergency and give her Lin's name. She doesn't believe me. “I don't know what this is about but you should be in school, young man,” she warns me.

  “It's my grandma's medicine. She has to have it fast and Lin knows where it is. I'll just ask her and be out of here,” I lie. I hope the lie won't come back so my grandma really needs medicine.

  “What is your phone number?” she asks.

  “We don't have a phone,” I lie again.

  The lady goes through a file of cards. “There's a phone listed here,” she says, like she caught me.

  “That's not ours. We got rid of it. Please, lady. Let me just ask her fast.” The lady calls the number but nobody answers. My grandma never answers because she can't speak English. Finally that does it. The lady calls a high school girl to take me to Lin's room.

  “What are those?” The girl sniffs when she sees the plants in the hall.

  “You stay here,” she orders me outside a classroom door. She goes inside. She comes out with Lin and jerks her thumb at me. Then she strolls away down the hall.

  Lin is scared. “What's wrong with Grandma?” she asks, her red eyes getting teary again.

  “Nothing,” I answer. I hold out the plants.

  “What are you doing with those?” Real tears, angry ones now, roll down her face. “Get out of here!”

  “Mutants,” I say. “See.” I pull her under a window where the light is bright. “See the little hairs.” I pull the big leaves at the bottom gently aside so she can see the stem. I'm so excited about it I almost laugh out loud. I show her the other one with no hairs.

  “Oh, Du,” Lin whispers like I've given her a golden treasure. “I see. I see.” Her face goes from golden treasure to disaster again. “Du,” she cries. “They're all in the trash. It's trash collection day.”

  “No, they're not,” I say. “They're lined up by the shed.”

  “Oh, Du. Thank you, thank you. Can you move them inside where they were? Outside might not be good for them. Please, can you do this one last thing? I know you're late for school.” I'm afraid she'll cry again.

  I run home to do what she says. I think about how desperate she is about the stubby plants and their little tiny hairs. Because it's a project for school. I think how cool it is that I found them and saved her. Even though she
was so crabby to me before. I get an idea on the way home. Now she can help me just once with Mrs. Dorfman's personal narrative. I'll show my teacher that I had a better trip than anybody if Lin can help me.

  When I walk in, Mrs. Dorfman points toward the office and says “Late slip” to me right in the middle of the social studies paragraph she's reading. I stroll over to the Counseling Center.

  “Why are you late, Du?” asks Ms. Whipple. I shrug but I must have a big grin because of rescuing the mutants.

  “It's not funny, Du,” she says, tilting her head like she's trying to figure something out. “If there's a good reason, you won't have to stay, you know.”

  “I was rescuing mutants for my sister,” I say.

  “Okay, Du.” She shakes her head while she writes out the late slip but she's smiling a little at what I said. “Be here after school until you make up fifty minutes.” I stroll back to class with my late slip. Ms. Whipple's nice. Maybe I will tell her about the mutants.