Same Sun Here (2 page)

I don’t usually talk this much unless I’ve had a Coca-Cola. Usually I am quiet. But you’re easy to talk to, River. My hand really hurts, and I bet, if you’re still reading, that your eyes are hurting. My brother is looking over my shoulder now and saying I wrote too much and you probably won’t write me back because you will think I am a crazy person. But he is a big dummy and smelly, too, which is not surprising because he is wearing his OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT T-shirt for the
third
day in a row. (He is completely obsessed with the election and goes around quoting Obama all the time, like a lunatic.)

I hope you do not think I am a crazy person. It is very nice to meet you, River. I hope you are having lots of good fun in Kentucky, and I hope you will write and tell me about yourself.

Your (hopefully) pen pal,

Meena Joshi

P.S. My brother says there was a famous movie star who died a long time ago with your name. Is this true?

P.P.S. We live five blocks away from the East River in New York City. Do you live near a river, too? Also, what kind of music do you like?

10 August 2008

Dear Meena,

I am real pleased to meet you. I am going to just get right at it and answer your questions and tell you everything I can think of, as I have been wanting to write you ever since receiving your letter, which I have read four times now.

Well, I am a boy. My mother named me River because she loved growing up on the Cumberland River and because her and my father’s first date was at this restaurant down on the Powell River. We have all kinds of rivers and creeks here. Did you know that Kentucky has more waterways than any other state except Alaska? I always thought that was real interesting. I like knowing things like that, although nobody else I know really cares.

I have never met anybody from New York City before. I’ve always heard that people from up there are real rude and will not hold the door for you, and you’ll get mugged if you walk down the street. Is this true? My mamaw says it is probably a stereotype, which I looked up in the dictionary and it means “an oversimplified opinion.” She also said to remember the Golden Rule, which she says a lot. She is real big on the Golden Rule, which is from the Bible, I guess. I don’t have time to look it up right now. Do you believe in the Bible? Since you are an Indian, I don’t really know.

Mom used to make me go to church with her every Sunday, but she doesn’t go anymore, because she’s sick. It wasn’t too bad, I guess, but I didn’t much like going to Sunday school, where it always smelled like chalk and they only had grape Kool-Aid, which I despise. Mamaw quit going to church a long time ago because the preacher said something about women’s rights that made her mad, and she never did go back. But every Sunday she reads to us from the Bible and she prays all the time, loud.

My mother and I live with Mamaw now. We used to have our own good house up on Free Creek, but now we live over here right outside the town of Black Banks, in the house my daddy grew up in. Daddy used to be a coal miner who went waaaaay back in the mountain to work, but the underground miners are all losing their jobs, so he had to go down to Biloxi, Mississippi, to find work. He is having to live down there while they rebuild Biloxi from where Hurricane Katrina ruined everything. My mother used to work in the school lunchroom, but now she has the blues all the time. She also gets sick headaches and has to take to bed. Sometimes I hold a wet washrag to her forehead and tell her all about my day, but usually I am with Mamaw most of the time.

You said your brother was your favorite human. Well, mine is Mamaw. Almost every day we climb the path up the mountain and she tells me the names of all the trees, or we go along very quiet and watch the ground for treasures. We have a nature collection that has things in it like feathers from blue jays and redbirds, chips of quartz, buckeyes, acorns, hickory nuts, and lots more. My other favorite thing to do with her is when we go fishing together in Lost Creek, which is full of bluegill (my father and I used to go fishing all the time, before he left). Mamaw and I clean them together and then she dips them in milk, and then meal and flour, and fries them. They’re delicious. Mamaw is the best cook in the world. This evening she is making my favorite meal: pork chops, biscuit and gravy, fried potatoes, and fried apples. I can’t wait. What’s your favorite meal? I guess my second favorite meal is fish, hush puppies, and fried potatoes.

The reason I’m not on the e-mail list is because I thought it’d be cooler to write letters to somebody, since I can write e-mails to anybody. Lots of my friends just play Nintendo or get on the Internet all the time, but I have never been much for that. I only like to get online if I’m looking up something, not to play games or check e-mail. I don’t know why. I think it’s boring.

I’m weird I guess. I mean, none of my friends really wants to spend that much time with their grandmothers. Or at least they don’t admit it. Mamaw says it is all right to be weird and that if the end of the world came I’d know how to survive, and the rest of the people my age would only sit in front of their dead computers and not know what to do. I believe Mamaw likes being on the computer better than I do. She is on there all the time researching stuff, because she is what is called an activist.

Anyway, that’s why when Ms. Stidham put out the sign-up sheet for pen pals that I only put down my mailing address and not my e-mail address (I have one, but I just don’t check it much). Mamaw was real proud of me because of this. She says that everyone used to write long letters all the time and it is a lost art form. I don’t see what’s so arty about it, but I like to do it. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a newspaper reporter.

I can’t tell any of my friends at school these things because they’d make fun of me too bad. I am real good at basketball, so that’s all I talk about with them. Let’s say right now that we can tell each other our secrets and we won’t make fun of each other. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound weird, too. I am glad of it, because I can be my own true self with you. Maybe it’s because of your looooong letter. Nobody ever wrote me that much, ever. I’m glad it was long, though. And maybe because our names go together so good.

Why did you pick me to write to?

I’ve never read
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
, but I looked at it in the library and it’s pretty thick. It looks kind of girly. Is it? When I was little I was obsessed with the Spiderwick Chronicles and Beverly Cleary, especially
Dear Mr. Henshaw
and
Strider
. But my favorite author ever is S. E. Hinton, especially
The Outsiders
. That book has characters in it who are their own true selves, only with each other, too, and I guess it’s my favorite of all time. S. E. Hinton (who is a GIRL if you can believe it!) was only four years older than me when she wrote it. That blows my mind. I don’t get to read as much as I used to because of basketball practice. If you’re wondering why I underlined the titles it’s because you’re supposed to, to be grammatically correct. Ms. Stidham is real strict about stuff like that. She says that since people all over the world think we’re stupid here in Kentucky, we have to make sure we have good grammar skills. She says that we can have accents and talk any way we want to as long as we’re speaking correctly. So I try to have real good grammar. She’s the only teacher I know who makes us all want to learn and doesn’t tell lame jokes.

I would die if I had to do the laundry. That’s like the worst possible thing I can think of. What are you some kind of saint or something? LOL.

I liked your drawing of Mrs. Lau and the dog. Did you REALLY draw that? It’s REALLY, REALLY good. You should think about becoming an artist. You have good handwriting, too. I don’t see how you wrote all of that looooooong letter by hand. I would have been worn out. Once I had to write “I will not talk during arithmetic class” 500 times for my teacher, and I thought I was going to fall over dead before I got finished. I put two pencils together, one on top of the other one, so that I could write it twice at one time. Have you ever tried doing that? It works pretty good, but better if you’re doing it on college-lined paper, because the lines are closer together. Just a little trick in case you ever get in trouble for talking in school.

I better go. Time for basketball practice.

Take it easy, Cheesy (ha!),

River Dean Justice

August 16, 2008

Dear River,

Hello from New York City!! Thank you for saying you liked my drawing of Mrs. Lau and Cuba. I think my handwriting is messy, so I am glad you think it’s neat.

It was nice of you to say those things, but I am wondering, why did you call me weird and cheesy? Also, I’m not “some kind of saint.” You wrote LOL after that but I couldn’t tell if you meant it nice or mean. I don’t mind doing the laundry, even on a Friday. I don’t think you would mind either if you had lived far away from your mom and dad and brother for seven years. I am glad to finally be with them. If you want to know the truth, I think Americans have it easy. I was raised to do whatever is best for everyone in my family — even if it is something that is not fun or relaxing for me. Mum would say I shouldn’t say rude things about Americans to an American. But I guess I already said it, so it is too late.

You asked how come I picked your name and address, so I will tell you. Kiku always says, “Tell the short version of the story or I’m not going to listen.” He thinks he is Mr. Cool and he is so not. Anyway, I like long stories. I hope that is OK with you.

I think this has been a lucky summer. First, I got into the Arts and Humanities Summer Program by writing an essay about Mrs. Lau and how we are friends. Second, Ms. Bledsoe, my teacher at the Summer Program, is really nice. Every week we go someplace new, and it is all free. This week we went to Ellis Island. It was so interesting, all the different people and photographs. My favorite picture was of a little boy who got sent back to Italy alone because he had tuberculosis. I liked the picture because I could see what he was feeling by looking at his face. Everything at Ellis Island reminded me of our family, except that we came on planes not boats.

Last month we went to the Van Cortlandt House, where Dutch people lived a long time ago; the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where the red hibiscus is blooming; and the Tenement Museum, where we saw what life was like in Chinatown in the 1880s. Back then it was a Jewish, Italian, German, and Irish neighborhood. We also wrote a group letter to Mayor Bloomberg. I love to write. Whenever I put my pen on paper, I cannot stop. When I grow up, I want to be a poet.

I also love fruits and vegetables, and actually that is how I came to be writing to you.

Ms. Bledsoe took the Summer Group to the supermarket last week. Everybody said it was a lame field trip, but I was excited. Ms. Bledsoe says city kids don’t think about where things come from, especially food. She’s from North Carolina and grew up on a farm. She talked about how food is shipped into the city and how big trucks use a lot of gas and that young men and women fight wars over things like gas. She told us to be mindful of what we waste and use. I like that word: mindful. It makes me feel like my brain is a big bowl brimming over.

So we went to a D’Agostino (that’s a grocery store) on Essex Street and stood in the vegetable section. Some of the lettuce was getting watered from little sprinklers and we got wet. Ms. Bledsoe picked up an apple and said that in NY, apples get picked off the trees in October, so for us to have apples in August means they have traveled a great distance.

We looked at the labels on the apples. Some were from Israel. Some from Washington State. Ms. Bledsoe said we should picture those places on the map, to see how far the apples had come. While she was talking I saw a pile of okra. I thought maybe it had come from India, like me. It was in a wooden box that said KENTUCKY on the side, and there was a picture of mountains. I looked at the okra and the mountains and I wanted to go to Kentucky. It looked just like home.

When we got back to class, Ms. Bledsoe handed out a list of names and addresses. She said the assignment was to pick a pen pal and write a letter. Everyone said this was stupid and babyish, but I thought it sounded like fun. All the other kids wanted to do e-mails, but I wanted to write a real letter and put a pretty stamp on it, so I got a different list. There were lots of names and addresses on the list, kids from all over. Malaysia, Scotland, Hawaii, Trinidad, Moscow. Everyone, even Ms. Bledsoe, thought I would pick someone from India. But all the addresses were in New Delhi, and I didn’t like it there the one day I saw it. When I saw your name and that you live in Kentucky, I wanted to write to you.

Do you grow okra? If you do, I will send you my grandmother’s recipe for
bhindi.
That’s how you say okra in Hindi.

Hmmm. I guess I told the realllllly long version of the story. Sorry about that.

I have to go help Mum make dinner now, but I will write you more very soon. I am wanting to talk to you about basketball and those nice walks you take with your mamaw.