The Trouble Begins (18 page)

My dad does look at my report card. He knows the day we get it and he asks to see it. For a minute I think I'll tell him I left it at school or lost it or something but that will just make it worse when he finds out. It's folded up into a little tiny square in my pocket. I take it out and unfold it. I hand it to him. There is a long heavy silence while he looks at each grade. He doesn't yell at me or slam anything down on the table.

“So, your teacher says you're not even trying,” he says. “You're acting like a gang boy, a criminal. You're mean to people. You can't read. I don't know whose boy this is.” He says it sadly like he gives up. I know the report card doesn't say all that. It has Needs Improvement checks next to “Follows classroom rules” and “Treats classmates with respect.” Not respecting my classmates means I won't let Anthony call me Du Du but I don't tell my dad that. I got a U,
Unsatisfactory,
in “Effort,” which means Mrs. Dorfman thinks I don't try. “Reading” is a D for dumb reading group. For him there is no excuse at all, anywhere, for a report card like this. He places the report card on the table, turns his back on me and leaves the room. Later I get my mom to sign it when she is in a hurry to leave for work.

Winter holiday practice again. We're going to practice every day until the day of the program. That means no PE. Before we begin Mr. Unger jumps up on the stage. He's waving the strips of math paper. “What a great job you guys
did!” he yells. “Give yourselves a big round of applause.” Everybody claps and cheers and whistles. He doesn't get nervous like Mrs. Dorfman when it gets noisy. “Way to go!” he yells. “And now for the winners.”

It gets quiet. Even kids who quit writing answers halfway through get quiet in case everybody else was even worse and they won. “Many of you got over ninety percent correct!” he yells. More cheers. “But those problems number fifteen and twenty-seven were doozies. Those are the ones that did us in.” Kids groan. “Only two people got everything right because of those two ugly problems.” He waits, looking all around the auditorium. Kids are squirming hopefully. “And the one hundred percent winners are …” His feet pound the stage like a drum. “In my phenomenal class, Iris Perez! Come on up, Iris.” Kids clap, especially the ones from Mr. Unger's class, and she runs up to the stage. “And in Mrs. Dorfman's equally phenomenal class, Du Nguyen!”

There's a moment of complete silence. Nobody believes it. I don't think about winning. I feel scared. I have to run up on the stage. “Put your hands together for Du. Come on up, Du Nguyen.” Kids clap then. Pretty loud, I think. Kids near me push me out of my seat. Cheering picks up in my class. We tied the smart kids' class. Because of me. I run up to the stage. Mr. Unger gives Iris and me each a new pencil. Then he snatches them back. “You two don't need these,” he says, breaking off the end with the erasers. He gives the broken pencils back to us. Everybody laughs.

“Seriously,” he goes on. “With the skills these two have developed I wouldn't be surprised if they end up owning the
pencil factory. The rest of you out there, follow their example and next time it will be you up here… with a broken pencil to show for your work.” Kids laugh again. I laugh too. “And the winners also receive this Mental Math Champion certificate to keep so they can remember this day and what they did. Let's have another round of applause.” He hands Iris and me thick papers with gold paper medals and little blue ribbons stuck on them that have our names and “Mental Math Champion” and the date in fancy printing. Everybody wants to see it when I get back to my seat. They want to see the broken pencil too.

We start the winter holiday program practice. I'm happy. I like school. I might even sing in the angel chorus just because I feel like making noise.

The Tet part of the program starts. The girl in the front box of the dragon is absent. Mrs. Dorfman asks for volunteers. I wave my hand around without thinking. “All right, Du,” she says like she's sure it's a mistake. “You may have another chance.”

I go up onstage again. No problem. I crawl under the front box of the dragon. It's the box with the head, a big mouth full of teeth, flames from the nose painted along the sides of the face and lots of colored streamers all around the back for the mane. I don't want the dragon to look like a cow. I grab the sides of the box. I jump into the middle of the stage. For a second the other boxes hold me back, then they jump too. I jump straight up and shake the box back and forth. Through my box I hear laughing. It's easy to act crazy when no one can see you.
Bong!
go the gongs. I leap and
jump and shake and bow and go in circles until someone knocks on the box and says it's time to go offstage. I'm sweaty when I get out from under the box. I walk back to my seat. Kids are still laughing. Somebody pounds my back. “You were great, Dude,” they say.

At home I show Thuy and Lin and Vuong my Mental Math Champion certificate.

“Oh, Du, now you will get As, I think.”

“See, Du, you just have to get over being lazy.”

“You could get everything right in spelling too if you tried.”

I feel embarrassed. It's such a little thing but they pretend it's big. I wish I hadn't told them. I give my Mental Math Champion certificate to my grandma. She puts it on the chest in her room where she keeps a piece of bamboo, a little vase and a necklace from Vietnam. I don't tell my dad because he will say it was just a game or say that it proves I am a lazy boy and not trying, and to him lazy and not trying are the worst things of all.

Vuong comes up the front walk with a long box. “Whatcha got?” I yell. I hope it's something fun.

“Nothing,” he says. He brings the box into the workroom. Thuy and Lin are studying. He opens the box slowly just to make me wait. He pulls out a little fake Christmas tree all folded up. It has red balls already stuck on it and it leans when he sticks it on its stand. We look down at it. So does Buddha. Thuy and Lin and Buddha laugh at Vuong. I do too. His tree is nothing like the tall shining ones on TV
all covered with lights and angels. Vuong takes the tree to his room and shoves it in the corner.

I know there's no real Santa Claus anywhere but I'm not sure about Christmas. “Did they have Christmas in Vietnam?” I ask my mom.

“We're here now,” she answers. She and my dad always say stuff like that when I ask questions about Vietnam. My sisters give me angry looks. They say it makes my mom sad to remember because of the war and the people in her family who died and the ones left behind that she may never see again. They don't want me to make my mom sad. I don't want to either but I would just like to know. We don't do Christmas but maybe other people from Vietnam do. My grandma tells me stories but not about what really was.

“Are there reindeer in Vietnam?” I ask my grandma. She thinks for a minute.

“No,” she says. “We have water buffalo instead. Water buffalo are big with powerful shoulders and curved horns.” Then she tells me a story about a tiger who sees a water buffalo work all day for a farmer. The tiger asks the buffalo why he works for a puny little man who is so much weaker than he is. The buffalo says it is because the man has a special box of wisdom. The tiger is curious and grabs the man in his claws and demands to see his wisdom. The man says yes but he is afraid if he goes to get it the tiger will eat his buffalo. “Let me tie you to this tree,” he says, “so I can show you my wisdom.” The tiger lets himself be tied to a tree and the man sets the tree on fire. When the ropes burn, the tiger is free
but he has stripes where the rope burned his fur. The tiger knows he has seen the man's wisdom.

Talking tigers are about like flying reindeer but my grandma tells me the story so I will be smart. Maybe the Santa Claus story is so kids will be good. I'm smart enough to figure out that my parents didn't have Christmas in Vietnam. The old man used to have Christmas but I can tell he hasn't used the Christmas lights and the red glittery balls in the shed for years.

The old man never found Cat and the kittens when he got his mower but if he gets his Christmas stuff he'll find her for sure. I get a little piece of a hot dog to take to Cat. She likes Vietnamese fish better but hot dog is all we have today. I snake quickly through the little window. I hear the squeaky cries. The kittens are fine but they are noisy now. They are all there in a tangle of fur pushing their paws against each other, looking for Cat. All but the littlest gray one have their eyes open now. Cat pushes her way in through the crack. I give her the piece of hot dog, which she chews quickly holding it down with one paw. There are little cries again as she steps among the kittens. They all struggle to get to her. Soon they will be ready to eat fish and hot dogs too. Where will I get enough food? How can they stay hidden? I better get out my box of wisdom and figure it out.

I walk to school. Christmas is everywhere. The Mexican guy's house has a big Santa in front and lights all over the
porch. The gas station has white bears bigger than kids, with red Santa Claus hats. They're for sale in a big pile. The streetlights have fake wreaths on them. The window of the ninety-nine-cent store is full of Christmas candy and Christmas paper and dolls and toy cars and a lot of other junk.

I think school will be different this last week but it isn't. “Du, you're to go to the Counseling Center immediately.” All the kids look at me the way they always do when someone's in trouble. But no one says, “What'd you do, Du Du?” the way they used to. I hope whatever I've done is not so bad that I miss the winter holiday program. The dragon won't be any good without me. I walk slowly over to the Counseling Center. I try to think of what I've done lately. Nothing big that I can think of but sometimes it's hard to know what they consider bad. Like the time I put glue on my arms. That didn't seem so bad and it was fun to peel it off. Mrs. Dorfman said it was a “waste of classroom materials.” Other kids were wasting more glue dripping it all over their paper sculptures.

Ms. Whipple smiles when I come in. “We need your help, Du,” she says. What is this about? Maybe it's a trick. “I must warn you that what I'm asking of you will be difficult. We have a mother in the nurse's office who is very upset. The nurse has found that her child has a hearing loss. The mother speaks a little English but when she heard about her child she was so upset that she can't understand anything else. I thought of you, Du. I thought you could explain to her in Vietnamese. Will you try?”