Pandas on the Eastside

by Gabrielle Predergast

  Mrs. Bent clicked something on the microphone. There was a loud buzzing noise and everything in the school went silent. I took out my piece of paper and started to read.

  “Good morning, teachers, guests and boys and girls.” I had to gulp then, because I was so nervous, but Dad took a picture of me and gave me a thumbs-up, so I kept going. “Today we would like to welcome back Miss Bickerstaff. For those of you who don’t know, she has been away because her brother died in the war and she was feeling too sad to teach. Miss Bickerstaff loves teaching, so if she was too sad to teach, then that means she was very, very sad.”

  Mrs. Bent dabbed her eyes. I drew a big breath and read on. “This war is making lots of people sad, it seems, and there’s a whole lot of other stuff too that makes people sad. Some people don’t have enough to eat, or anywhere nice to live.” I thought about Kellie Rae and Gary and Jack. “Some people live far away from their country and have a hard time understanding the way we talk.” I thought about Jen Chow and Mr. Huang. “Some people’s families are mixed up or messed up or missing people or just weird.” I thought about Michael Booker and David Schuman. And I thought about myself and my dad, who I had just met. “And some people just have a hard time doing things that the rest of us can do real easy.” I thought of Nancy. “Some people have real hard jobs.” I thought of Anjali’s dad and Patty Maguire’s dad. “Some people just try really hard to keep going, even though life seems to make things hard for them. They have to make hard decisions and try every day not to make mistakes.” I thought of Mom and Miss Bickerstaff and Ben Wallace. And I thought of Officer Pete, because he did have a real hard job, and a policeman can’t afford to make mistakes, no matter what. “Some people are sad because it seems that no matter what they do, nothing ever gets better.” I looked up at Mrs. Bent, who had tears streaming down her face by this time, and Mr. Hartnell behind her, who was staring at a stain on the carpet.

  “The thing is, we can make each other happy, if we try. We don’t have to be mean to each other. We can help each other. We could be more like animals in a way, not less. Because there is a perfect animal in the world who only wants bamboo to eat and somewhere comfortable to sleep. That’s what makes them happy. And we can help them today. They need our help. And I believe that helping them will make us happy—I know it will make me happy. And I think it will make Miss Bickerstaff happy. So I, Journey Wind Song Flanagan Chaparro, am asking you to come with me to the shipyard. We don’t have any parental permission, and we don’t have any buses, but it’s not raining and we’ll all be together, so if you want to come, then let’s meet in the schoolyard and go help our friends find their way to their new home.” I finished with a sigh. It felt right. Mrs. Bent clicked off the microphone. Then she blew her nose into a lacy hanky.

  The cameraman turned his camera off and looked at my dad. “I’m going to get an award for this,” he said.

  Nineteen

  Mr. Cheung

  We arrived at the shipyard just before eleven, like I’d planned. The younger kids were tied together with long strings looped around their wrists. Some of the older kids had wandered into people’s yards, thrown chestnuts at each other and made faces at passing cars, but we’d all gotten there in one piece. Soon there were a hundred kids and nearly as many adults, all gathered outside the warehouse. Gary and Jack were there, and even Kellie Rae. I stood there holding Miss Bickerstaff’s hand and wondering what to do next. As usual, I hadn’t quite completed my plan before going ahead and putting it to work.

  The warehouse door was closed and locked in front of me, like some magical gate to a forbidden castle. The Chinese word for panda could still be seen, clear as anything. But someone had crossed out the drawing of Mr. Cheung with red spray paint. Did that mean he was gone? I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  The door opened and Mr. Cheung came out. He had an expression on his face like someone who has just drunk a gallon of vinegar.

  “Journey Song,” he said to me, only he made it sound like a swearword.

  “Mr. Cheung,” I said right back, hoping for the same effect.

  “I should have all of you arrested for trespassing.”

  I pointed to Officer Pete, who had been waiting for us when we arrived. “There’s a policeman right over there. Why don’t you go tell him to arrest us?”

  Officer Pete gave me a big grin and a smile. Mr. Cheung glared at me.

  “Let me tell you about my day, Miss Song,” he said. His lips were pulled so tight I thought they might split apart. “This morning at 2 AM I received a call from my government. Then I received a call from the president’s office in Washington at 3 AM. At 4 AM my mother called and told me I was bringing shame on my whole family and our ancestors. Then at 5 AM my daughter had a nightmare that woke up the entire house. At 6 AM my daughter’s nanny told me she would not make my daughter’s breakfast unless I agreed to let the pandas go to Washington. At 6:30 I fired her. At 6:45 my wife said she would divorce me if I fired the nanny. At 7 AM I rehired the nanny and had to raise her wages. At 7:30 my government called again. I told them to call the president’s office directly, as I was going back to bed.” Mr. Cheung crossed his arms and sighed.

  Everyone, including Mr. Cheung, seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I said the first thing I could think of. “What have you learned, Mr. Cheung?” That was something both Mom and my teachers said when something went wrong or I was having a bad day.

  “What?” Mr. Cheung looked very, very tired. I decided to help him out.

  “Well, I think maybe you’ve learned that there are a lot of people in the world who are affected by the decisions you or your government makes. Not just people, but pandas too. I hope your government learned that too. And the president in Washington and everyone who works for him. Also, you probably weren’t paying your nanny enough to begin with.”

  Beside me, Miss Bickerstaff gave a little snort of laughter, which she covered with her hand.

  Mr. Cheung pinched the top of his nose. “What are you doing here, Miss Song?”

  “We came to make sure the pandas don’t get sent back to China, because—”

  “The pandas are not being sent back to China,” Mr. Cheung said, but as usual I just kept on talking.

  “—I’m worried that they won’t survive the journey, because that would be very hard for them. They’ve been locked up in the warehouse for ages, and they normally live up in the clouds, and we’ve been bringing them bamboo and everything, but I’m not sure if that’s enough for them, and, well, it would just be a tragedy if anything were to happen to them. A tragedy. So, in conclusion—”

  “THE PANDAS ARE NOT GOING BACK TO CHINA!” Mr. Cheung yelled.

  Everyone got so silent that you could have heard a seagull wing flapping clear across the harbor.

  If it had been nighttime, we would have heard crickets, I’m sure.

  “What?” I said.

  “The pandas aren’t going back to China!” Nancy yelled before Mr. Cheung could repeat himself.

  Everyone started to cheer. Nancy turned around and held her arms up in victory, as though everyone was cheering for her. Then, toward the back of the crowd, I saw Kellie Rae hold her arms up. People turned to her and cheered again. Then Michael Booker held his arms up, and so did Contrary Gary and Ben Wallace and Anjali’s grandfather and Jen Chow. Soon we all had our arms in the air and were cheering for each other.

  “We did it!” Nancy shouted to me. I wasn’t sure how we’d done it, and maybe it would have happened anyway, but everyone there felt that triumph as much as I did. We mattered in that moment. To each other and to the world. We were important. We had changed the course of history—or at least the course of the lives of those pandas. And that mattered. That mattered a lot.

  Gradually the cheering stopped and changed into just the murmur of a lot of people talking to each other, excited but not loud. I turned to Mr. Cheung, who had a strange expression on his face. He didn’t seem happy. He didn’t seem mad. H
e seemed like someone who didn’t like his job anymore.

  “You can go now, Miss Song. You got what you wanted.”

  The grin fell off my face like a baby bird out of its nest.

  “Go? What about the pandas?” I said.

  “What about them?” Mr. Cheung said. “We are taking them to the airport this evening. The zoo is sending a special plane.”

  I suppose I should have been happy. It was almost everything I had hoped for. Almost. But I felt kind of empty inside. And everyone got really quiet, when they should have been cheering. It wasn’t until I turned to Miss Bickerstaff that I remembered she was the reason I had wanted to help the pandas in the first place. I had wanted to make her happy. And I didn’t know if she was.

  “Are you happy?” I asked her.

  “Of course I am, Journey. I’m very happy.”

  But she didn’t look happy. She looked far away. Ben Wallace put his arm around her shoulder. I saw a couple of parents and other grown-ups look in their direction with pinched-up mouths. I wanted to shout at them that love comes in all shapes and colors, but I didn’t think that would help.

  Everyone stood there quietly until Mr. Cheung finally spoke again.

  “Well?”

  But before I could answer, the boat worker that I had met before came out through the door.

  “Hello! Joon Yee!” He came and shook my hand so hard my whole body jiggled. “See pandas now?”

  My heart flickered. “See them?” I said. “Really?”

  He and Mr. Cheung started to argue. And if you think arguments in English are hard to follow, you should hear two people arguing in two kinds of Chinese. I turned to Mr. Huang and Jen Chow to see if they could understand what was going on, but they both just frowned. Finally Mr. Cheung threw his hands up in frustration, yelled something and stomped back through the door.

  The boat worker looked disappointed. “Only you and two, Joon Yee,” he said.

  I didn’t understand him at first, but Miss Bickerstaff explained, “He’s saying that you can see the pandas, Journey. But you can only bring two friends.”

  Only two friends? How could I decide? Of course Nancy was my best friend, but I’d been hanging around with Anjali a lot too. And she and her grandpa had helped with the bamboo and all. What about Mom or Dad? Could I choose one but not the other? And what if I chose both of them? Would they fight the whole time?

  Then I remembered Miss Bickerstaff again. I remembered thinking that her seeing the pandas would make her happy again. Wasn’t she an obvious choice? So I could take her and Ben Wallace with me. But then I thought of poor Kellie Rae and her terrible life. And Contrary Gary and Kentucky Jack—but if I took them to see the pandas, would they even remember the next day? What about Mr. Huang? Without him I never would have been able to get the note to the boat workers. It never would have been in the paper here and in China. Surely he should see the pandas too. In fact, everyone here deserved to see the pandas as much as I did. I was about to explode in a puff of not being able to decide when Nancy solved everything for me.

  “Why don’t you take the guy with the TV camera in?” she asked. “Then we can all watch later.”

  It was, as usual, a brilliant idea. So a few minutes later, Miss Bickerstaff, the cameraman (whose name was Brad) and I were ready to go into the warehouse to see the pandas. Just before we went in, my dad stopped me and slipped his fancy camera around my neck. “Turn this to focus, and press this to take a picture, okay? I just reloaded it, so there are over forty shots in there. Use the whole roll if you have to. Brad, can you set the f-stop for her?”

  I had no idea what that meant, but Brad seemed to, so I decided not to worry. The boat worker held the door open for us, and we went inside.

  Twenty

  Journey Wind Song Flanagan Chaparro

  We were in a long, dark hallway. Well, it would have been dark if the camera guy, Brad, hadn’t turned on this real bright light that lit the way for us like headlights on a car. Mr. Cheung turned and made a face at him.

  “You won’t need the light when we get to the pandas. The room is well lit.”

  “Groovy,” Brad said. Mr. Cheung just scowled. Next to me, Miss Bickerstaff squeezed my hand.

  We turned a corner. The boat worker waved at us, a big grin on his face. He headed down another long hallway, only this one had high dirty windows all along one side. Despite the dirt, they filled the hallway with light, and Brad flicked his light off.

  I checked Dad’s camera, reminding myself, Focus with this, take a picture with this, focus with this…

  I don’t know why I was nervous. It’s not like pandas are dangerous. Anyway, Miss Bickerstaff would never let anything bad happen to me. And Brad would be filming them, so everyone would get a good look. Any photographs I took were just going to be extras. But then I remembered—my dad worked for the newspaper! Could a picture I took be in the newspaper? People were pretty interested in the pandas. Maybe a photo would be on the front page. Maybe my name would be under the photograph, the way Dad’s name was.

  I started to wonder what name I would use. Would I use Journey Song because that’s how most people knew me? Or would I use Journey Flanagan, because that was on my birth certificate? Maybe I could use Journey Chaparro, because kids usually had their dad’s last name. Only Journey Chaparro sounded a bit like a superhero’s girlfriend or something. I would have to decide, but I couldn’t decide just then. I thought I might talk to Miss Bickerstaff about it later. She would know what to do.

  Turning to look up at her, I saw she had a kind of strange expression on her face, like she was walking through a dream. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but she didn’t look sad. She looked peaceful. I decided that peaceful was the best way for her to look. I squeezed her hand, and she glanced down at me and winked.

  The boat worker opened a door. We stepped through into a large open space. There were high windows all around us, shining light down onto the concrete floor. At the back of the huge room, some wide doors were open to the dock and the water beyond. Sunlight and fresh air were streaming in. And in the middle of some crates and boxes and other mess was an enclosure made of chicken wire and two-by-fours, lined with bamboo and newspaper. And in the middle of that were the pandas.

  I never thought I would see anything more beautiful than the studded denim jacket Nancy and I once saw in the store window at Woodwards, but these pandas made that jacket look like an old dishrag.

  One of the pandas was lying on its back with its four paws wiggling in the air, and the other was sitting, just like a person, with a sprig of bamboo in its fist, chewing on it the way a person might chew on a toothpick. They looked up at us as we came in. Next to me I heard Brad start his camera. It whirred and clicked, but I could barely hear it over the pounding of my heart.

  The pandas were just lovely. So beautiful I felt like I was going to cry. I blinked and blinked until finally I remembered the camera around my neck. I lifted it up and turned the lens to focus it. Through the lens I saw the pandas both look at me, like they were posing.

  But it was more than that. It was like they were speaking to me. Thank you, they said. Thank you for caring. Not just about us, but about the world and everyone in it. I snapped a picture and hoped that somehow what they were saying would come through on film.

  Beside me I heard Miss Bickerstaff sniff. She was crying! But it wasn’t like the crying on that awful day she learned her brother had died in the war. It was like the way Mom cried when she got a raise at work that meant we could get the bigger apartment. They were tears not just of happiness, but of something deep and wonderful. They were tears of understanding something for the first time in your life. I knew all about what kind of tears they were, because I was crying them too.

  The pandas just watched us. Thoughtfully, like they understood.

  Later, when Dad told me that Brad had filmed for over half an hour, I couldn’t believe it. Had we been in there that long? It had felt like only a minute or two. They
got a friend of theirs to rush the processing of the film, and we showed it in the gym at school two days later.

  I watched that film with the rest of my school and all the people from the neighborhood, and I felt goose bumps rise on me as the me in the film looked back at the pandas. I wiped my eyes in the film. I wiped my eyes in the gym. Something amazing had happened. No one, not one of us, would ever forget it.

  No one spoke, in the film or in the gym. The pandas sat and looked back at us, chewed bamboo and eventually curled up and went to sleep, like they were trying to show us how to really live the good life. It was the best movie I had ever seen. Better than Pippi Longstocking.

  I thought so many thoughts as I watched the film that I wondered if my brain might just explode. I thought about my friends and my family. I thought about Miss Bickerstaff and the school and the war and China and the pandas. I had a wonderful daydream about how the world might be from now on. How the school might be better, how Miss Bickerstaff and Ben Wallace would get married and no one would care about what color they were. I thought about Nancy becoming a great writer or poet, and Anjali taking over her family’s business and making it grand and huge. I thought about Michael Booker and how one day he would forget his terrible family and become a good man with a good job—maybe a policeman, like Officer Pete. I thought about Jen Chow and Mr. Huang practicing their English together. I thought I would try to make better friends with Patty Maguire, because she was probably sick of her sisters by now, and we did just live upstairs. I thought of David Schuman and how I would ask him if I could pat his cat one day and maybe get some ice cream together.

  I thought about Kentucky Jack going to meetings with my mom and giving up the drink for real, and Contrary Gary getting his head fixed. I thought about poor Kellie Rae and decided to give her all the dimes in my piggy bank so she could call her family and ask them to come rescue her.

  I thought about my mom and dad and how I wished they would love each other again and that we could be a family. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but it was nice to think about.