Betti on the High Wire (7 page)

I was supposed to be the brave one because I was the leader. But George asked his new mommy if he could ride up and down the moving stairs again and she let him do it three times. He laughed and squealed as we all waited. Everyone always loves George.

I kept whispering last-second things into George’s big ear.

“If it’s too horrible living with the Melon, you come and find me, okay? Just try not to get lost. And I know you’re not going to be able to sleep for a while, you’ll miss my stories before bed, but—”

“Babo.” George tilted his head and looked at me. “Maybe my mommy will tell me a story before bed. Maybe I can ask her.”

“But you won’t understand her, George! She’ll just say a bunch of foreign goop!”

Then George’s new mommy hugged him for about the tenth time. I heard her trying to speak words in our language. She sounded like a four-year-old baby, and George answered in English like a four-year-old baby. They were a perfect, out-of-order match.

“Bye, Babo!” George yawned and waved. “I hope I get to see you really soon!”

Then all I saw was George’s back, walking away from me with his mommy.

George is weird, but he’s the only one who understands everything.

“Betti?” Mrs. Buckworth touched my shoulder and I jumped. She put her arm around me, and red-haired Lucy reached for my free hand. Mr. Buckworth gently took my bag from me—my whole life in an orange bag—and carried it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Standing in front of us like scary glass soldiers were the airport doors that opened out into the world of America. That’s when Mrs. Buckworth asked, “Are you ready to go home, sweetie?”

“Yes,” I said. All I could think about was running like crazy and jumping back on that big bird airplane. “Yes. Home.”

HOME IS A weird thing.

We rode in a long brown car that Mrs. Buckworth called “the wagon.” It didn’t look like any wagon I’d ever seen. Or like Big Uncle’s taxi. I sat in the back next to Lucy as cars zoomed by us from every side. I wasn’t sure if the Melon cars were all zooming away from some dangerous hot spot, or if they were zooming toward something very important in the center of their market.

Either way, I was right about America. Way too big. A leftover kid could get lost in about one second. I squinted my eyes and looked up at the sky; the tops of tall buildings disappeared in the clouds. On the ground everything looked way too clean. No dirt, no smoke, and I wondered where they had hidden all their trees and monkeys and soldiers.

The Buckworths started asking me questions but I was very busy, with my nose against the window, staring at their huge shiny village.

Mr. Buckworth’s copper coin eyes looked at me from the mirror in the front seat. “So what did you think about the airplane, Betti?”

I gave his seat a little poke so he’d keep his eyes on the zooming cars. Then I held my arms out like enormous wings. “It was very bigger than a big, big bird. It fly.”

Lucy scrunched her eyes. “You’ve
never
been in an airplane before, Betti?”

I shook my head. “George and me think it fly away already. Because Big Uncle’s taxi too slow. Cows and houses fall down and kids are dirty and hot spots ... We did
not
want to be traitors. But the airplane wait for George and me. In a mountain. Of rocks.”

“I’ve been on an airplane so many times,” said Lucy. “Never in a mountain of rocks, though. I flew to Florida once and I saw Mickey Mouse and there was this show where all these kids were singing and—”

“George and me have Coca-Cola for free,” I said.

“Everybody gets free Cokes, you silly.” Lucy touched my knee with her little finger.

Lucy had a big mouth. But my mouth was bigger.
“Then,
I see ‘We Love You’ on the ground. Little pigs ... kids ... at circus wave like Coca-Colas ... I mean flags ... so I open window.” I waved my arms around like crazy for effect. “I climb out on airplane bird wing and walk careful on my line so I do not fall. Then I wave too. And I dance like the circus. ‘We love you,’ they scream. ‘We love you.’ And the ghosts on the airplane say, ‘We love you’ too. They tell me to go back home.”

Lucy scrunched her eyes.
“What?”

“Luce, why don’t you let Betti relax for a few minutes,” chuckled Mr. Buckworth. “She just had a very long trip.”

“I know, Dad, but I’m trying to understand like you said.” Lucy wiped her nose and sighed. “But Betti’s talking about dancing ghosts and you said there aren’t any ghosts. And she’s talking about some waving circus pigs and Coca-Cola. I don’t really understand what she’s talking about, Dad. Not a bit.” She turned and stared at me. I was a freaky animal in a zoo.

That’s when I ducked my head down and covered my eyes with my circus doll.

And I didn’t even peek out the window until the wagon finally stopped zooming and slowed down.

There was a whole long line of houses, but the house I liked the most was one that looked just a little tilted. So I tilted my head too and rubbed my good eye. There was a girl reading a book on the tilted porch. She had bushy brown knotty hair that covered her head like a wooden bowl. Wild hair, as if it hadn’t been combed in weeks. If she hadn’t been a Melon, I might’ve thought she was a circus girl. I watched her out the back window until her house disappeared, and so did she.

Soon the wagon stopped in front of a sky blue house. It was square with a real roof that wasn’t caved in. It had windows that weren’t shot out and exotic foreign flowers that hung in pots like pretty birds in stringy nests.

Not a fancy royal palace at all, like Old Lady Suri at the bean stand told me. She said that everyone in America lived in houses practically bigger than our whole village. She had seen it herself on a tele-veezion when she went to visit her sister in the capital.

She said that every house had a hundred rooms so no one ever saw each other. When they
did
see each other, well, it was either a dramatic love story or a horrible tragedy. Either way, the Americans were crying all the time.

Auntie Moo told me not to believe everything I heard at the market. “Most Americans don’t live like that, Babo,” she said. “Most Americans are like you and me. They just happen to be living somewhere else.” Still, Auntie Moo had never seen a tele-veezion box like Old Lady Suri.

But when Lucy jumped out of the wagon, and Mrs. Buckworth grabbed my orange bag, and Mr. Buckworth opened my wagon door, I thought that maybe Auntie Moo was right. At least about the Melons’ houses. The Buckworths’ house was pretty, very pretty, and a whole lot bigger than the lion cage, but it definitely didn’t have a hundred rooms. I was glad. It sounded awfully lonely getting lost in a hundred rooms with Melon ghosts flying around.

“This is it,” said Mr. Buckworth as he picked me up in his hairy bear arms. “Home sweet home.”

And that’s when the tour of my new life started.

 

WELCOME BETTI!

Big lopsided letters were draped across the whole room when I walked inside.

There were also colorful balls hanging from the ceiling. “Balloons!” cried Lucy. She poked one and it exploded and I nearly flew out of my flip-flops.

“I made that myself!” Lucy pointed at the banner, which looked very useful for scaring off hungry scavengers from the bean fields. “Now come on, Betti! I wanna show you
everything!”
Lucy grabbed my hand and started pointing at all sorts of other things.

Mikroo-wave.

It makes things really hot really fast.

Lucy pushed a button. Ding.

I looked on top of it and underneath it and behind it. No waves at all. No firewood. Not even a teeny red spark of fire. Weird.

Ree-frigger-ater.

“For food,” said Mrs. Buckworth.

Ree-frigger-ater is cold. Stove. To cook food.

“It’s hot, Betti. Never touch the stove when it’s hot.”

Cold. Hot.

Kichin. Dineeng Rooom. Bath Rooom. The Living Rooom had funny painted pictures hanging on the walls. And funny pictures of a baby with red hair. And then ... I saw it! It looked exactly like Old Lady Suri said. A huge tele-veezion staring out from the wall! My good eye got big.

“TV,” said Lucy pointing at the tele-veezion.

“TV?” I repeated.

She pushed a button in her hand and the tele-veezion magically came alive. I jumped back and gasped. I was afraid to move. There were two real live people talking to each other on the tele-veezion TV!

Lucy giggled. “You’ve never seen a TV, Betti?”

I shook my head. My knees were shaking too.

Lucy pushed the button over and over—flash flash flash—and the magic TV flashed with new people every second. The trapped TV people must’ve done something very horrible. That’s when Mrs. Buckworth came into the living room and took the thing out of Lucy’s hand and made the TV people disappear. The box turned black.

“No TV right now, Lucy,” said Mrs. Buckworth. “Maybe you can show Betti some TV later. Maybe tomorrow.”

Lucy’s lip jutted out for about a second, but then she ran to another door and swung it open. “BASEMENT!”

Base Mint? Mint was green and cured hiccups and hives.

But this was no plant. It was a huge black dog that suddenly appeared and leaped right over to me!

“DOG!” shouted Lucy as she laughed and barked.

“DOG!” I screamed back and jumped on top of one of the fluffy chairs. My heart practically flew right out of my chest.

“Sit, Rooney!” hollered Lucy. But Rooney didn’t want to sit. He wanted to stare at me with his mouth open and his black tail flying back and forth. Big teeth and bad breath.

Lucy climbed on his back. “Giddyup! Giddyup!” She kissed his runny nose.

Mr. Buckworth held on to Rooney by a purple thing around his neck. Then Mr. Buckworth held out his other hand and helped me down from the chair. “Don’t worry, Betti,” he said in a voice that was way too calm. “He’s a nice dog.”

I wasn’t sure about that. Not sure at all.

In
my
village, I always ran away from packs of tired, hungry dogs. Once, I hid for an hour, but a leftover dog had waited and peed on me like I was a tree.

But I had to be nice to the fat American dog, or the Buckworths would make me disappear in their TV box or their microwave. That’s when Mrs. Buckworth told us to sit at the eating table. Rooney licked my missing toes under the table and I tried not to scream.

“Spaghetti,” announced Lucy. “Dad made it.”

“Spooogetti,” I repeated. It turned out that spaghetti was a big bowl of snakes. I didn’t know that Melons ate snakes too, even though Mr. and Mrs. Buckworth ate our snake at the circus camp.

I picked one up with my finger and stared at it up close. “Skinny,” I said. “No eyes and no mouth.”

Lucy giggled and licked her lips. “Yummy,” she said, which must’ve been the word for thanking the snakes for letting us eat them.

I grabbed a whole pile of skinny blind snakes in my hands. I chewed and slurped until my plate was empty. “Yummy,” I said.

Mrs. Buckworth smiled and gave me more. I didn’t tell Mrs. Buckworth that I’d already eaten three different meals on three different airplanes. But I kept eating snakes, and more snakes, until the Buckworths all stopped eating at the same time.

Mrs. Buckworth looked a little worried. “Um, Betti? You must be so hungry! But there’s plenty of spaghetti, okay?”

Lucy started to laugh like crazy and picked up a pile of snakes with her little fingers. She stuffed a whole handful in her mouth.

I was supposed to eat my spaghetti snakes with a fork. That’s what Mrs. Buckworth said, and she showed me how. I’d seen forks used for all sorts of things, like starting taxis, but never for eating. Forks really didn’t make much sense; it was much easier to eat with my fingers because my snakes kept slithering off my fork.

Mr. Buckworth pushed his plate aside and put his elbows on the table so he could stare at me extra close. “We’re so happy you’re finally here, Betti.”

Lucy bounced in her chair as if she had baby mice trapped in her pants. “Especially me. I couldn’t wait. If I had to wait another day I was gonna die.”

I set my fork down and stopped chewing. Lucy was going to die? I gulped.

“It’ll take some time for you to get used to being here,” said Mrs. Buckworth in her soft voice. “America is so different.”

“Your country’s kind of scary,” said Lucy. “And poor.”

“Lucy.”

Lucy shrugged.

“But we’ve been trying to learn about your country too. So we can understand. Haven’t we, Luce. Let’s show Betti the book.”

Lucy ran to the living room and grabbed an enormous book that sat by itself in the middle of a glass table. “Here.” She held it out to me.

I turned the pages of the book slowly, while the Buckworths huddled around me. The three of them looked at each picture and then looked at me.

The Buckworths must’ve thought that I was some sort of expert on my whole country. They must’ve thought that I loved their big book, because soon I started flipping fast through all the pictures until I got to the very end. Actually I was just looking for pictures of Auntie Moo or the leftover kids or the tallest lady in the whole world with a tail.

Nothing.

The shiny pictures must’ve been taken before the war, a long, long time ago.

“Your country is pretty, Betti,” said Lucy, leaning right against me so her cheek touched mine.

I nodded. “My trees are pretty. My animals are pretty. I climb better than monkeys. Sela was pretty one. She got adopted because she is pretty. Curls and eyes. Other leftover kids inside pretty. That’s what Auntie Moo say. Not pretty like Sela, but very pretty on inside.

“This book ...” I sadly shook my head. “People have fingers. And toes. No circus people. No hot spots. No houses like broken bones. No pretty on inside people.”