Project Mulberry Read online

  It was the afternoon of the third day of the spinning, a Sunday. Patrick was sitting on the couch in our living room. I'd told him to sit there while I went and got the paper from my room. He raised his eyebrows at me but didn't say anything.

  "I've decided what I'm going to embroider. I'm going to do"—I paused dramatically, then whipped out the paper—"the Life Cycle of the Silkworm."

  I held up the sketch I'd drawn.

  "Egg. Worm. Cocoon. Moth." I pointed to the drawings one by one. "And wait till you hear the best part. I'm going to use regular embroidery floss to do the egg and the worm. And the moth, too. But for the cocoon, I'm going to use the thread we make. The cocoon is made of silk in real life, and it will be made of silk in the picture too, get it?"

  Patrick grinned, a really huge grin.

  He got it, all right. I almost felt like hugging him. He put his hands up in the air and bent forward a few times like he was bowing to me.

  "Julia Song, you are a genius. We are absolutely, positively, going to win a prize at the fair."

  I made a silly curtsy back at him. "Thank you, thank you." I'd thought of doing the life cycle a while back. But it was the caterpillar that had given me the idea for the cocoon part. I'd watched it spin for a while right before I went to bed, and I'd woken up that morning with my genius plan.

  I had known right away that it was perfect. There was just something so completely right about it. It wasn't American, like the flag—but it wasn't Korean, either.

  Or maybe it was both?

  Patrick took the sketch from me and studied it for a second. Then he looked up. "It's almost like an exact picture of the whole project, right?"

  I nodded. "That's what I was thinking."

  "Okay, so if it's supposed to be just like the project, you should leave out the moth at the end."

  "Why would I leave out the moth? That's the final stage, right?"

  "The final stage of the silkworm life cycle, yeah. But not the final stage of our project."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "We're not going to have any moths."

  "Of course we're going to have moths," I said. "Look how great they're doing—they're almost done spinning their cocoons."

  "But we want thread. So you can sew with it."

  "Yeah, so?" What was Patrick's problem?

  Patrick rolled his eyes at me. "Oh, I get it. You never read the book, did you."

  "I did so. I mean, I didn't read every word, but I looked through it. I studied the pictures a lot—I traced one for the caterpillar sketch."

  "Jules. If you'd read the book you'd know."

  "Patrick, what are you talking about?"

  He shook his head. "If you want to get silk from the cocoons, you have to kill the—the creatures inside. Before they come out as moths."

  What!

  I stared at him. I could feel the blood going out of my face. "You have to kill them?"

  Patrick nodded. "You have to boil the cocoons. For about five minutes, to dissolve all the sticky stuff that keeps them together. Then you can unwind the silk. But the boiling kills them—the pupae."

  For once, there was no jostling in my head because there was only one thought, with nothing else for it to bump into.

  Kill them.

  We'd have to kill them.

  My hands were freezing cold. I closed them into fists—open, shut, open, shut—while I tried to get my brain to work.

  "Patrick, wait. Why can't we unwind the cocoons after the moths come out?"

  "Jules. It's all in the book."

  "Okay, okay. I didn't read the stupid book! Tell me!" I almost screamed.

  Patrick spoke slowly, like he was trying to calm me down. "The moth gets out by making a hole in the cocoon, right? To make a hole it has to chew through the silk—well, it doesn't actually chew, it spits out this chemical that dissolves the silk and makes a hole. And the hole goes through all the layers of silk, see? So instead of one nice long thread, you'd end up with a million tiny short pieces that you couldn't sew with. Silk farmers never let the moths come out—it would ruin everything. Get it?"

  I got it, all right. I closed my eyes because I felt dizzy.

  I hadn't known that I didn't know.

  Ms. Park: Julia?

  (silence)

  Ms. Park: Julia, come on.

  (silence)

  Ms. Park: I know you're there. I can hear you.

  (more silence)

  Ms. Park: Okay, so you're upset. But we need to finish this story. I'll give you some time on your own now, but I'll be back in a little while.

  Ms. Park: Julia? Three days and you haven't said a single word. You still need more time? All right, let me know when you're ready.

  Ms. Park: Are you ready now? It's been two weeks....

  Ms. Park: Come on—you can't hide forever.

  Ms. Park: At least I hope not.

  Ms. Park: Julia! I've given you more than a month! Enough is enough! You can't run away from this—it's your story and you have to see it through! Now stop being a coward and come talk to me RIGHT THIS MINUTE!

  (silence)

  Ms. Park: Julia. I'm sorry I got mad. (pause) But I really want to finish this story, and I can't do it without you. I'm stuck. Completely stuck.

  (silence continues)

  Ms. Park: There. That was what you wanted at the beginning, remember? For me to admit I'm not always the boss? Well, you were right. I need you. Talk to me.

  (silence gets louder)

  Ms. Park: Please? Please, please, PLEASE?

  14

  Jostle, jostle. My brain was starting to work again.

  Jostle, bump. Bump, thump, jostle, bang. Bang, crash, smash into smithereens.

  If we let the worms live and turn into moths, I wouldn't be able to make the picture with real silk and we wouldn't be able to enter the Domestic Arts category, so we'd only have Animal Husbandry, and even that wouldn't be very good. It would be more like a school science project than a really good Wiggle project.

  Worst of all, I'd be letting Patrick down.

  But for me to carry out my genius idea—to embroider the cocoon with real silkworm silk, we'd have to—

  Crash, bang, smash.

  ***

  I opened my eyes and looked straight at Patrick. "We can't do it," I said. "We just can't."

  Patrick jumped to his feet. "Jules! Are you nuts?"

  "Patrick—"

  "It's such a great project! And your idea for the picture is genius—I told you that already! It's perfect! It'll be the best project ever! And with the video, and the photos ... we've been working so hard, Jules! We can't let it all go to waste!"

  I still felt dizzy, and now my stomach was starting to churn. "I know we've been working hard," I said, "but so have they." I nodded in the direction of the back porch. "They're spinning like crazy, Patrick. Because they think they're going to get to be moths at the end of all this."

  Patrick flapped his arms wildly. He looked like an ostrich that had forgotten it couldn't fly.

  "Oh, for pete's sake—they don't think anything! They're worms!"

  "How do you know they don't think?" I demanded.

  "Jules!" Now he raised his voice. "It's not even like they're endangered or anything! People have been making silk for ages and ages, and they always kill the worms, and nobody worries about it, and they're fine —there are still billions of silkworms in the world! You—you just—you're being stupid about this!"

  Stupid? Stupid?

  Somehow that was the last straw.

  "Stop blaming me for everything!" I yelled back at him. "You're the one who's afraid of them! You probably can't wait to kill them! I bet that's why you picked this project—so you could kill a bunch of poor innocent caterpillars! Besides, I didn't even want to do this in the first place!"

  "I'm not—What?" Patrick frowned. "What do you mean, you didn't want to do it? I thought—"

  "You thought wrong! I hated the idea right from the start! But y
ou were so—so— I knew I'd never be able to talk you out of it, so I just went along with everything—and the money—and then your phobia—and I'm the only one who cares about them!"

  From the look on Patrick's face—a combination of stunned and confused—I knew I wasn't making much sense, but I couldn't stop to get organized. I felt like any minute I might start to cry, so I kept yelling because maybe yelling would keep me from crying. "So now everything's all messed up! And it's not fair, and it's not my fault!"

  I turned and stomped up the stairs to my room. But I didn't close the door because I wanted to hear Patrick leaving.

  He did.

  ***

  He didn't come back after supper to do homework, either. Instead, he sent me seven e-mails. I couldn't believe it—there were way too many kids in his house, and he hardly ever got the computer more than once a night.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,6:43 PM

  Subject:Wiggle project

  I cant believe you think I would pick this project just to kill worms. Thats the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Just because a person has a phobia doesn't make them a MASS MURDERER.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,6:54 PM

  Subject:Wiggle project (again)

  its not like theyre PETS, Julia. You didnt even name them. And besides worms have NO nerve endings. they don't feel pain, it wouldn't hurt them NOT ONE BIT.

  i am not lying to you about this!!!

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,7:09 PM

  Subject: Wiggle project

  when theyre in the cocoons they're hibernating,

  they are not even CONSCIOUS.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,7:1 I PM

  Subject:Wiggle project

  scientists dont even KNOW if worms HAVE consciousness, not like humans anyway, thats why theyre called a LOWER FORM OF LIFE!!!

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,7:38 PM

  Subject:WIGGLE PROJECT PLEASE READ AND REPLY

  you kill mosquitoes dont you? ALL THE TIME. you dont worry about THEM do you??? WHY IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT?????

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,8:23 PM

  Subject:Wiggle project

  ARE YOU GOING TO ANSWER ME????

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Sunday, May 27,9:06 PM

  Subject:Wiggle project

  I cant believe you would do this to me. its MY PROJECT TOO AND I WANT A CHANCE TO GO TO THE STATE FAIR!

  Patrick and I weren't speaking. It was the first time this had ever happened. Sometimes I would feel bad about it, but mostly I was too angry at him. He didn't care. He could hardly even look at the caterpillars, much less hold them. It didn't matter one bit to him if they lived or died.

  And, although it was hard to admit, I was mad at myself, too. If I'd read the book when he gave it to me, I'd have known what to expect. I was sure I'd still have felt bad about having to kill them, but it might have made a difference.

  Somewhere along the line, winning a prize at the state fair had sort of faded from my mind. When had that happened? It was before this—before I found out about killing the worms.... Probably the first molting, when I'd thought they were dead. From then on I was worried about the caterpillars, and the silk, and the embroidery. But somehow I'd stopped thinking about the prize.

  So Patrick was still thinking about the fair and the prize, and I wasn't. Did that make one of us right and the other one wrong?

  And which was which?

  ***

  I left home early so I wouldn't have to walk to school with Patrick. Not that it was hard—he was avoiding me, too. But we couldn't avoid each other at the Wiggle club. Mr. Maxwell was meeting with everyone about their projects. I heard Patrick go up to him and ask to go last, and we waited until everyone else had left.

  Mr. Maxwell must have been able to tell that something was wrong. He looked from Patrick to me and back again and said quietly, "What's up, kids?"

  Neither of us said anything for a moment. Then Patrick took a deep breath and explained everything in one of the longest sentences I'd ever heard. He finished by saying, "and you need to talk to her, Mr. Maxwell, because you're a farmer and you kill stuff all the time, don't you, and it doesn't make you a bad person, so could you make her see that?"

  Mr. Maxwell leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "Julia, I know exactly how you feel," he said quietly. "I didn't grow up on a farm, either. And I'll never forget the first time I killed an animal that I'd raised myself. It was a chicken." He smiled, but it was a serious smile. "It was bloody, and messy, and I almost got sick."

  He flicked a glance at Patrick. "But Patrick's right. I do kill things all the time now. Or rather, I send them off to be killed." He paused. "Remember the field trip a couple of weeks ago, those lambs in the first pasture?"

  We both nodded.

  "They're gone now. I sent them off to the locker—that's the place that does the slaughtering."

  I swallowed hard. Those sweet fluffy lambs ...

  And I love lamb chops.

  Mr. Maxwell spread out his hands in sort of a shrug. "Nowadays, most people get meat already cut up and wrapped in nice neat plastic packages. They don't really want to be reminded that it came from a living, breathing animal."

  He looked at us and nodded. "I think it's important not to forget. To feel responsibility for what we eat, and to raise farm animals with respect for their lives. That's why I work the way I do. And that's also why I run the Wiggle Club. I want at least a few kids to learn some of these things, and think about them, and maybe appreciate farming a little more."

  He reached out and patted me on the shoulder. "Julia, I'm sorry you're upset about your worms. But I'm also glad in a way. Not glad like hip, hip, hooray. Glad because it means you're really going to appreciate that silk. It's going to mean a lot more to you than if you didn't care."

  I took a deep breath.

  He'd almost changed my mind.

  Almost convinced me that it wouldn't be so bad to kill our worms. The way he had to kill his chickens and his lambs.

  But that last thing he'd said—"you're really going to appreciate that silk."

  He was assuming we were going to make the silk. He wasn't trying to convince me that it was okay to kill the worms—he was only trying to make me feel better about doing it.

  Patrick was looking at me, and I knew he knew me well enough to know what I was thinking.

  I put on what I hoped was a perfect face. "Thanks, Mr. Maxwell," I forced myself to say. "And thanks for doing the Wiggle Club. You're right—it does make me think about things I never thought about before."

  "Great," he said, and grinned. "My good deed for the day." He stood up and put his jacket back on. The three of us walked out of the building. Mr. Maxwell said goodbye and went off toward the parking lot.

  I started walking toward home. On my own.

  "Jules."

  I walked a couple more steps. Then I stopped and turned back.

  Patrick didn't try to catch up with me. He just spoke from where he was standing. "I know I'm not gonna be able to change your mind," Patrick said. "I figure we can still finish the animal part of the project. But I gotta ask you something. The other day when—when we were—well, you said you hadn't wanted to do the project in the first place. How come you never told me that?"

  He wasn't going to try to change my mind anymore.

  It was too much to think about all at once—so much that my mind sort of went blank for a second. But then I focused again. One thing at a time. Patrick
was waiting, and he'd made the first move toward trying to fix things up between us, and he'd told me the truth about his phobia, even though it must have been hard.

  So it was only fair that I should tell him the truth, too.

  "It was too Korean," I said at last. "I didn't want to do the project because it seemed so, well, foreign. I wanted to do a really American project."

  Now for the hard part. I looked down at the sidewalk in front of Patrick's feet. "So for a while I was only pretending I wanted to do it. I kept trying to find a way out of it. That's why I wouldn't ask my mom for a loan at first. I figured if we couldn't buy the silkworm eggs, that would mean no project. And we'd have to think of something else."

  "Oh." Patrick shifted his feet a little.

  Silence. The money stuff was still no fun to talk about.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I guess I should have told you at the very beginning. But you seemed so—so happy about the idea, and I didn't think I could talk you out of it."

  More silence.

  "Okay," he said at last. "I just wanted to know." We didn't say anything more the whole way home.

  That evening, just when I was about to shut down the computer and go to bed, I got an e-mail. From Patrick. No message, just a link to an article on a website.

  It was an article about Susan B. Anthony. I knew about her—we'd studied her last year in social studies. She was famous for her work on equal rights for women in the U.S. She'd helped women get the right to vote.

  Why the heck was he sending me stuff about Susan B. Anthony?

  But I wasn't going to make the same mistake again. I read the article from start to finish.