Visiting Miss Caples by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel; Dial Books: New York, 2000; $16.99 When I first saw the cover of the book Visiting Miss Caples I thought the story would be downright boring. I put off reading it for a while. When I did start reading the story, I was easily caught up in the book. Jenna’s character was easy to relate to—who doesn’t have a friend that they look up to and rely and depend upon for support? I cannot imagine having a friend for so long and then suddenly losing her over some stupid prank. Jenna has to choose between following her friend, the most popular girl in school, or to do the right thing and become a social outcast. There is not a teenager out there who doesn’t worry about being liked or having friends. What makes it harder is when someone vows to be your worst enemy. Even after years of torment from Liv and Jenna, Jane had never tried to get back at them. I think if we all tried that approach kids would feel a lot safer at school. There are always going to be kids who think that they are better than everyone else is. I don’t think we can get rid of the bullies either. They will always be there. What we can do is try to turn the other way and try non- violent solutions to our problems and accept others for their differences. Those differences that we see in each other are what make people unique. It would be really boring if everyone looked, acted and thought the same. I had an experience like Jenna’s a couple of years ago. I used to hang around a group of girls at school. I guess you could say it was the in-crowd. The leader of our group was always getting us into trouble. Finally, one day she thought of this horrible prank to play on this other girl. I told her I wasn’t going to go through with it. She became really upset and turned the others against me. I dreaded going to school and facing them or wondering what they were going to do to me that day. I tried to ignore them, found different friends, and eventually the whole thing was forgotten. I became friends with other girls who I can truly call my friends. Another situation I can relate to was the social studies project that Jenna had to do. Her assignment was to read to an elderly shut-in once a week. I know exactly how Jenna felt the first time she visited Miss Caples. I have volunteered for the past two summers at senior centers. It is really hard to try to get people to open up and talk to you. It is amazing though what you can learn from the stories they tell you. I became really close to a few of the people there. I look forward to it every summer. My favorite line from the story is “The past is like smoke in the wind.” Both Liv and Miss Caples say this. I never really thought about how true that is. We always worry about what happened last month, last week, or the day before. But the past, like smoke, will eventually become fuzzy or fade away and then completely vanish or become absorbed by something else. We need to think more about our present and future and leave the past where it is—behind us. I truly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading.
Halfback
The score was tied, one to one, in the second half. It was a hot July day, the kind where people say you could fry an egg on the sidewalk, or however the saying goes. The sun was beating down on the soccer field like crazy, and everyone on our team was getting tired, especially me. I don’t exactly have the greatest endurance when it comes to running. So I was taking a nice, long break on the sidelines, having a drink from my water bottle. I poured some water on my short brown hair and down the back of my red uniform to cool off. Then I sat with my teammates, watching the game. I’d been there for about five minutes when my coach called me over. I got up from the bench tiredly and stood next to him. “Andrea,” he said, keeping his eyes on the field, “you wanna play some halfback?” Now, for anyone who doesn’t know how soccer works, there are basically three rows of players, not including the goalie. Halfback is the one in the middle. I usually played fullback, or defense, back by the goal. I liked it back there. I was used to it, I’d been playing that position since second grade at least, and it was pretty simple for me. I watched as the ball soared straight through the air I did not want to play halfback. I had only played there once or twice before in practice, maybe one time in a game. And this was an important game, it would determine our place in the tournament; I couldn’t play halfback. “No,” I refused. No wasn’t enough for my coach, though. He wouldn’t take that for an answer. To him, asking me, “Wanna play some halfback?” was the same as saying, “Go play halfback position now!” “I can’t!” I begged him. “There’s no way! You can’t put me there, I can’t play halfback!” It did no good. I couldn’t convince him that this was a mistake. He insisted on putting me in halfback position anyway. When the next opportunity came, he yelled “Sub, Ref!” and pushed me onto the field. “Let’s go, Andrea, it’s just like fullback, only up a little farther. It’s not that hard.” That was basically the only advice I got. I dragged my feet along, walking onto the field. Come on, it’s not that bad, just like fullback. You can do it, I repeated to myself. You can do this. Slowly, I took my position at halfback. I told myself I’d do a good job, but I didn’t really believe it. Honestly, if you must know, it wasn’t too hard, playing halfback, but for some reason I still felt like I was doing everything wrong. I couldn’t kick right or pass right or do much of anything. At least, I didn’t think so. Anyway, the game went on. Just when I thought it would be over soon, someone kicked the ball to me. I was wide open, and I didn’t see anyone coming toward me as I ran to kick the ball. Suddenly, I heard Courtney, another halfback on my team, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Shoot, Andrea, shoot!” So I did. And then I watched as the ball soared straight through the air and curved to land right in the corner of the goal. It was one of those kicks that my coach would call beautiful. I never understood how a sweaty, dirty sport like soccer could be considered beautiful, but it was. I had scored a beautiful goal. Realizing this, I screamed and laughed as my teammates joined my cheers. I couldn’t believe it. Sure, I’d scored a goal before, but never like this one, and never from halfback. It turned out that it was the game-winning goal, and it helped our team get into the finals for that tournament. We all went home with silver medals. Now, I play halfback all the time. In fact, I’d rather play there than anywhere else. Andrea Bachmann, 13 St. Louis, Missouri Teddy Harvey, 12Williamsburg, Virginia
Permanence
The U-Haul pulls out of the driveway. Raindrops fall on the windows, pelting the glass in a steady rhythm. Dad is driving. He’s wearing his old red flannel shirt and worn blue jeans, which I haven’t seen since we came here, to Miami. My stepmother Lisa is in the passenger seat, humming along to the Beatles (an old music group) on the radio. Dad starts singing with her; he’s smiling, happy to be leaving Miami. I’m not singing or smiling. I don’t want to leave another place that felt like home. * * * Ever since my mother died, my father has been constantly moving, dragging me along with him like a sack of dirty laundry. I spent the first seven years of my life in Crisfield, Maryland, on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. My parents had bought the little beach house when I was born, and I loved every part of it. I remember the hours I spent playing in the dusty barn (which was somewhat larger than the actual house), or swimming in the bay. We had a private beach with a small dock, and a canoe that my father took me fishing in. It’s hard to remember my mother. Almost every memory of her is a blur. I do have a photograph of her, though. She was pretty, with long chestnut-brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. In the snapshot my mother is sprawled on the dock, red autumn leaves caught in her hair and falling in a thin carpet around her. It is either sunrise or sunset, because reflections of pink and orange sky are in the rippling water. My mother is laughing at something; her smile lights up the world around her. In the background there are ducks swimming around the dock. I often take it out and stare at the place that was once mine, and the woman who used to be my mother It’s a nice picture. I used to spend most of my time looking at it idly. Even now (usually when I’m supposed to be doing something else) I often take it out and stare at the place that was once mine, and the woman who used to be my mother. She died when I was six. I can just barely remember the time spent at the hospital. I remember nurses hurrying in and out of her room, my family coming and going in and out of the hospital. And the doctors. I remember I was scared of the doctors. My relatives were all crying, but I didn’t understand. Nobody had ever explained death to me, and so I didn’t know what it was to die. My mother lay still, very still. Her chest moved slowly up and down, her breathing was raspy and loud. I watched her chest more than her face as she breathed in and out. I kept watching because I was afraid that if I turned away the breathing would stop. The funeral went by in a blur. I remember standing and ‘hugging everybody. People kept crying into my shoulder, which was strange to me because Momma had always said that adults ought to comfort me, not the other way around. The people were saying things about my mother: “Poor child, your poor mother!” Or, “Look at her, the brave little girl isn’t shedding a tear over her momma!” And, “Oh yes, it was a disaster . . . drunk driver rammed right into Cathy . . . poor girl doesn’t understand about it.” Cathy was my mother’s name. I was the poor girl everyone was talking about, and I did not understand anything except that my mother was gone. * * * And so my father left Maryland and took me along with him. By then I was seven and knew about death and drunk drivers killing my mother. Dad sold the house; he sold the barn and the beach, even the canoe. “Why?” I asked, tears running down my cheeks over my beloved home. My father answered that we were moving because everything here reminded him of my mother. From place to place we moved, all along the eastern seaboard, but then inland and further west because the ocean reminded Dad of Momma, too. He married Lisa while we were in Vancouver, more because they were friends than because they loved each other. “It’s a way that we can be best friends and so that the social workers won’t think you have a broken family,” Dad explained. “So that they won’t try to put you in a foster home.” I didn’t mind because Lisa was nice, like a substitute mother, and Dad needed a friend. We never stayed anywhere for too long; each place was like a stop along the line, on a train that always kept on going. I grew used to moving, accustomed to never making friends. If I made friends I knew it wouldn’t be for long, because as soon as Dad decided to go somewhere else to live the friend would just be one more person missing in my life. But then we stopped in Miami. I was twelve. This time, my father told me, it would be different. “This time it’s for real,” he said. “Miami will be permanence. We’ll settle down and stay for a while, a few years at the very least. You can make some friends, Cassie, go to a good school. We’ll have a house, a real life, a permanent one. I promise.” Permanence. That’s all I ever wanted. I hated moving, hated going to the awful schools where I never allowed myself to make friends. Lisa saw how happy I was and came over to hug me. I was a bit confused about why Miami would be so different, but Lisa explained that my father thought he had run from my mother’s memory long enough. Miami was her hometown and Dad believed he could find peace on the Florida shores. We got a small
Sounds
My iguana cage is silent. Just two weeks ago it was alive with sounds. I wish we’d just throw it out. The other night I heard a helicopter fly over my head. I hear a lot of helicopters at night when I’m trying to sleep but this one was different. I was at UCLA and it was late at night and it flew over my head and I ran away from it but then it landed on the top of the UCLA emergency room parking lot and I was glad the awful noise just stopped. The answering machine picks up and says I would like to know if you can join Kaleidoscope on Sunday night. I don’t recognize the voice but I know it has something to do with school. I hear my stomach gurgling. It sounds like a washing machine. The siren of a police car wakes my cat up. The sound of a blue jay squawking is stopped by a loud shriek. I wonder if my cat got the bird. A dog is howling like a werewolf next door. The thought of that makes me shiver. I hit my pen against the table like a drumstick. I’m drumming to “Love Me Do.” It’s suddenly so quiet. The French people to the left of us are not home. The Japanese people to the right are asleep. I don’t like it. The only sound I hear is the tap tap tapping of my foot on the floor and the rap rap rapping of my pen on the table . . . Paul McCartney’s voice sings in my head. I can’t believe he can sing so deep and so high at the same time. Marley Powell, 12Los Angeles, California
Abby and the Pony Express
Abby heard a long, distant call, somewhere out there in the night. A trumpeting call, like a bugle or maybe it was only the wind. Snow whirled past the cabin window in an endless parade of white, and the wind moaned as it blew around the corner of their house. There had been blizzards like this last March, but this year was different. Abby didn’t feel content inside, as Mama sewed and Papa whittled in the flickering light of the fire, as their old draft horse James slept peacefully in the barn. This year something inside her felt unsettled as she looked out at the wild blur of snowflakes. There was something bigger and better she could be doing. Something more important than knitting stockings, more interesting than sitting inside on these long, long winter evenings. It was because of the Pony Express, of course. Ever since that exciting day last April, when the first delivery boy in that amazing new mail system had come galloping into the station, Abby had known that she wanted to be one of those fearless Pony Express riders. That sunny day Papa and Abby had ridden James to one of the stations, where the station keeper and the stock tender kept food and fresh horses for the boys who rode the Pony Express. James plodded along so slowly that the trip took them nearly an hour. There were only two small log cabins there, alone in the middle of the prairie. One was a stable for the horses; the other served as a storeroom and a place for the men to stay. Abby noticed that the windows were small squares of grease paper instead of glass. Soon Abby saw the Pony Express boy, charging across the prairie Two wagons were parked in the shadow of the stable; they had been used to bring supplies from the city of St. Joseph. “This whole thing was one man’s invention,” Papa told Abby. “Mr. William Russell decided that the western territories needed a system that would get the mail to them faster than stagecoach, and so he organized the Pony Express and invested just about all the money he had in it. The man’s probably hoping for a government grant eventually, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave it to him. Supposedly these ponies can get the latest news from St. Joseph to Sacramento in ten days.” Abby shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed at the sky, the long, waving grass, the emptiness in every direction. But it didn’t really feel empty or deserted. It felt as if the land had flattened itself down to make way, and the two little station buildings were the only things brave enough to stay where they were, waiting for whoever was coming. “I bet the Pony Express will get the mail through faster than that someday,” she said. “All the riders have to do is travel a little bit faster!” Suddenly a rider’s bugle had echoed across the prairie, warning of his approach. The station keeper, a big, important-looking man with a big, important-looking mustache, hustled Abby and Papa out of the way as he brought out a restless mustang pony, already saddled and prepared for the rider. Soon Abby saw the Pony Express boy, charging across the prairie on his horse, stirring up a tiny cloud of dust. Papa bent down close to Abby’s ear, his beard tickling her neck. “That rider’s name is Johnny Fry,” he whispered. “He’s the first boy to ever travel for the Pony Express. Today he has ridden all the way from St. Joseph.” When Johnny Fry got to the station he leaped off his horse, threw the saddlebag full of mail onto the new mustang, jumped up to the mustang’s back, and rode away again, toward far-off Sacramento. It all happened so fast that for a moment Abby was stunned. “That’s all you get to see,” the station keeper had grunted, as he removed the tired horse’s saddle and led the horse into the stable. “You people just think the Pony Express is a whole heap of cowboys and Indians, don’t you? Well, you’re not going to see any Indians here.” But Abby had seen enough to decide that she loved it. Now she shivered in excitement as she pressed her nose against the frosty glass of the cabin window. She could be a rider for the Pony Express! She had ridden lots of horses before. What a wild, adventurous, wonderful life to lead! She would ride through the prairies and mountains and deserts of the West, just her and her faithful pony. She would have a hero’s welcome wherever she went! And if the war over slavery really broke out, she would carry secret messages for their new president, Abraham Lincoln, to help him make the United States into one country again. Abby examined her reflection in the window. Curling red hair, a little bit bushy; long, but she could gather it into a bun and tuck it under a cowboy hat if she wanted to, out of the way. Hers was a tall, skinny figure; she would certainly be light enough for the horses to carry her long distances. She was only fourteen, but lots of boys that age were working for the Pony Express, and earning over one hundred dollars a month, too! She wasn’t afraid of a snowstorm, she thought defiantly. If only she had been born a boy. “You neglect your knitting, Abby,” Mama reminded quietly. Abby jumped and quickly picked up the long needles in her lap. “Ah, let her daydream,” Papa said, winking at her. “She has enough days of snow ahead to finish my socks.” Abby smiled into her lap and then looked up again. “Papa,” she asked carefully, “do you think California will secede along with the southern states? And will the Pony Express become a mail carrier for the South, then?” Papa kept whittling. “Ah, President Lincoln will set
Lost in Time
Lost in Time by Hans Magnus Enzensberger; Henry Holt and Company: New York, 2000; $18 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel in time? And have you ever wondered what problems you might encounter and what the consequences might be? In Lost in Time Robert finds out all these things and more as he wades deeper and deeper into history and lands himself in more trouble than he could ever imagine in his wildest dreams. It all starts when Robert rubs his eyes while watching TV and opens them in 1956 Siberia. Accused of being a German spy, he has many adventures there before being transported to 1946 Australia through a movie screen. This happens seven times and by the time he is a painter’s apprentice in 1621 Holland, Robert is beginning to doubt he will ever get back to the present, his friends, family and life. That is, until he comes up with a miraculous and ingenious idea to get him back home. To find out what happens you’ll have to read the book. Every time Robert travels to a different time period the story changes a little and so does Robert. He begins to know what to expect and even learns new things about history and himself. The story is sometimes a mystery, like when Robert puzzles over what’s going on in Soviet Russia, sometimes adventure, like when Robert joins a band of thieves in 1638 Germany, sometimes romantic, like when Robert meets his first girlfriend Caroline in Australia, and sometimes it is historical, like when Robert pieces together his surroundings in a new time and the reader learns about what life was like back then. The saddest part is when Robert must leave his girlfriend Caroline in another time. The most exciting part is when Robert joins the army in 1638—a war he has only read about in history textbooks. Personally, I don’t have a favorite part—I enjoyed the entire thing! Time travel has always interested me and I found it entertaining when Robert had to explain things like calculators to people who lived in the eighteenth century! At times I was annoyed at the mistakes Robert made; like mentioning television to someone before it had even been invented, but when I thought hard about it, I realized I would make the same mistakes too! How would you manage being zapped in time with no idea of where you would be next or more importantly, when you would be next?! I would highly recommend this great book to anyone aged ten and up or for any strong reader. Cameron Mckeich, 11Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Ellen’s Sixth-Grade Family
The sixth grade had finally come to a close. Actually, the year hadn’t been too long or hard. The last day dragged by so slowly. Yet here it was, the end of the year, and it seemed it had all passed by in the wink of an eye. Ellen went to the end-of-the-year pool party that afternoon. The whole class was there. Twelve of the twenty-seven were leaving for other junior high schools. Ellen was staying, since she’d only been accepted to one school and she didn’t really like it. That night she lay in bed thinking about all the people who would be gone next year, and about those staying. Most of the girls leaving had been mean to her and all year she’d been happy that they wouldn’t be returning in the fall. But now she would only remember all the nice things they’d done, the funny things they’d said, and how they had changed since she met them all six years ago. Now they really felt like her family, and any past resentment drifted away. She would never see almost half of her family again. Ellen rubbed her eyes to stop the tears, but her breath was already coming up shorter so she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the crying fit in store for her. Trying to console herself, she thought of all the people staying. Most of them were her friends, but could she really call them that anymore? They had changed so much this year; they became interested in boys and makeovers and pop singers, and Laura had started dating. Ellen recalled that in fifth grade she had always felt a little uncomfortable because she and her friends were such geeks. She had thought that it was they who were keeping her from becoming cool. Yet now, she was a little girl playing with toy horses, and they were out at the mall. Now she started to cry. Whimpers and snuffles and tears grew into uncontrollable wailing until her mother came in and threw her arms around her. Ellen knew her mother understood so she made no effort to speak. She just cried and cried in her mother’s embrace till her tears would come no more. And she slept. Ellen knew her mother understood so she made no effort to speak At about one in the morning, she reawoke. Her thoughts were muddled now. She had dreamed of the first day in seventh grade. The dream began in her home. Ellen watched herself eat, dress, and walk out the door. She got on the bus, the only girl left from her grade, and rode to school. When she entered her classroom, the teacher yelled at her for being late. Her friends, Laura and Cordy, were talking about all the boys they went out with over the summer. They didn’t even acknowledge her presence. She ran to her old sixth-grade classroom. No one was there. There were just rows and rows of empty desks. She saw her own from when she’d sat in it last year. The seventh-grade teacher strode in and yelled to her to get back in her classroom. Then she woke up. Trying to figure the dream out, she finally concluded that it was best to forget it and begin her summer. She picked up a book to read until it was lights out. She turned on the lamp and saw which book she had picked out. It was her class yearbook. Each page of pictures brought another memory to her head. Her first day of school, her first bus ride, her first sleepover. Her friends had been there for each of these. They wouldn’t desert her because they were changing and she wasn’t, Ellen realized. She could always hang out with them. Half of her thoughts were released now, but she still worried about all those people leaving. Would she ever see them again? she wondered. With a sigh she turned off the lamp and went back to sleep. Her father woke her up late in the morning and handed her a list of chores. “This is stuff to do so we can go to the Cape today,” he said. Ellen looked it over. “Mostly packing,” he said, “and if you get it done quick maybe you can invite a friend down with us.” Ellen’s eyes lit up. She could invite someone who was leaving for a different school! That way it wouldn’t feel as difficult not seeing her in seventh grade. Ellen hurried through the packing and called Lizzie. She was the nicest of the girls leaving. An answering machine clicked on. Ellen hung up and tried Sarah. She had other plans. Ellen called every girl leaving that she wouldn’t mind having a sleepover with, and none of them could come. She decided then that what she’d feared had come true. Those girls had all moved on and were trying to forget middle school. And so must she. Ellen decided that the only way to move out of the past was to focus on the future. Next year Laura and Cordy would be there, so she had to think about her friendship with them. She called up Cordy. “Hi, this is Ellen. Um . . . we’re going to the Cape this weekend. Wanna come?” Cordy accepted. The weekend was fantastic. She played games with Cordy that she had been longing to play all year, like tag and hide-and-seek, games that Laura had deemed “uncool.” And on their way back home, they passed a big green van. Inside sat Ann and Abbie, two of the girls Ellen was sure she would never see again. They waved, and she waved back. There was no sting of sadness. She had simply passed by two old friends. They had moved on and she had moved on. Her family was not ripped in half and separated. She had her family always with her, in her mind, in her yearbook, and in her
Rescue
It was the first day at my new school. I was excited and nervous. I am the first in my family ever to go to a Gymnasium (a German secondary school for grades 5 through 13, preparing for university entrance). Frau Heintz, the homeroom teacher for class 5b, was calling the roll. “Andreas Ludowsky?” “Here!” a thin boy with thick curly hair whom I didn’t know answered. His name began with an L. That meant my name would be coming soon. I began to think wildly, Please don’t call me, forget me, skip my name. But it didn’t help. Frau Heintz called, “Sieglinde Steinbrecher?” “Here,” I whispered barely audibly. But she hadn’t heard me. “I said Sieglinde Steinbrecher! Where is she?” This time I spoke a bit louder. “I’m here.” I couldn’t help sounding a bit whiny. Some other kids laughed. How I wished that I had a more modern name, like Daniela or Ann-Katrin. Why was I stuck with such an old-fashioned name? But at least the worst was over. The roll call had gone better this time than in elementary school, where everybody had repeated my name over and over again and had kept saying how stupid it was. I had just leaned back when I heard a voice behind me I knew only too well. Sabine von der Heide, my worst enemy. She’d been at my old school as well. “Hey, it’s Oma. Grandmother is in our class again!” she was saying to her best friend Birgit. “We’ll have some fun with her. In fact, we can start right now!” The next thing I knew, somebody had pulled the long braid hanging down my back. I turned around, even though I knew who had done it. Sabine sat there, with her fake, sweet, innocent smile. “Why, Grannie dear, how are you? What big teeth you have!” she said. Birgit could hardly contain herself with laughing. She looked like she was going to burst. I also thought I was going to burst with anger. I had to keep it in, but I couldn’t. I could feel my face getting hot, in a moment I would scream at that stupid girl, when . . . “We’ll have some fun with her. In fact, we can start right now!” “Sabine von der Heide? I repeat, Sabine von der Heide?” Frau Heintz was still calling the roll, and now it was Sabine’s turn. She hadn’t noticed it while she’d been annoying me. She raised her hand, looking very embarrassed at having missed her name. I couldn’t help grinning a little; it felt like I had paid her back. But I knew it was going to be a hard year. Just like all the other years since first grade. That was the first time I had ever been in a class with Sabine. Already then she had noticed I was a good teasing victim. That’s also when she had started calling me Oma. As we’d gotten older, Sabine had teased me about other things as well. I wore old-fashioned clothes, not Calvin Klein jeans or Gap clothes like her. She talked a lot about boys and pop stars. That didn’t interest me at all. I preferred reading books. I was sure that all the kids at this school were snobs who had parents that were doctors or professors and earned loads of money. My mother was a supermarket cashier who barely earned enough to raise her three daughters. And I was right about the hard year. Every day at recess Sabine, Birgit and their other friends would pull my hair and tease me. They stuck their feet out when I walked by their desks so I would trip. One time, Sabine grabbed my worn leather satchel and started throwing it across the room to Birgit. Moments later it was flying around the classroom. Even kids who usually left me alone were joining in the fun. I felt miserable. There was nothing I could do but wait till the teacher came. Or until they got tired of it. If I tried to snatch my bag back, they threw it around even more. Or they laughed at me during P.E., when I couldn’t run fast enough or wasn’t able to make a basket. At home, nobody really cared that I was unhappy. My mom was too busy taking care of my little sisters. And as for my father, well he’d left us when I was only six, just before my youngest sister was born. The one time I had asked my mother for help in first grade she’d answered, while she changed the baby’s diapers, “You can’t run to me every time a little thing goes wrong at school. You’re a smart girl! Stand up for yourself! Deal with it. The others will grow up sooner or later. Then they’ll leave you alone.” I’d hoped that would happen. For four long years I’d hoped. Sometimes I’d even wished something bad would happen to me, that I would break my leg, or get really sick, so that everyone who teased me would feel sorry. Or that I’d come to school and find that everyone was friendly and would apologize for the mean things they’d done. I’d really believed things would be better at my new school. But they weren’t. Nothing ever changed. And it looked like they never would. This was how I was feeling when Alison arrived. The weather had become cold and wet. Every morning I bundled up in my old thick brown coat and braved the wind. I think it was a Friday, because I remember thinking, as I battled the stormy weather, that very soon it would be the weekend, when I could stay home, relax and finish my library book, Robinson Crusoe. I could be alone on my island before Monday and the terrors of school began again. I reached school, and pushed open the heavy door. Thankfully, I stepped inside. At least in here it was warm and
Limitations
PROLOGUE I am a guardian angel. I am retelling one of my missions to earth long ago. It was my first mission; I was proud of my abilities. And to go to a foreign country made me excited. * * * The radiant noon sun shone brightly as the cool breeze ruffled the palm branches near the Mekong in Cambodia. It flowed from China and went past several countries and ended in the South China Sea near Vietnam. The Mekong River flowed smoothly, running its course to the ocean; the water glittered like a jewel in the light. A small fishing boat village was huddled together on one side of the four-mile-wide river, the small brown boat homes bobbing up and down. Children swam playfully in the water without a care. I noticed especially one small boat house where a family of four lived. Their living quarters were small and cramped. Like all of the other boat houses, they all looked alike. The boats were a much larger version of a wooden rowboat with a platform overtop and a tent-shaped roof. But this one I noticed was older and needed more repair; there was a thin rope holding the boat from drifting away. The mother and the father and their two sons that lived there were eating their meager dinner. The children were six and four years of age; their rag-like clothes hung loosely on them. Their parents’ faces were tired but happy. The catching always reached an all-time low in the flooding seasons * * * Gloomy clouds filled the sky and a cold breeze ripped through the air. The family was in a small paddleboat heading for the schoolhouse. The parents were dropping off their children at the school and then would go to work after. The paddle dipped slowly in the water getting closer to the school. * * * The mother and father paddled to the middle part of the river where fish were abundant. The rainy season had started last month and steadily the water had begun to get stronger, and the fish had started to get fewer and fewer. The water rushed quickly past the anchored boat; the gray clouds rumbled threateningly. Both of them cast out their fishnets, hoping with luck this time to catch many fish. A few hours later, they pulled the fishnets out of the water and checked for fish. They had once again caught very little fish. The catching always reached an all-time low in the flooding seasons and the family always went poor and hungry. Sad and depressed, the parents paddled silently home. * * * Torrents of rain poured down the sky with the strength of bullets. The two boys shivered with a high fever and coughed as a chilly wind swept through the house. They were too sick to go to school. The parents were reluctant to go to work, but they knew they must go in order to make money for medicine and warm jackets for their sons. They crept outside and onto their small paddleboat, leaving their two sick children. * * * The current rushed stronger and stronger than before and swept away debris. The cloud-filled sky was dark and menacing and rain poured down. The youngest son woke up with a bad feeling welling up in his chest. Where was Mom? Where was Dad? His brother woke up shortly, sweating with fever, coughing and cold. He shivered and took an old shaggy blanket and covered both of them with it to keep them warm. * * * They sat in their paddleboat waiting and waiting. They had pulled up the nets hour after hour and had caught no fish. The rain battered their bodies. They knew that there would be no fish because of the water that was mounting higher and more powerful. As they sat there, a log floated by. Then the father thought, Why not collect the firewood that had been swept away in last night’s storm to sell and get money instead? They started paddling to collect logs of wood. Two hours later their boat was laden with wood to sell and the husband and wife were ecstatic to have found so much wood. It was extra hard now to paddle with such weight. The rain was still beating down relentlessly and the current was pushing in the opposite direction when they were paddling. They were in the middle of the four-mile-wide river and it would take lots of effort and strength to get to shore. Tired and hungry they kept on paddling but the current was too strong. Tides of water flooded into the boat. They both started bailing out the water but when they finished another bigger tide flooded the boat again. The mother bailed while the father paddled with lots of effort to reach the distant shore. A big monstrous wave all of a sudden hit the boat. The boat spun, then flipped over, taking the parents with it. * * * Meanwhile on the boat house the weather was the same. Their home rocked violently back and forth. Both of the boys were ill, worried and, most of all, scared. Without warning, the boat lurched sideways. The rope that had held it had snapped! The youngest son ran out of the safety of the roof and tried to retie it with a stronger rope; the boat would stray away if he didn’t do it quickly. Another violent lurch flung the child’s body into the mighty waters. “Help!” he screamed, coughing and gasping, as his lungs filled with water. His body was too frail to swim in the raging current. His brother took a rope and threw it to him. I flew down swiftly and tried to save him. It was not his time to go, not his time to die. I held up his weak body as his brother pulled himself slowly toward the boat, when another wave came and broke his grip
With Liberty and Justice for Some
“Yip!” The sharp, insistent yapping of my dog Urashima drew me sluggishly upright the day the summons came. “Yip!” “Betty,” my mother called to me from the kitchen, “quiet your dog, please!” “Yip!” I responded with an unpromising grunt, flipping the page of my book. I was engrossed in Gone With the Wind, reading it for the seventh time, and resented any distractions. “Yip!” “Betty Okubo, that means now!” I slowly sat up, dragging my feet like a run-down windup toy as I walked to the door. Pulling Ura’s collar with one hand and groping for the mail with the other, I nodded a quick apology to the postman in case my dog had disturbed him. He gave me a glare that could crush stone and hurried down the sidewalk, as if our house was liable to explode at any moment. Letting go of my terrier, I groped through the closet for the mail: a brand new Sears-Roebuck catalogue, the monthly electric bill, a notice that my library books were hereby overdue—and a printed envelope addressed to “The Okubo family.” Sucking in my breath, I opened it and prayed fervently that it didn’t hold bad news. But no notice of death, doom, or despair fell out, only a typewritten slip addressed “To whom it may concern.” I nodded a quick apology to the postman in case my dog had disturbed him I ran through the house with the force of a full elephant stampede, screaming, “Mama! Mama!” “What?” my mother asked in a tired voice as I frantically waved the paper in her face. She seized it from me and began to read, then sat down quickly as a look of shock crossed her face. “They don’t understand,” she murmured. “They will never understand.” “What is it?” I asked eagerly. Wordlessly, she passed the paper to me. I read it slowly, carefully, drinking in every dire word like forbidden fruit. 1 May 1942 To whom it may concern: All Americans of Japanese descent in Military Zone 41 must report for internment between the dates of May 1 and June 1. Please be at the First Methodist Church of Newark on May 7. You will be moved from there to an internment camp. Bring only as much as you can carry. Tardiness will not be tolerated. In a flash, everything made sense: the cold looks people had given me in the six months since Pearl Harbor; the fear in my mother’s eyes when I ventured out alone at night; the suspicious glares I received when others discussed the war; what being in “Military Zone 41” really meant, other than the fact that we were prohibited from leaving. My parents had tried to make excuses for the government: it was wartime, after all; it wasn’t just us, it was Italians and Germans as well; even though we weren’t spies, others might be. They had refused to move away before it was too late. “They just won’t understand,” Mama muttered again. I nodded in silent agreement. We were as American as the O’Neils, who lived next door, or the Smiths, who owned the local grocery. We celebrated the Fourth of July and had a picture of George Washington in our dining room. But our last name was Okubo, our hair was black and straight, and our eyes were slanted, and so we had to go. “It’s not fair!” I burst out. “We’re as American as they are!” Mama had come over from Japan when she was eight. Dad was Nisei, born here. I’d never heard of Hirohito until I saw his name in a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle. And yet we were being ordered away, just because our ancestors were Japanese. “No, it’s not fair,” Mama agreed, “but neither is life.” I scowled. My parents made me go to school the next few days, although I didn’t want to. The allures of packing won out over the drab calls to learn the history, geography, and language of a country that no longer wanted me. “Who knows when you’ll see another school,” was my father’s only comment on the topic. “Enjoy this while you can.” Every school day began with the Lord’s Prayer, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Pledge of Allegiance. I stood dutifully with my hand over my heart for the latter, but balked at the words “with liberty and justice for all.” I had just received a painful example of American liberty and justice. With that thought in mind, I closed my mouth on the last phrase. Never, I swore to myself, never again would I say those six stalwart words. Never again would I believe in liberty and justice for all. I gave tearful farewells to my friends and Ura, who had to stay behind. A less sorrowful good-bye was given to my school, which I was not overly mournful about deserting. Then, toting our three suitcases apiece, my family boarded the bus together, not knowing where we were traveling or what would happen when we reached our destination. The bus was deathly quiet except for the cries of a few babies and the mumbling of old women in Japanese. I propped Anne of Green Gables on my knee and began to read, trying to lose myself in the story as we traveled along a narrow road through a windswept desert. The camp appeared suddenly before me, its barbed-wire fences a stark reminder of our coming imprisonment. “Barbed wire, Hana?” my father asked my mother nervously. “I don’t like the look of this.” None of us did. For the first time in years, I accepted my father’s hand as we stepped off the bus. The first thing I saw was tar-paper barracks lined up in rows, as far as the eye could see. The second thing I saw was a girl about my age running breathlessly toward the slowing bus. Her black hair lay sleekly down her back and her dark eyes sparkled as she skidded to a
September 11, 2001
today is my birthday i am eight years old colored tissue and balloons then in one bright blinding moment life changes forever a thousand dreams float from the sky and scatter jigsaw over New York City Rachel Weary, 8St. Albert, Alberta, Canada
Autumn Thunder
It had been one of those days when the sun could not seem to make up its mind whether it wanted to hide behind a curtain of clouds or look out over the world. Throughout the day the light had alternated between the brilliant gold of autumn leaves and the darkness that inspired the owl to open his eyes. The sky was sometimes a deep azure blue, laced with soft white clouds; sometimes it was the deep gray of a wolf’s coat, streaked with distant white lightning and growling black thunder. Now, just as the sun was beginning to set on the hilly horizon, a gray squirrel poked her head over the leafy edge of her nest in an oak tree. She blinked and peered toward the hills as the sun surrendered to dark cloaks of gray-blue cloud that were slowly and steadily pulling across the sky. The clouds were ominous and held trouble for the little squirrel. She was young and nervous. In her anxiousness to evade the predators that lurked on the forest floor, she had not built her winter nest in the giant oak’s strong, secure arms nearer the trunk, but dangerously high in the slender fingers, where the wind blew the strongest, and the rain struck like bullets. Hunger forced the squirrel to abandon these troubling thoughts. She thought of acorns, and began her journey to the earth. She clambered over the mass of sticks and leaves of her nest. A breeze wrapped around the flimsy branches and the squirrel swung for a moment before continuing on toward the rough bark of the tree’s sturdy body. She flicked her tail with agitation. With every step she realized how quickly the wind was picking up, and how urgent was her need to find a new home for the cold, gusty months ahead. The approaching storm was not going to be friendly. The owl held tight, leaning backwards and flapping to keep his balance On her way to the ground, the squirrel passed a hole in the tree. Curious, she poked her head inside. The entrance to the hole was small, but inside it was roomy and cozy. It was also uninhabited. There was no owl dozing in the hole like the booming great horned monarch a few trees down from the squirrel’s oak. There was no raccoon with its harlequin mask and bushy ringed tail. The only living thing in the room was an old bark beetle, a descendant of the bark beetle who had chewed out the hole long ago. The squirrel was not bothered by the beetle. She knew she had found her new winter shelter, and, reassured, she continued down. However, as soon as the squirrel felt the worn dirt under her paws, she was immediately unnerved again. She was an inhabitant of the trees. She survived high in the secretive world of branches and wood. But the ground was insecure, alien—swarming with predators. The squirrel flicked her tail again and looked around. She had expert eyesight, and good color vision; she did not see the scarlet flash of a fox, or the plodding brown boots of a human. Gingerly the squirrel inched across the ground. After a while she came to a patch of earth that had imprinted itself in her mind earlier that autumn. She began to dig feverishly. Her little paws neatly shoveled away the top layer of soil to uncover the scrumptious acorn she had buried a few weeks ago. Eagerly she popped it into her mouth and went to another nut-cache, until the ground was pocketed with harvested holes. Even in her bliss the squirrel glanced around the forest floor for predators. But predators did not live only on the ground. On a branch on the pine tree a short distance from the squirrel, the noble great horned owl was brooding, his eyes half-closed. His feathers were fluffed, his feathery horns standing straight up on his head. His yellow eyes were dull. The squirrel made a quick jump to another cache. This sudden movement attracted the owl and made him alert. His eyes snapped to attention. He dug his talons into the branch and yawned. As the squirrel continued to hop across the ground, the owl twisted his head around until it was nearly upside-down, the better to see every part of the squirrel, the prey. For many days now the owl had gone without a substantial meal. His unhealthy feathers were notched with pale streaks that told of his hunger. The owl extended his long, brown wings and flapped silently from the pine. The squirrel’s head shot up. She looked around, wide-eyed. Just as the owl whirled above her, a snarl of thunder erupted. The squirrel leaped narrowly away and raced up the tree to her new home in the bark beetle’s hole. The owl hooted his eerie call and it merged with the deep thunder. He flew to another tree to sulk and wait for more prey. Another movement below made him lift his wings—but he saw that it was not food. It was a red fox, loping down an old hunting trail with a rabbit in her mouth. The vixen had four hungry kits in a den near the stream that snaked through the forest. She was having to feed them constantly, for the kits were growing rapidly and would leave her in early winter. As if to remind the fox of her purpose, a chilly breeze descended from the looming gray-blue storm cloud and ruffled her fur. The determined fox quickened her pace. The starving owl flapped his wings. He struck the vixen’s mouth and gripped the rabbit in his talons. The fox was reluctant to let go of her well-earned catch. Her own young were hungry. She growled menacingly and pulled, neck muscles rippling. The owl held tight, leaning backwards and flapping to keep his balance. The vixen’s jaws ached. She was forced to let go. In a few seconds the owl had
