Family trips by automobile are always complicated affairs. For all the attractions of travel, it was a pain, since most places were long drives away. For example, Faith wanted to go to Los Angeles at least once a year. Taking a long, boring trip with five kids and four adults was always problematic, since boredom came around every corner. One approach is to keep the day full with interesting conversation. I liked the idea of challenging everyone with impossible emergency scenarios and asking what had to be done. One of my favorites was, “A hungry tiger is chasing you. You see your friend leaving in a car. Do you chase after the car and risk exhaustion (and being easy prey) if your friend does not stop, or do you turn around to find a weapon to face the tiger?” The question was and is impossible. How good is your friend? What kind of weapons are within reach? There were far more questions than anything else.
When the kids got older, their answers got more organized. We asked them what had to be done immediately, what could wait twenty minutes, and what could wait a day or so. Over the years, our kids could handle some rather non-traditional situations. They could verbalize how to get away with murder, how to rob a bank, how to tell lies, and how to do better than anyone expected in an election.
I made sure the kids learned how to fix a car, defend themselves, suture a wound, fire a gun, and so much more. Once I cut my leg, and I needed the wound to be closed up. Ruth gave instructions, and Julie did the suturing. Both Mary and Bobbie were fascinated. I think they wanted to be the ultimate tough kids. They kept trying to practice fighting to respond to Raymond's physicality. At a certain point, Bobbie and Mary told Raymond, “We are sisters. Sisters protect each other. If you attack one of us, we will bonk you on the head with a frying pan at some point. For each attack on one of us, there will be one bang on the head. If you attack one of us, you had better know what the other one is doing.” A few weeks after the ultimatum, Raymond finally left Bobbie and Mary alone. The house got a lot quieter after that.
One time I asked Bobbie, “What would you do if Raymond hid all of the frying pans in the house, and then attacked you?” Bobbie answered, “Easy. I would use some of our stash. Mary and I have frying pans hidden all over the house. There is about one for each room of the house. Raymond would soon discover that the cooks would be angry and that his head would still get dented. If Raymond managed to find every frying pan in our house, he still would need to find the frying pans we have buried in the backyard. I also want to point out that the outside world, away from our property, is simply loaded with inexpensive frying pans. It is often easy to borrow frying pans from others, especially if you say you only need it for a few minutes for something unrelated to cooking.”
Somehow, I have gotten this far into the book without mentioning that we were raising the kids bilingual. We spoke English and Mandarin. Some of this was hard on Faith, but she picked up Mandarin along with the kids. As if our family was not strange enough on road trips, we sometimes switched to Mandarin when we wanted to make rude comments. There is the risk that someone you do not expect can understand you. That rarely happened. There were a lot of stories on the flip side. There is no polite way of saying this. A child of a black person and a Chinese person looks black. The Chinese part is there, but not so obvious. So we had three family members (Faith, Sam, and Mary) who could speak Mandarin but did not look the slightest bit Chinese. I hate to say it, but Faith had numerous episodes when she said, “No, I am not going to steal your things. I am a law-abiding citizen” in Mandarin to persons who looked like they wished they could fall through the floor.
Sixth grade started badly for Mary and Bobbie. Their teacher seemed to detest them. It was over-the-top unprofessional. Mary and Bobbie swore that they did not talk in Chinese or do anything to antagonize the teacher. They did say that the teacher would get deeply upset each time they addressed each other in class as sister. We parents were quite frustrated because we were paying the tuition. Faith finally had enough and had a meeting with the principal and the teacher. She showed them some videos the girls took of their teacher screaming at them for no reason. He confessed that he had attempted to forbid them from calling each other “sister.” When they persisted, he said this was an affront to school discipline.
Faith looked the principal in the eye and said, “There seem to be some very bad assumptions here. These girls live in the same house that also contains all of their biological parents. They share a room and a last name. Don't be hung up on the slave collar and their skin colors. It appears that it is too late to salvage this situation. You all strike me as the sort of people who are incapable of ever admitting to a mistake. So let us turn to the matter at hand. These sisters are leaving this school. I will demand a full refund of the tuition for these two sisters. If you object, I will go public about your violation of your mission statement. You promise not to discriminate against families with different backgrounds. These sisters have had their rights violated.” She turned to the teacher and said, “I would like you to write a letter of apology to these sisters, or I will see that your teaching credentials are revoked in the ugliest way possible. Do you have a written policy against any students from identifying as siblings, or do you reserve this outrage only for my kids?”
Faith got a full refund. Once we had the refund, she considered making the dispute public to weaken the school further. We all decided that this would expose the crossover girls to public scrutiny and possible bullying. We handled the issue as quietly as possible. For one year, the girls were homeschooled.
Faith became responsible for their education. She gave them documents from her work and had them read and understand them. Faith had the girls walk around different areas, inside and out, and had them draw specific maps. The maps had to be as close to mathematical accuracy as possible. Faith assigned her kids rather strange book reports. They had to sneak into a public library, steal a book, have the book out for only a week, write a report, and then sneak the book back without being caught. They were required to demonstrate that they placed the book into the correct place, based on the library's organization scheme. The girls loved it. During their homeschool year, they produced ten “stolen book reports.” I remember one of them started out, “This book was not worth stealing.” I objected to this in the beginning. Faith just said, “No book is as loved or as carefully read as one of these books. Isn't that what a public library is all about? To take one book out of a whole building loaded with books and make it magical?” Another assignment was to ask the girls to bike to different places around Portland. They had to document the fastest route, and prove to Faith's satisfaction that it was the fastest route. Again, I objected that this exposed the girls to risk. Faith told me, “It is not the fastest route if you need to visit the hospital. The girls know this. They stay safe.”
Quincy filled up the pickup truck with bicycle parts from the dump. The girls were asked to assemble as many working bikes as they could and sell them to neighborhood kids. They were required to keep track of their time so that they could work out their earnings per hour. The girls set the prices to maximize their wages. They were required to fix any problem in the first 30 days, and to offer a full refund (if requested) after 30 days. Each time there was a refund, Faith fined them $5. They found that their hourly wage was quite low, being brought down by all the fussing over repairs. Sam helped grade the assignment. They got a B since Sam thought they could have made two more bicycles from the unused parts.
Faith volunteered for a non-profit that provided legal services for slaves or disputes involving slaves. One problem was access. If the non-profit could get a short video of an accident location or a witness, they could petition a judge for greater access. But without any initial access, there was no evidence to use to petition a judge. Mary and Bobbie's assignment was to sneak into all kinds of places and get the crucial, initial evidence. Often, Mary put a leash on Bobbie's collar, and Bobbie carried a tray of chilled sodas into a workplace. While the supervisors were enjoying the drinks, Mary would interview people. One odd metal object on Bobbie's tray was a hidden camera. Nobody ever caught on. Later the interviews would be typed into affidavits by legal clerks. Bobbie said, “We can do that, too.” Their first attempts were not suitable to present to the court. Eventually, they learned how to use format templates, grammar checkers, and spelling checkers. With improved technology and improved writing skills, they produced documents that could be submitted directly to the courts. One of the law clerks said, “You are going to put us out of business!” Mary said, “No, we are helping you so that your work will get to be more interesting. We are just doing the boring part of the work for you.”
Some slaves disappeared in Portland. One undercover investigator followed a suspicious car to non-descript industrial location. Subsequent investigation was impossible since the building was heavily guarded. No one could sneak in. The girls got the “assignment” to figure it out the best they could. The building had visible guards. They knew that none of their usual tricks would work. They first snuck into the adjacent building at nighttime. They were able to climb from that building onto the roof of their target building. Bobbie located a skylight that could be opened a few inches. You could stick your hand in, but not your head. Mary had a camera with a massive flash. She stuck it into the gap and took a few photos. At home, they looked at the photos carefully. There was nothing suspicious at all.
Mary and Bobbie worked out a plan together. They did see a row of suspended lighting fixtures. They scrounged around until they located a broken fixture that was identical in an abandoned industrial building. They took it apart and mounted a camera with a week's worth of battery life and a large capacity memory card. It was rigged so it would fold down to wedge into the skylight, and then snap into place with springs once it was inside. They snuck back up to the skylight, and by using mirrors and optical tricks, managed to lower their fake fixture to roughly the same elevation as the real fixtures. They figured no one would ever notice a non-working light fixture for one week. A week later, they snuck back and retrieved their phony light fixture. They took pains to avoid leaving any clues as to what they had done. Back home, they fast forwarded the video until there was movement. It seemed to show some sort of autopsy. That was enough for them; they turned the memory card over to Faith saying, “Whoever looks carefully at this video needs to have a barf bowl. This is disgusting.”
The video showed an organ harvesting operation. Slaves were brought in. They were told they had cancer, and they would be cured at “Special Slave Hospital #4.” If you want a further description of the contents of these videos, look at the Portland newspapers from the summer of 2048. The dissecting, the jolly workers with their profane comments, the rapid work, it all caused the whole town to lose their meals. Faith arranged for a 90-minute documentary. I was to be the narrator. It was my job to say that thirty slaves were harvested in a single week. When I went through the tape the first time, I screamed as loud as I have in my life. I saw one of my friends from Middle School being harvested for his liver and his kidneys. He was one of the kids who disappeared when slavery first appeared. They changed the script so that I could mention my personal connection. My voice was filled with rage, guilt, exhaustion, grief, and frustration. No one I saw was able to watch the video without openly crying. I barely spoke to anyone for two weeks. This is, in fact, the first time I am admitting that it was me who was the narrator of the film Harvest of the Enslaved. Faith had to accept several awards on my behalf for the “anonymous narrator.” It took me a whole day just to write this section, the most difficult portion of this book.
Lots of people went to jail. It was all a very big deal. Headlines were asking who obtained the video. No clue was ever located. No one ever confessed. Faith gave the girls an A-plus for their project. In the records Faith submitted to the school system to justify their admission into the 7th grade, she described it as “an unusual industrial arts project combining old and new technology for a unique practical application which was successfully tested on site.”
The school year 2048 had a rough start for Bobbie and Mary. They were both starting the 7th grade in regular school again. They never had much of a problem with other kids in elementary school. But there was a rough crowd at her school who had never seen or heard of them before. Bobbie and Mary introduced themselves as sisters, which did not go over well with this group. They had the same last name, but they looked so different from each other. You can imagine the conversations, “How come you look so different?” With Bobbie answering, “I have a different mom than she does. She has a different dad than I do.” The last straw was that Bobbie had a slave collar, and Mary did not.
There was a lot of name-calling. The parents told them to ignore it. We knew how fierce the sisters were, and we did not want to find out that they beat up a dozen students. Mary learned the name of the ringleader. We will call him Richard Wilson. He had about ten followers. One particular Monday, Richard was going to throw a big rock at the girls. That was the signal that the rest of the gang was going to beat up Mary and Bobbie. The girls decided to handle this their own way. They did have us adults stock up on a few things at our house.
Monday morning came. Bobbie and Mary walked bravely into the schoolyard. They kept their eyes open for Richard. Mary had no problem raising her hands together with her hidden Wonder Woman metal bracelets and deflected the rock, which was the size of half a brick. Mary yelled, “Stop where you are! Listen to me!” She made sure all the kids stayed put. She continued, “If you mass attack us, we will go total Amazon woman on you. We will break arms and legs. We will kick you with steel-toed boots. We will break your jaws. Each of you will look like you got run over by a truck. We do not want to do this. So stop and sit down. Dick Wilson, I issue the ancient challenge of the schoolyard. You shall fight my younger sister. You are way older, heavier, and stronger than she is. So you have all the advantages. Once the challenge is accepted, you both fight until one person says stop or does something we all agree means stop. No one here tells anyone else about this unless this sacred oath is broken. No weapons. If you want to use your feet, take off your shoes. Do you both accept?” They both answered, “Yes.”
The fight was a nothing. Richard charged Bobbie. Bobbie stepped aside. Richard fell to the ground. As soon as Richard got up, Bobbie punched Richard very hard in the stomach. Richard groaned and flopped to the ground again. Mary walked over to Richard and asked, “Do you want to be hit anymore?” Richard shook his head. Mary said, “The fight is over. There is an ice cream party at our house right after school. Everyone here is welcome. I am passing out green tickets. Only ticket holders are allowed to attend. Here is one for Richard.” Just then Faith and Ruth showed up near the school. Bobbie called out, “Hey moms! Over here!” The girls swapped backpacks, so that when they walked into school, they had their textbooks and homework rather than weapons.
The ice cream party was a great idea. Even though ice cream was an almost unheard of luxury these days, Richard did not show up. Bobbie thought that the gang was made up of not-so-bad kids that wanted to feel protected. Mary and Bobbie were excellent hosts. They showed lots of family photographs and explained our unique family structure. They gave a martial arts demonstration with bamboo poles in the driveway. In between swinging at each other (jumping, ducking, avoiding each other's swings), they thumped the poles on the cement and called out to each other. I do not remember the whole thing, but the big ending was, “(thump-thump) What do we do? (thump-thump) Homework by day (thump-thump) Fight Evil at Night (thump-thump) Who are we? (thump-thump) Sisters in our family. (thump-thump) Sisters in combat. (thump-thump) Sisters forever. (thump-thump)” I think they scared the daylights out of their guests. They did not show any of their knife throwing or shooting skills. It was better that way. Mary and Bobbie made a lot of friends that day.
The next day, Bobbie was called into the school office. In the office, there was the principal, Bobbie's homeroom teacher, Richard, Richard's parents, and their family lawyer. Bobbie demanded that they call her parents. The principal refused. Bobbie asked what this was all about. The principal said that she was being expelled because a lawsuit was being filed. Bobbie picked up a copy of the lawsuit and looked it over. She demanded that her sister come to the meeting to dispute the facts alleged in the lawsuit. Mary came in and presented video testimony and affidavits that discussed some facts not mentioned in the lawsuit. These facts were: Richard had thrown a large rock, Richard had organized a gang to attack, Bobbie had responded to a challenge that Richard had accepted, and that Richard had declined an invitation to an ice cream party. Mary asked, “Feel free to present your videos, affidavits, and other evidence.” The lawyer shook his head. He had not brought any evidence. Faced with Mary's evidence, Richard agreed with Mary's version of the events. Mary pointed out that the lawyer could be disbarred for such a pack of lies. She pointed out that Richard's family risked a countersuit that might plunge them into slavery, and that the principal risked losing his job for ignoring Bobbie's requests for her parents and due process. Mary showed the bruises on her arms and asked to see Richard's belly. Once the adults could see that Mary had been hurt far more than Richard, there was dismay on all of their faces.
Mary then said, “Everyone here should just ignore the five minutes of foolishness in the schoolyard. There will be no lawsuits. There will be no disciplinary action whether at school or at the bar association. It was all over. Instead, every person at this meeting is invited to come to our house after school for another ice cream party.” It was a bit hard for Richard's father and his lawyer to cool down. They uttered about a dozen cuss words each to refer to Bobbie and Mary. Mary just smiled and said, “I will need to ask our parents what all those new words mean. There is another logical fallacy here. Since I made the challenge to Richard, I am just as guilty for this incident as Bobbie is. So logically, you need to expel us both. You would lose lots of tuition money. You would lose your best students. My parents would work ceaselessly to close this school, and all of you would lose your jobs, possibly losing everything you own, even your own freedom. Or, you could walk out of here saying, ‘I came into this meeting without knowing the full facts.’ In return, we promise to obey school rules. All we ask of you is that you respect due process. We also demand to keep a copy of that lawsuit as a bargaining chip if anyone here ever tries to re-open this case with a revised set of alleged facts. We also demand that we take photos right now of the alleged injuries for the same reason. By the way, cursing is not an argument. Cursing just shows you have lost big time. Next time, leave out the curses and try to use logic and facts.”
The ice cream party was a great way for everyone to cool down. It seemed everyone was quite impressed by the charts and diagrams showing the complicated way these two sisters did not share any DNA. The parents used their own words to point out the jeopardy the principal put himself in by not letting any of them attend the meeting. He turned white. The lawyer wanted to know how the kids got so good at legal stuff. Bobbie explained that they did pro bono legal clerking to assist slaves falsely accused of all kinds of things. Bobbie explained, “Once a lawyer realizes that these two tiny girls have affidavits, video depositions, and piles of photos, they kind of melt. They know that if they allow things to go to trial with their word against solid evidence, the humiliation would be total. They would be the laughing stock of the bar association. So they settle on our terms. In this case, our terms are that you show up and get a chocolate sundae. We prefer to reserve our greed for ice cream.”
At one point, the girls interviewed the lawyer about his work with a hidden camera. They then invited him to their joint room, while they showed how that turned the video into a transcript that was formatted like an affidavit. They printed it out for him as a souvenir. The speed, accuracy, and professionalism of the printout amazed the lawyer. He said that he might have some work for them. Bobbie said, “We work for free if we fight for justice for the downtrodden.”
Faith kept in touch with Richard Wilson's family. We learned that they were Jewish. We told them of our modified ritual to help separate the week from the weekend, based on the Jewish Shabbat. Ruth Wilson invited us to her house. I said, “That is not very practical. We are a family of nine, after all.” Faith asked Ruth's family of four over to our house. We learned the basics of kosher (no mixing meat and milk products, no shellfish) so we could prepare the bulk of the food.
At 6 pm, the Wilson family came over for dinner. They brought wine, knotted bread, and a set of candlesticks. We told them that we had a weekly home-cooked meal that gathered everyone. Faith said, “We use the meal as a means to separate the harsh and confusing work week from a hopefully more peaceful weekend. We deliberately complain about our work while we cook, and then stop when we serve the food. We have been doing this for over 15 years.” Mr. Wilson laughed and said, “I wish more Jewish families could adhere to Shabbat as faithfully as you have. Do you know much about the religious aspects?” Faith said, “I know a little. When I was a girl, I was invited to Shabbat dinners with my Jewish neighbors. Our weekly dinner is based on my memories. I know there is a lot that I do not know.” Over the course of the dinner, the Wilson family told the story of the Jewish Shabbat and explained what they did at their home.
After dinner, the adults crowded into the family room for a general discussion. There were a few words about the schoolyard episode. At one point, Faith stood up and said, “I may regret showing you this, but please look here.” She walked over to a large picture hanging on the wall. Faith lifted it off the hook and moved the picture to another location. Mounted on the wall, hidden by the picture, was a poster with lots of pictures and writing. Faith gestured for Ruth Wilson to come over and inspect it. The poster showed how Bobbie and Mary had made a spring-loaded lighting fixture with a hidden camera. It showed how it was installed and removed. The diagrams made it clear that the girls had used a laser rangefinder and a periscope to lower the light fixture to the same level as the other fixtures and to make sure the fixture was level. There was a note that Sam had helped the girls with the trigonometry needed to estimate the correct distance to the fixture straight down. In the corner, Faith had written, “Exceptional work. You get an A-plus.”
Ruth Wilson looked shocked. She recovered herself and said, “One hundred years ago the Nazis built death camps that killed millions of Jews. Now we have a mini-death camp located here in Portland. It was your own daughters assisted by the rest of your family who put an end to it. What a mitzvah! And my son rewards them by throwing a rock and inciting a mob! I will never live this down. I am very sorry.” Faith put the picture back and quietly said, “No issue. It is not like we advertise their projects. Your son just picked on the wrong girls.” Ruth shook her head, “I am very sorry. After this whole affair, I still thought you were bad parents. I thought you let your daughters run wild. I thought the way they said, ‘We help the downtrodden’ was comic book swagger which was irresponsible. It is not irresponsible to raise children who refuse to be bullied, even when faced with a dozen of their classmates. Your daughters are wonderful, and you are all the greatest parents ever. I was so, so wrong about you. Thank you for your wonderful hospitality and generous spirit. I have a lot to think about.”
Ruth sat down in her chair, still shaking her head. She said, “Wait, that was Chris' voice narrating the documentary. Oh, I am so sorry for your loss.” Ruth's voice just stopped. I said, “It was very tough to see that. Usually, when your kids start using trigonometry for the first time, you do not end up seeing one of your two best friends from middle school being killed right in front of you. I was in shock for a few weeks. But yes, the girls did an amazing job of executing that project. They had no idea what was going on there. Now that I know what was happening there, I would never have allowed that assignment to have gone forward.” Quincy said, “Please promise not to reveal the secret identities of Portland's newest comic book superheroes. Can we count on your discretion?” We all laughed. It was great that Quincy could break the complicated mood in the room.
A little later, it was time to leave. We discovered that the kids were playing an epic game of classic Monopoly. We asked everyone to take an inventory of their holdings to declare a winner. As usual, Julie came out on top. She knew that the key to the game was continually explaining that another player was winning while she quietly won the game. No one was better at psychological manipulation than Julie.
As the Wilson family stepped outside to walk to their car, I whispered in Faith's ear, “I think you have a new friend.”
Bobbie and Mary had three older siblings. They did not get enmeshed in drama. Sam was an excellent student and tended to stay away from getting his hands dirty. I saw lots of similarities with my upbringing. He was interested in math, science, and computer programming. He had a balanced group of friends. Sam was also good at baseball and spent a lot of free time playing games when he could.
Raymond turned out to be a sweet kid. He was ashamed of how he had treated Mary and Bobbie in the past. I think Raymond was the most balanced kid. He was a good student, a passable athlete, and excellent at car repairs. Not only did he have a large network of friends in Portland, but he was a “pen-pal” to a considerable number of people all across the FUSA.
Julie mellowed her psychological warfare to be a social queen. She was always in the center of a big network of friends. She occasionally used Mary and Bobbie as her “special agents” to get intelligence of what various cliques were saying and doing. In return, Julie used very subtle ways to imply that Bobbie and Mary were very, very cool. Julie could have resented the way Bobbie and Mary identified as sisters. Since Julie shared a single parent with both of her younger sisters, she could have insisted that they also pull her into the “club of sisters.” Instead, she was totally charmed with her younger sisters and was constantly encouraging them to reach for even greater goals.
All of us in the family sensed that we needed our own squad of secret agents to move across our finish line. No one ever suspected what these two tiny girls could do when they were threatened.