Counting by 7s

  The door to the trailer office was open, but not wide like usual. It was open only a slice.

  So I looked inside and I didn’t see Dell Duke. I saw two bodies.

  But not dead bodies.

  Alive.

  I stepped back, but one of the two, the teenage girl, had seen me.

  And she said:

  “It’s okay. You can come in.”

  I didn’t know if I should do this.

  The room was cramped and even though there was an extra chair, I felt like I was intruding.

  But then the girl got up and pushed the door open all the way and said:

  “We’re almost out of here.”

  I could now see that an older boy was hunched over a coloring book and he was very intently filling in the spaces.

  I’ve never understood coloring books.

  Either draw a picture, or don’t. But why waste your time coloring in someone else’s work?

  I knew that Dell Duke saw other students from the school district, but the sight of the two older kids made me uncomfortable.

  The girl suddenly said:

  “My brother won’t leave until he finishes his assignment. Sorry. His session was over ten minutes ago.”

  The boy shot the girl a hostile look, but returned to his feverish coloring. The girl then continued:

  “Mr. Duke went to get a soda. At least that’s what he said he was going to do. But he’s been gone a long time, so I don’t believe him.”

  I nodded, but didn’t speak.

  I admired the suspicion in the girl’s statement and I now hoped that Dell Duke didn’t walk through the door holding a Diet Pepsi.

  I made a note to myself to talk to him about soft drinks.

  Those beverages are not healthy.

  I was tired from dodging the volleyball in gym class, and so I took the only other seat in Dell’s office.

  I didn’t want to stare, but the teenage girl now at my side was visually very interesting.

  Like me, she was someone impossible to easily peg in terms of ethnic background.

  At first glance, she might have been African American. Her skin was dark; her hair was shiny black, and a bed of curls.

  I kept my head facing forward and completely still, but moved my eyes into their corners to get a better look.

  With this closer, peripheral examination, I suddenly wondered if the girl was a Native American.

  I took great interest in the cultures of indigenous people.

  What if this girl was a member of the Cahuilla tribe?

  The Cahuilla lived in Southern California and once thrived in Bakersfield.

  It was possible.

  But not probable.

  Suddenly I couldn’t control myself. I turned to the girl next to me and asked:

  “Do you speak Takic?”

  Chapter 9

  mai & quang-ha

  A leader gets everyone to shoot in the same direction.

  Nguyen Thi Mai was fourteen years old and a freshman at Condon High School, which was on the other side of Bakersfield from where Willow Chance lived.

  She had a brother named Nguyen Quang-ha who was a year older.

  Quang-ha was a troublemaker.

  Mai was not.

  She was determined and deliberate in everything she did, and that quality attracted people to her.

  Mai had true confidence. Or as she liked to see herself, she was born strong-willed, while a lot of the world was wishy-washy.

  Adults didn’t intimidate her, and neither did strangers of any age.

  Because Mai, as her mother reminded people, was born in the year of the dragon; and that meant nobility and power and strength.

  Starting the second week of class, on Thursday afternoons, the teenage kids caught a bus to the school district main offices for Quang-ha’s appointment in Dell Duke’s windowless mobile unit.

  Mai had the bus fare, a bottle of water, and two snacks. Even though she was a year younger than her brother, she had long been his keeper.

  Mai waited for Quang-ha to have his counseling session, and when he was finished, they went together to Happy Polish Nails.

  This was the salon that their mother operated.

  Mai knew, of course, that she and her brother stood out in Bakersfield.

  Her mother had been born in Vietnam from a father who was a black American soldier. Because of this, Mai’s mother, who was named Dung, had been an outcast.

  When the U.S. government gave teenage Dung a chance, she had left home and gone halfway around the world to California. In the next ten years, she had two children with a man originally from Mexico (who had left soon after Mai was born to see his sick brother, and had never come back).

  Dung had changed her name to Pattie once she found out what it meant in English. But even though she had been in the United States for twenty-one years, some of her mail still came addressed to Dung. Her kids didn’t appreciate it.

  Dell had ignored (even more than usual) his regularly scheduled cases.

  He gave the pest known as Quang-ha a geometric coloring book and commanded that the kid complete three pages.

  Dell was surprised to see that, instead of complaining, the hostile teenager actually looked enthused to employ colored pencils to fill in blank spaces.

  Being careful that no one was watching, Dell then got in his car and took off. He had fifty minutes to take care of his business.

  Dell Duke returned to the room without a can of soda, but with a pet carrier. His voice was strangely high-pitched and harsh as he said:

  “Quang-ha, you should be done by now. I told you to leave at ten till four.”

  Quang-ha continued coloring and didn’t even bother to look up.

  Mai and Willow Chance both fixated on the jail-like front panel of the beige plastic crate, where they saw an extremely large orange cat.

  Dell Duke was insistent:

  “You have to go. My next appointment is here!”

  Quang-ha kept working the mustard-colored pencil as if he was getting bonus money for every stroke.

  This shouldn’t have surprised Dell because the kid was in counseling for not following classroom instruction and having control problems.

  But Dell looked like the one with a control problem. His face flushed deep red and he put the pet carrier down on his desk as he raised his voice.

  “Done! Finished! No more coloring!”

  Willow seemed to be sucked back into her chair.

  And when that happened, Mai got to her feet. She was some kind of wild tiger unleashed into the airless room.

  “Don’t you raise your voice at us! He didn’t do anything wrong. If my brother wants to finish the picture, he’ll finish the picture!”

  She took in a deep breath and continued.

  “He was supposed to have a counseling session, but you were gone the whole time. That’s not right! You are late for your next appointment with this little girl here. And that’s not right either! And here’s something else to chew on: I don’t think you’re allowed to have animals on school property. We could turn you in for that!”

  Chapter 10

  I felt my blood pressure rise.

  But in a good way.

  The exotic-looking teenager standing in front of me was bold.

  She was yelling at Mr. Dell Duke and the tone of her voice demanded that the world listen as she stood up for her brother and for me.

  It was there, in the small, stuffy trailer on the edge of the baking-hot blacktop of the Bakersfield school district parking lot, that I found an older girl who was disappointing only in her failure to speak the language of the mostly obliterated Cahuilla people.

  I found Mai Nguyen.

  Dell Duke stared at us but he didn’t say anything.

  Instead h
e pulled the only rabbit he had out of a hat, which happened to be a cat from a cage.

  He gave us all a wobbly smile and opened the metal door of the plastic pet carrier.

  Then he said:

  “This is my cat, Cheddar. I thought you might like to meet him.”

  So this was my surprise.

  I had said that my father was allergic to pet hair, which was why I couldn’t have a dog or a cat or even a pygmy goat.

  This was Dell’s attempt to please me. To bond. He brought in his cat. It was strange, but right then in that room, what wasn’t?

  The cat took several (in what looked like slow motion) steps onto the desk. I knew that cats behaved in this casual way because they weren’t needy.

  They didn’t run and greet a person and slobber with joy.

  They didn’t look for validation or recognition.

  They didn’t fetch or cower or make big-eyed faces that say: “Love me, please.”

  Their failure to care wasn’t just appealing, but seductive.

  Because cats made you try.

  We all watched as Cheddar sauntered across the desktop, rubbing his freakishly big body against the three shelves of the in-and-out box (where Dell Duke had piled official-looking paperwork that I suddenly felt certain he later simply dumped unread in the large storage closet that was behind his desk).

  The huge cat then took a few sniffs and found the whole place not very satisfying.

  With no obvious provocation, he leaped down to the floor and bounced right out of the building like a bright-colored, fur-covered soccer ball.

  We watched as Cheddar hit the parking lot running, and in moments the fat cat had disappeared.

  For 37 straight minutes, we all looked under cars, behind hedges, and around the buildings of the school district administration headquarters for the missing hunk of Cheddar.

  But he was not to be found.

  Dell claimed that he felt bad about this, but oddly it seemed that Mai and I felt much worse.

  Finally, after agreeing to stop our search, we all returned to Dell’s office to make LOST CAT flyers.

  Dell didn’t have any photos of his cat, which also struck me as strange because from everything that I’d read, photographing a pet seemed to be where most animal owners found their greatest joy.

  But the problem was solved when Quang-ha drew a perfect pencil sketch of Cheddar, which then served as the centerpiece of the LOST CAT—PLEASE HELP—REWARD OFFERED flyer.

  Dell wouldn’t list an exact reward amount.

  I believe that economic incentive is crucial as a motivator, especially in a consumer-driven society.

  But I didn’t argue the point.

  We gathered around the copying machine in the main office and watched together as the image was reproduced.

  It was here that I was able to identify a new sensation.

  I have never been part of a true group effort with older kids.

  And while we hadn’t been successful in finding Dell Duke’s lost cat named Cheddar, I couldn’t help but experience a kind of accomplishment as I stood next to fourteen-year-old Mai and her surly big brother.

  I was not pretending to be anyone but myself, and they still accepted me into their troop.

  I felt human.

  That was the only way I could describe it.

  Mr. Dell Duke drove us home.

  He said that he had to take me first and I assumed that this was because it would be inappropriate for him to be alone with a kid in his vehicle.

  Parents had to give permission for students to be off school grounds with anyone who works for the district.

  But I didn’t want to raise any red flags, even though that was my signature color.

  For a moment, I drifted off into my head, but not with thoughts about something like cellular structure.

  I found myself imagining the place where Mai and Quang-ha lived.

  Maybe it was a home with a chronically ill relative who was interested in regular examination by a young person who would listen endlessly to ailments and take precise notes.

  Or perhaps Mai’s family had an apartment with a roof-deck that housed an amateur self-constructed observatory with a shockingly powerful reflecting telescope.

  Sitting in the backseat, I wanted to exchange vital contact information with this older and intriguing girl named Mai.

  In a blink of pure fantasy, I suddenly saw myself walking away from Dell Duke’s grimy car with a tiny glass vial of her blood sample for genome sequencing.

  Because even though Mai said during the cat search that her mother came from Vietnam, I hadn’t completely given up on the idea that she could have something to do with the Cahuilla tribe.

  This was one of my secrets. When I was younger, I imagined that I was an Indian princess.

  Looking out the car window to the street that I’d known my whole life, I understood that origins were so important.

  Even if you didn’t know your own.

  I was energized.

  Once I was home, I went into the kitchen and fixed myself a drink of hot water mixed with a tablespoon of honey (from my backyard beehive) and a tablespoon of my own homemade vinegar (made from tart apples, brown sugar, and distilled water).

  As I sipped the tangy beverage, I was certain that the day, despite the loss of the counselor’s cat, had been a triumph.

  Having a friend—even one who was older and went to high school—would open a door for me into another world.

  That afternoon I made a decision.

  I would learn everything possible about lost cats and Vietnam.

  It felt as if I were going up and over some kind of barrier after spending too long hitting the thing straight on.

  Chapter 11

  Mai watched as Willow got out of the backseat and headed up the driveway, pulling her wheeled luggage behind her.

  Quang-ha mumbled:

  “Someone should tell her to get a backpack.”

  Mai shot him a hard look, which she knew would keep her brother quiet.

  She could see that the strange girl’s house had been painted the color of the shrimp curry that her mother made. It was a bold yellow that stuck out in the drab neighborhood.

  But what really interested Mai was behind the house.

  Because it was very green back there.

  On one side, a stand of timber bamboo jutted up three stories high. On the other edge of the property, a tall palm tree and several smaller, bluish silver eucalyptus trees trembled together in the late-afternoon wind.

  Staring at the house and the properties next door, it looked to Mai like there was a jungle behind where Willow lived.

  No one else had that. Not in a neighborhood that spent two hundred days a year without rain.

  Maybe, she theorized, the girl’s parents owned a plant nursery.

  Her brother didn’t seem at all interested in Willow, or her house, but Dell stared intently with his nose almost touching the glass as Willow removed a key from a zipped pocket in her carry-on luggage.

  Any regular little kid would have then turned and waved back, or done something to acknowledge the people in the waiting car.

  But Willow simply unlocked the door and slid inside, disappearing into the shadows of the curry-colored house as if she were suddenly invisible.

  It was intriguing.

  Once Willow was gone, Mai watched as Dell Duke jerked his car out of park, hitting the gas pedal so quickly that the Ford lurched forward like a broken carnival ride.

  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  So he was that eager to get rid of them?

  Interesting.

  She hadn’t had a very good opinion of the counselor, but in the last hour she had been feeling bad about his lost cat.

  Now she was quickly returning to her or
iginal position:

  Dell Duke was not a natural at his job.

  After Dell dropped off the troublemaker and his flame-throwing sister, he headed home.

  The route took him directly by the school district offices and that was when he saw Cheddar sitting in the still-hot sun on top of a once green Dumpster at the south side of the parking lot.

  Dell didn’t even brake to get a better look.

  There were rats on the property. That was just a fact.

  As far as Dell was concerned, Cheddar could pull his own weight back there. And maybe shed a pound or two in the process.

  Dell had picked up the cat after reading a notice online about a lost pet.

  It wasn’t a shelter, so he didn’t have to pay any fees. He just claimed the fleabag and even took the plastic cat carrier that the old lady offered.

  The woman seemed thrilled to be reuniting the cat with the owner. Dell almost felt bad.

  Still, he was going to dump the LOST CAT flyers in the trash. He had promised the kids that he’d post them, but that was just to keep them in their shoes. They’d been pretty anxious about losing Cheddar.

  The flyers were on the passenger-side floorboard of the car.

  Now, as he waited at a traffic light, he had to admit that the drawing, coupled with the imaginative and dedicated coloring that Quang-ha had done earlier in the afternoon, was disturbing.

  The kid was a Lone Wolf.

  He was coded green.

  It was just wrong for the delinquent to have any artistic talent.

  But anyone could see from the picture of Cheddar that the surly kid had some kind of visual sense.

  Dell made a note to change Quang-ha’s category.

  He was going to be moved to purple, for Oddball.

  Dell found himself wondering if all kinds of assumptions were questionable.

  And that was Strange indeed.

  Once in his possession-choked apartment, Dell peeled off his stinky shirt and poured himself a tall glass of red wine.