Blackbird Fly (6 page)

Dana Duttons on the Dog Log. She probably didn't even know what the Dog Log was, which made me feel even worse that she was on it.

Alyssa continued: “Fourth is Martha Leibovitz. Then—”

“Never mind,” I said. “I don't want to hear the rest.” I couldn't listen anymore. I suddenly felt terrible for even talking about the Dog Log—almost as bad as I felt about being on it. Maybe it's because I was on the list. Maybe it's because I was thinking about Dana Duttons. Whatever it was, I needed to get off the phone ASAP.

“I gotta go,” I said, and before Alyssa could say anything, I hung up, tossed the phone off the bed, and pressed the pillow to my face again.

I imagined Jake Bevans and his friends sitting around talking about me and Dana Duttons and Heleena Moffett. I could already guess what words they used to describe Dana and Heleena. I wondered what words they used when they talked about me. Did they say
ugly
? Did they say
slanted eyes
? Did they say
flat nose
or
round face
? Did they say
dog-eater
? Did they laugh?

I thought about Alyssa and Jake. I thought about how I would never want to speak to Jake if he put a
friend of mine on some ugly list, yet Alyssa blabbed to him long enough to get all ten names.

My face was wet before I even realized I was crying, and even though the pillow got soaked and made my skin itch, I didn't move. I imagined myself floating far away, not just out of Chapel Spring Middle School, but above the whole town itself.

The only way to escape the Dog Log was to escape Chapel Spring completely. But how? How does a girl with a crappy bike and no money leave town and start a new life?

I imagined all kinds of crazy scenarios—hitchhiking on a desolate highway, walking through the forest and camping under tree canopies, riding in the back of a bumpy truck while the breeze of freedom blew through my hair—until the answer became clear to me.

When George Harrison was thirteen, his dad bought him a Dutch Egmond flat top acoustic guitar. When he was fifteen, he joined his first band. And
when he was sixteen, he left school to make music. Lots of people in history have left their lives behind to follow their dreams. It's been done a million times. Louis Armstrong joined a quartet in New Orleans when he was eleven and became one of the most famous jazz musicians of all time.

And he's not the only one. When I was in elementary school, I went to New Orleans with my mother, and I remember walking through the French Quarter and seeing musicians with their hats and cases full of dollars and coins. I asked my mom why they were playing music on the street instead of on a stage.

“They're making a living,” she said. “That's what happens when you don't make good grades. You have to stand on the sidewalk and play music for money.”

But the musicians looked happy to me. They tapped their feet and sang their songs and smiled the whole time. When people dropped money in their
guitar cases, they said thank you and kept right on singing. They looked like they were having fun. The people listening did too.

So that's what I would do. I would go on the field trip to New Orleans. I would wait for the perfect moment, the perfect opportunity, when no one was paying attention, and I would slip away. Take off. Run. I would run and run and run until my legs couldn't carry me anymore. I would have a guitar on my back, and as soon as everyone stopped looking for me I would find a spot on the sidewalk with all the other street performers, and I would play and play and play until my guitar case was full of money. I could play until my fingertips hurt, and then I could join a band. By that time it wouldn't matter that I'd run off, because people would be tired of wondering about Apple Yengko. And I wouldn't be Apple Yengko anymore anyway. I would be someone else. Maybe I would call myself Ana.

There was one big difference between me and
George Harrison, though. I didn't have a dad to buy me a guitar. And my mom certainly wouldn't show up with an Egmond flat top.

I needed a guitar.

I needed a plan.

B
y the time I emerged from my room, Lita was at the house. Lita is a nurse and was able to bring me and my mom to the States because of some kind of nursing-shortage crisis. Lita has been here a lot longer than us though. Twenty years, something like that. She has two daughters. One of them is a senior at the private Catholic high school. She's a cheerleader, makes straight As, serves on the student council, and
plays volleyball. She's the kind of girl who makes you think you are totally messing up the whole growing-up thing. Lita's other daughter is in college studying to become a paralegal, so now any time Mom had a legal question, she asked Lita.

Mom and Lita were sitting at the dining room table playing gin rummy when I came in looking for something to eat. When they're together, they speak only Cebuano, and even though I understand a lot of it, I've forgotten a lot too. When we first moved here, my mother said we needed to speak English all the time so we could blend in with the Americans, but pretty soon she started mixing her English with Cebuano. I stuck with English. So much for blending in though. It doesn't matter what language you speak when you're the only Filipino in your school, you're named after a fruit, and you're one of the ugliest girls in school.

The kitchen smelled like garlic, lime, and onions from the fried rice my mom cooked earlier. She uses a
special Asian citrus seasoning on her fried rice instead of soy sauce, and it smells like limes. She calls it her “rice secret.” She says soy sauce has too much salt. For some reason she is always worried about how much salt we eat.

“Hello,” Lita said, without looking up from her cards. Lita was a lot like my mom personality-wise, but they looked nothing alike. Lita was very plump and round, and she always wore the same shade of red lipstick, no matter what.

“Hello,
Manang
Lita,” I mumbled. I just wanted to get something to eat and disappear into my room, where I could fall asleep and dream of my reinvented life. But it's never that easy when adults are in the way.

“How was school today,
Analyn
?” Lita asked. I could tell by the tone of her voice—and the fact that she called me Analyn—that they'd just finished talking about me. I could feel the aftermath of their conversation hanging in the air.

“Fine.” I took the leftover rice out of the
refrigerator and pulled a bowl from the cabinet.

“Don't take too much,
Analyn
,” my mom said. “I don't want to see any go in the trash.”

Lita shifted some of her cards. “Anything new happening,
Analyn
?”

Even though they were saying Analyn like it was a joke, I wasn't going to complain about it. Let them say it however they wanted; hearing Analyn was a lot better than hearing Apple. At least
Analyn
Yengko wasn't third on the Dog Log.

“No,” I said, filling my bowl with big, heaping spoonfuls.

Now that I was in the room, my mother started speaking English, which meant one of two things: What she was saying couldn't be translated into Cebuano, or she wanted me to hear her clearly.

“At her age I had so many friends, I couldn't go anywhere without them nipping at my feet,” she said.

Definitely the wanting-me-to-hear-her thing.

“I know what you mean,” Lita said. “At that age friends are very important.”

I put my bowl of fried rice into the microwave.

“Apple—eh,
Analyn
,” said my mother, speaking more loudly. “Did you know Lita's daughter Olivia had her first sleepover at six years old? Lita's house was always full of Olivia's friends.”

“Fantastic,” I said, pushing the numbers to set the time.

I've only had one friend over for a sleepover, back when I was eight.

Her name was Iris.

Back then I didn't know any better. I figured all moms mixed vinegar and tuna together and ate it out of the can with a spoon. All moms, I assumed, monitored the water in the bathtub to make sure you didn't waste any. But thanks to Iris, I know better now.

“You and your mom talk funny,” she'd whispered to me that night as we sat together eating rice at the dinner table. “Especially your mom. How can you
understand anything she says? And what's with this rice?” I remember how she'd wrinkled her nose. “What's in it?”

I'd shuffled the rice around on my plate. “Garlic.”

“I've never seen rice look like this,” Iris replied. “Where's the gravy?”

I'd walked up to my mother, who was putting two drops of dish-washing liquid into the water in the sink. Like everything else, she monitored how much dish-washing liquid she used.

“Mom, can Iris have gravy?” I'd asked.

“Gravy? What do you mean, gravy?” asked my mother, almost too loudly.

I'd looked back to make sure Iris wasn't listening, but she was still pushing the rice around with her fork.

“There's no gravy. It's garlic rice.”

“I know, but can we eat something else?”

“But you love garlic rice.”

“Can we order a pizza instead?”

My mother set plates in the drying rack and sighed.
“
Ay naku
. There's food right in front of you.”

Iris had other questions too. Why don't you have a dad? How did he die? What kind of language does your mom speak? How did you get to America? Why is your skin so dark?

On Monday Iris told everyone at school that my house smelled like fish and my mom didn't know how to speak English. Every time I passed Iris at recess, she pinched her nose. Pretty soon the other kids did too.

The next Friday my mom asked me if I wanted to invite Iris over again.

“We can order pizza this time,” she'd said.

I'd locked myself in my room.

“Apple hasn't had a friend over in a long time,” Mom said now, to Lita. “Last one was—whatshername, Apple?—Alexie, I think. That was a long time ago. She comes one time for dinner, and I never see her again.”

“Ay Dios ko,”
Lita said, which means something like ohmygod, youcantbeserious. “Why, Apple? Why
aren't you inviting friends for sleepovers?”

Because no one can understand my mother when she talks. Because she eats sardines out of the can with her fingers, cooks Spam in a skillet, and freaks out if someone leaves too much food on her plate or uses too much water in the bathtub. Because she wears an apron that says:
Mabuhay Philippines!

Because, because, because.

The microwave had five seconds left, but I stopped it anyway and quickly took out the bowl, even though it was almost too warm to hold.

As I left the kitchen Lita said,
“Tst-tst-tst,”
to my mother.

This means: What a shame.

R
ight before you steal something, you feel it everywhere. Your mouth gets dry. Your insides rattle. You even feel it in your fingertips. Each one of them tingles.

That's exactly what happened to me right before I took the twenty dollars from Mr. Z's wallet. It happened as soon as I started thinking about it, actually. Alyssa and Gretchen were in the band room
with about fifteen other kids trying out for the swing choir. I wanted to watch, but Mr. Z said I would have to wait in his office if I wasn't auditioning.

His office was in the corner of the large band room, which had short bleachers for chorus practice, circles of chairs for the band, and big empty spaces in between so all the music groups of Chapel Spring Middle could be in there at the same time if needed. Because Mr. Z's room was so small and tucked away, it felt removed from everything, and I did too. Especially when I saw his wallet. He'd left it on his desk with the edge of a twenty-dollar bill sticking out of it. It was the exact amount I needed, and there it was. Almost like fate.