Betti on the High Wire Read online

  Rooney.

  “Shoo!” I hissed in my language as a big string of drool fell out of his mouth and landed on my ear. He opened his mouth wider. I was sure he’d bite my head or lift his leg.

  We were both underneath a tree next to the empty swinging seats. Rooney the American dog had followed me and slept outside with me. I could smell the grass and hear the birds and a bug crawled across my hand.

  Then Rooney’s huge slobbery red tongue lapped out and licked my bad eye!

  “Help!” I screamed. This was the last word Auntie Moo taught me before I left in the beat-up taxi. She said I only needed to use it if I got into big trouble. “HELP! HELP!”

  Suddenly Mr. Buckworth was sprinting through the backyard in his underpants.

  “Betti! Are you okay? What are you doing outside?”

  “P-pig,” I stammered, pointing at Rooney. “Mikroo Wave Base Mint TV”

  I meant to say “dog,” but these were the words that came out. Even though Old Lady Suri said I’d get in big trouble for saying the wrong words, it really didn’t matter at a time like this.

  “Come on, boy,” Mr. Buckworth said in a deep voice, so Rooney sat down and licked Mr. Buckworth’s foot. Then Mrs. Buckworth ran outside, followed by Lucy.

  Mrs. Buckworth tilted her head and said in a very worried voice, “Betti?”

  “I . . . I . . .” I didn’t have the right words. The Buckworths probably couldn’t understand why I was sleeping outside. Maybe they just thought I loved nature or their swinging seats. “No kids . . . smooshed.” I pointed to a corner of the fence as if it were the lion cage. “No George.” I split my legs like a wishbone. “It is too very dark in there.” I pointed at their sky blue house. “I cannot see.”

  I didn’t know how to tell them that in the middle of my first night in America I woke up shaking and sweating in my new yellow room. I waved my arm back and forth to touch a leftover kid, or George’s feet, but I couldn’t find either one. I was all by myself and the Buckworths’ house was way too quiet. It was definitely much safer outside.

  I couldn’t explain in English how it was very important to see straight up to the sky so I always knew if something was coming.

  I raised my hands up. “Boom.”

  MRS. BUCKWORTH’S HAND set down a pretty plate right in front of me at the eating table. Clink. Bright yellow egg, circled by white goo. I poked the egg with my finger. Yellow goo spread across my plate and ran into cooked bread. This . . . was my first breakfast on my first day at the Buckworths’.

  Scary.

  Lucy bounced in her chair and made egg designs on her plate. “Look, Betti!” She kept grinning at me like a crazy red-haired clown. “Look at my egg.”

  “Eat your breakfast,” Mrs. Buckworth told Lucy from one end of the eating table.

  “Ick.” Lucy stabbed her fork into her egg.

  I made egg designs like Lucy. “Ick,” I mumbled, which must’ve been the Melons’ word for promising the ghosts that I wouldn’t get into trouble, so they’d give me more food. I swirled my fork around and around on my plate. “Ick,” I said politely to the ceiling.

  I ate eggs in my country, but never eggs like this. Sometimes I climbed into trees and found polka-dotted eggs, and blue eggs, and yellow eggs. White eggs were the most boring of all. The Buckworths’ cooked bread was boring too.

  “It’s called toast, Betti.” Lucy jumped out of her chair. “Come here! Look!” She pushed a button on a white square box and waited. I peeked inside and suddenly the cooked bread magically popped up and nearly hit my nose. Lucy thought that was very very funny. “See?”

  I didn’t know why Melons called cooked bread “toes” but I got to make it three times by myself. Then Lucy showed me the red stuff that I got to squirt on my cooked bread. It oozed out in a big funny blob.

  “Jelly,” said Lucy with red teeth almost like Big Uncle’s red teeth.

  “Jellllly.”

  And I didn’t really know what “break” meant, but I knew what “fast” meant, so I tried to eat as fast as I could. I dipped my fingers in the yellow goo and licked them fast. Goo dripped onto my plate and covered my lips. I stuffed cooked bread toes in my mouth fast, even though my cheeks puffed out.

  Mr. Buckworth looked up from his newspaper and smiled.

  Mrs. Buckworth said, “Um, Betti, we have plenty of eggs and toast if you’re still hungry. You don’t need to hurry, okay?”

  “Okay.” So I picked up another piece of red bread with my fork and started chewing it slowly around the edges.

  The Buckworths would definitely want to send me home because I ate way too much and way too fast.

  But then Lucy stabbed a piece of cooked bread with her fork and started eating it around the edges, just like me.

  “Lucy . . .” said Mrs. Buckworth.

  “I know.” Lucy’s cheeks puffed out as she grinned at me.

  Then Mr. Buckworth picked up a piece of bread with his fork too. Lucy spit crumbs out of her mouth and started giggling like crazy with crumby teeth. I giggled a little too, because I couldn’t help it.

  Mrs. Buckworth sighed.

  The Melon dog put his hairy head in my lap. He was everywhere. Lucy threw a piece of cooked bread toes to Rooney, who chomped it down in about one second and stared up at the sky to wait for more.

  Ick.

  I ate four pieces of red cooked bread and three gooey eggs, which must’ve made the ghosts very happy. I was like a pig eating sloppy slop and my stomach stuck out like a fat fruit.

  I felt like I used to feel at the circus camp when I was up all night hearing things. Life in America was kind of like the circus. A new act every second. New sounds and smells and drooling animals and magic lotions and bouncing girls and bouncing bread toes. I never knew what would happen next.

  MY EMPTY BOOK.

  Leftover Dogs and Plastic People

  I WAS TRYING hard to hear the circus music.

  Floating through the Buckworths’ trees, or through their backyard, or through my open window or my skinny secret door. I was sure I’d still be able to hear it sometimes, all the way in America.

  But I couldn’t hear much of anything. Because after breakfast Mr. Buckworth was taking a bath and he was singing songs that made me stick my fingers in my ears.

  Instead, while I was sitting in a corner, poking my toes into my fuzzy floor that was supposed to look like grass, I wrote new words in my Empty Book. I drew things, too: spaghetti snakes, and the television TV, and droolly dogs, and swimming mermaids with tails. I had to write and draw everything before I forgot. I touched my letter from Auntie Moo in the back of my book.

  Finally Mr. Buckworth was done with his bath and his bad singing, and then it was Lucy’s turn for a bath. She didn’t sing but she did jump out of the bath and run into my yellow room with no clothes. She danced around and giggled like crazy until Mrs. Buckworth hollered for her to stop playing and to get back into the tub “immediately.”

  I closed my good eye so I could try and hear the leftover kids singing their long, sad songs around the fire circle. But before I could imagine much of anything, a little voice whispered in my ear. “Betti, are you sleeping?” A little finger touched my lips. Lucy had leaped back in—with clothes on, with soggy hair—and plopped down next to me.

  I opened my good eye and closed my Empty Book.

  “Do you want to play? I wonder if you will play with me?” Her head was tilted and she was smiling with no teeth. “Please?”

  I was very busy with my book, but I was also very curious about Lucy’s Melon games.

  She had a whole bag filled with plastic dolls. She pulled them out one at a time, about ten of them, and lined them up next to my feet. All of her dolls were staring at me with perfect smiles.

  “This is Jimmy Dale and Malibu Margie and Ramon and Jessie Lynn, who’s getting married. See? She has a wedding dress on.

  “I got this doll . . . birth-day . . . I love her sooooo ... much and I have . . . doll . . . house .
. . really cute . . . Someday . . . I hope . . . car for dolls . . . maybe at Christmas . . . and maybe . . . Mom and Dad . . . they’ll get you . . . house . . . too.”

  Gobbledygook. My head hurt from foreign words. It was easier when Auntie Moo spoke English to me because she only spoke the words I knew. Everybody here—except for Mrs. Buckworth—spoke too fast. And too loud. And spoke too many new important words.

  Lucy’s skinny dolls danced up and down in front of my face. Lucy’s little hand made them march all the way up my arm and down again. “See, they’re in a parade, Betti!” Lucy squealed. They bounced across Rooney’s back, on top of his head, around my orange bag, and all over my stuffed circus bear.

  Mrs. Buckworth poked her head in. “Betti, are you ready for your bath now?”

  I scrunched my eyes and pretended that my ears were out of order.

  “You really need to take one today, sweetie. This morning.”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe at birthday. Maybe at Crissymess.”

  Mrs. Buckworth looked very confused. “At Christmas? But—”

  “Mom,” said Lucy, “we are busy now. She promises she’ll take one later.”

  Mrs. Buckworth sighed. “Well . . . but—”

  And fortunately that’s when I heard the loud DONG-DONG noise from the front door. I heard: “Hi! Halllooo!”

  GEORGE!

  “Hi, Babo!”

  I jumped up from the floor, leaped over to him, squeezed him around his belly, and nearly knocked him down. George and I bounced up and down as if we hadn’t seen each other in a hundred years. Then George made woof-woof sounds at Rooney until Rooney licked his hand and drooled on the floor.

  “Hi George!” said Lucy. “Will you play dolls with me?” She bounced her dolls all over George’s feet until he giggled like crazy.

  “Dulzz?” asked George. “O-kay.” George always played anything.

  In about one second, Lucy scampered out of my room. In another second she was back, holding a pink plastic house with tiny beds and chairs and tables inside. “This is where they live!” cheered Lucy, setting the fake house down on my floor with a thump.

  George jumped off the bed and plopped down next to Lucy.

  “You get to be Jessie Lynn,” Lucy told him. “She’s getting married.”

  George took the doll and looked at it up close. He had no clue what getting married meant, so I translated, and soon he was making Jessie Lynn run into every room in the dollhouse—the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen—as if he’d lived in a real house forever. He made Jessie Lynn say things like “Hi, hallooo. Hi, hallooo,” and laughed as if it was the most fun he’d ever had in his whole life. Which just figured. Because I couldn’t figure out what was so fun about playing with plastic people in a fake house. My games were definitely better.

  So I took my circus doll and sat down on the floor too.

  “Your doll doesn’t really fit in, Betti,” said Lucy. “She’s a sock.”

  “She does not want to fit in house. She want to live in tent.”

  “What? What tent?” Lucy scrunched her eyes.

  I pulled my blanket off the bed. George and I crawled under our circus tent. “Jessie Lynn,” I told George’s doll in our language, “it is time to feed the pigs.”

  George blabbered that he couldn’t feed the pigs because he was getting married, and he already had his special occasion dress on, but I told him that was no excuse. The pigs needed their sloppy slop.

  George shrugged. “O-kay.” He loved my games.

  “Now . . . you are Melon soldier,” I told Lucy, pointing at the doll she was holding called Jimmy Dale. “You burn the house.” I pointed at her pink dollhouse.

  “You’re bossy, Betti,” said Lucy. “These are my dolls, not yours. Jimmy Dale goes to the beach, see? He gets tan.”

  “It is game. Do you want to play? Or not.”

  “Yeah, but . . . I don’t want to burn my house.”

  I gathered all of her dolls under the tent except for Jimmy Dale. “Your Melon soldier has gun. But we are all mermaids.”

  George knew the English words “soldier” and “gun.” In our real language he said, “Some soldiers are nice, Babo.”

  I sighed. “This is my game. This is my country.”

  “Your country is scary!” Lucy crossed her arms against her chest.

  After I taught George what a mermaid was, he waved Jessie Lynn up and down as if she was diving in and out of the river. I made mine swim too. We flew our dolls all over the place, through the air and over the bed. Then George skipped off to the bathroom. When he ran back into my yellow room, Jessie Lynn and her wedding dress were dripping wet from swimming in the sink. George laughed like crazy.

  “Now ... all of circus people mermaids swim away. Saved.”

  “Banana,” said George in English, meaning to say “fish.” George made his hand into a big fish. “Soldier be eat.” His hand ate Jimmy Dale in about one second and George threw the doll over his shoulder.

  “And the ghosts in sky . . .” I said dramatically, “scare soldier. Forever.”

  George and I danced around my bedroom making “whoooo whoooo” ghost sounds. We jumped up on the bed and waved our arms around.

  “NO!” shouted Lucy. “I HATE this game! I—”

  George and I shook the blanket tent up and down and Lucy got caught under it. She flailed her legs and let out the loudest piercing screechy scream! It shook the house and made Rooney put his paw over his head.

  Perfect.

  If Lucy hated me—and my scary ghost games—she’d tell the Buckworths and they’d send me back to my country. Immediately.

  She kept screaming and was wildly dashing out of my room, when . . .

  She crashed into Mr. Buckworth. He stood in my open bedroom door chuckling. Mr. Buckworth probably thought we were having so much fun together, that I was teaching Lucy so many important things.

  “I SCARE LUCY!” I cried.

  Mr. Buckworth looked at Lucy and then at me. “Did you get scared, Luce?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Nah. We were just playing. It was fun.”

  I sighed.

  And Lucy forgot about horrible me, and my horrible games in about one second, because Mr. Buckworth had something hidden behind him. “Guess what, kids?” he said with a sly smile. “I have a little surprise!”

  There were way too many surprises in America.

  “What IS IT?” Lucy shouted, jumping up and down like crazy.

  Then Mrs. Buckworth walked up behind Mr. Buck-worth. She saw Mr. Buckworth’s surprise first and gasped. “Larry, no! Not another one!”

  It was a dog. Another one.

  Mr. Buckworth told us that he had stopped at the store to pick up something for the special food that Mrs. Buckworth was going to make. “I couldn’t just leave her there, could I? She looked so sad. All by herself. Just look at her!”

  We all looked at her. I’d never seen such an ugly dog. She had big bald spots all over her chunky body, and crooked chewed ears, and one blue eye and one black eye. Mr. Buckworth put the dog on my bed, where she started to scratch like crazy until flakes of dry skin and patches of fur flew off.

  “She’s so CUTE!” squealed Lucy.

  “CYOOOT!” cried George.

  Which must’ve been the word for very, very ugly.

  Mrs. Buckworth sighed. “Larry, we need another dog like we need a hole in the head.”

  “Just until we find her a good home—”

  “And this one looks sick!”

  “See? That’s why I couldn’t leave her outside the grocery store.” Mr. Buckworth shook his head and flicked dog hair off his fancy suit. “She’s just a sad little sick puppy.”

  “Larry,” said Mrs. Buckworth with her hands on her hips, “that dog is at least fifteen years old. She is not a puppy. She is an elderly grandma!”

  I didn’t understand what an old dog had to do with a hole in the head, but just then the ugly dog jumped off my bed, squatted on my floor, an
d made a yellow spot. Ew.

  “Let’s call her Puddles!” cheered Lucy.

  “Putdes!” repeated George.

  Mrs. Buckworth sighed. She pointed out my bedroom door and told Mr. Buckworth to take his new dog outside so his new dog could learn to use the bathroom. Mr. Buckworth led the parade, with Rooney and Puddles and Lucy and George running after him.

  Mrs. Buckworth went to the window in my room. She pulled back one side of the cloth covering the window and I pulled back the other. Mr. Buckworth was trying to get Puddles to sit, and finally Puddles sat and peed on Mrs. Buckworth’s purple flowers. George was running around the backyard hollering WOOF WOOF. Lucy was trying to get Rooney to jump over an empty swinging seat, but Rooney wanted to itch his ear with his paw. Mrs. Buckworth looked at me and sighed.

  She explained that Mr. Buckworth had a little problem with saving animals. He was the Vice President of a bank, but he would really prefer being the Vice President of a home for lost dogs.

  That’s when I thought: This is bad. Very, very bad. If the Buckworths saved an ugly elderly lost dog, and didn’t send her back to the grocery store, I was never going to get sent home.

  Sloppy Slop

  WE PLAYED OUTSIDE all day.

  Mr. and Mrs. Buckworth pushed George and Lucy and me in the swinging seats, and I felt like I was going to shoot straight over their house and into the sky. George squealed like a flying baby monkey.

  There was also this game we played called something like “hide-and-squeak.” I squatted and hid in the bushes. When Lucy found me, I danced around like a ghost and squeaked and squeaked, but she wasn’t even a bit scared this time. She just giggled.

  I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing to be “it,” but when Mr. Buckworth was it, and he found me, he let out a roar that almost made me jump out of my flip-flops. I screamed like crazy and ran around the Buckworths’ yard.