The Wonder of Wildflowers

by Anna Staniszewski

  “No! I have to go!” I say, trailing behind him. “He’s my friend, and I need to make sure he’s all right. Please.”

  I expect Tata to tell me to stop arguing, but he nods and says, “Fine. Come on.”

  32

  My hope evaporates the minute Tata begins examining Mikey. Tata’s face is grim as he takes Mikey’s pulse and listens to his heart.

  “Tell them they need to get this boy to a hospital,” Tata finally says to me. “There’s nothing I can do for him here.”

  I want to scream. I realize that it’s my fault we don’t have any extra Amber to spare. If I hadn’t stolen from the supplies in our basement, Tata wouldn’t have dumped the rest in our yard.

  When I translate Tata’s words, Aunt Flora’s face goes pale. But she doesn’t seem surprised at the news. It’s as if she knew the truth but didn’t want to admit it to herself.

  “If we could just get more Amber—” Daniel starts to say, but Tata cuts him off with a wave of his hand.

  “Tell them the boy needs a blood transfusion,” he says to me. “Without that, more Amber won’t help him.”

  “If we bring Mikey to the hospital, they might realize his papers were forged. There’s a good chance they’ll deport him,” Aunt Flora says when I’ve relayed Tata’s words.

  “Yes, but they’ll give him the blood first,” Tata has me say. “They’re ethically bound to stabilize him.”

  “But not to cure him,” Aunt Flora says with a weary sigh. “They’ll get him well enough to send him back across the border, but he’ll still be sick. Without Amber, he’ll die.”

  I start to translate what she said, but Tata must have understood because he cuts in. “Stay here, he die faster.”

  The room is still for a long moment. Then Tata’s voice takes on a gentle tone, one I’ve rarely heard. “Tell them that I lost a son while we were waiting to be allowed into this country,” he says to me. “Every day I wonder what would have happened if we’d tried to find another way in. But we didn’t. We waited like we were supposed to. When our time came, it was too late. Tell them that they’ll never regret anything more than doing nothing.”

  Tears trickle down my face as I say the words, and when she hears them, Aunt Flora nods. “All right,” she says. “We’ll bring him in.”

  “Aunt Flora, we can’t!” Daniel cries.

  “He’s right,” she says. “We’ve already waited too long. We need to do something now.” Then she scoops Mikey out of the bed as though he weighs almost nothing, and we follow her out of the house.

  * * *

  Once Mikey is stable, as Aunt Flora predicted, the doctor refuses to give him any more Amber. While the hospital officials wait for immigration agents to come review the case, Tata and I are asked to leave, since we’re not family.

  “I sorry I could not more do,” Tata tells Aunt Flora, but she warmly shakes his hand and thanks him anyway.

  We walk back through the crowded emergency room waiting area, which is full of sick kids coughing and sneezing, their noses raw and red. Mikey must have skipped by all of them to be seen by the one doctor and one nurse on duty. Miss Patel told us there weren’t a lot of doctors in Amberland, but I didn’t realize she meant almost none.

  “We’ve been here for hours,” I hear a little girl complaining to her mom as she groans and holds her stomach. I think of all the kids who’ve been missing school lately, sick for the first time in their lives without Amber to protect them. Have they all had to wait in lines like this?

  Tata stops walking for a second and studies the girl. Then he turns to me and says, “Tell the mother to make sure she’s giving her daughter plenty of fluids or she’ll get worse.”

  I blink at him.

  “Translate it for me,” he instructs.

  Finally understanding, I shyly go over to the woman and tell her what Tata said.

  “Is he a doctor?” the woman asks.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “Then why isn’t he doing something to help all of these people?”

  “He—he’s not from here. He was a doctor back home but—”

  “A doctor’s a doctor,” she says. Then she turns to Tata and says, “Please, we need your help.”

  I translate for him even though I can tell he understands. But a man nearby who must have heard us speaking another language growls, “Why don’t you folks get out of here?” Tata takes a step back, as if he’s been slapped. The man has one arm around a small boy who looks feverish, but his eyes are narrowed at us, as if we’re the reason why his son is sick.

  “I am sorry,” Tata says to the woman. Then he takes my hand and pulls me away.

  As we march down the hospital hallway, I can’t help saying, “There were a lot of sick kids waiting.”

  “Most of them have illnesses that will clear up on their own,” Tata says. “It will take time for people to adjust to how things are now. They’ll need to hire and train more doctors and learn to heal without Amber.”

  “But what about the really sick ones?” I ask as we head toward the main entrance. “Who’ll help them now?”

  “I don’t know,” Tata says simply, and the words chill me. Tata has always had an answer to my questions before, even if it’s not one I wanted to hear.

  As we go through the hospital doors, I hear chanting and shouting. Protestors. They’re holding the now-familiar signs. SAVE OUR AMBER. But I see a couple of new ones too: SEND THE BOY BACK! and NO SHORTCUTS INTO AMBERLAND.

  “Word must have spread about Mikey,” Tata says.

  “But they can’t be protesting him. He’s five!”

  “They’re protesting what he represents,” Tata says.

  For a moment I think about putting on a crazy costume like Aunt Flora and holding up my own signs, but I’m not sure what the signs would say. Is it fair that Mikey gets Amber when he’s not legally allowed to be here? No. But does that mean his parents should have kept him at home and let him die?

  I don’t know the answer. But yelling and screaming at the hospital windows for Mikey and his family to “go back where they came from” can’t be it.

  33

  The morning of my wildflower presentation, Mama is on the phone, her face pale and serious.

  “Yes, I’ll be right in.” She hangs up and grabs her coat. “There are protestors outside my lab,” she tells us. “I need to go make sure everything is secure.”

  Tata shakes his head. “The police will—”

  “I need to be there,” Mama insists in a tone that means it’s pointless to argue. She gives us both quick kisses and hurries out the door.

  After Tata walks me to school, I sit at my desk staring at nothing. Daniel is absent, of course, but so are a handful of other kids who are out sick. I hardly pay attention to anything until language arts, when Miss Patel calls Krysta and me to the front of the room.

  “These two girls entered a local writing contest,” she tells the class, “and did well enough to place in the final ten!”

  I can feel the kids eyeing me, clearly surprised at the news.

  “Our very own Krysta Perez came in fourth place in the contest!” Miss Patel adds.

  My mouth drops open. Fourth place? Since when has Krysta ever been anything but at the top? Even if she’s not the best writer, I figured she’d find a way to win like she always does.

  Everyone looks a little stunned, especially Krysta, as Miss Patel hands her a certificate edged in purple. If I’d helped her with the words, I wonder if she would have placed higher. The other kids applaud, and Miss Patel tells Krysta that she can go back to her seat.

  I turn to go sit down too, but Miss Patel stops me. “Wait, Mira. I have one more announcement.” Her smile widens. “Class, Mira also entered the contest. And I am so excited to announce that she came in third place! Isn’t that wonderful? Let’s give her a round of applause!”

  She slips a certificate into my hands as the kids give me a few half-hearted claps. I stare at the piece of paper, this one ri
mmed with bronze. Third. I came in third place, one spot ahead of Krysta. And I did it without Amber.

  It’s not the first-place prize I dreamed of, of course. But when Miss Patel squeezes my shoulder and whispers “I knew you could do it, Mira,” somehow it feels a lot like winning.

  * * *

  When we start the wildflower presentations, it hits me that Daniel really isn’t coming. Even though we practiced our talk together, I’m going to have to do this on my own.

  Funny how I dreaded the thought of having to stand up in front of the class with Daniel by my side, and now I’m even more upset about not having him with me. It reminds me how upside down everything is.

  I watch the other kids showing off their amazing “top five,” probably grown in their yards with doses of Amber to make them look perfect. Tata would never call these weeds. I feel like I’m at a flower show instead of in science class.

  Krysta’s presentation is, of course, spectacular. She barely lets Anton talk, and when he does, he’s clearly reciting a script she gave him. It doesn’t include a single question, which I can tell is killing him.

  “Mira?” Miss Patel finally calls. “Are you all right doing your presentation by yourself?”

  No, but I have no choice. Tomorrow, Daniel might not even be in the country.

  I give Miss Patel a small nod and take a deep breath as I walk up to the front of the class. Then I hold my project up with shaking hands. “The Wonder of Weeds,” I say.

  The kids snicker.

  “Um, weeds?” Eileen says. “Don’t you mean ‘wildflowers’?”

  My first instinct is to look down at my feet, to hide and retreat and be silent. But I push all that away. “No,” I say. “It doesn’t matter what you call them. ‘Weeds.’ ‘Wildflowers.’ They’re the same thing. And they’re not all pretty and perfect. Some of them are weird-looking or smelly, but that’s what makes them interesting.” Then I start holding up our top five, which are different from everyone else’s. My classmates probably overlooked these flowers because they were too ugly, but that was what Daniel and I liked about them. They were different. Unique. They didn’t blend in with the rest and get lost.

  “Did you say some of them are smelly?” Anton asks, free to be his inquisitive self again.

  For a second, I think he’s making fun of me. But judging by the look on his face, he’s actually interested.

  “Um, yeah. Like this one.” I show them some skunk cabbage. “And did you know that you can eat a lot of wildflowers? You can cook them or put them in salads and stuff. A lot of them are sweet, but some taste like onions.”

  By the end of my presentation, my voice isn’t shaking anymore and the kids are looking at me with actual interest. Even Krysta seems to be paying attention. This is almost like the day when we danced in front of the whole class, but it’s even better. This time, I’m not doing what someone else told me to do.

  At the end, Miss Patel says, “Sounds like you really enjoyed this project, Mira. Tell me, do you have a favorite ‘weed’?”

  I don’t hesitate. “Black-eyed Susans,” I say. “Because they’re really tough. They’ll grow in places where ‘real flowers’ won’t.”

  When I’m done, I walk past Miss Patel to sit at my seat. She’s smiling as she calls up the next person. Maybe that means I did all right.

  At the end of class, when I hand the project in to Miss Patel, she tells me to wait a minute. The familiar fear kicks in that I’ve done something wrong, but when everyone else is gone, she says, “Excellent work on your project, Mira. If you want, I can grade it now.”

  “Um, okay,” I say.

  She starts leafing through, making sure that Daniel and I identified all the flowers and their parts correctly. I wait for her to start marking things wrong, but her pen doesn’t move. Finally she closes the binder, and I’m convinced I’ve failed. I’m convinced that she’s going to hand it back to me and tell me I need to start all over.

  Instead she scribbles something on the cover. I squint, sure I’m seeing it wrong. But when I’m holding the binder in my hands again, there’s no mistake.

  There’s a big, red A+ on my assignment. Just like I always wanted.

  34

  Tata is watching Mayor Perez on the news again when I get home from school. The mayor is at his podium urging the protestors to stay calm, and assuring everyone that the extra rationing is only temporary and that “the situation at the hospital” will be taken care of. Then he turns away from the podium and heads back inside to his office.

  I start to ask Tata what “taken care of” means, but I’m afraid I already know. If they send Mikey back, he’ll die. I can’t let that happen. But what can I do?

  “I need to go see Krysta,” I say. “She’s the only one the mayor will listen to.” Hopefully, I can get her to listen to me.

  I expect Tata to remind me that I’m grounded or to say that there’s nothing else we can do. Instead he nods and reminds me to wear a jacket.

  When I ring the bell, Mrs. Perez answers the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she says. This time she doesn’t try to pronounce my name.

  I know she hates me, but I throw my shoulders back and ask, “Is Krysta home?”

  “She’s in the basement,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Trying to get out of practicing piano, I bet. Can you tell her I haven’t forgotten?”

  I only nod and head toward the basement, glad I was at least able to make it past the front door.

  As I walk down the carpeted steps into the gleaming finished basement, I hear music, but it’s not coming from the piano. It’s the song that Krysta has been using for the recess dance routine. I head toward the sound and find Krysta in a back room, prancing around like a ballerina. I watch, breathless, as she bends and leaps. This is nothing like what I’ve seen her do on the playground. She looks like a real dancer. Better than Yuli, even.

  Krysta starts to do a spin and loses her balance. She barely manages to catch herself on a nearby wall. That’s when she finally notices me.

  “What are you doing here?” Krysta cries, something like panic in her voice. She rushes to turn off the music. “Get out. No one’s allowed in here!”

  I don’t move. “Where did you learn to do that? I didn’t know you took ballet.”

  Suddenly the fight drains out of her. “I don’t,” Krysta says, still breathing hard. “That’s why I’m so bad. I keep trying and trying to do a pirouette, but I always fall over.”

  “How long have you been working on it?” I ask.

  “A few days,” she says, shaking her head. “Each one I do gets worse!”

  I can’t help it. I laugh. “A few days?”

  “I knew you’d make fun of me!” she cries.

  “No! No. I’m not laughing at you. It’s just… did you think you’d be perfect at it right away?” But the answer is obvious. Krysta has never really struggled at anything. Of course she thought this would come easily too.

  “I’ve always loved dancing,” she says in a small voice. “Honestly, I’ve wanted to be a ballerina since I was little. But I was afraid to take lessons or anything, because what if I was bad, you know? Then my parents would make me quit.”

  “They’d make you quit?” I repeat in disbelief.

  Krysta nods slowly. “That’s what happened with softball. I wasn’t good enough, so my mom made me quit the team. It didn’t matter if I liked it or not. And I don’t just like dancing. I love it.” She bites her lip. “After what you said the other day, about needing to fail, I finally thought I’d try to teach myself. But… but I can’t do it!”

  “Krysta, do you know that I never got anything higher than A− before this year?” I ask.

  She stares at me. “You mean you were actually getting Bs and stuff? I had no idea!”

  I guess I won’t mention the C I received on a test once. It’ll probably shock her too much. “The point is, I got better, and so will you. That’s how people everywhere else do it.”

  “But… but what i
f I’m terrible? What if when you take the Amber away, I’m nothing?”

  “It’s not up to the Amber. It’s up to you. Just keep trying.” My insides twist as I think about the fact that I haven’t even bothered picking up my notebook lately. I assumed the words had dried up, because they weren’t coming as easily as they always had. “And you’ll never be nothing. Not to me.”

  Krysta closes her eyes, and I’m surprised to see a tear roll down her cheek. “I’m sorry about the writing contest. I knew I shouldn’t enter it, but the thought of anyone beating me at something… Well, all I could hear was my mom telling me that I’d let the family down, and…”

  “It’s okay,” I say. Maybe I’ll never completely understand why Krysta needed to submit a piece for the writing contest, but there are more important things to worry about now. “Besides, I didn’t come here to talk about that. I need your help.”

  Krysta flicks her tears away. “With what?”

  When I explain to her about Daniel and Mikey and the protest, her lips tighten. “Please, can you talk to your dad and convince him to help us?” I ask. “He always listens to you.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Why should I help Four-Eyes? He’s never done anything for me.”

  “Because his brother will die if we don’t help!” I cry.

  Krysta doesn’t look convinced. And I realize that it’s because she has no idea what that means, not really. She’s never lost anyone in her life. She’s barely lost any thing.

  “I never told you about my brother,” I say softly.

  She frowns. “I didn’t know you have a brother.”

  “I don’t. Not anymore.” Then I tell her about Henryk, even though I’ve never mentioned him to anyone before, and I explain how my parents still haven’t gotten over losing him. Her eyes get wide as the words tumble out of my mouth. When I’m finished, she doesn’t say anything.