The Thing About Luck

CHAPTER NINE

I stepped inside our camper dragging Thunder with me while Robbie went wherever he went, probably to his camper to study and get ready for college. Obaachan was standing up, already boiling oxtails for stew. The remnants of breakfast were gone. She glanced at me and said, “You with Robbie. He no good for boyfriend. Anyone who think you can eat cooked sashimi have problem in head. He need psychiatrist.” She wanted to talk about sashimi now? Now when my entire life might have just been ruined? It was ruined because I knew I had to tell Obaachan or Jiichan about the chickens, and then Robbie would hate me. But I didn’t see why the Laskeys would be mad at Robbie’s parents. It wasn’t their fault at all.

I just stood there and stared at her. I knew I had to confess to what Thunder had done.

Jaz was working on his LEGO apartment building at the kitchen table, adding “Cooked sashimi?” He laughed lightheartedly. “Sometimes I’m glad you’re my sister. Your life is nutty.” He laughed more. Then he seemed to be thinking. “But why would anyone want to be your boyfriend?” he asked. He looked at me innocently. “Seriously.”

“Why is every day Pick on Summer Day?” I asked.

“No. No. I’m not trying to insult you,” Jaz said. “I was just curious.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a single reason why a boy would want to be my boyfriend. Some girls in my class already had boyfriends. They wore makeup and had cell phones and polished their nails. I tried to polish my nails once, and it smelled so horrible, I knew I could never do that again. Then I thought of one reason I’d make a good girlfriend. “I’m a good cook,” I said triumphantly.

“Men don’t care about good cook until ready to get married,” Obaachan said. “You think fourteen-year-old boy want you to roast him chicken?”

I pressed my lips together and looked at my flip-flops.

Obaachan set down her stirring spoon. “What you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I know you thinking,” she said. “Remember, I can see inside your head.”

“Well, I’m always thinking. I wasn’t thinking about anything special. If you could really see inside my head, you’d know I wasn’t thinking about anything special.”

“I only see shapes and writing in your head, but I no can read the writing because it too messy. You tell me what writing say. I see shape of something bad.”

I wondered if it was shaped like a dead chicken. I’d actually rather tell Jiichan than Obaachan, but Jiichan wouldn’t be finished working until two in the morning. I looked down at my flip-flops again. What if something terrible happened, like Obaachan made me get rid of Thunder?

“Something happened,” I said.

“Something happen every day.”

“It’s really all my fault. It isn’t Thunder’s fault, and it isn’t Robbie’s fault. It’s all mine, one hundred percent,” I said passionately.

“Tell me what it is,” Obaachan said. “But I warn you, you tell me something that give me heart attack, my death on your conscience forever.”

I looked directly at Obaachan. “Well, I went with Robbie to look at a gigantic horse in the Laskeys’ stable. He was really huge. And I forgot all about Thunder, and he got to where the free-range chickens are ... and ... killed three of them.” I felt my eyes filling with tears.

Obaachan snapped, “Tears don’t change my heart.” Then she got down on all fours again, the top of her head against the floor. “Hara tell me all I need to know about that boy,” she said.

Hara means “stomach” or “gut.” Although Japanese do think with their hearts or heads like anyone, for them, thinking with your gut was a whole different level of thinking. My grandfather was always telling me, “Think with your hara!”

“Obaachan, it wasn’t his fault,” I exclaimed. It wasn’t. “I’m the one who should have been watching Thunder.”

Thunder hung his head.

“Nothing no happen without Robbie.”

“That doesn’t make it his fault.” I watched her for a moment. I wondered if this getting on all fours meant her back was getting even worse. “Why are you doing that?”

“Because my body tell me to. I no say it his fault. It your fault.” She pushed herself up with a grunt. “You tell the Parkers at dinner. Now you and Jaz do homework. When buzzer go, turn off oven and take out pie. Keep eye on stew. Turn off in four hour exactly to get all the taste into water. Make sure you exact, or Mrs. Parker fire us.”

She pushed herself up and walked toward our bedroom, stopping to turn around and look directly at me. “You go study.”

“Okay.”

“I know what you thinking. You thinking about that boy. You thinking you find that boy. You thinking you do anything except study.”

“Obaachan, I honestly wasn’t thinking anything. I didn’t have time.”

“That what you were going to think, even if you didn’t think yet.”

I rolled my head around. “Obaachan, it’s really not fair to get mad at me for something I didn’t even think yet.”

“I know your brain. You study, or I put more grounding on list I keeping. For killing chicken, you get six-week grounding.”

I turned to Jaz. “You better study too.”

“What did I do?”

I looked to the shelf where we kept Mrs. Parker’s binders. That’s where we also kept our schoolbooks. I picked out my math book and set it in front of me on the table. I moved my hands closer to it. I couldn’t open it, though. I willed my hands to open it. But I still couldn’t do it. Then I returned it to the shelf and took down my history book. I’ll bet all sorts of things happened in history that were more interesting than the stuff in this book. In fact, I was sure of it, because Jiichan was reading my history book once and said, “This not history. This public relation document.”

Jaz took down his math workbook and was immediately so engrossed, he probably wouldn’t even have noticed if there was a tornado—he’d just keep working while he was swirling around in the air.

I decided not to read my history book, so I took down my journal. I was supposed to write about my experiences on harvest for my new teacher, and I would read some of them to the class so they could learn about this lifestyle. But they all knew about it already. We lived in farm country. So what could I say? I had a crush on a boy and Thunder killed some chickens? I cooked sausages? I sat down and tapped my pen on the journal. Then I wrote.

That was lame. I drew a line through it and turned the page to start again.

I drew a line through that too. Then I closed my journal and put it back on the shelf.

I took down paper and A Separate Peace to write my book report. The teacher said to sum up your feelings about the book in the first paragraph. Then tell what happened and also mention what you do or don’t have in common with the main character. Also, somewhere in there you’re supposed to state how the main character changes in the story.

My sixth-grade teacher hated contractions. We were supposed to write, for instance, “do not” rather than “don’t.” One thing I didn’t understand was punctuation. My teacher always said to put your punctuation where it “feels” right. But then when I did that, she always marked up my paper because she said the punctuation was all wrong. Fortunately, the main thing was to mix up descriptions of the book with your own feelings, not to have perfect punctuation. You had to write at least three drafts and hand in all three.

For draft number one, here’s what I wrote:

I stopped writing. We were supposed to write the theme or the lesson of the book at the end of the report. I didn’t understand what the theme or lesson of this book could be. I thought about it, and then I started writing again.

I must say I thought that was a pretty brilliant book report. Plus, the book really gave me insight into life. It made me realize that since I was twelve, I could be almost twenty-seven by the time I was untangled. That seemed like an awfully long time in the future, but maybe there was a way to shorten the time. I knew you would have to work hard at it, because if it was easy to untangle yourself, everybody would be untangled, which simply isn’t true.

Anyway, it was time to start adding carrots and potatoes to the stew. Jiichan had told me that while I was cooking, I should put love into what I was doing, and then the food would be healthier. I couldn’t find my apron, so I put on Obaachan’s. I picked up a knife to slice the potatoes. How did I put love into that? I thought, I love everyone, I love everyone, I love everyone. I kept thinking that while I sliced. I held my open palms over the potatoes and thought, Love, love, love. I really concentrated. But as hard as I concentrated, I just couldn’t feel love for these potatoes.

“What are you doing?” Jaz asked.

“Putting love into the potatoes,” I answered.

“Putting love into the potatoes,” he repeated.

“Jiichan said to put love into the food as I cook.”

Jaz laughed a delighted laugh. I don’t know why, but I laughed too.