Project Mulberry Read online

  As soon as Kenny learned to talk, we started fighting. When I was eight and he was three, he made me really, really mad. I can't remember now what he did, but it was so awful that I yelled, "You— you —" and I tried to think of the worst thing I could call him. "You SNOTBRAIN!"

  Ever since then, that's been my nickname for him. But I never called him that around my parents. They had a no-name-calling rule. In general, I thought it was a good rule.

  Except when it came to the Snotbrain.

  Me: Do you want my opinion? I am not happy with the way things are going here. I hate the project Idea, Kenny is driving me nuts, and I still haven't found another Connecticut.

  Ms. Park: Actually, no—I don't want your opinion. In fact, I have to admit, this is weird for me. I've written other books, and only once has a character ever talked to me. You talk to me all the time, and I'm finding that hard to get used to.

  Me: Like right now, while you're in the—ahem—bathroom. Well, I don't care whether you want my opinion or not— you're getting it. That was a terrible chapter.

  Ms. Park: Would it help if I said I'm sorry you're having such a hard time?

  Me: If you were really sorry, you'd go back and rewrite it.

  Ms. Park: You're the main character. You have to have a problem or two. If you didn't, there wouldn't be any story.

  Me: In that case, how's this: Patrick and I get, like, five ideas for the project, five good American Ideas, and they're all so brilliant that we can't decide which one to choose. That would be a much better problem.

  Ms. Park: That would be a different story. Not the one I want to tell.

  Me: But it's my story. I should have a vote.

  Ms. Park: Okay. In the next chapter, I promise Kenny won't bother you as much. Now will you leave me alone for a while?

  Me: Fair enough. But what about the other stuff?

  Ms. Park: One thing at a time, please.

  4

  Patrick sat down in the computer chair and typed silkworms into the search-engine box. I flopped down on the old armchair nearby. Across the room my parents were reading. Kenny had stormed upstairs after losing his game and had not come back down again to pester us, thank goodness.

  While Patrick clicked and read, I did some hard thinking. Ideas jostled around in my brain and I tried to get them organized.

  We had only a couple of months to work on our Wiggle project. It might take a little while before my plan worked and we could drop the silkworm idea. I didn't think we'd have time for a whole new project after that, so I needed to get started on something else.

  Patrick wanted the silkworms to make thread ... and then I was supposed to sew something with the thread, so we'd be able to enter our project as both an animal project and a sewing project....

  A sewing project. I could plan a sewing project, and when the silkworm part didn't work out, I'd be ready to do it with regular thread.

  But what should I sew? It would have to be something really cool to have a chance of winning a prize at the state fair.

  I thought about it some more. Wiggle sewing projects were usually clothes. Mr. Maxwell had shown us pictures of projects kids had done in other years. One girl had made mother-daughter dresses (gag). Another had sewn a lot of bright red fleece vests. On the back of each vest she'd embroidered Oak Hill School and Home. That was a boarding school for disabled kids in our town. On the front was a person's name. The girl had made these vests for the kids at Oak Hill—the ones who were her age. When they went out on field trips, they wore the vests, and that bright red color made it easy for their teachers to keep track of them. Another double project: Domestic Arts and Community Service.

  Thinking about those vests made me realize that what I really like isn't sewing—I mean, not on the machine. I like doing stuff by hand. That's a separate category in Wiggle; it's called Needlework.

  In my parents' bedroom there was a framed picture of some flowers. Not painted flowers—embroidered ones. My mom made it ages ago, when she lived in Korea. It was really good; she'd used millions of tiny stitches. Maybe I could make something like it....

  "Mom," I said, "could you teach me how to embroider?"

  Patrick glanced over at me. I answered before he could ask. "Embroidery," I said. "I'm gonna get started practicing for when we get the thread from the worms."

  I hoped my face didn't show how I was feeling, which was a little guilty. It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth, either.

  He gave me a thumbs-up and went back to clicking the mouse. It seemed like he'd already forgotten I was mad about something, which was fine with me—now that I had a plan, I wasn't mad anymore.

  My mom put down her book, looking pleased. "I was thinking a while back that you might want to learn," she said. "Is your homework finished?"

  I nodded.

  "Then we can start right now."

  She went upstairs for a few minutes and came back down carrying her sewing basket and an old plastic shopping bag. From the bag she took a wooden hoop and some white fabric. It turned out that the hoop was really two hoops that fit together tightly, one right inside the other. She unlocked a little clasp, and the two hoops came apart.

  I went and sat next to her on the couch. She showed me how to put a square of fabric between the two hoops, and how to pull the fabric so it was nice and tight and smooth.

  She'd also brought the embroidered picture from her room. Now she took the frame and started undoing the catches at the back. "A long time ago—I don't know how long, hundreds of years, maybe—Korean women decided they wanted to make their embroidery work different somehow," she said, "to set it apart from Japanese and Chinese embroidery."

  She held up the piece of fabric and then turned it around so I could see the back.

  Wow.

  The back side looked exactly the same as the front. There wasn't a single knot or loose thread anywhere.

  "Patrick, look." I took the picture from my mom and held it up so he could see it. Then I flipped it over.

  He looked at it for about half a second. "Pretty," he said, and turned back to the screen.

  He didn't get it.

  "How did you do that?" I asked my mom. Never mind about Patrick for now. I'd explain it to him later.

  "I can teach you," she said, "but not right away. You have to get good at the basic stitches first."

  "It's like sewing, right?"

  "Yes and no. It is like sewing, but there are also some differences, and you have to be a lot more precise, which makes it harder. Let's see how you do."

  She was right. To start with, I had to put two pieces of thread through the eye of the needle instead of just one. It took me five tries! I thought it would only be twice as hard as putting one piece through, but it was exponents again—about 23 times harder.

  After I finally got the needle threaded, my mom taught me the simplest stitch. Running stitch. You put the needle in and out and in and out of the fabric, and you end up with what looks like a dotted line. Easy.

  My mom looked at my stitches. "Not bad," she said. "But a little uneven. In embroidery it's important that all your stitches be exactly the same size." Then she did five stitches to show me what she meant.

  They were beautiful. Perfect. So even.

  "Not just the stitches," she said. "The spaces in between have to be the same size, too. Because—"

  "Because that's what makes the back side look the same as the front!" I exclaimed.

  My mom nodded and smiled.

  I was proud of myself for figuring that out.

  Then I got so involved in trying to make perfect running stitches that I almost forgot Patrick was still there.

  "Jules," he said, turning the swivel chair around so he could look at me. "We've got a problem."

  "Good news first," Patrick said. "There are a whole bunch of places that sell the eggs. We can order them over the Internet. They're around ten bucks for twenty-five eggs."

  Hmm—so it was possible to get silkworm eggs he
re. Then what was the problem?

  "But it's no good us even ordering them," Patrick went on, "unless we can find a mulberry tree."

  My mom made a little surprised noise. "That's right," she said. "I'd forgotten about that. We had a mulberry tree in our backyard in Korea. It was one of my jobs to pick leaves for the worms to eat."

  "There's something called artificial silkworm food," Patrick said. "But it's really expensive, because you have to buy a huge amount. For, like, hundreds of caterpillars. And besides, they grow much better if they eat mulberry leaves. They won't eat any other kind."

  A mulberry tree? Wasn't it a bush? That nursery rhyme, Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush...

  Patrick said what I was thinking. "I've never even heard of a mulberry tree. A mulberry bush, in that song for babies. But not a tree. I bet there isn't a single mulberry tree in all of Plainfield."

  My mom turned to my dad. "Yobo," she said.

  That's not his name—his name is Jay. Jae-woo in Korean, but people call him Jay. My mom's Korean name is Jung-sook, but everyone calls her June. Yobo is a Korean word that means "honey" or "dear." My mom and dad almost always called each other "Yobo."

  Yobo, don't you know someone with a mulberry tree?" my mom asked.

  My dad lowered the newspaper. "What's that?" he said.

  "Mulberries," my mom said. "Didn't someone bring a mulberry pie to one of your office parties a while ago? Remember, you told me about it because you said you hadn't seen mulberries since Korea."

  "Oh. Yes." My dad blinked a couple of times. Obviously, he hadn't been listening to the conversation, so now he was clueless. "I did tell you about that, didn't I."

  "Dad!" I said. "Those mulberries—do you know where they came from?"

  Patrick and I both waited for my dad's answer, but I knew it was for different reasons: Patrick hoping the mulberry tree was somewhere nearby, me hoping it wasn't.

  "Wisconsin," my dad said.

  Yesss. Wisconsin was hours away!

  "The lady who made the pie, her mother lives in Wisconsin," my dad continued. "The lady went up there for a visit and brought back frozen mulberries from her mom's tree and made a pie for us." He smiled. "Great pie."

  Sheesh. He was so out of it.

  "Well," Patrick said slowly, "that's good news in a way. I was afraid maybe they only grew in the tropics or the desert or somewhere like that. At least now we know they can grow here."

  "That's right," my mom said. "You need to ask around. Somebody in town might have a mulberry tree."

  "We could ask Mr. Maxwell," Patrick said, looking a little more hopeful. "Maybe he would know."

  "We won't see him for another week," I pointed out. "Not until the next Wiggle meeting."

  "Gak," Patrick said. "But wait—I have an idea. There's something else we can do in the meantime. Jules, come over here and help me."

  Ms. Park: There! A whole chapter where Kenny didn't bother you once.

  Me: Well, of course. You're not one of those people who don't keep their promises, are you? I hate that. But I have to say, it was a pretty short chapter. I think that's sort of cheating —you didn't have to keep him away for very long.

  Ms. Park: For heaven's sake, he lives with you, and it's not a very big apartment. You're bound to run Into him In most chapters.

  Me: And another thing. You'd better give me plenty of time in the story to practice my embroidery.

  Ms. Park: I refuse to promise that. It's your responsibility. You have to organize your schedule, get your homework and your chores done, and not dilly-dally around. You should have plenty of time to do embroidery if you plan your time efficiently.

  Me: Sheesh. You sound like my mom. But as you keep telling me, you're the writer. If you write a dilly-dallying scene, what choice do I have? Like how you made me have a brother instead of a sister.

  Ms. Park: It's not that simple. I'm not always in control.

  Me: Ha! You mean /m the boss now? I get to decide everything?

  Ms. Park: No, that's not what I meant. Neither of us is the boss. The story is the boss.

  Me: How can the story be the boss?

  Ms. Park: It's kind of hard to explain. Sometimes the story takes over, and I end up writing things I didn't expect. I think you'll understand later.

  Me: I hate it when grownups say that.

  5

  The next morning, Patrick and I left early for school. Patrick had the duct tape, and I carried the flyers.

  MULBERRY TREE NEEDED

  Do you have a mulberry tree in your yard?

  We need some leaves.

  Please call Julia at 555-2139.

  We got my mom's permission to use my phone number, because if anyone called Patrick's house when he wasn't home and one of the little kids answered, he'd never get the message. That was a possibility with the Snotbrain, too. But at least there was only one of him, and my mom usually answered the phone anyway.

  Last night, Patrick had typed in the information, then I'd designed the flyer, centering the text and using a nice font. If I had really wanted us to find a mulberry tree, I'd have thought the flyers were a great idea. So I was pretending to be all enthusiastic about them.

  I told Patrick the flyers were genius, and I really did think it was smart of him, but inside I was almost positive they wouldn't work. I had solid evidence that a mulberry tree would be practically impossible to find around here. And not just because of what my dad had said about that tree being in Wisconsin. I had other proof.

  When Patrick and I did our leaf project in fifth grade, we got more leaves than anyone else in the class. We went all around our neighborhood and to other parts of Plainfield, too. The assignment was to collect fifteen leaves, but we had twenty-seven, which gave us a ton of extra credit. Three kinds of maple (red, silver, Japanese); four kinds of oak (pin, white, red, bur); sycamore, locust, gum, willow, birch—I can't remember them all now, but there were a bunch of fruit trees. Apple, peach, pear, plum, and a friend of my mom's even had a quince tree.

  No mulberry.

  If there had been a mulberry tree nearby, Patrick and I would have found it. In the whole class, there was only one kind of leaf someone else got that we didn't have, and it wasn't really fair, because it was from a hibiscus tree that grew in a pot and was taken inside for the winter.

  That's why I was pretty sure the flyers wouldn't help, so I did my best to make them look good. We printed them on fluorescent green paper, and I made the font really big so you could read it from far away.

  We stopped at several places on the way to school. The gas station on the corner of our street. The convenience store across from our school. Three or four big utility poles on busy corners.

  The lady who worked at the gas station was really nice. I'd never met her before. My parents went to that gas station, but they used pay-at-the-pump, so I always just stayed in the car.

  When we first went in to talk to her, I thought she was a little scary. She had orange hair piled sky-high and hairsprayed rock-solid, and she also had the worst teeth I'd ever seen. They were this nasty olive-green color. But she let us put the flyer up in the window and said she'd be sure to point it out to people.

  That was Wednesday morning. I was pretty jumpy that day after school—every time the phone rang I was afraid it would be somebody saying they had a mulberry tree.

  But nobody called that day.

  No calls the next day, either.

  And none on Friday.

  I was right. There weren't any mulberry trees in our neighborhood.

  By Saturday afternoon, even Patrick was sick of hanging around waiting for our phone to ring, so we walked to the convenience store to get slushies. I got the 79-cent size, and gave the cashier a dollar bill plus four pennies so my change would be a quarter.

  Illinois.

  Gak. I already had two Illinoises and had gotten at least a dozen more.

  Still no Connecticut.

  No calls Saturday,
Sunday, or Monday. On Tuesday we went to the Wiggle meeting. This was another hurdle. If Mr. Maxwell knew where there was a mulberry tree, I'd be in trouble; I'd have to start all over again, hoping for a different snag.

  The Wiggle meeting started out with bad news—bad for me, that is. Patrick went right to Mr. Maxwell and told him we wanted to do silkworms for our project. And Mr. Maxwell said okay. In fact, he seemed to think it was a great idea. "A first for me," he said. "Never had anyone do a silkworm project before. It'll be unique. Good job, kids."

  I cheered up—secretly, of course—a minute later, when Mr. Maxwell told us that he didn't know anyone with a mulberry tree. "I'll ask around," he said. "You never know."

  Everyone talked about how their projects were going. Abby brought in a pie every week. She was planning to enter the pie competition and was perfecting her crust. She gave each of us a bite or two and then would ask a million questions about the crust. "Was it flakier last week?" she'd say, or, "It's still not flaky enough, is it?" I wanted to be helpful, but I was hopeless at trying to remember—they all tasted good to me.

  Tony and Nathan had baby tomato plants they were growing from seed. Angela had baby potato plants she was growing from the eyes of a bunch of different kinds of potatoes.

  Kevin was raising a goose. The goose's name was Gossage. "The baseball player," Kevin said. "My dad's favorite pitcher." Patrick explained it to me. A while back there had been a Chicago White Sox pitcher named Rich Gossage, whose nickname was "Goose." Sometimes Kevin brought Gossage to the meeting to show us the tricks he was learning. Gossage could already honk on command and untie Kevin's shoelaces.