Betti on the High Wire Page 9

  “Outside?” asked George’s mommy, as if this was the strangest thing that had ever happened in America.

  “I just don’t think she likes it here. She seems so unhappy.”

  “George,” I said, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him off the sofa. His cookie fell out of his mouth onto the fuzzy floor. He looked back at it. “I have to show you something.”

  I walked him straight to the television TV and plunked him down in front of it.

  “It is called TV, Babo,” said George. “I like TV”

  “I know what it’s called.” I sighed and started pacing back and forth. “George, you’re still a little kid, and you don’t understand English. But it’s just like I told you before. See, George, these people in the TV are saying, ‘Help! Help me!’”

  George put his nose up to the television. “They are?” He knocked on it. “Halllooooo. Hallooooo.” There was a Melon boy on the TV with his hair parted just like George’s.

  “They can’t hear you. They’re trapped. The Melons put them in there.”

  George looked up at me. He was very worried. “What did they do that was so bad?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Maybe they said they weren’t afraid, just like the circus people. So the soldiers took them and put them in TV jail. Prisoners of War in America. Like our country, but different.”

  “But Auntie Moo said there was no war in Amer—”

  “You’re not listening. This is very important.”

  George leaned back on his ankles and rocked back and forth. He pressed his hand gently against the TV and tried to follow a TV person with his finger. “I’d help them if I knew how to get them out. I’d let them go free, Babo.”

  “Me too.”

  We both scooted behind the TV to see if there was a secret door that we could open. But there was no door and no people. Just black plastic. I poked my finger through a hole in the back, and George stuck his eye into another hole. “I can’t see anybody, Babo.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Those poor, poor prisoners.”

  “Scary,” said George.

  “Very scary.”

  We looked at each other and shrugged.

  “But Babo,” said George, “they look sort of happy in jail.” The people were singing and dancing, smiling the biggest, whitest smiles I’d ever seen. “They don’t look sad.”

  I sighed. “That doesn’t mean much at all.”

  Then we heard the DONG DONG noise at the front door. We heard Mrs. Buckworth and George’s mommy say “hello hello” and we heard a stranger’s voice.

  “The nice lady!” cried George. “She must be here.”

  I jumped up and pulled George with me. “Come on. Hurry.”

  “But—”

  I picked up the whole plate of cookies and we ran into my yellow room. I went immediately to the secret skinny door in my bedroom. First I took out my orange bag and opened it and threw half the plate of cookies inside. Then I made George sit down next to me so we could stare straight into the mirror glass.

  “Now look, George. Look at you.”

  George looked at himself. He tilted his head one way, and then the other.

  “Scary.”

  “I know. You’re very scary. See? The Melons are trying to make you an American already.”

  “I like Amair-ee—ka, Babo,” said George.

  “That’s not the point!”

  George kept staring into the mirror. He slowly traced his finger along the glass. “Look, Babo! It’s like I have two fingers that match! I have two arms and two hands. They’re exactly the same.”

  I rolled my good eye. “George, you do not have two arms. It’s a trick, see?”

  George wasn’t listening because he was too busy wiggling his ears and looking at them in the mirror. He giggled. He flapped his arm like a bird, and smiled a big smile even though his teeth were dirty from cookies. George was fascinated with himself, as if he was the most beautiful boy in the whole world.

  “Kids!” Mrs. Buckworth called from the other room.

  I whispered, “Don’t you remember what I told you? Melons will try to change you from the inside out. Your brain will get messy. And you’re really close to becoming a Melon, George. You’ve already changed.”

  George was quiet. He looked at me very seriously. “I haven’t changed, Babo. I’m still just me. George.”

  “No. You’re being tricked like the prisoners in the TV are being tricked. You have to be careful. You have to listen carefully to the stories your mommy tells you. Don’t believe a single word.”

  “My mommy?”

  “Especially your mommy.”

  George immediately stood up from the floor. “She’s not a Melon, Babo!”

  George never disagreed with me. This was bad. Very, very bad.

  I thought about things. “Yeah, but that’s why it’s tricky, George. See, your mommy already loves you. And if she loves you too much she’ll never send you back. That is exactly why you have to be a horrible boy. You have to be so horrible that—”

  “Kids! She’s here!” cried George’s mommy. “George! Betti!”

  My important lesson was over in one second because George ran out of my room as if some royal princess had arrived.

  And me? I crawled under my bed with my blanket and covered my head.

  I heard George giggling. Which just figured.

  “Betti? Would you like to come on out?” It was Mrs. Buckworth.

  “She ... donkey bed,” said George.

  “Under bed,” I mumbled to myself. “Not donkey.” George was going to get himself thrown into the zoo with his lousy English.

  Soon I thought they forgot all about me. But I wasn’t so lucky. There was about a whole ten minutes of George giggling and trying to speak English. Everybody always loves George.

  Then the Melon adoption lady came into my room. “Betti, are you in here? Won’t you come out and talk to me? Even for a minute?”

  I lowered the blanket and peeked out. All I saw were her shoes. Special occasion shoes. Yellow. And tall.

  “Well, that’s okay. I’ll talk to you from here, if you don’t mind. I’m Lenore. I’ve been helping kids who’ve been adopted for twenty years. A long time, Betti. So I know a little about what you’re going through.”

  The adoption lady may have been some sort of expert on adopted leftover kids, but she wasn’t an expert on me.

  I took the blanket off my head so the adoption lady could hear my Big Mouth. “Are you from my country?” I asked her in my language.

  There was a pause. “Uh, unfortunately I only speak English. In fact, I’m going to start teaching you and George some English. Would that be okay with you?”

  “No.”

  “Why is that? I know you speak pretty well already, Betti, but it might help to learn more, don’t you think? For when you start school?”

  “Auntie Moo is my teacher.”

  “Auntie Moo, of course. Well, but, Auntie Moo’s still back in your country, Betti.”

  “I know!” I practically growled.

  “So you’ll need school here too.”

  “Auntie Moo is my school!”

  I heard the adoption lady sigh. “Think about it, okay? Will you think about it? Please?”

  I thought about it already. There was silence.

  “And ... I also want to talk to you about how things are going so far. I wonder how you like America?” Lenore really liked to talk.

  “America ... no baths in river,” I blurted out. “No pigs, no monkeys. No market like my market. No circus music, no story like my story, no lion cage, no sleep at night with kids, no good games like my games, no Old Lady Suri. She tell me I will not come back. Lost like ghost. But I am not a ghost.”

  “Of course you’re not a ghost, Betti, but—”

  “But it is okay.” I scooted out on my back from under my bed, so I was staring straight up at Lenore. “Because my mama and dad will come. To take me home. Probably tomorrow. They fly on
airplane. In sky.”

  Lenore shuffled her feet. She looked down at me, and looked away, and looked down at me again. Her lips twitched. Her eyes were sad slivers. “Betti, you know ... about your mother and father ... what happened ... won’t be coming, dear ... I know ... that’s hard to hear ...”

  Gobbledygook. The adoption lady was just a voice. And shoes.

  “... the Buckworths ... nice family ... they love ... have to ... give them a chance. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even like it here.”

  And that’s exactly when I scrunched back under my bed and pulled the covers back over my head. All except for my good eye, peeking out, that had to watch everything. I let out a snort like a cow.

  The shoes finally left my room.

  “She’ll adapt,” I heard the voice say to Mrs. Buck-worth. “Don’t worry ... starts school ... learns more English ... makes some friends ... gets used to things ... She will.”

  I had no idea what the word “adapt” meant. But it was close enough to the word “adopt.” I would not stay adopted, and I had to try very hard not to adapt.

  Santy Claws and the Fairy with Teeth

  IT FELT LIKE a whole bunch of hours went by, but maybe it was just a few minutes. It was hard to say.

  “Betti?” said a very soft voice.

  It wasn’t the adoption Melon lady’s voice; it was Mrs. Buckworth’s.

  I wasn’t even going to come out for Mrs. Buckworth. I wanted to stay under my bed forever. But I peeked out and saw Mrs. Buckworth lying down on the floor too. She was looking under my bed. At me.

  “I did not want to talk. To nice lady.” I covered my eyes again.

  “That’s all right. Maybe some other time.”

  I snorted.

  “Betti, do you mind if I tell you a story?”

  “Is it a good story?” My voice was all muffled.

  Mrs. Buckworth laughed. “I don’t know about that. Some parts are good, some bad. Not as good as your stories, I’m sure.”

  I took the blanket off my head anyway because I was curious about Mrs. Buckworth’s Big Mouth story.

  She took a big breath and began: “So ... there was a little girl, a long, long time ago, who lost her parents.”

  My good eye got big. “She lost them? Where did they go?”

  “The girl wasn’t sure. One day they just disappeared.”

  “Like ghosts?” I stared at Mrs. Buckworth sideways. I picked at the fuzzy fake grass on my floor.

  “Well, yeah. I guess you could say that.”

  “Maybe a bomb?” I added quickly. “Or they washed away in river?”

  “The girl didn’t want to think about those things.” Mrs. Buckworth sighed and stared off for a second, thinking. “She couldn’t think bad thoughts.”

  I bumped my head on my bed, and inched my way out from under it. “So she look for them. All over the whole world?”

  “Well, she was very little. Much younger than you. She thought her mom and dad wouldn’t be gone for long. She thought they’d be coming home any day.”

  “And they did!” I practically shouted.

  Mrs. Buckworth shook her head sadly. “No ... instead she got shipped off to all sorts of other places. Other homes.”

  “On a ship?” I crossed my legs and sat in front of Mrs. Buckworth. I liked this story.

  “Well, not really on a ship.” Mrs. Buckworth sat up and crossed her legs too. “First ... she was sent to some relatives’ houses. She’d never even met them before. Three different houses. Total strangers. They weren’t mean strangers; they just didn’t really want a little girl. Some of the relatives were old. She made them tired. Some of them were too busy. ‘We’re sorry,’ they said. So she got sent off again. In the next home, with foster parents, they didn’t really want her either. Or the home after that. They had too many kids.”

  “Was the little girl really bad?”

  “Oh, she got into all sorts of trouble. She made other kids get into trouble too!” Mrs. Buckworth laughed a little, so I did too. She nodded to herself. “It made some sense that they didn’t really want her. But, the thing is, she wasn’t a bad girl.”

  “She was not bad?”

  “No. She was just a sad girl. The saddest girl you could ever imagine. The saddest girl in the whole world.”

  My good eye got cloudy to think about such a sad, sad girl.

  Mrs. Buckworth’s eyes got cloudy too. “The only thing that made her happy was thinking about when her real mom and dad would come to save her. Then she’d be happy again; she was sure of it. So she kept waiting and waiting. But they didn’t come for her. Soon she couldn’t even remember their voices or what they looked like. She started to think that her dad was a very important person: Santa Claus!”

  “Santy Claws?”

  Mrs. Buckworth spread her arms out really wide. “A big old man with a beard and a kind smile. The nicest man in the world. But ... he was so busy that he could only come once a year. She never got to see him exactly, but he brought her presents.”

  “Like an Empty Book?”

  Mrs. Buckworth shook her head sadly. “No, I wish she would’ve had an Empty Book. She also began to imagine that her mom was the Tooth Fairy. So important that she could only come and visit when the girl had a tooth fall out. The girl started to look forward to losing her teeth! Once she even tried to pull some out herself.”

  “Ew.” I scrunched my face.

  “Every night she would lie in her bed and dream. And wait.”

  “Sweet dreams or bad dreams?” I was already dreaming about the pictures I’d draw about Mrs. Buckworth’s story in my Empty Book: Santy Claws, the Ghost Fairy of Teeth, the sad little girl.

  “Both, I guess. She would dream that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy would take her home somewhere far away.” Mrs. Buckworth tilted her head and looked closely at me, straight into my good eye and my bad eye. “That was her wish. That was the present she wanted.”

  “Did Santy Claws and Tooth Lady bring her the present?”

  “No. They never did. The girl thought it was her fault. She felt so alone. And trapped too. Because she was so little and didn’t know where to go.”

  “So ...” I scooted forward and put my elbows on Mrs. Buckworth’s feet. “What did she do?”

  “The girl decided to run away.” Mrs. Buckworth got very dramatic. “She wanted to find her mom and dad all by herself.”

  My good eye bugged out. Mrs. Buckworth’s story was very interesting. It was a good one. “But ... how?”

  “Easy. Marched right out the door when no one was looking.” She nodded toward my bedroom door to make her point.

  “But ... where did she go?”

  “Well, she made it to the corner, just down the street. She was already cold and hungry. She didn’t have any food or money. She missed having a home where it was warm. The foster parents could be warm too, sometimes. It definitely wasn’t perfect, but she realized that she had to let people help her, a little at least.”

  “But her mama and dad ... they did come. Yes? They help her.”

  “No, Betti. They couldn’t come because they had died when she was so little.”

  “They died? In the war?”

  “No, not a war. It was just a bad accident. But she didn’t understand that until much later. Her mom and dad couldn’t come, but it wasn’t her fault. Some people had told her the truth all along, but she still had to believe they were coming back.”

  “Then what happened to little girl?”

  “Well, she grew up, like little girls do.”

  “She did never get adopted?”

  “No.” Mrs. Buckworth shrugged. “Never adopted. But soon she was old enough to go out into the world by herself.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, but the girl was strong. And brave. She tried to remember good things. One thing she remembered was that her mom’s name had been Betti.”

  “Betti? That’s your mama’s name.”

  Mrs. Buckworth nodded slowly. She lo
oked down at her lap.

  “It is a true story?”

  “Yup. The true story about me. I always wanted a family.” Mrs. Buckworth touched my cheek. “I feel so lucky to have one now, Betti,” she said quietly. “I got my wish.”

  I didn’t have any Big Mouth words in any language.

  Mrs. Buckworth stood up and put her hand gently on my head, and then she left my yellow room.

  I felt sad for Mrs. Buckworth, the saddest little girl in the world. Her parents were killed and she thought that her dad was Santy Claws, some hairy man with claws, and her mom was a Fairy Ghost who made kids pull out their teeth. Nobody loved her, so she ran away because she was so alone and lonely. If Mrs. Buckworth would’ve run to the circus camp she could’ve been a leftover kid too. Then she would’ve been loved, really loved. I would’ve watched over her every day and made sure she was okay.

  But Mrs. Buckworth had been a little girl, younger than me. I was already brave, like a little tiger. I was already old enough to go out into the world by myself. I didn’t need any help.

  Mrs. Buckworth may not have been a bad girl, but I was. Horrible, even. But I’d have to be worse, much, much worse. And if the Buckworths still couldn’t realize how bad I was, if they still loved me, then ...

  I’d have to run away.

  MY EMPTY BOOK.

  Crazy America

  IN MY COUNTRY danger could strike at any second. It was life or death. You had to be on guard at all times. You had to listen for any little noise, any movement, any strange smell. You had to lie low and wait for the right time to escape.

  That’s what I had to do in America.

  I had to wait for the right time to run away. So I definitely had to stay another day. Or two. Or just a few.

  And in just a few more days I realized that Melons were even crazier than I thought.

  Especially the Buckworths.

  Mrs. Buckworth taught me how to scrub my teeth with a teeth brush, and used the same nasty goo paste that was always donated to the Mission. I didn’t tell Mrs. Buckworth that we used that stuff to fill the holes in our flip-flops. After I brushed my teeth, I spit my goo paste at Lucy before I learned that I was supposed to spit in the sink. Lucy thought it was funny, and spit her goo at me, but I don’t think Mrs. Buckworth thought that was a bit funny.