Project Mulberry Page 12

  It was mostly about her house somewhere in New York, and how it was a museum now, with exhibits on her life. And then I came to this paragraph:

  One display shows a dress made of black silk brocade. The silk was made from worms raised by women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, and was given to Anthony by them on the occasion of her 80th birthday. (She had the cloth made into the dress.) Susan B. Anthony said of the dress: "My pleasure in the rich brocaded silk is quadrupled because it was made by women politically equal with men. The fact that the mulberry trees grew in Utah, that the silkworms made their cocoons there, that women reeled and spun and colored and wove the silk in a free state, greatly increases its value."

  So that was why he'd sent it to me.

  I sat back in my chair.

  Susan B. Anthony was as American as you could get.

  I knew then what Patrick had done. He'd probably spent the whole rest of the afternoon and evening searching the Internet. He must have had to make a huge fuss to get all his brothers and sisters to let him have the computer for that long. He must have told them it was really important.

  But not because he was still trying to talk me into killing the caterpillars. He'd said he wouldn't try to convince me anymore, and I believed him.

  What he was trying to do was find something that would make me feel better.

  The next morning, I waited out front so we could walk to school together.

  Ms. Park: Welcome back! I'm so glad you're talking to me again! Does this mean you've decided what to do?

  Me: No. Yes. What I mean is, I've decided that I can't decide. You're going to have to do it yourself.

  Ms. Park: I am not going to decide this for you.

  Me: Well, how about this then: We end the story now, right here. Without me deciding either way.

  Ms. Park: Oh, I'm sure the readers would just love that.

  Me: I don't care what they think.

  Ms. Park: That's no good. You have to care about the readers. Because without them, you won't exist.

  Me: What do you mean?

  Ms. Park: It's like this: You exist while the story is being written—like right now—but pretty soon the story will get made into a book. And after that, it's the readers who will bring you to life.

  Me: So ... the story has to have an ending that readers will like?

  Ms. Park: Well, they don't have to like the ending. But it's completely unfair not to give them one. It's like not keeping a promise. And you've already told me how much you hate that.

  15

  That afternoon we got my mom's permission and went to Mr. Dixon's house to tell him that the worms had spun their cocoons and we wouldn't be needing any more leaves.

  We went to the gas station first. We said hello to Miss Mona and thanked her for her help—we told her how we'd ended up getting leaves from Mr. Dixon's tree. Then we bought three rolls of winter-green mints as a thank-you present for him.

  My money, Patrick's idea. It was really thoughtful of him to come up with that.

  Mr. Dixon greeted us, and we told him our project was almost finished.

  "So was it a success?" he asked.

  There was a little silence. Then Patrick said, "Yeah, you could say that. I mean, we learned a lot."

  Mr. Dixon nodded. "Good. Glad my leaves could help. Will you be coming round again? I hope you'll stop by, time to time."

  "Sure, Mr. Dixon," Patrick said. "We could bring the video once it's finished, if you'd like to see it."

  "I'll look forward to that," Mr. Dixon said. He winked at us. "You two are going to make my leaves famous, isn't that right?"

  We all laughed. Then Patrick and I gave him the mints. He laughed again and thanked us, then told us about the trick of eating them in front of the bathroom mirror with the door closed and the lights out, and crunching down on them hard so you could see sparks in your mouth. I'd known that from a long time ago, but I'd forgotten about it. I thought I'd buy another roll sometime and show Kenny—he'd think it was totally cool.

  And then I could use the mints to bribe him when I wanted him to leave me alone.

  We walked back, and Patrick went home for supper. I went out to the back porch, lifted the lid off the aquarium, and opened one of the egg cartons just a crack.

  The worms had finished spinning. There were nine cocoons in that carton, each one of them a perfect oval. Egg-shaped, but smaller than chicken eggs.

  I touched one gently. A nice dry shell around the little pupa inside. It was like a miracle, how worm spit could turn into something so sturdy and beautiful.

  Kenny came out and stood next to me. "Can I see?" he asked.

  I lifted the carton top a little more.

  "Cool," he breathed.

  Then he looked at me, his face serious. "Patrick told me. About killing them to get the stuff you need. But you don't want to."

  I put the top back on.

  "It'd be neat to see the moths come out," Kenny said.

  Well, what do you know. The first person who'd said anything at all about the moths.

  "Julia, do you have to kill all of them? Why can't you just get the stuff from some of them and let the others get to be moths?"

  I'd already thought of that. But we'd still be killing them—some of them, anyway. And besides, how would I choose? It would be like playing God, to have to decide which lived and which died.

  Mr. Maxwell probably had to do that. There were sheep in the pasture—adult sheep. That meant not all the lambs got slaughtered. Some of them got to live and grow up. How did he decide which ones?

  "Maybe you wouldn't have to kill that many of them, Julia," Kenny said. "How much stuff do you need? Maybe just one cocoon-thingy would give you enough."

  I didn't know the answer to his question. The jostling started again.

  What if he was right?

  What if I only needed one cocoon?

  What if I only had to kill one of them?

  Which one?

  I needed to do some reading.

  I went up to my bedroom, scrabbled around in the mess for a few minutes, and found the book Patrick had left me. Ages ago. He told me he'd renewed it twice already.

  I read the table of contents, found the chapter I needed, and turned to one of the last pages.

  You can make your own thread by twisting the silk from five cocoons together. Fewer than five and your thread will be too fine....

  I flipped back a few pages and skimmed until I found the answer to my next question.

  The silk of each cocoon can be up to a mile long....

  A mile! Amazing!

  Five strands of silk each a mile long, twisted together into one thread.

  Way more than enough to embroider a cocoon.

  If we boiled five of the cocoons, we'd have enough thread for the project. The other twenty-one pupae could become moths. And I wouldn't be letting Patrick down.

  That was the big picture. It wasn't exponents. It was baby math—even Kenny could have done it. ■

  I thought about it all the rest of that evening. Especially while I was embroidering.

  I was getting pretty good at embroidery. I'd figured out a few things lately, which helped my stitching a lot. When I was doing outlines, tinier was better. Stitches so small that one by itself looked like a speck. If I kept taking tiny stitches like that, I ended up with a line that was beautifully smooth. I loved seeing how those specks, one after another after another after another, merged together into a nice unbroken line.

  It took me almost an hour for just one leaf! And all that time, in between being careful about where I put the needle in and how tightly I pulled the thread, I was thinking about my darling caterpillars.

  Five. (Take a stitch.)

  Sacrifice five of them, and the rest could live. (Take five stitches.)

  It's not a compromise. Not for the doomed five. Life and death is not something you can compromise about. (Take two stitches. Undo one and do it over.)

 
I want them all to live. But I also want to be able to finish our project the way we planned it. (Three more stitches.)

  I want a perfect solution. (Two perfect stitches.)

  There is no such thing as perfect.

  Even my leaf. It was beautiful, but it was not perfect. There was a knot on the underside.

  And even if there wasn't a knot—if I was good enough to cover up that loose thread—would that make it perfect? Not really. Because the loose thread would still be there. You just wouldn't be able to see it.

  Maybe everything in life had its messy bits. Things other people didn't see. Or didn't know they didn't know. Or didn't want to think about.

  Maybe that was exactly the reason I had to think about them.

  On the way home from school the next day, I told Patrick what I'd decided.

  He looked shocked at first, and then really, really happy, and then serious. All in about two seconds.

  "You sure, Jules?" he said anxiously. "You sure you're okay with that?"

  I nodded. I didn't want to talk about it—I might change my mind again.

  He said I was a double genius, and our project would be even better because now we'd have tape of the moths emerging. "And you can sew your picture just like you drew it," he said. "You won't have to leave the moth out."

  Patrick always said "sew" when he meant "embroider." It bugged me a little, but I guess they must have seemed like the same thing to him. Weird, when he was so hyper about words.

  Then he looked more solemn. "I'll do it, Jules," he said. "You can go up to your room, or whatever. You don't have to be there when—when—"

  "No," I said. "I want us to do it together."

  Something about what Mr. Maxwell had said, and how I felt about the worms—I wanted to be responsible.

  "By the way, I've been doing some more thinking," Patrick said, "about—you know, Susan B. Anthony."

  We'd never said anything about that e-mail he'd sent me. But I knew that he knew that I knew—well, that I'd appreciated it.

  "Pizza," he said.

  Pizza? Honestly, just when I thought I had Patrick figured out...

  He waited for me to say something, and when I didn't, he went on. "Pizza is, like, totally American, right? But it started out Italian. And now everyone thinks of it as American."

  "So?" I didn't see what he was getting at.

  "Well, between that Susan B. Anthony dress and us doing this project for Wiggle—maybe someday people will think of making your own silk as a really American thing to do."

  Oh, brother. Him and his ideas. But I couldn't help smiling. "I kind of doubt it," I said. "Still, you never know."

  "Honestly, Jules, I've always thought it was so cool that your family has all this Korean stuff. It makes things much more interesting. Not like my family. We're just plain old nothing American."

  I thought about that for a second. "Patrick, that can't be right. Your family must have come from somewhere else, even if it was ages ago. I mean, everyone comes from somewhere else. Even the Native Americans came from Asia, remember?" Part of our social studies unit.

  "I guess so," Patrick said doubtfully. He frowned. "I think my grandma's grandma came from Ireland. But there's a bunch of other stuff mixed in—English and French and some German, maybe." He brightened up. "Maybe I'll make it a project—finding out my family tree."

  He grinned at me. "Probably be even harder than finding a mulberry tree."

  When we got home, Patrick tore a sheet of paper into tiny pieces. He numbered the pieces from one to twenty-six. Meanwhile, I opened up the egg cartons; I had to use scissors to cut the webbing, but it wasn't hard.

  Patrick put one number randomly in the egg-carton pocket with each cocoon. He did this without me looking.

  "Okay, Jules," he said. "They're ready."

  I was going to pick five numbers. This was how we'd decided to choose the cocoons for boiling. Patrick's idea again.

  I stood with my back to the aquarium and said the numbers really fast, without thinking, to make it even more random.

  "Twelve, seventeen, four, nine, twenty-three."

  "Wait—what were the last two? You were going too fast."

  I gritted my teeth. "Nine and twenty-three," I said.

  I turned around. Patrick had the five cocoons in his hands.

  ***

  My mom took out a pot. I filled it with cold water and put it on the stove. Patrick stood next to me and handed me the cocoons one by one. I cupped each cocoon in my hand for a second and wondered, Was this the one with the wider stripes? Or one of the big guys?

  I said goodbye to each one—silently, of course—before I put it in the pot. I might not have minded saying goodbye out loud in front of Patrick; he seemed to understand—he was being very quiet and sort of respectful. But my mom was there, too, and I didn't think she would have understood. She'd probably have thought I was nuts.

  At last it was time.

  I was lucky in a way. It wasn't like Mr. Maxwell's chicken. It wouldn't be all bloody and horrible. The water would heat up slowly—it'd be nice and warm for a while, and Patrick had told me (about a million times) that the worms wouldn't feel a thing.

  I whispered a final goodbye in my head. Then I put the lid on the pot.

  And turned on the burner.

  We kept working. I was a little numb, which was a good thing. We rearranged the remaining cocoons so we had one empty egg carton. After the water had boiled for five minutes, we turned the burner down. Then my mom showed us how to stir the cocoons with a stick. As she stirred, the silk started coming apart in sort of a mass. The stick, from a bush in our backyard, was rough and had little twigs on it, and pretty soon she was able to pick up a single strand.

  Then Patrick and I each tried, and between the three of us we finally separated out five strands, one from each cocoon.

  My mom took over again. She pulled the five strands and twisted them together at the same time. When she had a couple of feet of twisted thread, she handed the end to me. I held a wooden spool and started winding the thread onto it.

  It took forever. I couldn't believe how long the strands were! We pulled and twisted and wound and pulled and twisted and wound, and the silk never seemed to end. I got so tired of it that I even let Kenny do some. I was faster at twisting and winding than either Kenny or Patrick, but my mom was way faster than any of us.

  Kenny got bored quickly. He stood behind me and made stupid faces while Patrick was taping me—he did it twice, and Patrick had to stop the camcorder each time. I was about to yell at Kenny when I got a better idea.

  "Kenny, I'm busy twisting," I said. "Would you count down for Patrick while he films?"

  I gave him my watch. He went and stood next to Patrick, and counted down with his fingers like he'd seen me do, and Patrick finally got some decent tape.

  After we'd been twisting for almost two hours, I started to feel a little funny. The feeling got stronger until at last I stopped and stood up. "I'm taking a break," I said quietly and looked at Patrick. "You finish up."

  "Okay," he answered just as quietly.

  He knew what I was thinking. The cocoons had gotten smaller and smaller, and pretty soon we would get to where we'd unreeled enough silk to be able to see the dead pupae. I didn't want to see them. That wasn't very brave, but I'd done the best I could, and the thought of seeing them like that was too much for me.

  I went up to my room and sat on the edge of my bed.

  They were just worms.

  But they were my worms.

  I'd taken care of them, fed them, worried about them, watched them grow. And now they'd never get to be moths. I knew I would appreciate the heck out of that silk. But would that be enough to take away the feeling in my stomach—half-numb and half-sick?

  Kenny appeared in the doorway. "Julia? Are you sad? Are you going to cry?"

  Of course I was sad. "Leave me alone," I said in the coldest voice I could manage.

  He hesitated for a moment. "But
I got something for you." He held out a closed fist.

  "What is it?" Couldn't be much of anything, he was just a baby.

  He opened his hand. "Connecticut," he said.

  16

  Kenny dropped the quarter into my hand. It was a little sweaty.

  I looked at the tree on the back of the quarter. The branches were as pretty as ever—so tiny. Like strands of silk.

  "At first I wasn't going to give it to you," Kenny said. "Because I wanna collect them, too. Just like you and Patrick. But now I want you to have it. Except, will you help me start my own collection?"

  It hurt a little when I tried to swallow. I cleared my throat. "Sure, Kenny." I went over to my shelf and took down my money box. "You can get started right away. I've got Illinois here, and New York, too—you can have them."

  Kenny beamed as he took the two coins. "Julia, you know Connecticut is my favorite quarter," he said.

  "Because of the tree?"

  "No, because of the story. I heard Patrick tell it to you. Will you tell it to me again? Please?"

  So I did. I told him about how the British didn't want Connecticut to have its own government charter, and about the candles getting blown out, and the charter getting hidden in the hollow of a big tree. The tree on the back of the quarter.

  "Cool," Kenny said.

  From downstairs I could hear Patrick's voice.

  "Yum," he was saying. "Thanks, Mrs. Song."

  He had gotten his bite of kimchee.

  The moths emerged, white all over except for their black eyes. I was surprised to see how fat their bodies were. I'd seen pictures before, but I guess I thought ours would be different somehow. They weren't slim and graceful like a butterfly; instead, they were squat and chunky. But their feelers were pretty, with delicate featherings almost like lace. I knew just how I'd embroider them, with tiny outline stitches. And they had adorable little teddy bear faces.