Betti on the High Wire (6 page)

I shrugged. I wasn’t worried a single bit. I hoped we’d run into more cows and hot spots. But George was worried. “They’ll wait for us, won’t they, Big Uncle? The man who flies the airplane? They wouldn’t leave for America without us. Would they?”

Big Uncle didn’t answer. He just grunted and chewed more nuts, making crunch-crunch sounds.

Once we were out of the hot spot George talked and talked. I’d never heard him talk so much. I closed my eyes and pretended to fall into a deep sleep—for about five minutes—but George was way too noisy with all his talking.

“I hope we’ll be next-door neighbors, Babo.”

“Yes.”

“And go to the same school too.”

“That’d be just great.”

“And play in the swimming poo after school?” George smiled hopefully.

“Sure,” I sighed.

“And we’ll probably be friends forever. Don’t you think, Babo?”

“George, sit still. Aren’t you tired?”

“How could I be tired? We’re going to America. We’re going to see our mommies!”

I didn’t even have the energy to explain to George—again—that my mom was
not
Mrs. Buckworth. My real mom was the Tallest Woman in the World with a Tail. Definitely
not
a Melon.

Auntie Moo told me that George’s real mom and dad had almost certainly been killed. That’s what happens during a war. A foreign soldier found George and brought him to the charity hospital because his arm was lost. The soldier named him George and the name stuck. When George was better, the soldier held his hand and led him to the circus camp. George trusts Melons and I think it’s all because of that foreign soldier.

He was about three and I was about six. None of us knew what happened because George never talked about it. But he smiled on that day, even with a missing arm.

Weird.

Big Uncle’s bushy eyebrows arched up as he gave me a look in the rearview mirror. “Isn’t it time for the little man to take a nap?”

Finally George got tired of talking and fell asleep on my lap. Big Uncle was quiet too. I was afraid that he’d fall asleep like George, so every once in a while I gave the back of the driver’s seat a little poke.

We left the circus camp in the morning when the sun was coming up, and when the taxi pulled to a stop the sun was down.

“Taxi ride ends here,” announced Big Uncle.

GEORGE RUBBED HIS eyes and sat up. “Are we at my mommy’s house, Babo?”

I tried to see out the window into the blackness. “George, we haven’t even left our country.”

“Oh. I thought maybe we drove to America instead.”

Big Uncle cleared his throat and bugged out his eyes at me in the rearview mirror. That meant that George and I were supposed to get out. So I took George’s hand and we crawled out of the backseat and out of the Chevy. We stood next to each other in the dark.

Big Uncle revved the beat-up taxi engine. He opened his door and shook our hands and said, “Good luck.” Then he tried to close his door again three times and finally it stuck. Big Uncle drove away fast, shooting up rocks and dirt with his taxi tires.

I didn’t see a single star and I didn’t see a single airplane. I didn’t see any buildings that looked like an airport and I didn’t see a single excited person with packed bags ready to fly to America. Maybe the plane would be coming soon? Maybe we had to wait? We’d never seen an airplane up close, or an airport, so we didn’t know exactly what we were waiting for.

But then lights flashed on and there it was. In a mountain of rubble, which used to be the airport, we saw the airplane with wings bigger than the biggest bird in the whole world.

 

GEORGE AND I had never been to another country. We’d never even been to another village. We’d never been in a Chevy taxi and we couldn’t remember ever being alone for a whole day without Auntie Moo. So on this day? Well ...

Airplane people helped us up the airplane stairs and took our tickets and sat us down in our perfectly clean, striped seats. The airplane people wore uniforms like soldiers, but theirs were perfectly blue with no wrinkles and no holes. They told George and me that some lady from the adoption agency was supposed to meet us and help us to America, but officials wouldn’t let her into our country at the last second because it was too dangerous. “We’ll help you, though,” said one airplane man. He had a sunny smile, not at all like a soldier. “We’ll take care of you, okay? Don’t worry.”

I was worried. The plane finally rumbled and I sucked in my breath. I could see the wheels leave the ground, the front wheels and then the back ones. We went up and up, as George covered his ears and the plane went straight into the sky. I thought I might throw up, while George laughed as if this was the most fun he’d ever had in his whole life.

He stared with his nose against the window and waved.

“Who are you waving to, George?”

“Maybe they can see us at the circus camp!”

“No. They can see the plane, but they can’t see us and we can’t see them. Remember?”

“But I see ‘We Love You.”’

I practically climbed right over him so I could see out the window. Nothing but pure blackness and dark clouds. “There’s nothing there, George. There’s no ‘We Love You.’ ”

“It’s there, Babo. I see it. You don’t see it?”

I stared and stared. Maybe it was there. My good eye started watering and playing tricks. We Love You. I wanted to see it, but George had better eyes than me.

He was still waving out the window an hour later when an airplane lady asked us if we wanted drinks.

“Does it cost money?” I asked her in English.

“No,” she said with a sugar smile. “It’s free.”

George and I looked at each other. Free. George ordered a Coca-Cola, but I didn’t order anything because I knew that nothing ever came for free.

When George’s drink arrived, I looked at the lady suspiciously. Old Lady Suri at the bean stand said that foreign Melons could be very sneaky. But the airplane lady didn’t ask for money and George sucked his Coca-Cola through a straw and made
mmmm-mmmm
noises. So when she walked by again, I tugged on her arm and ordered three Coca-Colas. She laughed and brought me all three for free.

George smiled in his cute way at all the airplane Melons, so they brought him games to play, and crayons. They didn’t bring me any because I covered my head with a blanket. Still, I could hear everything.

“Isn’t he so cute?” they cooed to each other in English.

George drew a picture of a little stick boy holding hands with a big stick woman. Under the woman he wrote in his scribbly letters: “mommy.” He wrote the word in English like Auntie Moo taught him, which just figured, because then all the Melons had to come look at his picture.

“Are you going to meet your new mommy?” one of them asked.

He nodded his head, way too shy to speak his bad English. Then, of course, he had to pull out that swimming poo picture.

I snorted and covered my head again.

The plane ride to America took nineteen hours, on three different planes.

George didn’t sleep at all. He stared out the window and smiled, even when it was black outside. And me? I went into a foggy sleep where people fell from planes, tires flew around on their own, mamas and dads with tails did twirls on the wings, and no one ever left my country.

It seemed like days of hiding under the airplane blanket. Sometimes the plane shook us up and down and muffled voices came out of the airplane ceiling. I tried to pretend I was still in the lion’s cage, where booms seemed safer than airplanes.

After an extra-big clunk, I rummaged around in my orange bag for my circus doll. I found her and set her in my lap. But folded up under my doll, in a neat little square, I found something even better. I held it in my hand very very carefully. A letter ... for me.

 

 

 

 

I SNIFFLED LIKE crazy and I couldn’t even help it. My good eye got very cloudy until I closed it tight. I dug down deeper into my seat, but that’s when George’s finger touched my cheek.

“Babo! I think we’re here!”

Sure enough, everything finally stopped. I peeked past the old people in the seats next to us. Outside, there was an enormous white building with rows of enormous windows. The airport. George’s eyes lit up and all he could say was, “BABO! LOOK!”

I carefully folded Auntie Moo’s letter again and hid it at the very bottom of my orange bag—under my pictures of the Buckworths—so it would never get lost.

I couldn’t believe we were still alive.

I couldn’t believe we were in America.

I stepped on a plane on one side of the world and stepped off on the other.

My old world was like this: leftover children and jungle dirt, lion cages and circus stories, explosions in the woods and the soft lap of Auntie Moo. In my new world, I’d have to go to something named Diznee-land, I’d play Lucy games, I’d swim in a swimming poo, and the Buckworths would call themselves my mom and dad.

And ... I’d be called Betti.

I HELD GEORGE’S hand and wouldn’t let go. We were both shivering and it wasn’t even cold. I could see them right away. Mrs. Buckworth smiled and waved. A tiny hand appeared from behind her, and the hand was attached to a girl with red hair.

Meanwhile, George spotted his new mommy from the picture. Their scene at the airport was like something out of an American “mooo-vee.” I’d heard all about them from Old Lady Suri at the bean stand. This one was a love story. George took a step and stopped. George’s mommy took a step and stopped. Then they both ran toward each other, like crazy people, and hugged. George’s mommy cried, and George looked so happy that I thought he might explode. Or wet his pants, which he does sometimes.

As for me? I wasn’t sure what to do.

I looked down at my flip-flops. My knees were shaking.

Then a little hand grabbed mine. It was the red-haired sister with no teeth. “Hi, Betti!” she said in an American baby voice, flinging her arms around my waist. “That’s a funny dress! It’s pretty, kind of.”

I was still clutching my circus doll in my other hand. Lucy reached out to touch my doll and said, “She’s kind of a funny doll, Betti!” I immediately smooshed my doll against my chest as a whole bunch of foreign faces surrounded me and started hugging me. “Hello, Betti! Hi, Betti! Welcome to America, Betti!”

Betti? No. It didn’t sound right at all.

I thought I’d stop breathing. I thought I’d faint, face-first, onto the airport floor. Suddenly I was the foreigner.

And George was already lost.

“George!” I cried out as loud as I could, but my words were lost too in all the loud English. I bounced up and down hoping to spot his large ears. The Americans probably thought I was very excited to be in their country. “George!” I shouted louder. With my bony elbows I tried to poke through the wall of tall Melons. Their foreign smell made me dizzy.

So I dropped straight to the floor. I threw my orange bag over my shoulder and held on to my circus doll by her leg and dragged her behind me. I crawled and crawled through the rubble of big shoes, and finally I spotted those dirty little feet. I clutched his flip-flop and held on. George wiggled his foot as if I was a snake.

“Hi Babo! What are you doing on the floor?” George said in our language. He giggled as he squatted down and tried to dust the dirt off my doll.

“George, don’t scare me like that. You’re going to get lost!”

“I’m not lost, Babo. I’m right here.”

“I told you a hundred times. You need to be very careful in America. You need to be on the lookout at all times. You need to—”

“Are you two all right?” Mrs. Buckworth was suddenly squatting on the floor next to us.

“Very big feet here,” I answered. “Very funny smell.”

Mrs. Buckworth put her hand on my shoulder. “I know this all must seem so crazy.”

“No crazy,” said George.

I looked up and squinted my eyes. “I will maybe get squashed. I will maybe get stolen.”

“Babo scared,” said George.

I elbowed him. “I am NOT scared.”

“Ohhhh,” said Mrs. Buckworth. She put her arms around me like I was her baby. My face was touching her purple jacket and her neck smelled like Melon. “It’s okay, Betti. I’d be scared if I were you,” said Mrs. Buckworth. “I really would. Just stick with me, okay?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be
stuck
to Mrs. Buckworth—she was a Melon and I hardly knew her—but I did want to squat with her there on the airport floor for a long long time; it was quieter, like being under a tent. But Mrs. Buckworth took my hand so she wouldn’t be scared, and I tugged on George’s hand, and the three of us stood up together so things wouldn’t seem crazy. We were led along in a wave of towering tall people. I couldn’t let George get lost again.

We rode down on stairs that moved and I was absolutely sure my feet would get sucked inside. I didn’t want to lose more toes.

“George, are you scared now?” I asked, clinging to him.

“Why would I be scared, Babo? This is fun!”