Betti on the High Wire Read online

  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.”

  My good eye started to tear up. I sniffled a little and closed my eye tight like I had a bug in it, even though there were no bugs in the Buckworths’ house. “I think this country is ...” I closed their big book. “Not my country.”

  Moms and Mermaids

  BED ROOOM.

  Square and yellow. Almost as big as the lion cage. Auntie Moo and all the leftover kids could have slept in it, even though Lucy said it was all mine. But I wasn’t going to like it a bit because I wasn’t going to be at the Buckworths’ house for long.

  After dinner, when Lucy showed me my new bedroom, I peeked out a window and saw the sky turning dark blue and black. I squinted and saw a perfect square of real grass. Old Lady Suri said that my village used to have real grass too, until the soldiers stomped the grass down to nothing with their brown boots. An arched metal thing stood in the center of the Buckworths’ grass with two hanging empty seats.

  “Your window looks at the backyard and mine looks at the front. My room’s right there, see?” Lucy pointed to an open door across the hall. A pink room. “But maybe Mom’ll let us have slumber parties and I can sleep in your room. In a sleeping bag.”

  Then Lucy pointed to something on my bed. It was the best thing in my whole room! “He’s for you. He’s so cute, don’t you think?” Lucy picked up a stuffed bear that had a red ribbon around his neck. She kissed its black plastic nose.

  I reached out to touch its fuzzy fur. Its wide-open eyes stared back at me and his thready mouth smiled.

  “I picked him out myself!”

  It was a CIRCUS BEAR, kind of, even though it was fake. So I pulled my circus doll out of my orange bag and dusted her off. I set her carefully on my bed next to my circus bear.

  Sometimes Melons donated boring white socks that we never wore and soapy teeth paste to the leftover kids, but I’d never been given a present that was just for me. “Thank ... you,” I said, just as Auntie Moo had taught me to say when the Buckworths did something nice.

  Lucy started bouncing up and down on my new bed, which made me very dizzy. “My mom said that your eye got hurt.”

  “Yes.” I shrugged. I carefully pulled my jar of circus dirt out of my orange bag and set it down on a little table next to the bed. “It got broken.”

  “But how did it break?”

  I was too tired to explain how my eye got lost in the war or the circus, so instead I said, “Ghost named Hairy Bear Boy tell me my fortune. He say I have to go to America. Good luck or bad luck, it is hard to say. Next day I wake up and my eye falls out. And my hair. And my toes fall off too.”

  Lucy’s eyes grew huge. “Did he use a magic potion?”

  “Yes, he did,” I said dramatically. I wasn’t sure what a magic lotion was, but I was sure that the Hairy Bear Boy must’ve used it.

  Lucy tilted her head and plopped down on my bed. She scrunched her forehead. “But you’re not bald now, and your eye is still here, sort of, and most of your toes—”

  “They growed back.” I laid my everyday pants from the circus camp at the bottom of my bed. “They just growed back funny.”

  “I wish I had an eye like yours, Betti.” Lucy looked up at my fish eye as if she was looking at a funny painting. “Last year ... mermaid ... for Halloween ... do you have Halloween, Betti?”

  I had no idea what a halloweenie was, and I hoped I’d never had it.

  Lucy swirled her finger around on her face, and up past her eyes. “Mom let me wear ... makeup ... my eyes. Blue ...”

  I could understand most of Lucy’s Big Mouth words, but others were plain gobbledygook.

  “But Mom says ... no makeup ’til ... I’m really old. Ninth grade ... Only Halloween ...”

  “What does it mean? Merrrr-Made?” I asked.

  “Mermaid? It’s a half girl, half fish. She has a tail and she’s the same color as the ocean.”

  “She ... swim?”

  “She has to. She doesn’t have any legs. A mermaid only has a tail.”

  Mermaid. I thought about all the people who floated away from my village. They were all probably mermaids by now, waving their tails at the bottom of the sea.

  “Lucy!”

  The Buckworths loved to scream back and forth to each other.
Maybe their ears were out of order.

  “Shhhh!” whispered Lucy as she put her little finger to her lips. “My mom wants us to go to sleep. But now that you’re finally here I don’t wanna go to sleep. Do you? We have so many things to do! You’re going to play dolls with me and watch cartoons and we can roller-skate ... For HOURS.”

  Suddenly I was very, very tired. I lay down on my bed and put my head on my very own “peee-lo.” It was way too fluffy, but I was so tired that I could’ve slept on top of ten monkeys. I reached for my orange bag on the floor, took out my potato sack, and laid it carefully over that weird pillow.

  Lucy lay down with her head next to mine. She closed her eyes. “Shhhh. We have to act like we’re asleep.” She reached out and softly closed my good eye for me, when...

  Mrs. Buckworth walked into the yellow room.

  Lucy let out a loud noise like a sleeping cow. She elbowed me, so I let out a cow noise too.

  “Girls,” laughed Mrs. Buckworth, “you can’t fool me. Go put on your pajamas, Lucy, and then it’s off to bed.”

  “Ohhhhhhh, Mom.” Lucy bounced off my bed and ran out of my room. She was back in about one second. “Can we have a cookie first?”

  “Tomorrow.” Mrs. Buckworth sighed. “Now it’s pajamas.”

  “Pajamas. I know.” Lucy ran away again.

  Mrs. Buckworth sat down on my bed and smoothed out my blanket with her hand. “Betti, I have some pajamas for you too.”

  “What is pujamuzz?” I asked.

  She opened a secret drawer that was inside of a large wooden chest against the wall. She took out a long, fuzzy pink dress and held it up. “I wanted you to have something to wear tonight. I also bought some other things.” She opened another drawer and then another. “I hope you like them.”

  Four pairs of pants, three pairs of shorts, eight pairs of socks and underwear, another striped pajamas dress, a “swimming soot for swimming in a swimming poo,” and a pair of “overallzz.” The overalls were blue and looked like what the poor farm people wore in my country. But mine had a red flower on the front.

  Then Mrs. Buckworth walked to a skinny secret door and opened it. I curiously followed her and looked inside. Hanging like empty people from a pole that went from one side to the other, were three brand-new dresses and three brand-new shirts.

  “And some shoes, Betti.”

  “Shoes?”

  There were perfectly white shoes for playing, which I planned to get very dirty, and shoes kind of like my flip-flops, only fancier, with holes in the front that would show off my missing toes.

  I looked down at my flip-flops. Sister Baroo had spent a lot of money for my flip-flops. They were just fine, but not here I guess, and yesterday seemed like a million years ago.

  Then Mrs. Buckworth held up a third pair of shoes. “These are for birthday parties and special things like that.”

  Special occasion shoes! Red and shiny with buckles. My good eye bugged out and my mouth hung open. I wanted to touch all of my new clothes and my new red shoes. Instead I said, “Thank ... you,” and closed the door. I was not going to like any of it.

  “I’ll help you put on your pajamas, sweetie,” said Mrs. Buckworth, “but first you can take a bath.”

  “Bath?” I said. I definitely didn’t want my skin scrubbed until I was blue and raw and wrinkled like a baby elephant.

  “I know you’re probably so tired after your trip, but it might feel good to—”

  “No bath, no bath.” I put my arms across my chest. I pointed my nose at the ceiling.

  “Oh. Well ...” Mrs. Buckworth put her hand on my shoulder, on my circus dress. “I guess it can wait until tomorrow. Sure.”

  So I shyly let her help me put on my pajamas. My new pink pajama dress was soft and warm.

  I sat down on my bed again. I yawned.

  “Betti, I also wanted to give you this.” Mrs. Buck-worth handed me a book.

  She watched hopefully as I was very busy flipping through the pages. I was afraid it was another book about my country that was not really my country. “It is no words,” I said.

  Mrs. Buckworth laughed. “It’s a blank book. It isn’t supposed to have words yet.”

  “Blank?”

  “It’s ...” Mrs. Buckworth looked at the ceiling and itched her chin. “It’s ... empty. So you can write in it or draw pictures, whatever you want. Maybe you can write new English words in it so you don’t forget them.”

  “M Tea.” I itched my chin too. “My M Tea Book.” I had no idea what Melon tea had to do with a book. But then Mrs. B. wrote the word on her hand: Empty. “My Empty Book,” I said, and Mrs. Buckworth smiled. It had a purple cover with pictures of flowers and a smiling girl. And there was a blue pencil that was attached to it with a pink thing on the end. The pink thing looked like a little piece of candy so I bit it. Definitely not candy. I spit that thing on the floor.

  Still, I loved my Empty Book! “Thank ... you, Mrs. Buckworth,” I finally said.

  “You’re welcome, Betti. It might be nice for you to have it. I mean, so you can look back on it someday. After you’ve been here for a long time.”

  A long time? I definitely wasn’t going to be here for a long time. But I’d write everything in my Empty Book so I could show Auntie Moo about the world of America. Pictures that I’d drawn of my very interesting vacation here and all of my new words. I’d show Old Lady Suri at the bean stand and I’d show the leftover kids who would ooooh and ahhhhh, and best of all, I’d give it to my mama and dad when they came home to the circus camp.

  Mr. Buckworth knocked softly on my bedroom door and walked in. Both of them sat down on my bed next to me.

  “This ...” Mr. Buckworth waved his hand around the yellow room. “This must all seem so new and strange, Betti.”

  I nodded. Very strange.

  “But you don’t have to feel shy. This is your home now.”

  The Buckworths were okay. Mrs. Buckworth gave me an Empty Book and red buckle shoes and she squatted with me on the airport floor. Mr. Buckworth made me spaghetti snakes and saved me from the Melon dog. Lucy taught me important words like “yummy” and “mikroo-wave” and gave me a stuffed hairy bear. In fact, the Buckworths were nice. For Melons. I played with my fingers and set my circus doll in my lap. It was all very confusing.

  “I do not ... understand,” I said, trying to run my fingers through my doll’s knotty leftover kid hair.

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “I do not understand why you choose ... me.”

  “Oh, Betti.” Mr. Buckworth smiled and plunked his hand down on my head. “We knew we were going to adopt you when we first saw you.”

  “But ... why?” I bugged out my eyes. “Did the ghosts tell you?”

  Mr. Buckworth chuckled. “No. No ghosts. We just felt that you had so much courage. Like a little tiger.”

  I didn’t know what “courage” meant, but I liked being a little tiger.

  “And you’re funny, Betti. We knew that Lucy would love you too,” added Mrs. Buckworth. “That you’d teach her so many important things.”

  I thought about how I made the leftover kids memorize my scary Big Mouth stories. I thought about how I taught them all of my games that got us into big trouble.

  “Auntie Moo say ...” My good eye started to get cloudy, so I shut it tight. “Learn something and teach something every day in whole short life.” I squished my circus doll against my chest, and wished that Auntie Moo were hugging me.

  “Auntie Moo is smart, just like you.” Mrs. Buckworth looked at me with kind eyes until I looked down. “We know you’re going to miss her, Betti. And the other kids. That part’s not going to be easy. You can talk to us about that too, okay?”

  It wasn’t supposed to go like this at all.

  Somehow I’d have to make the Buckworths realize that I was definitely the wrong choice. Broken from the inside out. Somehow I’d have to get the Buckworths to throw me away, back to the circus camp, so they could get a new left
over kid. Not smart and not funny and not a little tiger, like me. I was going to have to be bad. Really really bad.

  “We hope you’ll feel happy here, Betti.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Buckworth.”

  Mrs. Buckworth’s face turned pink. “You don’t have to call us ‘Mr. and Mrs. Buckworth,’ ” she said, brushing hair out of my eyes. “You can call us ‘Mom and Dad.’ I mean, if you ... want to.”

  I thought about that. Very quietly I answered, “Okay, Mrs. Buckworth. And Mr. Buckworth.”

  The Buckworths slowly nodded their heads—Mrs. Buckworth looked a little sad—and they both bent over and kissed my forehead, just like Auntie Moo always did.

  “Goodnight, Betti,” Mrs. Buckworth whispered. “I hope you have sweet dreams.”

  I watched them tiptoe out of my yellow room.

  If they hadn’t chosen me I never would’ve been in this confusing mess.

  I got up and took off my fuzzy pajamas and put on my circus dress. Only Melons wore pajamas. Then I dug around in my orange bag and found my letter from Auntie Moo, underneath my pictures of the Buckworths. I stuck it in the back of my Empty Book, and slipped my Empty Book under my pillow.

  In front of my nose, next to my pillow, I propped up my fake circus bear and my circus doll.

  “My mama,” I whispered to them both in my real language, “is the Tallest Woman in the World with a Tail. She takes my hand and we dive in and out of the water. Mermaids. We can swim around for HOURS, because there is a whole country inside the purple plastic swimming poo. A whole country of watery circus people. ”

  My bear and my doll were listening carefully. Their eyes were wide open.

  “You can live there too, if you want to.” I touched the circus bear’s nose. “See, we are very safe, because no one knows about the country but us.”

  Eggs and Drool

  IT WAS MY second day in America, and . . .

  I opened my eye and screamed.

  Something furry was staring at me. I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to move because that’s when animals chase you. My potato sack was under my head. My circus camp doll was under one arm and my circus bear was under the other. My special occasion dress was all wrinkled, and my flip-flops were on my feet in case I suddenly had to run. And the enormous furry black thing started to wag.