Making Friends with Billy Wong

by Augusta Scattergood

  “Had to save her from Willis DeLoach and his bike. He’s scary.”

  Mr. Jackson shook his head and muttered something about that boy not having the sense the Good Lord gave a tadpole, then nodded toward the garden shed. “Tell your grandma I’ll be back the next cool day. Once school’s started, I’ll have time for painting. Lots of bikes need fixing before September!” He headed down the sidewalk, waving Tiny’s little paw over his shoulder. “Thanks for the walk! And Azalea? You watch out for Willis. That boy’s often up to no good.”

  “You can say that again.” I turned up the sidewalk and I skipped over every crack. Willis DeLoach almost running me down with his bike was enough bad luck for one day.

  When Grandma Clark rolled her wheelchair into the kitchen, I was washing Willis cooties off my hands. With soap. You can’t be too careful when it comes to standing close to somebody like Willis DeLoach.

  I helped her into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. “Henry Jackson was here,” I said. “I offered to pull honeysuckle and ivy off the shed. He didn’t need me.”

  Grandma Clark reached for her sewing box. “Henry loves to talk.”

  “He told me you’re an artist,” I said quietly.

  “Not these days. No time for that foolishness.” She fluffed a faded blouse in the air, then settled it back on her lap. I thought about saying I was an artist, too, but she punched a needle through a button and snapped her mouth shut, like that was that.

  A little fan turned slowly from side to side, blowing hot air around the living room. Leaning back onto the sofa to let the room’s quietness settle around me, I remembered something. “Mama told me you like ice cream. I saw a sign in the drugstore window downtown. Said they have a soda fountain. Want to get some?”

  Grandma Clark dropped her sewing and looked up. “Too hot to be pushing wheelchairs. Why don’t you run downtown? Billy should be working at his great-uncle’s grocery. If they can spare him, invite him for ice cream.”

  “Me? Get ice cream with Billy?” I shook in my boots thinking about it.

  Grandma Clark nodded toward her coin purse on the table. “Can’t think why not. Take enough money to treat.”

  I could think why not. Just because Willis was mean and I wanted to take up for Billy didn’t mean I needed to talk to a Chinese boy and eat at the same time. But I liked ice cream a lot. I tucked my shirt into my shorts and grabbed two quarters.

  And that’s how I happened to be eating ice cream at Ward’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, side by side with Billy Wong.

  Now, Daddy always tells me focusing right at a person’s eyes shows you’re interested, no matter how hard it is. I slowly spun my stool around two times, then stared into Billy’s eyeglasses. After I took a deep breath, I made myself ask, “How long have you lived in Paris Junction?”

  Billy dipped an Oreo into his ice cream. “Two weeks,” he said. “But I’ve visited. A lot. Everybody in my family lives here or across the river in Shallowater.” He didn’t seem to mind talking to a stranger he’d just met pulling up weeds. And he spoke perfect English, like me.

  “You don’t talk like you look.” I licked my spoon and wondered if that sounded rude. “You ever live in China?”

  He took polite nibbles at his cookie and answered, “Never even been to China. I was born in Mississippi. Where my parents have their grocery. This summer they sent me to live with my great-aunt and uncle so I could get ready for school. Seventh grade, starting soon.”

  “If I ever get back to Texas, I’ll be in sixth grade.” I scraped the last bite of my banana split and ignored the look from a waitress wearing a funny hat and a Gloria name tag. When Gloria pursed up her lips and started talking to the lady drinking coffee at the other end of the counter, the words granddaughter and Mrs. Clark and Chinese boy drifted my way. I put down my spoon and shifted on my stool. “What’s she talking about over there?” I whispered.

  Billy shrugged. “Maybe she thinks we shouldn’t be sitting together at her drugstore. You and me.”

  Just when I was getting brave enough to talk to a complete stranger, somebody had to make me worry over what to say next.

  “My mama claims you can’t turn around twice here without somebody gossiping about what you ate for breakfast.”

  “Guess I didn’t notice. Shallowater’s a pretty small town, too,” Billy said.

  “I’ve lived in a bunch of places. If you don’t count my second-grade teacher making us do an ancestor project, nobody ever cared about my family or what we were doing.”

  Billy didn’t answer but Gloria sure slammed the check on the counter and squinted through her cat’s-eye glasses at us. The little rhinestones in the corners caught the light over the soda fountain when she leaned close and said, “That’s thirty cents. You’re taking up space needed for the regulars.”

  I glanced at the empty stools, then slid my grandmother’s change across the lunch counter.

  As we headed toward the door, Billy spotted a wire rack near the big front window. “Hold on, Azalea. I collect these comic books. Mostly Superman.”

  I turned the spinner around and reached in my shorts pocket. Two dimes. I could buy me and Billy a comic book. “My favorite’s Little Lulu.”

  Billy didn’t answer. His head was stuck inside Superman.

  “No reading without paying,” Gloria hollered from behind the counter. “Time for you two to go.”

  I put Lulu back where she belonged. I wasn’t buying anything else from rude Gloria. I left Ward’s Drugstore real quick and Billy followed.

  “I better get back. Grandma Clark shouldn’t stay by herself too long.”

  “I’ll walk partway with you. If I hurry, Great Uncle won’t mind. The store shouldn’t be too busy till suppertime.”

  Maybe something about walking side by side made it easier to talk. But when this thought jumped out of my head and into my mouth, I said it out loud. “I saw Willis DeLoach at your grocery store. Mr. Wong didn’t seem too happy.”

  Billy frowned. “He’s not supposed to be there. They caught him shoplifting a couple of weeks ago and turned Willis over to a judge for punishment.”

  I took a sharp breath, considering whether to tell Billy that the judge was in cahoots with Miss Partridge. And she’s the one who forced him on my grandmother. Or how I’d seen Willis with that bubble gum at Lucky Foods. Before I could decide, here came Willis and two boys with canasta cards clothespinned to their bike spokes, clicking and zooming up the street. One of them stopped, reached down for a fistful of gravel, and tossed it right next to me.

  “Go back where you came from!” Willis yelled as they sped off.

  Billy grabbed my hand, pulling me back, saving me. Once I caught my breath, my voice was shaking. “Why’re they mad at me?”

  “It’s me Willis wants to leave Paris Junction,” he answered quietly, kicking a stone off the sidewalk.

  “Huh? What’d you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why’s he so mad?”

  “Maybe because Chinese are going to his white school now. For a long time, we had the Chinese Mission School, where my sister and brother went. Chinese students came from all over the place. Some even lived there.”

  “How come you’re not going? Like your brother and sister.”

  “The school closed. The rules changed. Now we’re allowed to go to Paris Junction Junior High. In the same building with the high school.”

  Billy sounded like that was the best thing in the whole world, going to a big new school. I’d be shaking in my boots, walking the halls with high school seniors!

  “You want to go to a whole school of people you don’t know?”

  “I play baseball with some of the white kids,” he said. “And I plan to write for the Tiger Times school newspaper. Run track, join a few clubs. Even if Willis thinks I don’t belong.”

  “Does he own the school?”

  Billy shrugged, then laughed. “My sister says ignore Willis. Hard to ignore today, when he
’s throwing rocks.”

  The thought popped into my head that I’d been talking to Billy Wong all the way to my grandmother’s house and I hadn’t run out of things to say.

  He turned back toward Main Street, then stopped. “Tell Mrs. Clark thanks for the ice cream,” he said. “Oh, and, Azalea, you got a bike? We could ride together along the creek behind our store. You like to hunt turtles? Fish?”

  If I hadn’t already talked more than I’d talked in my entire lifetime to a boy, I’d be explaining that no, I will not be exploring a creek. I will be fixing dinner and watering Grandma Clark’s garden till the cows come home. Or at least till my mama comes to take me home. I probably won’t be riding any old bike, either, or fishing or catching turtles. Even though it was easy eating ice cream together, I had a hard time picturing being good friends with a boy. Especially one so different.

  But today was fun. So I looked right at Billy Wong, and I answered, “Maybe.”

  Notes for Tiger Times Report

  Banana split: 20¢

  Ice cream and cookie: 10¢

  Superman comic: 10¢

  Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter, is my hero.

  If you read comics without buying,

  the waitress will get you.

  Chinese students not to sit at counter too long.

  Especially with a white girl.

  Even if she’s your friend.

  Billy Wong, Reporting the Facts

  It’s nice you and Billy are becoming friends,” Grandma Clark said when I opened the kitchen door.

  Being friends with somebody other than Barbara Jean? Barbara Jean had announced to our entire class last year in Texas that she thought Azalea was the most interesting name she could imagine. She knew I was terrible at dodging and cracking but she’d picked me first for dodgeball and crack the whip. She’d hopped on the top row of the chorus risers when I was the only girl Miss Fife stuck up there. Just because I was the tallest girl in fifth grade, Barbara Jean said, didn’t mean I had to stand with the boys.

  And now I’d practically forgotten my best friend.

  I pulled a wooden chair next to my grandmother, who was sitting with her foot propped on a stool. “Billy says thanks for treating. We talked about that school where his brother and sister went.”

  Only a tiny breeze floated in the window, and Grandma Clark fanned herself with the newspaper. “Before they closed the Chinese Mission School, my church helped with their big garden,” she said. “His older sister and brother worked with me. I’ve known Billy’s great-aunt since she joined our Women’s Missionary Union.”

  A picture of the scary, frowning people hanging in her upstairs hallway popped into my head. My grandmother wasn’t as scary as I’d thought she might be, though. So I asked, “We don’t have a big family like Billy, do we? No aunts and uncles. Not a one.”

  “Families come in all shapes and sizes. JoBelle was plenty for your grandfather and me.” Grandma Clark rolled her eyes and pressed her lips together like she was trying very hard to keep the words inside. Before I could ask another question, she reached for her toes with a back scratcher Mama had given her, and that was all she said about that.

  “Time for supper. I managed to get the neighbor’s meatloaf in the oven. Serve it up, Azalea.”

  Never mind that I’d eaten an entire banana split and I wasn’t nearly hungry enough for supper. Or that she still wasn’t saying please. I sliced tomatoes from the garden and only nicked myself once. Sticking my finger in my mouth, I held the pot holder with the other hand and grabbed the meatloaf. Grandma Clark didn’t notice I was bleeding, but I didn’t drop the meatloaf, either.

  “While we’re eating, turn on my kitchen radio.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I switched on the music, and she nodded in time to the songs.

  Even though Daddy loved to spin Mama around, dancing everywhere, I’d never heard the old-timey music playing now. Then, the second I speared a tiny bite of meatloaf, a song came on that made me drop my fork.

  “That’s my mama’s favorite!” I hummed along about a blue moon and a dream in my heart.

  “The day I was born, Daddy called the radio station and requested that song for Mama and me.”

  My grandmother put down her iced-tea glass and settled her hands in her lap. “You don’t say,” she said very quietly.

  “I know all the words. Since I was barely tall enough to put my arms around his waist, I’ve danced on my daddy’s shoes.” I was still a little mad at Mama, but remembering her and Daddy carrying on to music made me smile.

  Grandma Clark turned to face the window, away from me. “Get me some more tea, Azalea. While you’re up, cut off the radio.”

  “But I love ‘Blue Moon.’”

  “I asked you to turn it off. We’ve heard enough,” she answered.

  While I pushed a fat red tomato slice around my plate in the quiet of the kitchen, Grandma Clark finished her meatloaf. I wheeled her to her room and she leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes. “I’m tired tonight. Run on up to your room. Enjoy yourself.”

  I stomped upstairs and flung myself across the bed. How was I supposed to enjoy myself? I didn’t want to be here in the first place. The only person nice to me was probably off riding his bike and catching a fish. Me? I’m stuck in this little blue house, in dopey Arkansas. I opened the drawer and yanked out my sketchbook.

  Uh-oh. That plate. I picked up the broken pieces and laid them on my bed. Would they ever fit back together? With the thick gold rim around the edges and the purple of the huge fairy wings, it sure looked like something special. I could never paint anything so beautiful. Mr. Jackson said my grandmother is an artist. Had Grandma Clark made this?

  I needed to tell her it was broken. But if I did, I could be in trouble. If I didn’t, I wasn’t telling the truth. I hadn’t known my grandmother long, but I knew how she felt about the truth.

  Stuffing the pieces as far back in the drawer as I could, I stared at a blank sketchbook page. Back in Texas, I could draw my cat curled up on the sofa. I scribbled a few curlicued As and Ms, but my heart wasn’t in fancy writing. Barbara Jean would say draw the clouds. She was partial to puffy clouds that looked like kittens. But what’s there to draw here? Nothing, that’s what.

  Sitting up, I leaned on the windowsill and stared clear to the back fence. A rising moon reflected off the shed’s blue door. Grandma Clark said mostly spiders lived in her garden shed and I’d better stay out. But maybe she’d forgotten. What if it was full of something else?

  Like roller skates.

  Old Little Lulu funny books.

  My mama’s diaries.

  I’d seen Mr. Jackson hide the key on a hook. I waited till it got darker and Grandma Clark was surely asleep before tiptoeing downstairs, one creaky step at a time. I listened in front of her bedroom door. Quiet snoring. I crept along the walkway to the back fence. Lifting the key chain off the hook, careful not to drop it, I put the key into the lock. The door was hard to push, stuck almost, but it opened.

  A flashlight was next to the door. I held my breath and danced the light across a little bed squished between two tables. One table was crowded with boxes of nails and hooks and thumbtacks. A stack of dusty books was on the other. I sat in the desk chair and twirled it around once, shining the flashlight around the room. In the corner was an open door. To a bathroom, with a commode. Had somebody ever lived in here?

  I turned slowly around again. Wow. A long shelf filled with rows and rows of teacups and saucers and plates. Like the one I’d broken! They were so perfect I could almost smell the flower decorations. Should I ask my grandmother about the easel and the canvases propped against the back window? But I couldn’t admit I’d sneaked into a place she told me—and all her garden helpers—to stay away from. I turned a cup over, careful not to break it, and looked on the bottom. The initials were A.A.C. Were they Grandma Clark’s? I put the cup back where it belonged.

  Before my grandmother woke up and hobbled into the garden to
holler at me, I reached for the key I’d set next to a glass perfume bottle painted with flowers. I stopped and sprayed the bottle twice. Nothing but hot, dusty air. I took a deep breath. What this room really smelled like was turpentine, old books, and secrets.

  Shaking off the shivers, I tiptoed down the path and into my room. I opened the drawer to hide my sketchbook next to the broken plate. I whispered the words written on the cover. Keep Out. Private. This Means You.

  A few days after I’d sneaked into the shed, it rained. Hard. But by the time the garden helpers came back, the sun was beating down. We pulled weeds and swatted at sweat bees till my grandmother finally said come sit under the tree. She’d made lemonade. Make that her Number One Helper had made the lemonade. Me.

  Maybe she was trying to get Willis DeLoach to stop making fun of Billy. Because for some reason, she was going on about being polite and minding your manners. Melinda sat closest to Grandma Clark. Billy smiled nicely. Willis had showed up late, missed most of the weeding. When he slipped into his seat at the picnic table, it was in time to hear Grandma Clark say, “It’s common courtesy to remember names. And to look a person right in the eye when you meet them.”

  My least favorite thing is looking right in somebody’s eyes.

  Grandma Clark wasn’t finished. “If you’re shy about that, focus on their forehead.”

  Willis jerked his head around every which way. “You mean like those ugly cyclops things, with an eye in the middle of their head?”

  That boy gets on my last nerve.

  Grandma Clark ignored him. “To remember a person’s name, make up something to relate it to.”

  Well, I could do that!

  Willis DeLoach—Worst Roach.

  Melinda Bowman—Bossy Bow.

  After my grandmother finished our Good Manners lesson, she sent the helpers back to weeding. She sent me inside. “Wash out the lemonade pitcher, Azalea,” Grandma Clark said.