The Trouble Begins (2 page)

“That's not true,” Thuy answers so softly I can hardly hear her.

“Well, even if the kid doesn't get Dad fired, he's throwing up in
my
room. He's a bad-luck kid. He can sleep on the couch.” Vuong pushes me with his toe. “Wake up, Du,” he says. He holds his nose away from me and gives me a rag to wipe up the floor. He leads me down the hall to the room with the couch and the TV. For the first time in my life I will sleep in a room all by myself. “Don't you throw up on that couch,” he warns me as he leaves.

Bluuh! Cough, cough! Bluuh!
I make sounds just like throwing up.

Vuong whirls around. He sees that I fooled him. He stomps out. I go back to sleep worrying about my grandma. We couldn't come to America for all those years because we had something called TB. Now we are cured of that but she has gotten this new sickness from me. I want to see her more than I want anything. More than I want to be back in the Philippines. But she is in the hospital and I can't go. Vuong says our dad cares most about money. It cost a lot to bring us here and hospitals cost a lot too. I wonder if I can pay him back.

I wake up later still hot and dizzy and not knowing where I am but I am aware somebody is looking at me. I keep my eyes squeezed shut until I hear him cough. I open my eyes the tiniest slit and I can see my dad standing there looking down at me. I squeeze them shut again because I don't know what to say. He knows, though; he knows I am awake. “You go to school,” he says in his voice that is hoarse like mine from the sickness. “You go to school. You work hard. You'll be all right.” I hear him turn and shuffle away to bed but there is still nothing I can think of to say. I'll be the best at school, I think.

After a few more days I get better. I eat the food because I am so hungry. Most of it comes from cans because my grandma is still in the hospital and my mother is at the hospital staying with her or at work or sleeping. When she sees me in the early morning, she smiles kindly at me and asks
me if I want food. She sees that I love peaches and cherries so she brings them especially for me. Vuong complains. My father is usually angry when I see him. His face is grim and furrowed and he slams doors and walks with heavy feet. I think he blames me for getting my grandma sick and for getting him sick and for costing extra money. I stay away from him. Later he will see how smart I am and how I can make money too. Ever since I was little my grandma has called me a dragon. Everyone knows dragons are smart and lucky.

When I go in the dining room I can see that tall old white man spying on us through the window from his house next door. I sit on the floor and look from behind the pot on the window ledge. He doesn't know I can see his wrinkly old hand pulling back the curtain. He's an American with a big nose and bushy eyebrows. He should take those eyebrows and grow them on top of his head where he doesn't have any hair at all. If he wants to watch something why doesn't he watch TV?

Nothing interesting ever happens here. My sisters and my brother sit there studying from big fat books even though it's summer vacation now. That old man won't see me sitting there studying because I won't do it even when they boss me. I decide to give him something exciting to watch. I get a big knife out of the kitchen and sneak up behind my big sister, Thuy, like I'm going to murder her while she's reading. I walk very softly in my bare feet. I raise the knife high over my head so the old man's sure to see it.

“Du, you get out of here right now! I'm trying to study. Go someplace else and fool around,” Thuy shouts. She's
mad because I made her look up from her big fat book. I check the window. She jumps up from her chair and chases me back into the kitchen.

“Don't run with a knife,” shouts my other sister, Lin. That old man still doesn't call 911. Vuong told me that's the number to call if something bad happens. The old man doesn't call even if somebody might get murdered. I'm getting mad at him watching us all the time like we're some sort of TV show. He's been watching since the first day my grandma and me came when he yelled at my mom about the car. I saw him spying outside then, hanging over his fence. I'm gonna figure out a way to fix him. I go sit on the window ledge with my back to the old man's window and I bounce Thuy's big eraser from one of my feet to the other. Once I get up to eighteen times in a row.

“Du, stop that!” Thuy yells.

“What?” I yell back, because I'm not doing anything.

“Smacking on a banana and kicking the wall,” says Lin with a sniff. She's a year younger than Thuy but just as bossy. I fall off the window ledge and stomp around the table. Vuong swats backward at me with his hand. I'm quick. I stick out the bottom part of the banana. His hand mashes against it. He jumps up. I run. This is fun. He's so slow he can never catch me. He chases me out the front door. I wait until he almost grabs me. Then I take the fast way down. I vault over the railing on the front porch.
Crack!
The
no-good railing breaks. I crash to the ground with pieces of the railing all around me. I jump up to laugh at him so he knows it didn't hurt and he still can't catch me.

“Now you've done it!” he shouts as he slams the door. I hear him turn the lock. I try to put the railing back but some of the posts broke right off. I can see little holes in the wood. I crouch down where there's sun to see better. Little bugs made the holes. I blow in them. Wood dust comes out. I stick a little stick in the hole to see if a bug will come out.

“Your dad's gonna have to fix that.” It's that old spy from next door yelling from across his fence. He's been watching me the whole time. I don't even look up. “You better get some shoes with all those splinters around.” I'm not sure of all the words he says but I know what he really means. He hopes I get splinters in all my toes. I still don't look up. Americans wear shoes too much. They wear them in their own houses. My mom says it's dirty. I wonder if that old man wears shoes when he goes to bed. I prop the railing against the broken posts on the porch.

Our street is empty except for some little kids behind a fence in a front yard. In the Philippines there were kids everywhere but in America the kids are all hiding. When I hear the roar of an engine I trot down the street. I've seen a guy who fixes his truck in his front yard. My sister says he's from Mexico and I should leave him alone but I don't think it will hurt anything if I just watch. Today he's straining and groaning to pull something out from under the hood of his truck. He doesn't even see me. Sweat runs down his face to his bushy black mustache. I go close enough to see what he's
pulling on. It's a big round heavy thing deep in the engine. His hands are black with grease.
Crack!
“Oof!” He falls backward; the part he was pulling on comes loose and crashes down on the fender. He whacks into me because I'm trying to see from behind him.

“Cuidado!”
he yells. It's Mexican so I don't know what it means but he looks angry, like what happened is my fault. I run away around the truck. He heaves the round thing on the ground and shakes his hand because he scraped it pulling out the heavy engine part. He doesn't come after me so I lean over the front end to see what's inside. “Hold this,” he says in English. He tosses me a plastic piece with three wires hanging out. I hold it until he reaches out his hand. We both lean into the truck engine to see. I help him hold the wires in place while he connects them. I wish he would tell me what everything is called. I know some of the words in Vietnamese. When it's too dark he wipes off his hands.
“Gracias,”
he says with a nod. I know it's Mexican so I say,
“Chao tam biet,”
good-bye in Vietnamese. I go home.

Vuong doesn't tell my dad how the railing broke. My dad's too busy to worry about an old railing because he and my mom have to hurry to visit my grandma in the hospital.

I just watch TV for days and days. My mom and dad go to work, then to the hospital, then to sleep. I can't go to the hospital with them because I'm too young. When they're home sometimes I see them staring at me. I stare at them too
when they aren't looking. I say to myself, “That's my mom and dad,” so it will seem real. When he has a little time my dad teaches me American stuff like red-light crossing and shopping in stores with aisles so long I get lost once. My mom buys me American clothes, just like the Philippine clothes only brand-new. The shoes feel like heavy weights on my legs. But mostly my mom and dad are busy. Thuy and Lin and Vuong go someplace every day too. Summer school, they say. I am glad because when they are home they try to boss me around.

“You should practice reading, Du.”

“You should wear socks, Du.”,

“Do you know your multiplication tables, Du? You should practice.”

“You should comb your hair, Du.”

“What's this called in English, Du? Do you know?”

“Talk English, Du.”

I just watch TV and don't listen to them after a while. I look for pictures on TV that look like the Philippines. When I see kids outside and go to mess around with them they look at me funny and ride away on their bikes. In the Philippines kids would be excited and yell, “Here comes Du.” We all messed around together even if we didn't know each other. Here there are mostly just cars outside.

On the first day I know I don't like American school. When I get a chance I'm going to leave. I don't like the teacher because I don't know what she's saying. She points at me and motions for me to stand up. Then she says a lot of words and one of them is
Du.
Everyone laughs. She smiles a big fake smile. She points for me to sit next to a Mexican girl who eats too much. “This is Veronica,” the teacher says. “She'll help you. Can you say, 'Hello, Veronica'?”

I think I know what she wants but I don't want help from this girl. I don't say anything. The teacher repeats what
she said and kids are starting to giggle. Finally I mutter, “Hello, Veronica,” so she'll quit asking and Veronica reaches out and grabs my hand with her sweaty one and says, “Hello, Du.” Everyone laughs again. I'm not saying stuff like that ever again. Veronica whispers to me about what stuff to put in my desk and where to write my name on papers until the teacher gives her a mean look. I wasn't going to do it her way anyway.

There are lots of other things I don't like about school the first day. I don't like how the tag on my new T-shirt scratches my neck, so I rip it out. “Ohhh, you made a hole,” whispers Veronica. I stuff the tag into her pencil case. I don't like how the teacher talks and talks and then writes “Assignment: Four beautiful paragraphs about your summer vacation” on the blackboard. Underneath she writes what kids tell her they did.

“We went to Disneyland twice in one week,” says a girl in pink shoes.

“We camped out for three days at Yosemite.” I know Disneyland but I don't know Yosemite. I quit listening. The teacher writes other places: grandparents' house, Girl Scout camp, Sea World. Everyone starts writing but me. I don't know how to write English. I know what
vacation
is but I never had one.

“Please try, Du,” the teacher says as she walks by and taps her finger on my blank paper. I still can't write English no matter how many times she says please even though earlier she said it was a magic word.