It's Girls Like You, Mickey

by Patti Kim

  “Well, dang. First of all, that there looks more like cheering than fighting. And second of all, you are one deep dish,” I say.

  “So I do like this. Bam. Bam,” she says, throwing punches into her palm.

  “Yeah, that’s tough.”

  “Yeah, tough and deep, but not like dish. I am deep like ocean. Let me asking, Mickey. Why you all need me to be like the pet?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t even know I was doing that. Like when? When did I treat you like my pet, ’cause I don’t feel like I did. Give me, like, an example.”

  “You bossing me too much. You take like this and pull. Come here. Come here. Like this,” she says, grabbing my wrist and tugging.

  “Oh yeah. I did that, didn’t I?”

  “Like dog.”

  “I see it.”

  “And then you tell me wear this, wear that. Wear hanbok. I hate the hanbok.”

  “Then why’d you wear it? You didn’t have to wear it.”

  “I know. So I say that my problem too. I have to fix. But making me so mad when you bossing me. Say like this. Say like that. You don’t know. You no clue. You no clue,” she says, imitating how I talk.

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Just because my English not too good and I don’t know how to do the American, it’s not mean I’m dumb-dumb.”

  “Okay, for the record, I do not think you’re a dumb-dumb. You are, like, wild smart. And, like, coming to this country and all and not speaking the language and doing what you’re doing? That takes pure guts. And I think you deserve a standing O for that. That’s how high I think of you. And I swear I did not mean to treat you like a pet, but I realize what I mean and don’t mean don’t matter ’cause you felt it, and I am from the bottom of my heart of hearts so sorry about all my bossing and tugging and telling you what to do and how to be like I’m some life pro, ’cause yeah, that would piss me off too. You’re right. I didn’t treat you equal. I guess it was ’cause I’m American, I thought I was some kind of expert and I took it upon myself to show you the ropes, you know, like a tour guide.”

  “Tour guide is not friend.”

  “I admit there was something about you being all lost and helpless like that that made me feel good about myself. I admit that. But then you were going off without me, being all powerful and doing your own thing, and I was like, ‘Who does she think she is? I was her friend first. I found her. I made her. She’s supposed to be mine.’ Yeah, I get it. That was wrong. But you didn’t have to spit your gum at me.”

  “No. I not spitting. I wrap and give to you like birthday present,” she says, and laughs.

  “That was nasty.”

  “So sorry, Mickey,” she says, rubbing her hands.

  Larry comes over to us, pinching a balloon, and squeaks, “Hey, what’s up? Want to dance with me? How about we do the tango?”

  Sunny and I would’ve laughed and thrown some paws at him to go squeak somewhere else, if not for the scream. It was the scream to shut down all screams. Like Jason-is-chasing-me kind of scream. Like snakes-oozing-out-my-showerhead kind of scream.

  From the other end of the cafeteria, Sydney bolts out of the kitchen, and she is screaming her head off and flailing her arms like streamers on a pom-pom. I’ve heard her scream plenty at rallies. This ain’t no pep-rally scream.

  A black cloud chases her out the kitchen. Like falling dominoes, everyone else starts screaming and scrambling and running for their lives out the doors.

  The black cloud hasn’t reached us on the stage yet, but Larry and Sunny go running off. I’m moving too, but I want to get a good look at this thing streaming out of the kitchen and spreading all over like—no, not like smoke; it’s more like a bunch of flies. Flies. This here is an infestation of flies. I scream, flail my arms, and dash for the door ’cause I hate flies. One or two don’t bother me none, but an entire generation makes me queasy sick like when Benny left a jar of jelly out and flies laid eggs in it that hatched into a bunch of flies crawling and swarming all over the jelly, and now I’m wondering if some of that stuff I took for raisins in all them school lunches I ate up were dead flies. The queasies hit me hard. I charge outside, only to run into Asa throwing up in the parking lot and Nawsia gagging and copycat retches sounding out like a chorus. I find me a spot behind the school sign and throw it all up.

  I wipe my mouth and catch my breath, leaning against the signpost, which says SAVE LIVES. WINTER RESCUE DANCE TONIGHT. My queasies get taken over by the blues, ’cause it looks the dance can’t happen with a bazillion flies infesting the cafeteria unless everyone’s got a fly swatter and swats while dancing and don’t mind that dead flies are floating in the punch. My queasies return. Looks like we’re the ones in bad need of a rescue.

  thirty-four

  We’re parked in front of the TV. Benny, Ma, Cyclops, Charlie, Jill, and even Kelly, who don’t normally care to sprawl with us, sits on my lap. I guess she got a whiff of all the anticipation. We wait for the local news to come on. Reporter Pete Collins was at our school today. You know the type. He goes all out with the theatrics and loves pausing between his words for drama. He’s. The. Best. His stories make me laugh, tsk-tsk, tear up, and want to get up and right all the wrongs in my neighborhood.

  “Why’s he look like a alien?” Benny asks, getting in front of the TV.

  “Sit, Benny! I can’t see. He’s not an alien. He’s a fly. That’s a fly costume he’s wearing,” I say.

  “Looks like a alien.”

  “Hush.”

  Pete Collins reports, “This is a story about the students of Landover Hills Middle School trying to save lives. The plan was to hold a dance tonight right here in their own cafeteria. Not just an ordinary dance. This dance was special. The dance of life or death. This dance would save lives. How?”

  The camera cuts to Sydney. Oh my tarnation, that’s Sydney, and the mic is on her, and she’s talking to Pete Collins. “Our school partnered with the Prince George’s County Animal Shelter. We were going to have this dance to raise money and awareness and basically give the cats and dogs that are, like, the most vulnerable a chance to get adopted, because if they don’t get adopted, you know, it’s really sad because, well, you know.”

  The camera cuts to a meowing tabby at the shelter. Then to a brown Lab in a crate curled into a doughnut. Then to a gray kitten pouncing and playing with a stuffed pig.

  “Awwww,” Ma, Benny, and I say in unison.

  Oh my tarnation, that’s Charity! Charity’s on TV, and she’s talking. “Winter’s the worst for these animals. Our pound is packed. It’s an emergency situation right now. We can’t shelter every one of them. Believe me, we’d like to, but we just can’t. There’s no room. We have more animals coming in than going out.”

  “Then what happens to them?” Pete asks.

  “Well, it’s sad, but we have to, you know, put them down,” Charity says.

  “Put. Them. Down,” Pete says, taking his dramatic pauses. “In other words, kill them. Euthanasia.”

  On the verge of tears, Charity nods.

  “Why they kill kids in Asia?” Benny asks.

  “Not youth in Asia. Euthanasia. It’s mercy killing, which is a big fat lie, ’cause there ain’t nothing merciful about it,” I say.

  The camera returns to Pete, who says, “These young people wanted to make a difference. They planned a school dance to find homes for abandoned cats and dogs who were on death row. They wanted to raise money to buy crates and toys for the shelter and save lives, but it’s not going to happen, folks. The dance has been called off. Why? Why? Flies. You heard me. Flies.”

  Pete walks into our cafeteria. It’s a mess. It looks like the apocalypse hit. The balloons have floated up to the ceiling. The streamers hang so sad and limp like toilet paper. Signs have fallen off the walls. It’s embarrassing.

  Pete moves into the school kitchen, saying, “While the students were decorating for the dance, they were attacked. Attacked by flies. Not a few flies, but a full-blown
infestation not unlike a scene out of the Old Testament.”

  Oh my tarnation! That’s Jamie. Jamie’s on TV. He says, “It was pretty scary. This black cloud thing was like chasing everyone. There was all this screaming. Like, the girls were going crazy. I screamed too. We all ran.”

  Larry comes on and says, “It was like a scene from a horror movie.”

  Tammy says, “It was so gross.”

  Pete Collins comes back and says, “Gross, indeed. But it gets even grosser. The grossest. And according to the exterminator, it all started right here in the school kitchen.”

  The exterminator comes on and says, “We found some dead mice kind of throughout the place, but the real source was the grease trap. A lot of eggs got laid and hatched because of dead mice in there. That’s what happens when the conditions are ripe. It’s like the perfect storm for breeding flies.”

  Principal Farmer comes on and says, “It’s awful. I feel for these kids. It’s not just about the dance, but some of our students count on these meals, and we can’t provide them until inspection gives us the go-ahead. You’re talking two or three days to up to a week maybe.”

  “No lunch? What’re we supposed to eat?” I say.

  It’s Mr. Graves. He says, “We’re doing everything we can. We understand the urgency of the situation. Pest control got to the source of the infestation, and hopefully cleanup will be quick, and we’ll pass inspection and get back to taking care of our students, our number-one priority.”

  “Mickey, why ain’t you on?” Benny asks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they cut that part. Hush. Pete’s on,” I say.

  “This is a story of a chain of command flipped topsy-turvy. Aren’t we, the people, supposed to be at the top of this chain? Then next rung down, it’s our pets, the cats and dogs, and the cats chase the mice, and the mice eat the flies. Well, not in this case, folks. These flies took over, shutting down a school dance that would have saved the lives of some dogs and cats, who in turn would have helped control the mouse population, who in turn would have kept the flies in check. Flies won this battle, but will they win the war?”

  “That’s Mickey! That’s Mickey!” Benny yells.

  There I am. There’s Sunny. There’s Jack. There’s Nawsia. I see Asa, too. We chase Pete Collins out of the cafeteria with fly swatters.

  While we swat at him outside, he huddles over and says, “Pete Collins reporting. From Landover Hills Middle. Swatting out.”

  “I want to swat the alien. I want to get on TV. Mickey, you famous,” Benny says.

  “I wish,” I say, petting Cyclops.

  A commercial comes on. A man working under the hood of a car looks up and complains about his headache, saying how much he wants it gone. A woman reading a book takes off her glasses, rubs her eyes, and says her head throbs all over. A grandma petting her dog suddenly stops and frowns, rubs her temples, and says, “I don’t have time for headaches.” They take Advil, the advanced medicine for pain, and like magic they’re back to living their lives. The man shuts the hood of the car, smiling. The woman turns a page in her book, smiling. The grandma walks her dog, smiling.

  “Ma?” I say.

  “Mick?”

  “I got an idea.”

  thirty-five

  It was what Ms. T would call a chain reaction. I talked to Ma. Ma talked to Jerry. Ma talked to Principal Farmer. Principal Farmer talked to Mr. Graves. Mr. Graves talked to the president of the PTA. The PTA president talked to the PTA board. I called Sydney. Sydney called the SGA kids. The SGA went through the school directory, and blast off! The rocket ship of telephone tag launched to reach every single student in our school.

  Thanks to Pete Collins, we were all feeling it, the fire to stand up, right a wrong, do something, take action, rise, make it happen, work together, don’t give up. The. Dance. Must. Go. On.

  And the next thing you know, here I am, pouring myself a cup of the world’s best punch at the Golden Gardens ballroom, watching an old woman in a wheelchair petting the cutest little cat on her lap, with Charity standing by. Halima and her parents check out a scrappy brown dog chasing its tail. Jermaine and his dad check out the most beautiful yellow Lab, but it’s not as good-looking as Charlie. An old man sits at a table petting a dog that sits next to him like they belong together. He talks to the dog, and the dog wags its tail. Herman’s got a kitten climbing his shoulder. Another woman gives treats to the most darling little poodle mix named Chelsea Ray. Most of the animals look all right with being here, except for the two dogs, huddled and hiding in the back corner, a chow and a husky. Benny sits with them, but they’re shaking. Charity said the owner surrendered them yesterday, and they’re scared and confused and attached to each other. Charity’s also telling everyone being a foster family is a great way to provide temporary homes for these animals. Everyone’s oooohing and awwwwing and what-do-we-have-here–ing, being real sweet and gentle ’cause animals got a way of bringing out the soft in us.

  You’d think I’d be flying high happy we’re pulling this miracle off, and a good chunk of me is, but another chunk of me—I guess you can call it the grumpy chunk—don’t get how people up and leave their pets. You can tell yourself a buffet of bull-poop excuses about how life is so hard and this ain’t what you bargained for and you got your own personal dreams to chase and the road owns you and you ain’t getting any younger and how’re you supposed to take care of yourself, let alone a wife, two kids, a dog, and three cats? So you split. It ain’t fair. It’s downright irresponsible. I spit at your splitting. But I refuse to waste my time and my happiness mulling and whining and boiling over about it. Life is good. Look at them beauties over there. Not one is hard. Not one is closed for business of getting and giving love. I want to be like that.

  Sydney takes the leash of Chelsea Ray. She would pick the poodle mix. She stands at the doors with the dog, greeting everyone and passing out flyers about fostering and adopting. She’s all smiles, welcoming students, their families, as well as the residents, while keeping an eye out for the news van. She’s wearing the smartest-looking pantsuit. I swear, she’s going to run the country someday.

  Ma’s at the dance floor, talking to the deejay, probably telling him to keep it oldies and easy listening on account of the residents. Without her, the Winter Rescue Dance at Golden Gardens would not be happening. I’m still in kind of a shock she took to my idea. It’s more Pete Collins’s doing than mine. We all got fired up. If we didn’t get on TV, Ma would’ve said what she usually says when I tell her I got an idea. “In your dreams.”

  While Tony Bennett sings how the best is yet to come, Mr. Graves dances the fox-trot with his date. You heard me. He brought a date. Not in a bazillion would I have pegged him for a dancer, but I admit, he’s pulling some smooth moves. Kids start to drag themselves to the dance floor like that’s the last place they want to go, but oh all right, fine. Kevin dances with Joanna, which doesn’t surprise me ’cause there’s been talk about Joanna liking Kevin. Mike and Tracy start dancing together, and I’m like what’s going on there ’cause they just broke up. Gina and Audrey partner up. Two girls dancing together is no big deal, so I don’t get why two boys can’t. They’re all doing the hands-on-hips-and-shoulders, arms-stretched-forward zombie pose, eyes looking far and yonder, swaying to how we ain’t seen nothing yet.

  Principal Farmer goes table to table, shaking hands with parents, saying hi and thank you for supporting the students and reassuring everyone that the fly situation is under control.

  Sunny walks in. I jump and wave. She jumps, waves back, and catwalks like a supermodel to the punch table. She’s got on a black miniskirt, black knee-highs that look like boots from far away, a black turtleneck, and red lipstick. She’s all these-boots-were-made-for-walking beatnik chic. I get her cup ready, pouring her some lime-green goodness topped with not one, but two maraschino cherries.

  “Okay, you win the coolest cat,” I say, handing her a cup of punch. “Here. Try this. It’s so yummy.”


  She takes a sip and says, “Oh, so sweet. Is like the candy water.”

  “You got a foam mustache.”

  She licks it off and asks, “Is gone?”

  “Yeah. Oh my tarnation, are those doggy earrings you’re wearing? I love them. That’s so cute. Your ears are pierced? When’d that happen? I gotta get mine pierced. Did it hurt?”

  “It’s like pinching.”

  “You know you can do it yourself with a needle and a ice cube and some rubbing alcohol. Hey, how’d you like my dress?” I ask, turning around.

  “I like. I like. So cool. How did you make?”

  “So easy-peasy. It’s just cutting and stapling. I used duct tape to hold up the hem. See? It’s just like a sack. Wear a big belt around it and voilà. This here’s what I call the dress of the future. Hey, did you see Asa? He got on a tux,” I say.

  “I see. He look like penguin or something,” Sunny says.

  “What? I thought you were all goo-goo for him.”

  “I don’t know if I like anymore. Too many girls like. I don’t like that. Look at him. All those girls following around like that. I don’t want.”

  “Honestly? I don’t get what the big whoop is.”

  “I get. I think he’s like celebrity. You know, like everybody know him. He’s like star. That’s why they like so much. Oh, Mickey, here come Larry.”

  “How do I look?” I ask, wondering why I even give two toots about how I look to Lawrence Elwood. Before Sunny can respond, I say, “Whatever. I don’t care.”

  “He looking nice, Mickey,” she whispers.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Larry says, getting some punch.

  “Oh, hey,” I say.

  “Is it okay if I hang here with you guys?” he asks.

  “Free country. It’s fine by me,” I say.