The Color Orange
It was a hot summer day on Orange Street, one of those days that seem ordinary until you look back on it. Lawn sprinklers sparkled, mourning doves cooed, and the sky was an amazing blue, as it always was in L.A. Even at eight A.M., the sun looked like a giant egg yolk. In fact, a few parents made a joke about the sidewalk being hot enough to fry an egg on by noontime. One grumpy kid wondered aloud why anyone would be dumb enough to do that.
Everything seemed normal, except you couldn't help noticing the Day-Glo orange cone sitting at the curb in front of the empty lot. (The mysterious stranger didn't arrive until later.)
The empty lot belonged to the kids who lived on that particular block of Orange Street. They didn't have the papers to prove they were the owners, of course, but the lot had been theirs to play in ever since they could remember, which, even if you subtracted those baby years when nothing really sank in, was more or less a decade.
The lot had no house on it, but it wasn't completely empty because of its orange tree. Years ago, the tree had shaded the backyard of a house that was later torn down and never rebuilt. And oh, what a tree it was, with its juicy fruit and big huggable trunk and dark canopy of leaves! It even had a little plastic swing hanging from a big branch. The tree was the last living member of the grove that had given the street its name, long ago. Everyone knew that the coolest spot on the street (temperature-wise and otherwise) was under the orange tree. That's where the Girls With Long Hair Club conducted its meetings.
Over the years, hundreds of things had been buried under the lot's hard clay surface, whether by accident or on purpose. The mysterious stranger himself had come to dig up some small things, as well as something big.
Nasturtiums and sage and lavender grew all over the lot. They looked so grateful to be planted in the sun, you knew they would bloom forever. A huge, bushy bougainvillea vine climbed the lot's chain-link fence. Robert Green (302 Orange Street) liked to conduct his important, but lonely, missions behind that vine. He didn't pay attention to the orange cone because orange cones showed up on streets in Los Angeles all the time, and they usually meant street repair.
Bunny Perkins (308 Orange Street and a member of the GWLH Club) noticed the orange cone when she let her dog Ruff out, and went outdoors herself, to count snails. Summer always meant lots of fat snails-some could be found in the garden, others meandering across the sidewalks, leaving behind silvery, wet trails. Three snails on the front walk meant bad luck. Luckily, there were only two that day, an important point to note, especially on a morning when Bunny's mother was preparing to go on a trip by plane. Ruff ran to the lot next door and lifted his leg by the orange cone. Bunny phoned Leandra Jackson (301 Orange Street, another GWLH Club member) as soon as she could.
"What do you think that cone means?" Bunny asked.
"It's not the cone," said Leandra grumpily. Lots of things made Leandra grumpy lately, especially changes out of the blue. Or in this case, orange. "It's the color orange."
"Orange?"
"You heard me. In nature, orange means good things, like pumpkins, and juice, and autumn leaves, and sunsets. But when you paint something orange it usually means something not-so-good. Except, of course, if it's Halloween. And even Halloween is scary sometimes."
"It's summer."
"Exactly my point. So we're talking not-so-good. Like danger. Or condemned. And, of course, keep out."
"Keep out! I can't do that!" cried Bunny, her heart pounding. Bunny had lots of dependable ways to keep her mother safe, and one secret way involved climbing the orange tree. It worked every time.
"I'll call Ali right away," said Leandra. "I'll bet that cone means bad news. We're due for a club meeting anyway."
But Ali Garcia (305 Orange Street) wasn't worried at all. "Maybe it means an important person will be driving by, like the mayor," Ali said. "It could be something exciting. Maybe someone's going to make a movie about our street!" She and her little brother, Edgar, were sitting on the living room couch while they waited for Edgar's careperson to arrive. They lived right smack across the street from the lot and Ali had noticed the orange cone first thing that morning. "Actually, it looks just like a wizard's hat."
Leandra laughed, still grumpy. "Oh, grow up," she said. Leandra was five and a half months older than Ali, and often said that.
"Only kidding," said Ali. "See you soon."
It did look like a wizard's cap, thought Ali, staring at the cone across the street. When she had been younger, Ali had imagined the lot was a magical place, inhabited by witches, gnomes, fairies, goblins, wizards, etcetera, etcetera. Those creatures played tricks on ordinary mortals, terrified them, granted their hearts' desires, etcetera, etcetera, just as they did in all those great books she'd read.
The closest you got to real fairies in that lot were the tiny hummingbirds sipping nectar from flowers. Anyway, Ali was older now and considering a possible future career in science, probably paleontology, or archaeology. So she'd begun digging in the lot about two weeks ago, sort of as a summer hobby. She had always been curious about the true facts related to the property, which was sometimes provided by Ms. Snoops (303 Orange Street), the oldest living resident on the block.
Spread out on the coffee table were Ali's treasures from her most recent digs in the lot, not exactly the valuable treasures she'd discover on future digs in exotic places, but a good start: a jar top, two iron nails, a woolen sock. Ali's favorite was a little blue stone, shaped like a heart. It could be a wishing stone, if she still believed in that stuff.
Ali had also made a recent gruesome discovery. Ruff, Bunny's dog, had been digging holes in the lot, as usual, and that's how Ali had found the ancient cookie tin. The gruesome discovery was inside that tin: a head! It was a doll's head, not a human one, but still… Its face was cracked all over, its hair and one eyeball were missing, but it was still smiling faintly, despite its bad luck.
Ali put a few fingers in its poor little skull, making it dance for Edgar like a puppet.
"Hey, kid! What's your name? Will you play with me?" Ali asked, in a squeaky voice.
But Edgar didn't answer Ali's questions like he used to. He didn't ask his own questions, either. It used to be "Why? Why? Why?" all day long. And he used to say his name, and he knew all the letters of the alphabet and the names of a whole rainbow of colors. Even turquoise! Even fuchsia! And words. Lots of words! "So smart, and only two and a half years old," everyone used to say. Edgar himself would shout, "I'm fart!" And of course everyone would fall down laughing, Edgar laughing harder than everyone else. Just laughing and laughing and laughing. But Edgar's words and Edgar's laugh had disappeared ever since he'd gone into the hospital two months ago, returning home silent and pale.
Ali put the doll's head down. She touched the blue heart shaped stone with the tip of her finger, then kissed her little brother.
"I wish for my heart's desire," she whispered.
Ms. Snoops (303 Orange Street) Reports a Murder
The kids called her Ms. Snoops because that's what she did. (Her real name was Ethel Finneymaker.)
That morning Ms. Snoops noticed the orange cone, too, when she went outdoors to deadhead her marigolds. She didn't like to disturb those hard-working 9-1-1 operators unless the situation was serious (especially so early in the day), but she knew that ominous orange cone could mean only one thing.
"Murder!" cried Ms. Snoops. She glanced around to make sure nobody had heard her, then hurried inside to make that early morning phone call.
On any other morning, if you happened to glance up at the top corner window of 303 Orange Street, chances were you'd see Ms. Snoops looking at you as you strolled by. She'd give you an embarrassed wave, or a wink, or pretend to wipe some invisible dust specks from the windowpane. Then she'd go back to whatever she was doing before she started snooping.
The kids on Orange Street weren't exactly sure what that was.
Bunny worried that Ms. Snoops was a spy in disguise. (Well, a spy wearing a nightgown, or a shiny pink tracksuit.) She wondered if she should bring up that worry with her parents.
Leandra was positive that Ms. Snoops had committed a crime of some sort. Once she'd even seen a cop ringing Ms. Snoops's doorbell! She thought she'd glimpsed an electronic bracelet around Ms. Snoops's ankle on the day Ms. Snoops slipped on an avocado pit while taking a brisk stroll. The police were probably monitoring her activities.
Robert thought Ms. Snoops was a witch. He meant that in a good way. She had a thousand wrinkles that made her look wise, and she smelled of secret potions. Also, she'd recently lent him a book called Incredible Magic Tricks for a Rainy Day, which seemed to be the real deal, whatever the weather.
Ali knew Ms. Snoops the best, because she enjoyed visiting her to discuss the history of Orange Street. But Ali kept changing her mind about Ms. Snoops.
Sometimes she thought
(1) Ms. Snoops, a retired schoolteacher, was amazingly smart, with one of those brains scientists liked to examine in their labs. Ms. Snoops was over eighty years old and had lived on Orange Street when it was part of a grove of trees. If Ali asked Ms. Snoops, "Who were all the people who've ever lived on Orange Street?" Ms. Snoops could reel off names, hobbies, what people liked to eat for breakfast-everything! Ms. Snoops also knew all the constellations, dog breeds, plant types, old movie stars, American presidents, and synonyms or antonyms for any word you threw at her.
On the other hand,
(2) sometimes Ali thought Ms. Snoops wasn't that smart. This was a surprising thought that occasionally flitted across her own brain and made her feel deeply ashamed.
But, then, she thought, maybe
(3) Ms. Snoops had a mysterious ailment which required rest, occasional exercise, and lots of vitamin C from orange juice.
Ms. Snoops did love her orange juice! She drank it at most meals, and sometimes, with a drop or two of sherry, just before she went to bed at night: certified, organic orange juice from the health food store. But after the February blossoms had bloomed and then the sun and winter rains had done their magic, Ms. Snoops got the sweetest most orangey juice for free, stolen from the orange tree growing in the lot across the street, with the help of her trusty, rusty fruit-picker pole.
Actually, it wasn't stealing. Ms. Snoops felt she had the same rights to the tree's fruit as the squirrels did. Who else took the time to personally clean up the dog poop and gum wrappers and cigarette butts around its trunk? Who else fertilized its roots or gave it long, cool drinks from a watering can? Or risked a strained back lugging a ladder across the street to hang some wind chimes, as well as a snazzy birdhouse (free with her Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's)? Ms. Snoops had many "rules of life," one of which was to help make her own neighborhood as nice as she could.
This included the prevention of murderous crimes. On this particular morning, she dialed 9-1-1.
"I'd like to report a murder," Ms. Snoops said, when the dispatcher picked up.
That wasn't exactly true, Ms. Snoops realized.
"Actually, it's an attempted murder I'm reporting."
That wasn't true, either.
"Well," Ms. Snoops continued, "the murder hasn't been attempted yet, but trust me, it will be attempted very, very soon!"
There was a short silence at the other end of the phone line, punctuated by static crackles.
"Madam, I'm afraid we need more information. How can you be certain of this murder-to-be?" asked the dispatcher.
Now Ms. Snoops was very confused. "Well. I-"
But how could she be so certain? What had made her call 9-1-1 in the first place? Ms. Snoops racked her brain, but she couldn't remember.
"I really don't know why I called. I'm so terribly, terribly sorry for disturbing you," said Ms. Snoops, and she hung up the phone.
"Mitzi, Mitzi," she murmured sadly. "My memory is disappearing again."
Ms. Snoops was talking to her cat, Mitzi, who was lounging on the windowsill. That was another of Ms. Snoops's rules of life: Always have a cat around to talk to. She figured if she didn't have a cat, she'd be talking to herself all day long, which would be unbearable. And all of her cats were named Mitzi, in honor of all the dear Mitzies who'd come before.
She hoped the children would come to the lot that morning. They always cheered her up. She looked out her window. Yes, there was that girl, Ali, the question-asker. How wonderful it felt to answer her questions!
Ali was talking to her little brother in his stroller. Ms. Snoops couldn't remember his name. And there was that young man-the little boy's nanny. And hiding behind the bougainvillea vine, she could see a boy, but could not recall his name (Steven? Charley? Hector?). She knew that pretty soon another girl would show up, the one with the animal name, and also the girl with the big hair. She couldn't remember their names either. So many kids had lived on Orange Street! How could she possibly remember all of their names?
But she used to remember: first names, middle names, last names, nicknames, wished-for names, and fun names-just-for-a-day. She could still remember some of the old ones. Agnes. Cricket. Gertrude. Larry. Pug. It was this new crop of kids whose names seemed to slip away from her, like wisps of smoke.
Now Ms. Snoops noticed the orange cone across the street, as if for the very first time that morning. "Strange," she said to Mitzi. "Must be repairing a sewer today."
She also noticed something else. Noises right beneath her front window! A car's engine was purring. A hand break was creaking. She opened her window and looked out.
"Maybe I have a visitor," she said hopefully to Mitzi, who took the opportunity to crawl out for a nice sunbath on the eave. "Now, wouldn't that just make my morning!"
A shadowy, mysterious figure was in the driver's seat, eating a sandwich. Actually, he was eating a hamburger and fries; Ms. Snoops could see that clearly now, especially with the binoculars she kept by the window for bird-watching. He was an ordinary-looking man (except for his bushy beard) wearing jeans, a floppy shirt, and a vest. She watched him take a bite of the hamburger. Then he put down the food, picked up a notebook, and began to write something.
Ms. Snoops had so many questions! What kind of person ate a hamburger and fries for breakfast? What was he writing? Should she call the police? But there was something else about that mysterious stranger. Ms. Snoops had seen him before. But where? When? Why, oh, why did he look so familiar?
Ms. Snoops sighed. It was time for her daily magic trick. She plopped down onto her yoga mat. Sometimes the trick worked its magic. Most of the time it didn't.
On the mat she placed a perfect orange that had been picked from high up on the south side of the orange tree, where the sweetest oranges grew. She sat cross-legged on the yoga mat in front of the perfect orange.
And then she chanted, over and over:
NOW, NOW
MAGIC NOW,
SHOW ME HOW,
MAGIC NOW…
Ms. Snoops figured if she could just keep noticing the oranginess of the orange and its sharp perfume and its pockmarks and its almost perfect roundness, then she could hold on to her disappearing memory. Remembering the distant past was a cinch-and something she loved to do! Worrying about the future was pretty easy, too. Remembering the recent past was much trickier, and lately she just couldn't seem to wrap her brain around lots of things happening right now.
But her stomach began to growl, and, oh, that orange smelled good! So Ms. Snoops stopped what she was doing to eat it for breakfast, with a nice hunk of Gouda cheese.
306 Orange Street. Which Was Actualy the Empty Lot
Just around the time that car with the mysterious stranger pulled up under Ms. Snoops's window, Ali discovered her name spelled out in nasturtium seeds in the empty lot. Sitting cross-legged in a sunny spot near the fence, she just happened to glance down near her left foot, and there it was. ALI.
"Manny, look!" she called out to Edgar's nanny.
Ali examined the seeds again. OK, maybe the "A" was a bit of a stretch, but the "L" and the "I" did seem to be perfectly formed.
Manny was strapping Edgar into the orange tree's swing. "What's up?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing," said Ali. She sighed. She was being silly. What's the big deal about a bunch of straight lines? Any tidy squirrel or a particularly intelligent rat could have laid out the seeds like that. It was so hard to be a scientist when she kept hoping for miraculous things to happen.
Then again, strange and interesting things did seem to happen in the empty lot. For instance, the amazing ideas. Of course, you could get ideas anywhere, but Ali's best ones seemed to come to her in the empty lot. She had just had an amazing idea that morning, as a matter of fact, just before she discovered the nasturtium seeds. Ali couldn't wait to announce it to her fellow members of the Girls With Long Hair Club. She hoped they would agree that it was a kind and generous idea, the sort of idea that made you feel like a kinder and more generous person just for coming up with it.
But sometimes in the lot, someone would get an amazing idea, and soon after that, there would be an argument. Ali had some theories about why those two things would occur together. At that moment, she was considering two of them:
(1) There was a surplus of invisible, buzzing orangey electrons that inspired ideas and created friction, especially in warmer weather.
(2) Los Angeles was known as the City of Angels, and the lot was a hangout for a group of bored, invisible angels, who liked to inspire ideas and stir up trouble.
The first theory sounded more scientific, but the second theory was more fun.
"Did you ever have a great idea that arrived out of nowhere, as if, say, a little angel whispered something in your ear? Something you'd known all along, but didn't know you knew?" she asked Manny.
"Lucky you," he said, gently pushing Edgar in his swing. "I have to work hard for my ideas, and they're not always so great."
Ali smiled at this, because in her opinion, Manny, as well as being politely modest, had very good ideas. His real name was Manuel but it had been so wonderful, so fitting when he'd said, "Hey, everybody, call me Manny the Manny!" Ali loved words, and she especially loved that words and names, like shoes, could fit.
Manny could juggle and do magic tricks. He entertained children in hospitals where he called himself Magic Manny. His torn jeans came from Planet One, the coolest store ever. He knew umpteen unusual things to do with an orange, such as piercing it with his penknife, inserting a straw in the hole, then drinking the juice on the spot! Today he had made a little rabbit for Edgar from a flattened-out orange rind. For all these reasons, Ali loved him.
And recently, about two weeks ago, just around the time Ali began her digging project, Manny had the best idea of all.
One morning during his first week at work as Edgar's nanny, Ali, Manny, and Edgar had gone to Pacific Park. Pacific Park was ten and a half blocks away. It had eight swings and a castle with turrets she could swoop down from with Edgar in her lap. They'd land in a big pile of sparkly sand.
Ten and a half blocks went by quickly when you were starting out and smelling the bacon and morning muffins at the diner, or hopping over a gas line at the pumps, or looking for TV stars sitting outside Starbucks. But it felt like twenty blocks going back home. Somehow the same sights weren't as interesting when you were seeing everything for the second time that day, all tired out. And nobody had looked like a TV star, going home.
But then, as they'd turned the corner onto Orange Street, Manny got his great idea.
"Whoa, now that's a tree for a swing," Manny had said, pointing to the orange tree, its thick branches like strong arms. As if they had a choice of other trees! The sycamore branches were too high to reach, and who ever heard of a baby swing on a scraggly old tropical palm?
Soon after that, Manny had bought Edgar's plastic swing with his very own earnings, a special, enclosed swing that looked like a little throne. And then Ms. Snoops hung up the wind chimes and that birdhouse from McDonald's, which Ali called the Birdhouse of the Golden Arches. Then Leandra got her own amazing idea for the Girls With Long Hair Club. And… presto! They had their very own private park and meeting place. Something happy had come about from something sad, although of course the sadness of Edgar's operation was much bigger than that happiness. But still.
Now, as Manny gently pushed Edgar in the swing, the bells on his dreadlocks tinkled and his skin smelled of patchouli oil. He pretended that the little orange-rind rabbit was pushing Edgar.
Ali stared at Edgar, hoping, hoping for a tiny smile. No dice. And then she remembered her idea, which was just too amazing to wait for the Girls With Long Hair Club.
"Manny, listen to my idea…" Ali began. But before she could finish, Leandra strolled into the lot.
"Whee-hoo! It's a scorcher already!" Leandra said.
Leandra flopped down under the big tree, her long hair spread out on the ground like a thick blanket. The goal of the club was to grow hair long enough to sit on. Leandra was almost at that goal, as she so often liked to tell the other club members. But it wasn't so obvious because her curly hair grew up, around, and sideways rather than straight down, like Ali's.
Edgar whimpered. Ali went over to him and put her hand on his warm little head, then kissed his fingers, one by one. Manny lifted Edgar out of the swing and gently bounced him on his knee in the shade of the tree.
"I wish Bunny would hurry up and get here," Ali said. "I have an idea I want to share."
"She's saying good-bye, and that will take her forever," said Leandra. "Her mother is going on a business trip by plane. What a baby."
"But-" Ali began.
"I know, I know," said Leandra.
They were silent for a few moments because they both understood. It was so hard for Bunny to say good-bye when her mother had to travel by airplane. Ali began to dig in the dirt with one of her archaeological tools (a garden trowel belonging to her dad). Ruff had already been digging there, too, and it was the same place she'd found the heart-shaped stone and the rusty nails. A fruitful spot.
"Well, let's discuss this orange cone business while we're waiting," said Leandra, grumpily.
"Maybe it means a marathon or a parade will be coming by today. That would be fun!" said Ali. "Why do we have to worry about something bad that hasn't even happened?" Especially when something bad already has, thought Ali, looking at silent Edgar on Manny's knee.
"I guess," said Leandra. "Hey, let's not even wait for Bunny. I have an idea I want to share, too!"
"You share yours, then I'll share mine." Ali felt that her own idea was so amazing it needed to go last.
But just then, as if out of nowhere, Robert appeared in the lot, from the direction of the bougainvillea vine. He was carrying a giant shoebox (nike, blk+rd, 14w), which had once contained his father's sneakers.
"Hey, Rob-o!" said Manny. "How're you doing?"
Robert smiled broadly. He loved when Manny called him Rob-o! He wished other people would pick up on the nickname, but so far, no one had.
Leandra lifted up her head. "Do you mind? We're having a club meeting here!"
"So what?" said Robert, feeling his face flushing pink, like a grapefruit (Embarrassment Level One). "It's public property. Well, it's not public property, but you guys don't own it. And it's a free country, isn't it?"
Boy, did he sound like a jerk. It's a free country?, for halibut's sake! But he could remember a time, a few short years ago, when they'd all hung out in the lot together: selling orange juice to people walking by, putting on carnivals, launching imaginary rockets, or just doing nothing. Even doing nothing used to be fun! When exactly had things changed? He himself felt like the same person inside.
"Robert, how about giving us an hour or so?" Ali asked kindly. "Then the lot is all yours."
"Thanks," said Robert, "but I'd actually like to ask Manny a question."
"Fire away!" said Manny.
"One-on-one, privately," Robert said. Robert could feel his flushed face progressing to Embarrassment Level Two (tomato). And when exactly did his face start looking like some sort of produce whenever he was around these girls?
"Sorry, Rob-o. I'm working now," said Manny. "How about stopping by the Garcia's while Edgar's napping, say one P.M. or so?"
"Great," said Robert. Maybe his mission will have been accomplished by then. He shifted his big shoebox to his other arm, hoping one of the girls would ask him what was in it. Then he'd be able to answer, "Nothing. Yet." Heavy emphasis on the "yet." Just to keep them in suspense.
But nobody asked him anything. "See you later," said Robert, before slowly walking away.
"Now, where were we?" Leandra asked, glaring after him.
"Your great ideas," said Manny. He began to feed Edgar an orange slice. Edgar chewed it slowly, the juice dribbling down his chin.
"Right," Leandra said. "I was thinking-"
"Robert is lonely," Manny interrupted. "Maybe he wants to join your club."
Ali and Leandra giggled.
"Robert doesn't want to join the club. He just wants to eavesdrop, then make fun of us in front of my brothers. You should hear them go on and on," Leandra said.
"But really," said Manny. "I know the club is for girls with long hair, but maybe you could change your focus to include him."
"That's what I wanted to tell you. That's what my idea is about. Changing our focus!" Ali said. "But not with Robert," she quickly added.
Manny began to push Edgar in the swing again. "How would you feel if your best friend suddenly moved to New Zealand?" he asked.
"Well, that's life," said Leandra, gruffly.
"Right. That's life," said Ali, feeling a twinge of guilt like a pinprick. That's exactly what her mother had said, but in a much kinder voice, on the awful day they'd told Ali about the tumor growing inside her brother's brain. In his cerebellum. Cerebellum was one fancy word she wished she'd never had to learn! "Why? Why? Why?" Ali had cried. "That's life, mi vida," her mother said. "It's nobody's fault."
Now Ali was afraid to look up and see Manny's disapproval, so she began busily digging in the dirt again.
After a while, Leandra said, "I'm not waiting for Bunny. Here's my idea."
Ali wasn't listening. Her trowel had dug deep, scooping up some more nails, and a small piece of charred wood. She put everything into her bag.
"Why do you bother with that junk?" Leandra asked.
"It's not junk," Ali said. "OK, maybe this stuff is junk, but it's fun to think I'll find something really important. And look at this find!" She took the little blue stone from the pocket of her shorts. "It's shaped just like a heart."
"Let's see," said Leandra, leaning closer. "Well, I think it's liver-shaped. Actually, no. It's shaped like a lung."
"Very funny," Ali said, frowning. She rubbed it again, then pressed the stone to her lips.
"I'll bet you're making a wish right now," said Leandra. "You are! You're actually making a wish."
Ali shrugged. "So what? It just felt like a wishing moment. I didn't want to waste it." She hurriedly dropped the stone back into her pocket.
"Oh, grow up!" said Leandra. "Anyway, back to my idea." She looked at Manny and twirled a lock of hair around her forefinger. "I think we should all have dreadlocks, like yours, Manny. I really like dreads, and then it will also be easier to see whose hair is the longest."
Manny grinned and made an OK sign with his thumb and finger, but Ali frowned. "That's not going to fit in with my own idea."
"Why not?" asked Leandra, looking annoyed.
So Ali told her about the imaginary, theoretical angel, and how the angel had whispered something that Ali had known, but just hadn't known she'd known all along: her amazingly kind and generous idea.
"Get to the point," said Leandra.
"OK, let's say we grow our hair so long we can sit on it. What's the good of sitting on our hair? So what? Then what will our club do?"
"Well…" said Leandra.
Ali continued. "But let's say we grow our hair really long, and then we cut it off! Then we can send it away to an organization that makes wigs for sick children who need them, like Edgar. I'm not saying Edgar should wear a wig. But lots of other children who've lost their hair would like to. And we would be growing our hair for a reason, to help other kids! It would be altruistic!"
A fancy, fitting word she was finally able to use.
"And our club could have another focus," Ali continued. "It could be the Girls Who Dig Club, for instance."
"You mean cut our hair all off?" asked Leandra, who had been thinking of a long, magnificent ponytail of dreadlocks with ribbons and tinkling silver bells threaded through it. "That's the dumbest idea ever! And so is the Girls Who Dig Club!"
Ali caught her breath, tears springing from her eyes. "Well, I think the Girls With Long Hair Club is the dumbest idea ever!"
"It is not!" yelled Leandra. "And anyway, I wouldn't cut off my hair for anybody! Even Edgar!"
Invisible orangey electrons buzzed, or angels giggled, depending on your theory.
Edgar began to cry. Leandra stomped off. Manny shushed Edgar and put him gently into his stroller. He told Ali to cool down, hang loose, and schedule another meeting.
Soon the lot was empty, except for Robert-behind-the-vine again, still seeking to fulfill his secret mission.
Bunny Perkins. 308 Orange Street
Whenever her mother had to go on a business trip by plane, Bunny Perkins knew what she had to do. She chewed only on the right side of her mouth, tied her sneakers in double knots, and wore her mother's purple gardening hat outdoors, where she avoided sidewalk cracks. If she saw a squirrel or a hummingbird, she had to tap the hat, then blink rapidly three times. She also wished on a cloud (or weather permitting, the sun) at flight time. If school was out, she climbed the orange tree next door to actually touch the sky, then waved at her mother's plane for good luck. She always knew what time it was scheduled to fly by.
Her parents knew about the hat-wearing, which was obvious. They thought that was kind of cute. Bunny didn't bother telling them about all the chewing and tapping and blinking and tree-climbing and sky-touching, which even she knew was less cute. But so far everything had worked, bringing her mother home safely every time. Bunny wasn't taking any chances.
And just before her mother went on a business trip, that's when the questions popped into Bunny's head: all sorts of questions about all sorts of things that needed to be answered right then and there, before her mother went away.
For instance, she had questions about her name. Her parents said "Bunny" was her real name, but maybe there was another name somewhere, a beautiful name that "Bunny" was short for.
"You know it says Bunny on your birth certificate," said Mrs. Perkins, as she packed her bag.
"But maybe you showed me the counterfeit one," she said, "and the real one is hidden away."
"You mean the one with Rabbit on it?" asked Mrs. Perkins.
Bunny tried to get a good look at her mother's nostrils, but her mother was bent over the blouse she was folding. Mrs. Perkins's sense of humor was the annoying kind, where it was hard to tell if she was cracking a joke. Unless you studied her nostrils. If her nostrils flared, that was a sign she was joking.
"You know, it's been nine whole years since we officially named you. I forget where we hid the real birth certificate," Mrs. Perkins said, zipping her carry-on.
Bunny leaned over and nostril-checked. "Stop joking," she said.
"Oh, honey, I'm sorry," Mrs. Perkins said. "I shouldn't be joking now." She hugged Bunny and squished Bunny's face against her chest. "You know you were named after a wonderful woman."
"Kids keep asking me if I eat a lot of carrots," Bunny said, in a squished-face voice. She felt her mother sighing.
"Maybe we made a mistake," her mother said.
Bunny had heard the story a zillion times about how she was named after someone from long ago whose name was Bunny. How her parents thought the name was just right because their Bunny was such a cute, perky "bunnikins" when she was born. She was a bunnikins all right, a soft, shivery, scared one. She couldn't imagine Leandra, for instance, letting anyone get away with making fun of her (not without punching them in the nose, or something).
Bunny didn't feel perky as she followed her mother down the hall. She felt the way she always felt when her mother went on a trip by plane: slowed way down, like a turtle or a snail. But then another question occurred to her: Do turtles and snails ever feel perky, in their own way?
Before she could ask her mother that important question, Bunny's eye caught the eye of the wonderful woman she was named after. The wonderful woman was in a photograph hanging on a whole wall of photographs of dead and alive family members. The original Bunny Perkins was one of the dead ones. She had traveled from Missouri in a wagon train to a gold-mining town in California in the 1850s.
No one knew how the original Bunny had gotten her name. Modern-day Bunny's grandmother, Alice Perkins, had a wooden box with long-ago Bunny Perkins's journal inside of it. Not once did long-ago Bunny complain about her odd name in that journal. She had too many other things to think about, such as setting broken bones, delivering babies, smoking peace pipes with Native Americans, and cooking for her six children. Once, she met a roaring mountain lion by the creek near her cabin. She drew herself up as tall as she could, then hollered "AU-AU-AU-GUSTUS!" And that lion lumbered away, defeated. Later, she wrote in her journal, "I am glad my dear husband Augustus's name sounds like a lion's roar! I daresay I quaked and trembled, but I did what I had to do, for all of our sakes."
There was one thing modern-day Bunny knew for sure: Long-ago Bunny didn't look like she quaked. And she didn't look like a cute, perky bunnikins, either. She looked like she shot bunnikins, and skinned them and boiled them and gobbled them down in three or four bowls of rabbit stew at every meal, easy. She had a shotgun over her shoulder and she looked as tall as the bright pioneer sky. Her eyes were smart and squinty. Her mouth was a stern, familiar-looking straight line, like modern-day Grandpa Ed Perkins's mouth, just before he soaked his feet bunions in Epsom salts. That was probably because long-ago Bunny's feet were stuffed into skinny laced-up boots, peeking out from under her long skirt.
"I just figured out her real name," Bunny said grumpily. "It's Bunion. I'm named after someone named Bunion."
Mrs. Perkins laughed. "Bunion is a lovely name," she said.
Bunny was mad at herself for cracking a joke at such a serious moment, and mad at her mother for laughing, and mad at long-ago Bunny Perkins for being so brave, even though deep down, the wonderful woman was quaking like crazy. But Bunny knew what real quaking was like. You just couldn't hide it that easily, when you were a soft little bunnikins.
Ruff scampered to the front door, his tail going fast like a plane's propeller. Bunny let her dog outside. "I'll be there soon!" she called after him, knowing he was off to dig in the empty lot.
Ruff didn't seem to worry whether she'd be there with him or not. Suddenly, Bunny was mad at Ruff, too. Dogs didn't worry about anything! Not about plane crashes, or sad, sick kids like Edgar, or mean kids, or wars, or bad luck. Still, just for one day, just for one minute, Bunny wished she could be like Ruff, with no strong feelings about anything, except what was happening right then and there. Instead of worrying about the past and the present and the future, like she herself did, all in one quaking jumble.
Her father emerged from his dark, little office, his eyes smart and squinty in the bright morning light. His office used to be the kitchen pantry, but now it was where he spent hours telecommuting to work when Mrs. Perkins went on a business trip.
"How's my favorite nine-year-old?" asked Mr. Perkins, a joke which Bunny had heard a zillion times that year, so it wasn't really a joke anymore. And, according to her classmate Melissa Fung's aunt, if you counted the months you grew inside your mother's uterus, you were one year older than everyone said you were, which made Bunny ten. That was the Chinese custom anyway, which made a lot of sense. Except that would add only nine months to your life, which was something else Bunny would have liked to discuss with her mother.
But at that moment Mrs. Perkins was telling Mr. Perkins about all the carrot-eating questions from mean kids. To Bunny's surprise, her father said, "Tell you what… You think about what you'd like your new name to be, and when Mom comes home, that's what we'll call you."
Bunny didn't need to think about it. She'd already discussed the topic with Ali Garcia, who always had amazing ideas. "I know the most fitting name," Ali had said. "Bonita! A name that sounds pretty, and also means 'pretty.'"
"Bonita," said Bunny to her parents.
"Fine," said her mother, slipping on a crisp navy work jacket.
Now would come the giant smooch between her parents, then a kiss for her, and Mrs. Perkins would be out the door, even though she had so many questions left to ask her mother. Zillions of them.
For instance, why couldn't her mother just stay on the ground and be a real estate agent and get to see the inside of VIPs' homes, like Leandra Jackson's mother? And why couldn't the sky be the plain old sky like it used to be in pioneer Bunion Perkins's day, instead of a sky where bad things could happen?
But there was only time for two more questions.
"Do you think that orange cone means Danger or Keep Out?" Bunny asked.
"Neither, in my opinion," said her mother. "I wouldn't worry about it."
"Probably means No Parking for some reason or other," said her father. "Street cleaning, is my guess. Nothing to do with you and your friends."
And then the most important question of all. "What time is takeoff?"
"It's supposed to be eleven forty-five," Mrs. Perkins said. "Add a few more minutes and we'll be flying over Orange Street. I'll be waving."
"Me, too," said Bunny/Bonita.
Cone or no cone.
Bunny Bonita Meets the Mysterious Stranger (Sort of)
It was the mysterious stranger's birthday. He leaned against his car and gulped down a bottle of water. After that, he began to whistle the birthday song to himself. The funny thing was, it felt just like another morning, long ago, when he was ten and it was his birthday, that not-so-great birthday. The same sun heating up the oranges. The same heavy, still air in between the traffic noise. And the same… Holy moly! It was the same dog! The same cream-colored, foamy-mouthed, runaway Lab!
Of course it wasn't the man's dog, because the man's dog had been dead for quite a while. But for a second there, the stranger sure thought so, because everyone knows all good dogs are like all good dogs, and there was Ruff, jumping up on him, wagging his tail, loving him up.
And soon after that, there was Bunny/Bonita coming toward the empty lot. She was carrying a copy of Little House on the Prairie, which she loved because it took place in times before people traveled by plane, and wearing her father's watch. The watch was the old-fashioned kind with a loudly ticking second hand, to help her keep track of the passing time, so important on this particular morning. She had just finished tapping her purple hat twice and blinking six times as two squirrels scampered by, so the mysterious stranger startled Bunny/Bonita at a particularly vulnerable moment.
She saw Ruff prancing about across the street, even though he was trained to stay on one side of the street only! She saw the stranger feeding him a tempting delicacy. And then, suddenly, she stopped walking, because the strangest thing was happening to her. It was a blistering hot day, but her sneakers were trapped in a block of ice. RUFF, COME! HE'S A DOGNAPPER! Bunny/Bonita wanted to shout. But she discovered that her mouth was frozen shut, too. She just couldn't get it to work, to yell out LEANDRA! ALI! HELP! WHERE ARE YOU?
The man could have told her that everyone had gone off every which way, in a big huff. (Except for one of them.) But he thought Bunny/Bonita looked like a girl who never talked to strangers, and he was right about that.
"Let's go, boy," the man said. He grabbed Ruff's collar and led him across the street, past the orange cone, and up onto the sidewalk to Ruff's stuck-to-the-spot owner. Bunny/Bonita suddenly became unthawed, hugged her dog, and escaped to the empty lot.
Then the mysterious stranger went back to his green car. He realized he was hankering for a big hunk of red velvet cake with vanilla frosting, or even better, a piece of boysenberry pie, and he was going to drive around town to find some. He'd return to the lot that afternoon, and maybe do some digging before it got dark.
Ruff. Under the Orange Tree
Orange trees need nitrogen. Store-bought organic fertilizer, the kind Ms. Snoops used, has nitrogen in it, and so does dog pee. Ms. Snoops wasn't exactly thinking about dog pee when she ate her breakfast orange with gusto. And Ruff didn't know he was keeping the orange tree healthy, when he did his business under the tree.
But Ruff knew so many other things, that morning:
He knew he was sleepy.
He knew the earth smelled of stinky fertilizer and worms.
It was warm under his nose, but cooler where his belly touched the ground.
Something tiny, maybe a ladybug, was tickling his left ear.
A small rat raced through the weeds.
Mitzi the cat was watching, somewhere.
Robert, eating a PB&J sandwich behind the vine, was watching, too.
Ants scurried over and under the hollowed-out orange skins.
A wasp buzzed above Ruff's head, but not close enough to sting.
A squirrel held her breath on the branch above the wasp.
Hummingbirds whirred and hovered, like tiny helicopters among the blossoms, feeding their babies again and again.
And above them all sat Bunny/Bonita, lost in her book, her wristwatch ticking.
And also Ruff was thirsty.
And he had to pee again.
And he was much too deliciously sleepy to get up.
All that, Ruff knew.
Here's what Bunny/Bonita would say: "Lucky Ruff, just lying there enjoying the here and now."
"The magic now," Ms. Snoops would say.
But they'd be wrong.
As he lay under the orange tree dozing, then waking, then dozing again, Ruff, in his dog-smart way was also remembering:
the lamb bone deep under his right paw
the two and a half rawhide bones he kept burying and digging up again
the little teapot in the lot's middle, and beside it
that wooden thing with wheels he'd chewed in half
the stones of various shapes and sizes, buried and unburied, and the two glass marbles underneath
that jar with something in it, poking up from a freshly dug-up hole
And in every corner and all along the fence:
the peanuts, nasturtium seeds, raisins, smelling of rat and cat and squirrel
(some spelling someone's name, but this Ruff didn't know-he wasn't that smart!),
and of course,
those two moldy shoeboxes buried near the vines.
Ruff also remembered the green car, though the car looked grayish to Ruff. He remembered the person who smelled like food, who got out of his car to stare at the empty lot for a long time.
"Sit, Cream!" the man said, before he gave Ruff that bit of leftover hamburger meat. Then he said, "Good dog!" when Ruff did.
Ruff remembered the meat, salty and warm. He lay under the tree, hoping for more.
"All right, all right, you've made your point," Ms. Snoops would say. "Ruff remembers the recent past, much better than I do, as a matter of fact, but certainly not the distant past!"
Ms. Snoops would be wrong.
Didn't Ruff remember his mother, that black mutt with no name, and his father, the runaway hound? Didn't he remember sleeping in dark corners and shivering under the freeway? Foraging in garbage pails, the hunger squeezing his stomach? Didn't he remember the hard, cold cage at the pound, before the Perkins family brought him home, small and scared?
And what about those two moldy shoeboxes buried in the lot? Inside one, there was a tin of ashes and toys of that old cat Fluff. Inside the other, the bones of Moe the Macaw. One was a dear friend and one a dire enemy.
When Ruff yipped and yapped in his sleep, he was remembering all that.
Then Bunny/Bonita would probably pipe up loudly, "But you can't tell me Ruff worries about the future!"
Sure, Ruff didn't worry about his own future shoebox, or think about the poem Bunny/Bonita would one day place with his ashes:
The days are tough
Without my Ruff
We will miss you always.
(A poem similar to the one she wrote for her cat Fluff.)
But the near future, that's another story.
When that plane zoomed overhead and woke up Ruff at 11:50, and Bunny/Bonita whooped, "YOW-EE!" then reached up, touching the sky to save her mother, then clambered down from her branch, this is what Ruff knew:
He would lift his leg by the tree, and pee.
He would feel a whole lot better.
Then he and Bunny/Bonita would scamper home to 308 Orange Street, where his water bowl and his chew bone and his soft, odorous bed would be waiting.
