Pandas on the Eastside

Pandas on the Eastside — page 1 — One Journey Wind Song My neighborhood the Eastside is about the unlike liest place on earth you would ever think to see a panda But life is full of surprises Some people call the Eastside a slum That’s because they are describing buildings and roads instead of people To them people on the Eastside probably look poor sad uneducated sick and worthless But I don’t care what they think To me the people around here are friends Kellie Rae on the corner who Mom tells me to ignore She gives me dimes to buy Popsicles Those guys who sell stuff I’m not allowed to even see much less think about buying They call me Singalong let me take their pop bottles back and get snippy when their 1

Pandas on the Eastside — page 2 — Gabrielle Prendergast customers litter And Kentucky Jack Contrary Gary and the rest who sleep on the street until well into winter If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t know any swearwords at all And I think a girl called Journey might need high-quality swear words one day That’s right Journey is my name Journey Wind Song That’s pretty much all I know for sure about myself Mom sometimes says I’m part Viking but Kentucky Jack who has never by the way been anywhere near Kentucky says I look just like his cousin’s girlfriend and she’s pure Indian through and through and never been off the rez Kellie Rae always says Aloha to me and tells me I must be a Hawaiian princess or something Mom has red hair and freckles so obviously there was something going on with my dad that gave me the black hair but this is one of the things Mom never talks about Mom tells me all kinds of other stuff I’m sure I don’t need to know She tells me about the war and about the prime minister and his pretty wife and about all the weird ingredients in orange soda But she never tells me anything about my dad 2

Pandas on the Eastside — page 3 — Pandas on the Eastside All I ever get is this speech He didn’t stick around after you were born That’s all you need to know Why would I need to know about the ingredients in orange soda but not need to know anything about my own father I think when Mom says That’s all you need to know what she really means is That’s all I want to tell you There’s a difference But Mom doesn’t see it that way The past is gone she says as though it’s a book I left on the bus and should just forget about But how can I forget a past I never knew anything about in the first place Sometimes when she’s slipped a little and smells of wine she lies on the sofa and calls me Scheherazade I asked my teacher what that meant and she gave me a book called The Arabian Nights so I don’t know maybe I’m an Arab I don’t look like any of the girls from The Brady Bunch or like any doll that’s for sure Mom says she was one of the first people to give a kid a name like Journey Wind Nowadays you can’t walk down the street without tripping over a baby named Rainbow or Sunshine or a toddler 3

Pandas on the Eastside — page 4 — Gabrielle Prendergast called Freedom or Phoenix But most girls my age are called Mary or Julie or Nancy or Jackie Jackie was the name of the president’s wife the year I was born 1962 So there are a lot of Jackies but not too many Journeys in grade five at Eastside Elementary Mom was a real trailblazer an innovator namewise She says she was a hippie before anyone even knew there were hippies She calls herself Heather some days On others she goes by Bird Bird Song Get it Song is not our real last name I found my birth certificate one day when I was looking for a quarter to buy milk My real first name is Journey and my real middle name is Wind but my last name is actually Flanagan which is about as far from Song as you can get And it’s sure not a Viking name Under Father it says Unknown So I go by Journey Song That’s what I write on my schoolbooks anyway My school is three blocks from our apartment and in the morning I some times have to step over puddles of pee or worse things but mostly the streets are quiet at that time All the kids at school live on the Eastside No one from the outside would ever send their kid to an 4

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