Project Mulberry (6 page)

My mom nodded. "Tell him I'll be coming with you.

"Oh, Mom," I groaned.

She lowered her chin at me. "Julia, you are not going to a stranger's house by yourself."

"I won't be alone. I'll be with Patrick."

She shook her head. "If you want to go, I'm going with you. That's final."

So I went back to Mr. Dixon on the phone and told him it would be me and Patrick and my mom coming over.

"That's fine," he said again. "Tomorrow around four o'clock or so? I'm at 157 Grant Street. Off Orchard Drive, back of the school."

"One fifty-seven Grant Street," I repeated. "Four o'clock would be perfect, sir. Thank you."

"Bye for now, Julia," he said. "See you tomorrow."

I hung up.

Agent Song reporting:
MISSION FAILURE. NEW ORDERS REQUESTED
.

***

"One fifty-seven," Patrick said, peering out the car window. "One forty-six ... one forty-eight ... it must be on the next block."

"And on my side of the street," I said.

Now that meeting Mr. Dixon was unavoidable, I figured we might as well get it over with. I'd check everything out and be on the lookout for the next snag.

It was me and Patrick and my mom in the car. No Snotbrain, thank goodness. My mom had arranged for Kenny to have a play date while she took us to Mr. Dixon's.

Grant Street was only about half a mile from my house, on the other side of the school. The neighborhood didn't have rows of townhouses like ours; instead, it was mostly small homes, with a few apartment blocks mixed in.

"One fifty-seven—there it is," I said. A smallish brown house.

I was surprised to realize I was feeling a little excited. It was kind of like a treasure hunt, only instead of a chest of gold coins or something like that, our treasure was a mulberry tree.

Well, not exactly.
Patrick's
treasure was the tree. For me, it was more like Agent Song having to locate and reconnoiter the enemy's headquarters before being able to carry out orders. My new orders were to find some way to avoid getting leaves from Mr. Dixon's tree.

My mom pulled up in front of the house. There in the driveway was the green LTD. It was old, all right—a big, old-fashioned car. But in good shape. No rust anywhere.

No tree, either.

We went up the short front walk. Patrick and I sort of hung back and let my mom ring the doorbell.

The door opened.

I stared for what I hoped was only a nanosecond, then snapped my mouth shut quickly and looked at my mom.

Mr. Dixon was black.

My mom didn't like black people.

 

Plainfield was mostly white. Some black kids went to my school, but not very many. I didn't have any close friends who were black. It wasn't like there were big problems or anything; the kids were all friendly with each other, in class and after school and on sports teams, but the black kids pretty much hung out together in one group.

My favorite teacher ever ever
ever
was black. Two years ago I'd had Mrs. Roberts for fifth grade. She was the kind of teacher who made you wish you could have her every year for the rest of your life. She was really funny, and we never knew when she was going to say something that would crack us up, so we always listened when she was talking. And I guess because we were listening we learned stuff along the way.

She'd call on someone who had their hand raised, and if they got the answer right, she'd say something like, "Uh-
huh
, girlfriend!" And when she explained an assignment, she'd say, "We clear here? I said,
Are we clear?
" And we had to say all together, "
Crystal!
" I sometimes heard the black kids in school talk to each other like that, but I never heard any other black grownup talk the way she did. I loved it, because it made me feel like she was really being herself with us.

My mom never liked Mrs. Roberts.

It was a hard thing to learn. I mean, hard in two ways. First, it was hard because it took a long time to sink in. When I got home from school, my mom would quiz me. Not the usual "How was school today?" Instead, she asked question after question; it seemed like she wanted a minute-by-minute account of what I'd done all day long.

A little at a time, my brain put it together: She wasn't really asking about
me
. She was asking about Mrs. Roberts. I got so sick of all the questions every day that I finally asked her straight out. "How come you ask me so many questions about Mrs. Roberts?"

We were in the car, on the way to the store or something.

"Do I?" my mom said.

I hated that. I hate it when grownups answer a question with another question.

"Oh, come on, Mom. You know you do."

My mom pressed her lips together. She didn't look at me. She kept looking at the road, even though we were stopped at a red light. "Honey, there are some things that might be hard for you to understand," she said.

"Try me," I said. "I'm not a baby anymore."

My mom nodded, still not looking at me. "Okay," she said. "You know that black people in this country have had a tough time."

"Yeah, okay."

"And lots of them haven't had the same opportunities as white people."

"Right."

"So I'm just making sure that your teacher has had enough opportunities and experience to be a good teacher for you."

She made it sound very reasonable, but it still didn't make sense. I shook my head. "I keep telling you she's the best teacher I've ever had. You've seen my tests, I'm doing fine—she's teaching me everything I'm supposed to know. Why won't you believe me?"

My mom didn't say anything for a minute. Then she smiled a little. "Okay. I believe you."

But she still didn't look at me.

 

So I sort of figured it out: My mom thought Mrs. Roberts might not be a good teacher, because she was black. That made things hard in a different way. Most of the time, my mom was a very nice person. I hated thinking of her as someone who might be prejudiced against black people.

I finally told Patrick about it. He didn't say anything for a minute, but I could tell he was thinking.

"Soldiers," he said at last.

"Huh?"

"The Korean War. That was when the army got integrated for the first time, and black and white soldiers fought together. I read about it."

His military-history phase, last summer. He had read a ton of books. Sometimes he read aloud to me. I was glad when he moved on to reading about crows.

"The only black people in Korea back then were American soldiers," he went on. "Maybe your mom is sort of scared of black people because they make her think of war and battles and stuff."

That seemed like a good guess. After dinner that night, I talked to my dad.

"Dad, are there black people in Korea?"

My dad looked surprised at the question. "Yes, of course there are. But not very many—almost everyone in Korea is Korean." He smiled and went on, "It was very interesting for me when I first came to the States—I never knew people came in so many different colors!"

He said it like it was a wonderful thing.

"Did you know any black people when you were little?" I asked.

"I didn't really
know
any, no," he said. "But I did meet a few. I remember the first one I ever met—a soldier. He gave me some gum." He smiled again.

So Patrick was right about the soldiers. And my dad didn't seem to care what color people were, as long as they were nice. But my mom ... Well, maybe she'd been unlucky and had never met a
nice
soldier.

In a way, it didn't matter.

As we stood there on Mr. Dixon's front stoop, I wasn't thinking,
Why doesn't my mom like black people?

I was thinking,
Uh-oh. What's going to happen now?

 

Me:
Whew. You're throwing a lot of stuff at me.

Ms. Park:
Sorry. I didn't mean to. In fact, when I started writing that chapter I thought Mr. Dixon was white. I didn't realize he was black until I heard him talking on the phone. I know you couldn't tell then, but somehow he let me know that he was black. Believe me, I was as surprised as you were.

Me:
How come begets to tell you what to write and I don't? Is it because he's a grownup?

Ms. Park:
Of course not. You're not being fair—I did let you tell me what to do before. With Kenny. Have you forgotten already?

Me:
That was only a little thing. When are you going to let me decide something big?

Ms. Park:
Be careful what you wish for.

Me:
What's that supposed to mean?

Ms. Park:
You'll find out.

Me:
I hate it when grownups say that.

Mom had her perfect face on.

That's what I call it. Perfect—as in no expression. Perfectly smooth. Perfectly bland. My dad also has a perfect face. My parents wear their perfect faces when they don't want people to know what they're thinking.

"Mr. Dixon." My mom's voice was perfect, too.

"Yes?" Mr. Dixon looked a little puzzled. He had short gray hair and was about the same height as my dad, sort of average height for a man.

Nobody said anything for a second. It felt like a year to me.

"I'm Julia," I burst out. "You called me yesterday. Miss Mona at the gas station—"

"Oh! Of course, of course. Excuse me. Excuse my manners—I was just—I wasn't expecting—"

Finally, a crack in my mother's perfect face: Her eyebrows went up a little. "I'm sorry, you weren't expecting us? I thought Julia said today—"

"No, no, that's not what I meant." He smiled and shook his head. "I beg your pardon. It's just that when I talked to this young lady on the phone"—he nodded at me—"I was expecting white people."

My mouth fell open. I wanted to laugh, even though there was nothing really funny about what he'd said. Here I'd been thinking he was a white guy, and I hadn't said anything one way or the other to my mom, but I was sure she assumed he was white, too, and then he turned out to be black, and there he was thinking
we
would be white, but we were Asian, except for Patrick—

It
was
funny, wasn't it?

"Pardon me," Mr. Dixon said again, and held the door open. "Please come in. You're here about my mulberry tree, aren't you?"

 

We stood in Mr. Dixon's backyard. There was only one tree in it, at the side near the fence. Not quite as tall as his two-story house, the tree had rough gray bark and little green leaves that were just beginning to uncurl.

In other words, it looked like any old tree.

I was a tiny bit disappointed. And then I felt stupid for feeling disappointed—for pete's sake, what had I expected, gold leaves and silver bark and rubies for berries?

"It was here when I moved in fifteen years ago," Mr. Dixon said. "But nobody had taken care of it, so it was pretty scrawny. Looked more like a bush than a tree—they get that way if you don't prune them."

Aha! That explained the song!

"I trimmed it up a bit, and it's been doing just fine. Gives me a good crop every year." He looked at me and Patrick. "Either of you ever tasted mulberry ice cream?"

"No, sir," I said, and Patrick shook his head.

Mr. Dixon smiled. "Best ice cream in the world. But what was it—you want the leaves, not the berries?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "We're doing a silkworm project, and we need the leaves for food—"

"Silkworm food," Patrick broke in. "It's the only thing they eat. And mulberry trees are kind of rare around here. So far, yours is the only one we've heard of."

Mr. Dixon nodded, then looked thoughtful. "Silkworms, hmm. Sounds interesting, very interesting." He pronounced all the syllables in "interesting" but sort of skipped the first
t,
so it sounded like "inner-resting."

"I'd like to help you out," he said. "I'm just wondering—are you going to need a lot of leaves? See, if you're going to be stripping the branches bare, it might not be good for the tree."

Agent Song on the alert! "We wouldn't want to hurt your tree," I said. I looked at Patrick. "I bet they eat a lot, those worms."

Patrick shook his head and shrugged at the same time. "I haven't done enough research yet to know," he said, looking embarrassed.

My mom cleared her throat. "They won't be needing that many, Mr. Dixon," she said. Still her perfect voice. "I helped raise silkworms when I was a girl. I used to pick the leaves from the lower branches, without bothering the rest of the tree."

Dang it—why'd she have to say that?

Mr. Dixon nodded again. "Sounds like it wouldn't do any harm," he said.

"The only thing is..." My mom paused and pressed her lips together for a second before she went on. "The worms will need very fresh leaves, and they'll need them twice a day. Which means the children would have to come over here quite often. For around three weeks or so. That might be an inconvenience for you."

"We wouldn't want to inconvenience you," I said. Very polite of me.

Patrick looked at me like I was nuts.

"Well, to be honest, ma'am, that's part of the reason I wanted to meet Julia and her friend," Mr. Dixon said. "Kids these days, you can't be too careful."

Now it was my mom's turn to nod. "I can understand that," she said.

"But I don't see any problem here," Mr. Dixon said. "They look like good kids to me. They can just come right through the back gate and get their leaves—shouldn't be any bother."

"Thanks, Mr. Dixon!" Patrick almost shouted.

"Yes, thank you, sir," I said. What else could I say?

For now I just had to go along with things. Withdraw and regroup, Agent Song. Come up with another plan later....

Mr. Dixon walked over to the tree and examined the leaves on one of the branches. "They're mighty small right now," he said.