The Trouble Begins by Linda Himelblau Read Free Book Online Page A

money to pay for the library books and her uncle's medicine.
    I am in the car with five women all talking Vietnamese at once. I am crouched on the floor so the police won't stop us for the seat belt law. I am squished. It is a long trip.
    We finally get to the sewing place, which is in somebody's big garage. Sewing machines and chairs are shoved together in crooked rows with boxes of cloth at the front of the rows. Women are already working. My mom sits me down at a machine and leans over me to show me fast how to sew. I pay attention. I'm helping to make Christmas stockings with just two lines of sewing, up one side anddown the other. Then I give them to the lady behind me to do something else. We get paid for how many we finish. My mom hurries off to talk to the lady in charge so I start to do what she showed me. She sits down across the room in another row of machines. When I press the the pedal the machine taps its way down one side of the stocking. It's fun. All I can hear are sewing machines and women speaking Vietnamese. It's easy.
    “No good!” yells the lady behind me. She throws the red stocking at my head. “He's no good for this.”
    My mom runs over. “Sorry, sorry.” She bows to the lady. She looks at the bad stocking. She shows me how it's wrong. She leans across me to do a stocking on my machine. “There,” she says. “Like that.” As she straightens up I see her eyes. They plead with me. I bend my head close to watch the line on my next stocking. I make it straight.
    I do ten stockings, twenty, fifty. It's not fun. It's boring, boring. My neck feels stiff and crooked. I glance ahead of me. There are boxes of stockings taller than me at the start of the line. I remember my mom's eyes. I sew more lines and I watch each one closely. I will not let that lady behind me yell again.
    I look up later and only one box is gone. I quit looking. Now my neck
and
my shoulders have little prickles of pain in them but I stop thinking about it. I watch the lines of stitches across the red cloth. Over and over again. Once my mom comes over to show me how to replace the thread that comes up from the bottom. After that I do it myself. The boxes empty so slowly.
    Women stand up around me. They talk quietly now. I let myself look up. All the piles of boxes from the front of the line are gone. I am so tired. We close the machines and leave.
    Everyone in the car is quiet now so I fall asleep on the floor. My mom wakes me up when we're at our house. It's very dark. “Come,” she says. She pulls me out of the car. I am still almost asleep. “You are a good boy,” she whispers as we let ourselves into the quiet house. “A good worker.” I fall down on the couch in my clothes and go back to sleep.
    I don't sleep very long before my dad shakes me awake. “Get up,” he commands. “We gotta go.” With my dad I don't ask. I get up. I stagger out the door after him and get in the car. I am asleep before he reaches the end of our block. I don't know where we're going.
    When he shakes me again it is just beginning to be light. Where are we? I'm so tired. I drag after him across a street. I wait almost sleeping on my feet while he talks to a man. We get in a different car and drive away. “We'll get home in time for school,” he says. I fall asleep.
    This time when I feel the car stopping I wake myself up. We are home. “Hurry up, lazy boy,” my dad says as he rushes ahead of me into the house. Inside, when I look at the clock, I know school has already started. I grab my backpack before I head for the door.
    My mom comes out of the bedroom like she just woke up. My grandma comes from the kitchen. “Where have you been with him?” my mom asks. She sounds worried.
    “I heard about a better car for us from Van. I wanted toget it fast so I took Du.” He took me so he could drive in the diamond lane. He needs two people to drive there. “He's a lazy boy. He just sleeps,” adds my dad scornfully. My mom and grandma both