Betti on the High Wire Read online

  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.

  Dear Babo,

  When you get this you will probably already be in America. My heart is so happy for you! You must keep your eyes open (even your broken eye) to see everything, so you can tell me about our world. I believe it is beautiful, Babo, and I hope. you think so too.

  Remember that a wise student, a stundent who tries very hard, also makes the best teacher. This will be you. Teach something and learn something every day in America.

  I will miss you forever and always. Until we see each other again.

  Love, Auntie. Moo

  P.S. Please. don’t worry about us. We will be okay. And also ... try not to get into too much trouble, okay? The Buckworths seem very nice.

  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.

  Foreign Goop

  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!”

  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 fin
d 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 Sweet Melon 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 gaspe
d. 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.