The Trouble Begins (10 page)

“So?” Vuong mimics me. “So she doesn't have any mutants and the first part of the experiment is due tomorrow. She did all that work and wrote the report and now she won't have time to start growing them again and finish on time.”

“How about finish late?” I suggest. How much difference can it make?

Thuy stands up with her hands on her hips to argue. “She can't be in the science project class if she doesn't keep to the schedule and have a project to turn in. And Lin cares. She wants that more than anything.”

They're both acting like somehow it's my fault just because I wouldn't cry, boohoo, about her school project. I go to Lin's room to see if she wants to go to the market with me but she won't open the door.

I like to be out in the yard in the morning when it's just getting light. The weeds are wet on my feet and the bottom of my pants but I don't care. I watch for Cat. I leave her some noodles and tofu mixed up on a piece of newspaper. Later when I check, the food's always gone because she's such a hungry cat. I decide to check the alley for any good
wood or metal stuff people have thrown out. Even our trash can is piled high today. I wonder why.

It's full of Lin's speed-seed plants. She took such good care of them she even put them in the trash carefully. Speed-seed plants must mean they grow fast. What if I planted them in the old man's yard under the berries, and huge ugly mutant plants spread all over his yard? He'd be out there trying to pull them up or chop them down but they'd just keep growing too fast for him. Lin says they're not mutants, though, because they're all the same. To be a mutant one has to be different but maybe she's wrong and they're not all the same when they get older. I'll just rescue them all and line them up here by the shed. I'll get them all ready so I can plant them in his yard tomorrow.

I go in the kitchen for something to eat. “Du, you're all wet. What are you doing out there?” asks nosy Thuy.

“Nothing,” I say. Lin might tell me I can't have her plants even though they were in the trash. Her eyes are still red and she doesn't say anything. She trails off after Thuy and Vuong to school. I see Thuy wait at the bottom of the steps and put her arm around Lin's shoulders. I've got time to plant a few now if I go over the little side-yard fence and hurry. I don't think the old man's up yet.

I like these little plants. They look like they really want to grow. Bigger leaves near the bottom, close together, then smaller ones up the stem, until there are the little tiny growing leaves at the top. They look exactly alike, even more than outside plants do. Even these little tiny, tiny hairs on the stem that I can see if I hold them up to the light.

Wait! Not this one. This one doesn't have any little stem hairs at all…. This one doesn't either. I wonder if that's mutant. Little tiny hairs! They're hidden under the leaves and really hard to see. Too bad Lin's already gone to school.

No, I won't just say too bad she's gone. I'll take them to her. It won't take long if I run. I'll be late for school but late just means make up double time in the Counseling Center after school. I don't care about that.

I can't run too fast with these plants, hairy on the right and no hairs on the left. I don't want to wreck them. The high school's one block down now but there's nobody hanging around out front. Classes must have started.

I find the office by asking a girl in the hall. I park the plants outside the door. I tell the lady inside it's an emergency and give her Lin's name. She doesn't believe me. “I don't know what this is about but you should be in school, young man,” she warns me.

“It's my grandma's medicine. She has to have it fast and Lin knows where it is. I'll just ask her and be out of here,” I lie. I hope the lie won't come back so my grandma really needs medicine.

“What is your phone number?” she asks.

“We don't have a phone,” I lie again.

The lady goes through a file of cards. “There's a phone listed here,” she says, like she caught me.

“That's not ours. We got rid of it. Please, lady. Let me just ask her fast.” The lady calls the number but nobody answers. My grandma never answers because she can't speak English. Finally that does it. The lady calls a high school girl to take me to Lin's room.

“What are those?” The girl sniffs when she sees the plants in the hall.

“You stay here,” she orders me outside a classroom door. She goes inside. She comes out with Lin and jerks her thumb at me. Then she strolls away down the hall.

Lin is scared. “What's wrong with Grandma?” she asks, her red eyes getting teary again.

“Nothing,” I answer. I hold out the plants.

“What are you doing with those?” Real tears, angry ones now, roll down her face. “Get out of here!”

“Mutants,” I say. “See.” I pull her under a window where the light is bright. “See the little hairs.” I pull the big leaves at the bottom gently aside so she can see the stem. I'm so excited about it I almost laugh out loud. I show her the other one with no hairs.

“Oh, Du,” Lin whispers like I've given her a golden treasure. “I see. I see.” Her face goes from golden treasure to disaster again. “Du,” she cries. “They're all in the trash. It's trash collection day.”

“No, they're not,” I say. “They're lined up by the shed.”

“Oh, Du. Thank you, thank you. Can you move them inside where they were? Outside might not be good for them. Please, can you do this one last thing? I know you're late for school.” I'm afraid she'll cry again.

I run home to do what she says. I think about how desperate she is about the stubby plants and their little tiny hairs. Because it's a project for school. I think how cool it is that I found them and saved her. Even though she was so crabby to me before. I get an idea on the way home. Now she can help me just once with Mrs. Dorfman's personal narrative. I'll show my teacher that I had a better trip than anybody if Lin can help me.

When I walk in, Mrs. Dorfman points toward the office and says “Late slip” to me right in the middle of the social studies paragraph she's reading. I stroll over to the Counseling Center.

“Why are you late, Du?” asks Ms. Whipple. I shrug but I must have a big grin because of rescuing the mutants.

“It's not funny, Du,” she says, tilting her head like she's trying to figure something out. “If there's a good reason, you won't have to stay, you know.”

“I was rescuing mutants for my sister,” I say.

“Okay, Du.” She shakes her head while she writes out the late slip but she's smiling a little at what I said. “Be here after school until you make up fifty minutes.” I stroll back to class with my late slip. Ms. Whipple's nice. Maybe I will tell her about the mutants.

Lin is so happy to see me when I come home from school late that it's embarrassing. We all look at the plants with the little hairs and the ones without them. “Those are 'glabrous,'” announces Lin. “Most Americans don't even know that word. It means 'smooth, no hairs.'”

“Glabrous,” I repeat. “Smooth, no hairs… bald.” Ha. That old man is glabrous and he doesn't even know it. I'll use it in an essay for Mrs. Dorfman and when she marks it wrong I will tell her what it means.

Thuy and Vuong slap me on the back and tell me how great it is that I saved Lin even though Thuy does say, “What were you going to do with those, anyway?”

“I have to write a personal narrative about a trip I took with my family, and the place we went, and the trip back,” I announce. “Will you help me?” They exchange sideways looks. The only place our family goes is Orange and I don't go with them. “I want to tell about going to the Philippines with Grandma,” I say, “but I was too little to remember. I know what we did after we got there when I grew older.”

“Sure, Du. Sit down here. We'll do it right now.” Lin would do almost anything for me now. I wonder if I should waste it on a personal narrative. Then I think about how much she cares about her schoolwork. I'll do a good one once and see what happens.

“Now, about the trip,” says Lin, all busy with her paper and pencils ready. “Let's get started.”

“Ba and Ma won't tell me anything and Grandma gets sad if I ask and just wants to tell me stories.”

“Why do you want to tell that stuff?” asks Thuy. Vuong gets up and leaves the room.

“Because it's my trip!” I'm not going to let them start taking over everything I want to do.

Vuong comes back. “Here,” he says, throwing an old newspaper picture on the table. “Here's your trip.” We all stare.

In the picture is a little wooden boat pointed at one end and straight at the other. Even without color I can tell the boat is all beaten up and unpainted. It tips a little to one side. The front part is open but the back part has a roof over it. It isn't the boat that's important. There are about forty or fifty Vietnamese people crowded in the front part and on the roof. From the two windows in the side of the boat you can see there are more inside. The people are all staring at whoever is taking the picture, probably on another boat a little way across the water. None of the people are smiling the way Americans do for a picture. They are all skinny and there is a woman with her face hidden under a big hat holding a little boy to keep him from falling off the roof.

I can't believe it. “Is that my boat?” I whisper.

“Nah,” answers Vuong. “The newspaper is from 1980 and you went around 1978. But under the picture it says it's a boatload of Vietnamese refugees in the South China Sea. I got it from Nahn up in Orange. He said it's like the one you and Grandma went to the Philippines on. She and Auntie sold their gold bracelets to get a ride. A lot of people drowned or got robbed or killed by pirates but your boat made it.”

Vuong knows some other stuff too and he calls Nahn in Orange to find out some more. Thuy and Lin help me write.
I won't let them change what I say too much even though they want to make everything better. Lin wants it perfect but I laugh and say then Mrs. Dorfman will know it's not
my
story. By dinnertime I have a personal narrative with plenty of pages so I draw some little pictures along the edges and a cover because Lin says I should. It's ready to turn in.