Pandas
on the
Eastside
Gabrielle Prendergast
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
Text copyright © 2016 Gabrielle Prendergast
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Prendergast, Gabrielle, author
Pandas on the eastside / Gabrielle Prendergast.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4598-1143-0 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1144-7 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1145-4 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8631.R448P35 2016 jC813'.6 C2016-900530-5
C2016-900531-3
First published in the United States, 2016
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016931890
Summary: In this middle-grade novel set in 1973, ten-year-old Journey rallies her friends and neighbors to come to the aid of two stranded pandas.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover artwork by Taryn Gee
Author photo by Leonard Layton
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
www.orcabook.com
19 18 17 16 • 4 3 2 1
For Lucy
Contents
One
Journey Wind Song
Two
Miss Bickerstaff
Three
Nancy Pendleton
Four
Heather Bird Song
Five
Tom Chaparro
Six
Kentucky Jack
Seven
Ben Wallace
Eight
Officer Pete Baker
Nine
Mr. Huang
Ten
Kellie Rae
Eleven
Contrary Gary
Twelve
Michael Booker
Thirteen
Mr. Hartnell
Fourteen
Jen Chow
Fifteen
Patty Maguire
Sixteen
David Schuman
Seventeen
Anjali Singh
Eighteen
Mrs. Bent
Nineteen
Mr. Cheung
Twenty
Journey Wind Song Flanagan Chaparro
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
One
Journey Wind Song
My neighborhood, the Eastside, is about the unlikeliest place on earth you would ever think to see a panda. But life is full of surprises.
Some people call the Eastside a slum. That’s because they are describing buildings and roads instead of people. To them, people on the Eastside probably look poor, sad, uneducated, sick and worthless. But I don’t care what they think. To me, the people around here are friends. Kellie Rae on the corner, who Mom tells me to ignore? She gives me dimes to buy Popsicles. Those guys who sell stuff I’m not allowed to even see, much less think about buying? They call me Singalong, let me take their pop bottles back and get snippy when their customers litter. And Kentucky Jack, Contrary Gary and the rest, who sleep on the street until well into winter? If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t know any swearwords at all. And I think a girl called Journey might need high-quality swearwords one day.
That’s right, Journey is my name. Journey Wind Song. That’s pretty much all I know for sure about myself. Mom sometimes says I’m part Viking, but Kentucky Jack, who has never, by the way, been anywhere near Kentucky, says I look just like his cousin’s girlfriend, and she’s pure Indian through and through and never been off the rez. Kellie Rae always says Aloha to me and tells me I must be a Hawaiian princess or something. Mom has red hair and freckles, so obviously there was something going on with my dad that gave me the black hair, but this is one of the things Mom never talks about.
Mom tells me all kinds of other stuff I’m sure I don’t need to know. She tells me about the war, and about the prime minister and his pretty wife, and about all the weird ingredients in orange soda. But she never tells me anything about my dad. All I ever get is this speech: He didn’t stick around after you were born. That’s all you need to know. Why would I need to know about the ingredients in orange soda but not need to know anything about my own father? I think when Mom says, That’s all you need to know, what she really means is “That’s all I want to tell you.” There’s a difference. But Mom doesn’t see it that way.
The past is gone, she says, as though it’s a book I left on the bus and should just forget about. But how can I forget a past I never knew anything about in the first place?
Sometimes, when she’s slipped a little and smells of wine, she lies on the sofa and calls me Scheherazade. I asked my teacher what that meant and she gave me a book called The Arabian Nights, so I don’t know—maybe I’m an Arab. I don’t look like any of the girls from The Brady Bunch or like any doll, that’s for sure.
Mom says she was one of the first people to give a kid a name like Journey Wind. Nowadays you can’t walk down the street without tripping over a baby named Rainbow or Sunshine or a toddler called Freedom or Phoenix. But most girls my age are called Mary or Julie or Nancy or Jackie. Jackie was the name of the president’s wife the year I was born, 1962. So there are a lot of Jackies, but not too many Journeys in grade five at Eastside Elementary. Mom was a real trailblazer, an innovator namewise. She says she was a hippie before anyone even knew there were hippies. She calls herself Heather some days. On others, she goes by Bird. Bird Song. Get it?
Song is not our real last name. I found my birth certificate one day when I was looking for a quarter to buy milk. My real first name is Journey and my real middle name is Wind, but my last name is actually Flanagan, which is about as far from Song as you can get. And it’s sure not a Viking name. Under Father it says Unknown.
So I go by Journey Song. That’s what I write on my schoolbooks anyway. My school is three blocks from our apartment, and in the morning I sometimes have to step over puddles of pee or worse things, but mostly the streets are quiet at that time. All the kids at school live on the Eastside. No one from the outside would ever send their kid to an Eastside school. Some kids at school don’t even speak English. Some kids never bring lunch. Some kids only come to class once or twice a week, or they come late every day. My teacher, Miss Bickerstaff, sighs a lot and sends a lot of notes home and writes letters to politicians. I’ve heard some parents’ gossip in the schoolyard that all she wants is more pay and better sofas in the staff room, but she let me read one of the letters once. She was asking for more books and chalk and better blackboards. Stuff for us, not her. Stuff to make the school a better place to learn. Learning is the key that unlocks your future, Journey, she said. Then she blew her nose. Our classroom is real dusty sometimes.
I think it must be hard to be a teacher on the Eastside.
Two
Miss Bickerstaff
I saw the headline on a piece of newspaper that Kentucky Jack had folded over his head to keep the morning sun out of his eyes while he slept in the bus shelter.
“Ewwww!” Nancy Pendleton said when I leaned down to take a closer look.
I could hear Jack snoring under the newspaper, and I could sure smell him too, but I want
ed to read the headline. PANDAS COMING TO AMERICA. Under the paper, Jack grunted and rolled over in his sleep. The newspaper slipped off his head and fell into a suspicious-looking puddle under the bench.
“Gross! Don’t pick it up!” Nancy said. I really wanted to, but she was probably right. Who knew what was in that puddle?
“There are pandas coming to America,” I said as we walked away.
“What are pandas?” Nancy said. Nancy was one of the kids at our school who never really learned to read. It wasn’t her fault. She has something wrong with her eyes that makes the letters look upside down and backward, and the words get all mixed up. I tried to explain it to a teacher, Mrs. Parker, one day when we were in grade two, but she made us both write lines on the board. I will not tell lies, we wrote twenty times. Most of Nancy’s lines said I llw ont tle lise. Teachers never made Nancy write lines again. But they never taught her to read either.
“A panda is a bear. It’s mostly white, with black eyes,” I explained.
“Black eyes?” Nancy said. “Did someone punch them?”
“No,” I explained patiently. “They just have black fur around their eyes. Like raccoons. They come from China.”
“From China? And they’re coming to America? Are they going to swim?”
I really wanted to laugh then, because the idea of pandas swimming across the Pacific Ocean was sure funny, but Nancy had a habit of body checking people who laugh at her.
“I think they’ll probably come in a boat,” I said. “I sure wish I could see a panda. That would be groovy.” Groovy was a word I heard the big kids saying all the time. I liked the way it sounded, like the purr of a big fluffy cat. Grooooooovvvvyyyy.
“Maybe you can see one,” Nancy said. “When they get to America, where will they go?”
“Washington, DC, it said. That’s the far Washington, not the close one.”
Nancy looked disappointed. But even if the pandas were going to the close Washington, that was still hours away, and anyway, I could never afford to go. And certainly Nancy couldn’t.
“Maybe there will be a picture in the paper when they arrive,” I said. Then I made a promise to myself to save up a few dimes so if there was a picture in the paper, I could buy a copy instead of picking a greasy one out of the trash. I would put the picture of the pandas on my wall, next to the ones my mom gave me of the moon landing and Martin Luther King and the helicopter taking off from that big concert in the field with the funny name.
When we got to school I wanted to tell everyone about the pandas, but Miss Bickerstaff was crying in the hallway outside our room. The principal, Mr. Hartnell, and the secretary, Mrs. Bent, were holding her. Then she fell down on her knees, and Mrs. Bent went down with her. Her knees hitting the hard wood floor made me get a pain in my stomach, but she didn’t wince or anything—she just held on to Miss Bickerstaff even tighter.
“Get the children into the classroom,” Mrs. Bent said to Mr. Hartnell, like she was the principal and he worked for her. But he did what she said.
“Don’t just stand around like dazed sheep—get into the classroom,” he said to me and the other kids who were watching poor Miss Bickerstaff sob on the floor. Even though I’d seen people arrested or taken away in ambulances, I thought Miss Bickerstaff on the floor was about the worst thing I’d ever seen.
We all walked into class, quiet and shocked, and sat down at our desks in the most orderly fashion ever. Mr. Hartnell looked at us for a long time, frowning.
“I imagine Miss Bickerstaff will be going home for today,” he said finally.
A couple of kids just nodded.
“She’s had some bad news.” He stopped and looked out the window. “You know about the war, right?”
“In Vietnam?” I said after a few silent seconds had gone past.
“Miss Bickerstaff’s brother was fighting in the war and…”
“He died?” I said. I knew Miss Bickerstaff’s brother was in the war. She had a picture of him in his uniform in her drawer. I’d seen it when I got a paper clip for my book report. Miss Bickerstaff’s brother was only nineteen years old.
“Yes. He died,” Mr. Hartnell said. He didn’t act surprised that I had guessed it. “The army told his mother, and she called the school. Asked me to tell Miss Bickerstaff. So I did.”
Behind me I could hear Nancy and Michael Booker, who by some miracle had come to class on time, begin to fidget.
“I’m going to get the projector and see what films are in the library. Maybe there’s something from National Geographic.” He turned to the door. “You can watch something until I can get a substitute.” Normally this would have made the whole class cheer, but we all just sat there like dolls on a shelf. “Journey, you’re in charge,” Mr. Hartnell said as he left.
I turned around to look at my classmates, fully expecting them to start making spitballs and throwing paper airplanes, but nobody moved. Then the door opened and Miss Bickerstaff came in, with Mrs. Bent still holding on to her.
“She just needs her purse,” Mrs. Bent said.
Please don’t let it be in the drawer, I said to myself. Please let her purse be anywhere else. But she reached down and opened the drawer. Then she froze. Every part of her froze. Except her face. Her face kind of folded up, and she closed her eyes. Mrs. Bent clung to her, and they just stood there while Miss Bickerstaff shook with sobs.
Then a miracle happened.
Nancy started to sing. Now Nancy might have been kind of slow sometimes, and she couldn’t read a word, but she could sing like an angel sent from God. Who knows how she learned the words to any songs, because her family was too poor to have a stereo, and her older brother was always hogging the radio to listen to hockey or baseball, and Nancy for sure never went to church. But somehow, some way, she started singing “Amazing Grace.” It was like that song came right out of Miss Bickerstaff’s heart and into Nancy’s, and then Nancy sang it out so we could all understand what Miss Bickerstaff was going through.
After Nancy had sung two lines, Michael joined in. Then Patty Maguire started. Jen Chow, who could barely speak English, sang too, and she sang the words more clearly than she has ever spoken. Anjali sang, even though she believes in a whole other god, and David Schuman sang, even though he doesn’t believe in God at all because his parents are communists. Soon everyone was singing. I knew the song. Finally I couldn’t hold my mouth closed anymore. Even though I always think I sing like a frog, I opened up, and the sound that came out was like a ringing bell, clear and pretty and sad.
We sang that song all the way through, and when we finished, Miss Bickerstaff opened her eyes, reached down and pulled her purse and the photograph out of the drawer, closed the drawer slowly and stood up, hugging both things to her chest. She wasn’t crying anymore, although Mrs. Bent sure was. They didn’t say anything. They just walked out of the classroom, holding on to each other.
A long time went by. No one said or did anything. When I turned back to look at Nancy, she had fallen asleep on her desk.
Nancy is like that.
Three
Nancy Pendleton
Nancy Pendleton has been my best friend since kindergarten, when she poured a whole cup of Tang over the head of Michael Booker because he pulled my braid so hard I cried. I was real grateful to her, because Tang was a special treat. We only got it once a month when Mr. Hartnell brought it from home to help celebrate all the birthdays we had that month and to congratulate anyone who had lost a tooth. So while Michael Booker dripped into the garbage can, I gave Nancy what was left of my Tang, and that made her smile.
We were friends after that, even when everyone said she was a dummy and the teachers argued with Mr. Hartnell about keeping her back or sending her to another school. Mr. Hartnell said he believed in something called mainstreaming, Nancy’s mom told me. But she didn’t care either way—it was just easier for Nancy to go to the same school as her brothers. Even though she couldn’t read or write, Nancy was real good at taking care of
her brothers. Her mom said that was a gift from God. I don’t know what mainstreaming is, but if it means my best friend can be in my class, I’m all for it.
Nancy had a terrible flu when she was three. Her mom says she nearly died, and that’s the reason she can’t read and has trouble understanding stuff. But I think sometimes that she understands things better than anyone else, because when we were walking home that day after Miss Bickerstaff cried, she said about the smartest and most true thing I’d ever heard.
“I bet Miss Bickerstaff would like to see those pandas.”
I just stopped there on the sidewalk and smiled for a whole minute. It was such a great thing to say. Not that I ever thought Miss Bickerstaff would get to see the pandas or that seeing the pandas would bring her brother back. But Nancy had a way of capturing things and saying them in ways so simple that even she could understand them. And she was right. We all needed to see something great on the Eastside. With the war and the chilly old school and the weird puddles on the sidewalk, it was about time we all saw something great. I really wished someone would build a zoo on the Eastside and fill it with pandas. I really wanted to see a panda right then. Even a picture would do.
“Hey!” I said. “Let’s go to the big library!”
We had a library in our school, but I’d read everything in it already. And Nancy couldn’t read, so it was hard to get her excited about going to that library. But the big library was farther west into the city, where the skyscrapers gleamed in the sun and ladies wore platform heels and trim little skirts with colored tights. That was more of an adventure.
“Okay,” Nancy said. “Do you have two dimes for the bus?” Nancy has trouble counting money, but somehow she knows what everything costs in coins. A quarter for this, a dime for that. Three nickels would get a steamed pork bun at Mr. Huang’s. Nancy had no idea that three nickels was fifteen cents, but despite this, she knew that ten nickels each would get us into a matinee. Not that we ever had ten nickels each. But we could dream.
That day I didn’t have any coins, so we decided to walk. We had left school at three thirty, but neither my mom nor Nancy’s minded if we didn’t get home until just before dark. Mom made supper most nights, which she left covered with a pot lid on the table if I wasn’t home on time. Nancy usually heated up a can of soup, because her brothers would have already licked the supper pot clean. Nancy didn’t mind. She liked soup.
Pandas on the Eastside Page 1
