Free The Blackberry Bush by David Housholder

with a stolen drink, I often look through the photos of our life in Germany. I miss Opa’s shed the most, and the tools. I’m going to start working on movie and TV sets as soon as I’m old enough. I can’t wait to work a band saw again. When I’m working with tools, and the fresh sawdust billows up from the sander, my sense of balance comes back and my agitation calms down. I ride my bike past the studios all the time. They’re getting used to me, and the security people have started letting me in. I live for those days, and when I’m there, surrounded by the folks making sets, I don’t feel off balance anymore. Even though I’m a kid, they even let me help sometimes. I could live on that high for days.
    It’s a whole ’nother world. I especially love the Paramount lot. They shot Star Trek and I Love Lucy at these studios, and I’m more at home there than anywhere else, except maybe for church with Opa. Mutti asks me if I’m going to try out for a part some day. She so doesn’t get me. I want to build sets and backdrops. If I can’t be beautiful, at least I can create beautiful images. Opa merely smiles and states again that I have a superior gift of craftsmanship and an eye for detail. I get excited when I think about doing things like that.
    When they are entertaining at home, and diplomats do that a lot, Mutti always introduces me as a “future actress, if she would just cut her hair.” She’s said it like a bazillion times. Why do parents pick one phrase that bugs their kids and say it over and over to their friends? And besides, my hair’s not that long. It’s only been over a year since I refused to cut it short anymore.
    I’ve been rehearsing imaginary dialogues all day, trying to figure out how I’m going to react when Mutti turns livid because my hair is not cut. I rehearse these pretend conversations all the time with people who make me nervous. It makes it hard for me to sleep sometimes. That’s when I drink. And when I drink, my imagination runs wild. But usually drinking makes me feel worse…darker on the inside somehow.
    Wait till the folks at the Paramount lot see what I can do with my hands. They said that in a year or so, maybe, if I’m still interested, I could work a few hours there. Interested? Are they kidding? I’d love that job. And then I’d get to be around people who notice me…and maybe even like me.
    Opa says I shouldn’t worry about it, but I do. He says we are all worth the same, no matter what anyone thinks. He says the awful war he saw as a child was caused by people who didn’t believe this simple truth.
    Our school, Bancroft Middle School, is always in mural-painting competitions with other schools throughout LA. That’s where I met Zara, my Pakistani friend. She missed our last project. Happens a lot. She’s always expected to be there for every family event—no matter what. Opa loves to ask her about her family and sometimes attends the events at her home with me. He and Zara’s father seem to have a lot to talk about. “Old school” stuff, I guess.
    Our art class had to spend the first hour clearing the wild blackberry bush from the face of the concrete beneath the overpass where we painted the mural that day. I cut the back of my right wrist on one of the thorns. The long, thin scab is still there, and it stings occasionally. I got back at the vine by painting sharp, menacing blackberry vines winding through the mural. But I suppose the plant will grow back and outlive the mural....
    Opa kisses me on the forehead every day before I leave for school on my bike. Even as he’s gotten older, he always stands up whenever I enter the room. He holds my head in both hands, tells me in English that I’m his darling princess, and then seals it with the kiss where he tells me the tiara should be.
    He also says I have a perfect smile, and I should smile more. He calls it my “high beams.” At night I practice smiling, because I know he’s right. Someday it