Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park Page B

and smiled. "Thanks, Mr. Dixon. I'll give her the message."
    Mr. Dixon put down his shears and went into the house with the flowers. Patrick and I got busy picking leaves; we'd brought a plastic bag with us because we were going to pick a lot this time. We counted fifty leaves, and Patrick picked a few more just in case.
    We finished just as Mr. Dixon came out again. He had a bag with red peppers in it, and some sweet peas with their stems wrapped in a damp paper towel.
    My mom loved flowers. I felt hopeful—surely once she got the flowers and the peppers, she'd know that Mr. Dixon was a nice guy, and let us stay sometimes.
    Mr. Dixon handed me the bag and the flowers. "I hope she likes those peppers," he said. "They're not bell peppers—they're a different kind. A little spicy. Used to grow them when I lived down south, but they do fine up here, too, just come ripe a little later. I use them in my jambalaya. You like jambalaya?"
    "I love jambalaya!" I said. My mom made it sometimes, and I'd liked it ever since I was little. Rice and seafood and chicken and sausage all jumbled up together.
Yum!
I also liked the word
jambalaya;
it was fun to say.
    "Well, I reckon your momma will be able to get some good use out of them," he said. "Don't Chinese people use a lot of peppers in cooking?"
    For a second I couldn't say anything. I felt my face getting hot. And then Patrick rescued me again. "Julia's not Chinese, Mr. Dixon. Her family is Korean."
He started talking faster. "And her mom does cook spicy stuff, and her family eats spicy food all the time, so I'm sure she'll like the peppers a lot."
    "Well, that's fine," Mr. Dixon said. "I'll see you two later then. Mind you go right on home now."
    "We will," Patrick said.
    We left and walked a little way. Then Patrick turned to me. "Jules," he said in a low voice, "he didn't mean anything. He said 'Chinese,' but he meant, you know, Asian. Any kind of Asian."
    I nodded. "I know, Patrick. It's okay."
    But it wasn't.
    Â 
    Once in a while somebody thinks I'm Japanese. But that's it—either Chinese or Japanese. It seems like those are the only kinds of Asians anyone has ever heard of. I didn't know exactly why it bugged me. Maybe because it made me feel like being Korean was so nothing—so not important that no one ever thought of it.
    I was used to people making that mistake. I was used to having to explain that I was Korean and not Chinese or Japanese, and most of the time I didn't bother getting very upset, unless people were being mean about it.
    But I'd really been surprised to hear Mr. Dixon say the same thing, and Patrick could tell.
    Why? Why had I been so surprised?
    Jostle, jostle, jostle.
My mom had assumed things about my teacher Mrs. Roberts because she was black. Mr. Dixon assumed my family would like peppers because we were Chinese. And I assumed that Mr. Dixon—somebody black, somebody who probably had a lot of experience with racism—would never make a mistake like that.
    But Mr. Dixon and I weren't thinking
bad
thoughts about each other, not like my mom had about Mrs. Roberts. We weren't being mean about it, either, like those girls who had chanted "Chinka-chinka-Chinaman" at me. That made a difference, didn't it?
    Then why was I thinking all those things at the same time?
    I thought again about why I didn't like people to assume I was Chinese. They thought they knew when they didn't. And because they thought they knew, they never asked.
    So in a way, it didn't matter whether what you were thinking was good or bad.
    Not knowing.
    And not knowing—or not caring—that you didn't know.
    And not bothering to find out because you didn't know you didn't know.
    That
was the problem.
    Â 
Me: I feel a little dizzy. Not knowing about not knowing reminds me of something —a picture in a book Patrick once showed me. There was this drawing of a can of dog food, right? And on the can there was a picture of a dog holding a can of dog food. And on