Counting by 7s

“I wasn’t expecting company. I’m not prepared for visitors. I need to put a few things away . . .”

  He then quickly shoots like a trained hamster through a crazy maze of stuff.

  We hear a door shut in an unseen hallway.

  I wonder what he needs to hide, because there is enough here in his living room that should mortify him.

  Dell Duke is obviously one of those people who have issues throwing things away.

  Maybe he doesn’t have full-blown disposophobia, which is hoarding, but he’s on the same playing field.

  The Old Me would have taken a lot of pleasure in a firsthand look at such a complex emotional condition.

  But not now.

  Pattie and I stand in the entry and stare at the stacks of newspapers, magazines, and mail surrounding the discount lawn furniture, which I decide is the exact color of a white rabbit’s eyes.

  Pink with a drop of yellow mixed in.

  The complete patio set—called “masculine salmon” on a manufacturer’s tag sticking out from one of the cheap metal chairs—has cut distinct circles in the wall-to-wall carpeting.

  I step deeper into the room so that Pattie can close the door, and I find myself next to an outdoor umbrella still encased in cloudy plastic.

  It is propped against the wall.

  I feel its sadness.

  I trail behind Pattie down a narrow path to the kitchen.

  Towers of sloppily rinsed microwave trays are on most of the counters. Off to the side, I see teetering columns of red disposable cups.

  I realize that I have not had great exposure to other people’s ways of living.

  I had never seen the kind of garage setup that the Nguyens have going, and looking at this place, I understand that there are clearly whole lifestyles that have been kept from me.

  Dell Duke is charting a different course.

  If this is what he has in the open, I’m now curious to look in one of his closets.

  Pattie must have the same thought, because she moves out of the kitchen, through the clutter of the living room, back to the tight hallway.

  I follow.

  But with some caution.

  This looks like the kind of place where an unexpected exotic animal might appear—the illegal kind that people buy on a whim in the back rooms of pet stores, but then later set free in an alley because they can’t control the razor-sharp claws or the eating demands.

  The door to the first bedroom is closed but that doesn’t stop Pattie from turning the knob and opening it.

  We both now see Dell stuffing an oily-looking sleeping bag into a nylon sack.

  But there are no dead bodies or anything.

  At least not in plain sight.

  It’s just a super-messy room.

  Comic books and magazines are strewn next to the bed, which doesn’t have sheets or a mattress pad.

  The necks of empty wine bottles poke out of a metal garbage can (the sort that should be outside) in the corner.

  It only takes an instant for Pattie to find the handle on the closet door.

  Dell shouts:

  “No!”

  But it’s too late. Pattie has opened the louvered door to reveal a wall of underwear.

  There are hundreds of them.

  I used to enjoy estimating quantities, but not anymore. I know with certainty that in the past this would have really interested me.

  Pattie steps back as Dell sputters:

  “I’m . . . behind on the laundry!”

  This is truly an understatement. Pattie looks from Dell to the underwear and then to me.

  It seems obvious that there is no way that it could ever appear that Pattie and her kids live in this apartment.

  But I’m wrong.

  I’m not sure what flipped her switch, but maybe it’s the size of the challenge.

  We are back in Dell’s dusty Ford now heading (under Pattie’s direction) to the Salvation Army on Ming Street.

  Minutes later we all stand at the front counter of the secondhand store.

  Pattie has picked out a red Formica table with four nondescript dining chairs, a stuffed lemon-colored sofa, and a leather lounger that swivels in a complete circle.

  She has the tags for a metal frame bunk bed with mattresses that appears to at one time have belonged to a military enthusiast. Worn SEMPER FI stickers cover most of the railings.

  It isn’t until Dell’s credit card is out that he has the courage to ask:

  “How are we going to get all this stuff back to my place?”

  Pattie, without explanation, heads straight out the glass door to the sidewalk, leaving Dell to complete the transaction.

  Dell and I find her standing outside at the curb next to a truck that says WE HAUL.

  The two men who get out to help us are named Esteban and Luis. They have well-developed packing skills.

  It doesn’t take them long until they have all the furniture tied down into the back of the very worn-looking pickup.

  Upon arrival at the Gardens of Glenwood, the two men carry everything up the flight of stairs to Dell’s apartment without even breaking a sweat.

  Pattie supervises.

  Dell stays out of the way.

  I’m the silent observer.

  Now all we have to do is get rid of his junk.

  Pattie thrusts a detailed list into Dell’s hands and orders him to the market.

  Once he is gone, she positions me with Luis and Esteban in a line where we form a human chain.

  There are only four of us, but using this ancient means of transport, months of trash leaves the building.

  Dell returns two hours later and most of his stuff is now in the building Dumpsters. He says it was his plan to take it to the recycling center.

  But I know that he’s lying.

  He doesn’t seem upset that we got rid of his things, so I guess he’s not a hoarder.

  He just has trouble with follow-through.

  Chapter 33

  Mai stayed after school on Fridays to participate in a program for at-risk teens.

  They didn’t call them that, though. They called them “special enrichment students.”

  But of course she knew.

  Mai had read the pamphlet describing the funding for the project. It was on the desk of the Team Leader the day of the first meeting, so she wasn’t really snooping or anything.

  She was curious what they thought she was at risk for.

  Once a week a dozen chosen kids met at the school library to discuss everything from setting your sights on college to the importance of getting your teeth cleaned.

  Today a woman was talking about eating green vegetables and doing extracurricular activities to build a résumé.

  When she finished, they were all given little tickets. At the end of the program they could turn them in for prizes or something. The Team Leader wasn’t clear on that.

  Mai loaded her backpack with new books from the school library and walked to the bus stop.

  Most of the kids who weren’t “at risk” had their own cars to drive home, or parents who picked them up.

  So maybe, Mai thought, the risk part involved riding the city bus.

  The bus shelter in front of the school had a flowerbed with the toughest roses in Bakersfield.

  Or at least that’s what Mai thought as she stared at the thorny bushes. One of the few things that Willow had said in the last month was that everything in life could be seen in a garden.

  According to her, if a plant was in decent soil and had sun and enough water, a bud would at some point show up. It would start small and very green.

  Sometimes bugs ate holes in the exterior of the bud, but if they didn’t get too deep into the thing, it would bloom.

  And the world would see the flower.

&nb
sp; With time, the outer petals would start to wrinkle, beginning at the tips. The shape couldn’t hold and the whole thing would open up big and then sloppy.

  The rose was now more affected by the wind or the rain or even the hot sun.

  The petals would finally just dry up, and break away, falling to the ground.

  That left only a round bulb, which was the skull of the thing. And in time that would finally drop as well, returning to the soil.

  There was as much of a lesson in that, Willow had explained, as in anything she had been told by anyone about life or death or the stages in between.

  What was the rose before it was a rose?

  It was the soil and the sky and the rain and the sun.

  And where was the rose once it was gone?

  It returned, Mai figured, back to the larger whole that surrounds us all.

  No one ever picked up Quang-ha from school, so when Dell Duke’s car screeched to a stop right at his feet, he was alarmed.

  The smudged window slid down and Dell shouted:

  “Hey!”

  The boy could feel his whole body tense. You don’t say “Hey” to someone named “Ha.”

  And then Dell shouted:

  “Get in! We’re on a tight schedule!”

  Quang-ha didn’t budge.

  “What’s going on?”

  Dell reached across and opened the car door.

  “Ask your mother. She’s running this scam.”

  Dell didn’t explain much; just that Pattie and Willow were at his apartment fixing it up to make it look like they lived there.

  It all seemed pretty shady to Quang-ha.

  But he called his mother on her cell and she told him to load up the cooking stuff from their garage.

  He was supposed to take blankets and sheets and bathroom things too.

  He was pretty sure it was the dumbest idea in the world, but he crossed the alley and took the sweaty counselor with him.

  For over a month Quang-ha had been sleeping in the same room with a complete stranger. Maybe someone was finally going to do something about that.

  Dell stood in the doorway of the garage and stared.

  No wonder they had used his address! This place didn’t even look legal.

  Dell had assumed they lived in a house or at least a real apartment. So this was a shocker.

  Where did the woman get all of her attitude?

  After he and the Lone Wolf (who might actually be an Oddball) had placed a rice cooker, a bamboo steamer, a wok, half a dozen bowls, tongs, a collection of chopsticks, two meat cleavers, three cooking pots, and the bedding into Dell’s trunk, they filled an old milk crate with food.

  They then grabbed some stuff from the bathroom in the salon, and were back on the road.

  It felt, to Quang-ha, like some kind of prison break.

  By the time they swung into the dusty carport of the Gardens of Glenwood, he was even more on board with the whole plan. It seemed obvious that they were going around the law, or at least defying some rule or regulation.

  And that was exciting.

  Chapter 34

  Is there a more personal piece of clothing than someone’s underwear?

  I don’t think so.

  Dell wears all different styles.

  He has a great variety of colors and a shocking number of patterns. He is heavy on the cartoon characters. And images of vegetables.

  It is truly disturbing that I now know this.

  This man is not just my counselor. He’s also supposedly monitoring my schoolwork. Although in five weeks, that has never once come up.

  I can’t believe we don’t just leave his privates in the closet, but Pattie is all about doing things the Right Way.

  Even if that means getting involved in someone’s obsessive-compulsive underwear disorder.

  It takes us three trips to haul the mountain down to the laundry room.

  After we get the first load started, Pattie morphs into some kind of human tornado.

  Earlier, I realize, she was just some kind of tropical storm.

  By the time Dell and Quang-ha come up the stairs carrying the box of kitchen stuff, we have mopped the floor (which turns out to be shades of orange, not brown), cleaned the microwave and all of the counters, and filled eight trash bags with more detritus.

  I know a lot about bacteria and germs, so this is all very challenging for me.

  Dell has barely finished bringing up the stuff from the garage when Pattie hands him another list and shoves him back out the door.

  Quang-ha stays with us.

  Everything in Dell’s apartment looks gray.

  This is because someone put a canvas tarp over the skylight in the living room. Probably to cut down on air-conditioning costs or something.

  Now that tarp is coated in atmospheric dirt. Mold and mildew stains rim the edges where water must collect.

  So when you are in Dell’s living room, no matter what the weather is outside, overhead it appears that a CAT-5 hurricane has just descended.

  Pattie has her hands on her hips and she’s squinting up at the covered skylight.

  She says:

  “It’s not right.”

  The look on Pattie’s face isn’t good.

  I stare up with her.

  It’s like a giant dirty diaper is on the ceiling.

  She calls for Quang-ha, who has just been given a large plastic garbage bag of wine and beer bottles (found under the bathroom sink) to take downstairs.

  Pattie points skyward.

  “I want you to go up onto the roof and take off the tarp.”

  In a month, I’ve never seen Quang-ha happy, so his current scowl is just more of the same. He says:

  “You just told me to throw away these bottles.”

  Pattie says:

  “Do both.”

  I feel bad for him and offer:

  “I’ll help.”

  Quang-ha doesn’t want my assistance. But his standard operating procedure is to ignore me. Completely.

  And I’m okay with that.

  Now he grabs the heavy bag and heads to the door.

  I follow.

  We are both in the hallway and he’s lugging the bag of bottles. He should leave them if he’s going to go up on the roof, but he doesn’t.

  I don’t say anything because he’s older and can’t stand me. And also because I rarely talk now.

  He’s only here cleaning up Dell’s because of me and my problems.

  There’s a stairwell at the end of the corridor, and a sign indicates that it leads to the roof.

  I wish that Quang-ha would put down the bag of bottles. I think he’s trying to prove something to me, like maybe that the big bag isn’t too heavy for him. But I know that it is.

  I’ve lifted more things today than I have in the last six months.

  Quang-ha goes right up the narrow steps. There is a door at the top with a sign that says:

  ROOF ACCESS FOR MAINTENANCE

  WORKERS ONLY

  I don’t think we qualify, but Quang-ha just pushes the door open anyway. The sun is sinking, but outside it is still bright. There are ten skylights and ten dirty old tarps.

  So Dell isn’t the only one with interior shades of gray.

  I can see that Quang-ha is confused.

  I point to the left side of the building.

  “Over there. The third one is his living room.”

  He isn’t going to argue with me because after over a month of living together he knows I really only talk to state facts.

  Quang-ha still has the garbage bag as he moves across the hot roof.

  Again, I follow him.

  I’m not sure why. I’m his little kid shadow and I can see that I’m only making everything worse.


  There are bricks that hold down the corners of the tarps, and when we reach what is Dell’s unit, I lift one.

  Quang-ha then bends over and, with his free hand, pulls on the dirty piece of canvas.

  But the trash bag slips from his other hand and the bottles spill out and one crashes right at his feet.

  Green glass shards go flying and several pieces land on the clear plastic of the newly uncovered skylight.

  The Old Me would have screamed from the crash.

  The New Me expects these kinds of things.

  The New Me is actually surprised that we weren’t cut up from the airborne shards.

  Quang-ha was angry before. Now he’s really angry. He starts to pick up the broken glass.

  I move quickly to help.

  Standing over the skylight, I see that three glass pieces have caught the sun. They send small spots of color down into the room below.

  I glance over at Quang-ha. He sees it too. I say:

  “It’s like a stained-glass window.”

  Quang-ha is silent, but he takes a beer bottle and breaks it. He then positions a piece of amber glass on the surface.

  A chunk of orange-brown light now hits the carpet below in Dell’s place.

  We exchange looks.

  But we don’t say anything.

  And then we go to work covering the entire skylight.

  We end up breaking all of the bottles to get enough glass pieces.

  I find this to be strangely enjoyable.

  I can tell Quang-ha feels the same way, even though he is silent while we smash what appears to be the result of a real drinking problem.

  When we finally finish, we go downstairs.

  Quang-ha opens the apartment door and we both can see right away that the room has taken on a totally different quality.

  The light.

  Chunks of green and amber filter down from above.

  What was an ordinary and soulless feature is suddenly interesting.

  We’re standing there staring up at what we’ve done when Pattie comes in. I don’t want her to be mad, especially at Quang-ha. I say:

  “It’s temporary.”