Same Sun Here (11 page)

I don’t have to take the test because I am under the age of eighteen. So once Mummy-Daddy are citizens, I can be one, too. It’s called “derivative citizenship” (there are a lot of big words that go along with becoming an American). But I am still going to study for the test, because I want to know how to be a good citizen. Mummy-Daddy have to get their fingerprints done in two weeks, which is another part of the process.

After the class, Mai answered questions. Kiku asked one about how to join the Army so they will pay for your college. I do not want Kiku to be a soldier, but he says it might be the only way to get to MIT.

There was one thing I learned that I didn’t like. I didn’t know that to be an American citizen you have to “give up prior allegiances to other countries.” Kiku defined that for me — it means that once you’re an American, you can’t be loyal to the country you come from. I don’t know why I can’t be loyal to India and America at the same time. Kiku says it’s more complicated than that, but I don’t know, it seems like that’s what the words are saying. I am also worried that if the government finds out about our apartment, they will not let us be citizens. There is something on the paper Mai gave us about “no perjury,” which Kiku says means lying.

We saw Mai leaving the library. She has an iPod. I told Kiku I wanted one, too, and he pinched me really hard. When Mum went to the bathroom, he said that Mummy-Daddy can’t afford to get us those and if I said I wanted one, it would make them feel bad. I hadn’t thought of that before. I hope I didn’t hurt Mum’s feelings.

I should go finish my homework but I want to tell you about one more thing. Something weird happened Monday night, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Mrs. Lau was at the senior center and I was sitting on her couch with Cuba, watching the news. I pressed mute for the commercials, like I always do, and heard the sound of a woman crying. I couldn’t tell where she was because the sound was coming down the shaftway where three different buildings connect. I have never heard anyone cry like that before. It sounded like she was dying. Every time there was a commercial and I pressed
MUTE
, I heard her. She never stopped. It went on for a half hour. I kept looking at the clock. I was just about to call 911 and tell them someone was hurt when Mrs. Lau came home. I ran over and told her what was going on, and she took off her coat and held it in her arms and listened to the woman. Then she shook her head and said, “Someone she love betray her. Her heart feel like squashed tomato.” She sat on the couch and scratched Cuba’s belly and talked to him in Cantonese.

Isn’t that a funny thing to say? She seemed so sure of what was wrong with the woman. I hope Mrs. Lau has not ever cried like that. I hope Mum hasn’t either. I am still afraid that woman died, but Mrs. Lau says she is positive that she is alive and walking around with a squashed-tomato heart.

I hope you are making good scrimmage and I hope you will start up soon.

Happy early Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Sincerely yours,

Meena

7 December 2008

Dear Meena,

Here are all the bad things that have happened since I wrote you last:

Last week, my mother had such a terrible migraine that she had a fit. She was rolling around in the bed, screaming with pain, and when Mamaw went in to try to help her she jumped up and knocked Mamaw down by accident (she hit her head HARD on the end table but she’s OK). By then I had ran in there. She was in so much pain that she knocked everything off the dresser and the chest, then she went to the window and TORE the curtains off the hooks. She ran to the closet and started ripping all of her clothes off the hangers, and finally she fell right down in a heap and put her hands to either side of her head. She pulled out a big hunk of her hair, then screamed from the pain of doing that, too. That’s when Mamaw made me get out.

I went into the living room and sat down on the couch, and this is hard for me to admit — so you better not tell ANYbody, not even your brother — but I sat down there and cried. I couldn’t help it, I was so afraid. Now, you know that I trust you with my life, or I would not tell this. I thought she was going to die, or that she had cracked up and would never be the same. I’m still not sure if she will be.

Before long Mamaw came out CARRYING my mother. I couldn’t believe it. It made me think of you, hauling that bicycle up all those stairs. Mom has lost a lot of weight, though. I hadn’t seen her in the full light of day in what seems like forever. She looked so little in Mamaw’s arms. This made me want to cry even more, but something in me knew that I had to be strong now, too, so I got up and opened the door for Mamaw, then the car door. Then we drove her to the hospital. On the way there Mom rolled all around the backseat, screaming and crying. “I can’t stand it!” she kept saying, over and over.

Mamaw reached over and put her hand on top of mine and said, “It’ll be all right. Not soon, but eventually.” Then she tightened her fingers around my hand and said, “Don’t fret, buddy.”

But I am still fretting, because Mom has been in the hospital ever since. And I heard Mamaw on the phone, telling Dad that it could have been an aneurysm. I looked that up on the Internet and that’s real bad. I’m awful worried.

The other bad thing is that I got into a fistfight at basketball practice, and now I’m kicked off the team for the first game of the season, which is against our archenemy, Blankenship Middle School. That really, really sucks. But I didn’t have any other choice but to fight Sam Brock, who is on the team, too. He got mad because we were playing Shirts and Skins in practice, scrimmaging against each other, and my team was beating the fire out of his. We were twelve points ahead when he fouled me. He accused me of charging him, though, and one thing led to another and he got so mad that his whole body turned red and he was shouting so loud that the whole rest of the gym went quiet and finally he called me a tree-hugging faggot.

His father works for the coal company that is mining Town Mountain, and Sam has had it out for me ever since I brought up the mining in science class that day.

Mamaw was fit to be tied when she heard what he called me. “You mean they let him use that word and didn’t suspend HIM from playing?” I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her so mad. I was the one who got suspended because I threw the first punch, I told her. “But he said that awful word,” Mamaw said.

I told her I had once heard the principal use that word himself, when he told the coach that he better not let “that other team of faggots” beat us. He laughed like it was hilarious, but Coach just looked at him. As soon as I told Mamaw this, I regretted it, because I was afraid she’d go down to the school again. I know you are supposed to always stand up for what you believe in, but she can’t be running down to the school every single time somebody does something wrong. Because she’d STAY down there if I told her every little thing.

That was when Mamaw just sat down on the couch and put her hands over her face. “Lord have mercy,” she said. “What kind of world are we living in?” I thought she might be about to cry herself, her voice was so choked up. But she didn’t. “So full of hate,” she said, and sat there a long while, shaking her head, like she wouldn’t accept it, like it couldn’t be that way.

There is one thing about it, though: Sam is all bark and no bite. He got in one good hit, which busted my mouth. But I busted his mouth AND his nose AND gave him a black eye.

Mamaw grounded me for hitting him, though. After she had sat there and grieved awhile, she got up and had her mad-at-me tone. “And what about YOU, young man? What did I tell you, not more than a few weeks ago, about hitting people?” She put her hands on her hips. Her eyes looked like blue marbles, hard and shiny. “I’ve always been real proud of you, River, but you shouldn’t have hit that boy. Hitting someone is the last thing you should do.”

I asked her what I was supposed to do, then?

She was quiet for a long time, thinking, and for a minute I thought she’d reconsider and agree with me. But then she said, “The best thing would have been to have told him he was a stupid, ignorant boy, and then walked away. Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in, and then walk away.”

“But sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in and fight back,” I said. Mamaw looked at me for a minute, almost like she didn’t even see me before her, and then she turned around and went into the kitchen and started peeling potatoes.

About your secret (which I will never tell another soul, never): what is rent control, exactly? I don’t believe we have anything like that here. I looked it up on the Internet, and the best I can tell is that it means people who have rent-controlled apartments only have them if their family members were living there when rent control started. Right? And that only her family can live there legally. Right? I’m not sure I understand.

It only feels wrong because you all have to lie. But Mamaw says that sometimes the government and other people are so crooked that you have to tell a little white lie for the greater good. Maybe that’s what this is?

And listen, Meena: I would want to be your best friend no matter what. You are the best person I know. But I’m sorry, I still don’t like to talk about shaving your legs and all that. This is something we will have to agree to disagree on. (That’s a saying my father used to say all the time when he would be on the phone, talking to contractors who hadn’t paid him yet.) It’s not about you being a girl and me being a boy. It’s just that I think anything to do with hair is gross, man.

Sometimes you write things in your letters that I thought nobody had ever thought before, except for me. But then there it is in your letter. Like when you said that the city and the mountains have different moods. I don’t know about cities, but I do know about mountains, and I know for a fact that they have different moods.

Today, as soon as I got up, Rufus and I went walking in the woods and went all the way out to the cliffs so I could look at the mountains and see what they were doing over at the mine. Rufus would stay right beside my leg so that I could reach down and cap my hand around his head while we walked, then he would zoom off into the woods like he was tracking a rabbit or possum. Then he’d slink back out of the brush and walk alongside me quietly for a while, then zoom off again. He’s funny that way.

I tried my best to not look at the mine. Since it is Sunday, they weren’t working, so it was quiet. I could hear everything, I felt like. Even though it was cold today, there were lots of cardinals calling to each other in the trees. Their song is “Birdie, birdie, birdie!” which I think is real interesting, for a bird to say that. Maybe that’s why they are called birds in the first place, because of that song? I don’t know.

Anyway, there were the birds and the cold wind, and I know this sounds crazy, but it was like I could hear the mountains breathing. They were all spread out below me, back behind town, and all around, too. It seemed to me they were resting today, which is what you are supposed to do on the Sabbath. Even though we don’t go to church anymore, I know that you are supposed to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Daddy is real upset that Mamaw doesn’t take me to church anymore, but she says the woods are as holy as any church and that I’m in them plenty. Mamaw reads the Bible more than anybody I know.

Anyway, the mood of the mountains today was resting and peaceful and sleepy. Maybe it’s the only day of the week that they’re not listening to Town Mountain being torn down. On those days I bet they are nervous wrecks.

I believe in telepathy. I bet we could have telepathy. I am going to think something real hard, right now. It is 6:34 in the evening on December 7. Maybe when you get this letter you will remember hearing a message from me at this time. Let me know.

Sometimes I think I have telepathy with the mountains.

I would love to see that statue of Gandhi. We learned about him in world civ.

I have not heard M.I.A. You said that was a “she.” What kind of girl is named something like M.I.A.? Is it pronounced Mia? Weird, how it has the periods between the letters, like it stands for Missing In Action. My favorite Beatles song is “Here Comes the Sun,” but that’s a secret. I only listen to it when I’m alone. I’ll look up the Clash on YouTube the next time I get online.

That’s cool about the citizenship class you went to. I can’t imagine seeing all those people from different countries together in one room. Here everybody is American, except for Dr. Patel and his wife. Most people are white, too, but there are a few black people and some Cherokees.

I haven’t even told you about Thanksgiving. The main thing about it is that Dad didn’t get to come home. He said he had to work, and that if he didn’t come home for Thanksgiving he’d get to come home for an extra two days at Christmas. I thought he’d come home early because Mom is in the hospital, but he said on the telephone that he couldn’t be of any help to her while she was in there, so he might as well work. I wish he had come home to see her. Used to be when she got a headache, he would make her stretch out on the couch and put her head in his lap. He’d rub her head until she said it felt better, then he’d lean down and kiss her on each closed eye, and after that she’d be well. She said he had a magic touch. And now he won’t even come see her when she’s in the hospital.

He is supposed to be here in two weeks. I am looking forward to seeing him, but for some reason I am dreading it, too. I don’t know why, and it makes me feel bad to say that. But it’s the truth.

I’ve been meaning to ask you, how come you always write out GANDHIJI instead of just GANDHI? In our world civ book is is spelled Gandhi.

I liked your thankful list. I would do one but I’m in a weird mood. I’ve been kind of sad ever since Mom got put in the hospital. But one thing I am thankful for is knowing you. I’ll write you sooner next time. Please forgive me for taking so long. Write me as soon as you can.