Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All

One difference between Magnolia and Iris that causes friction between them is how much Iris loves and misses the ocean. Magnolia is not sympathetic, because it makes her feel like Iris hates New York and does not want to be there with her. She doesn’t know how to swim, and when they decide to track down the owner of a lost flamingo sock, she can’t even imagine real flamingoes: all she can think of are the plastic kind she’s seen in the city.

They start their investigation at Growing Up, a plant store owned by a woman named Rosa. When Rosa tells the girls that Mr. Wu is the one who taught her to use eggshells as fertilizer, Magnolia is embarrassed at her parents’ thrifty ways. She is surprised, though, when Rosa praises her father’s plant knowledge and mentions that Mr. Wu once supervised a huge dahlia plantation. She wonders what her father would grow if he had room to have a garden in the city. Rosa shows them her “plant hospital,” explaining that being transplanted is hard on plants (67). Magnolia realizes that Iris is like an uprooted plant and that she might need extra care while she adjusts. Rosa gives Iris some seeds to plant at home, but she does not recognize the sock.

Next, the girls try Zito’s Pizza Shop. The owner and his staff all praise Magnolia’s parents for how white they get the shop’s aprons. When Magnolia asks for a Shirley Temple, Zito mentions that it is her mother’s favorite and that this is why she uses the English name Shirley. This is all new information to Magnolia. She tells Zito that her mother’s Chinese name is Xiaohua, and he practices saying it until he can do it easily. Just as Magnolia is feeling happy about eating pizza and drinking her Shirley Temple, a boy called Aspen, who often bullies her at school, enters the shop with two friends.

Aspen mocks her drink for being pink, saying that it is “girly.” Zito and his cooks all point out that there is nothing wrong with being girly, firmly shutting Aspen down. Zito doesn’t know who the flamingo sock belongs to, so Iris and Magnolia get up to leave. On his way out, Aspen throws a balled-up napkin at Magnolia’s head. Inside the napkin, the girls are surprised to find a message: “Follow the pennies. Please” (77). They think that Aspen must really need help if he’s written “please.” Outside the pizza shop, they see a penny. It leads to a trail of pennies that deposits the two friends at a small bookstore.

Inside the bookstore, underneath the leg of a stool, they find a note, directing them to look behind a castle. Behind a painting of a castle, they find a shoelace with “Chauncey 284” written on it (80). This leads them to a page in a book. On this page, there is an entry about flamingoes. The entry explains that flamingoes begin life gray but gradually turn pink from eating brine shrimp.

From behind a shelf, Aspen hisses to get their attention. He confesses that he loves flamingoes and the sock is his. He wants them to give the sock back without his friends realizing because he is embarrassed. Magnolia is tempted to keep it from him, but Iris encourages her to be kind. She learns that Aspen has been saying mean things at school about the laundromat because he does not want her to talk about it. He thinks she already knows a story that her father has never shared with her.

When Aspen was little, his own father—who is mean and critical—threw his stuffed animal in the wash and mocked Aspen for thinking it would drown. Mr. Wu sewed pretend gills on the animal and promised Aspen that the toy could now never drown. Aspen tells them that he loves the passage in the book about flamingoes because he believes that if he refuses to eat the “shrimp” of his father’s constant criticism, he can “stay gray”—stay true to himself and not start believing the terrible things his father tells him about himself (86). Before they leave, Iris writes Aspen a note: “I hope you stay gray” (87). She tucks it into the book about flamingoes.

When Iris chooses a sock covered in ice cream cones for their next investigation, Magnolia thinks it probably belongs to a girl their age named Jessica. Jessica’s mother owns a large ice cream company, and Jessica lives in an expensive apartment with a doorman and a fancy security system. Jessica’s nanny, Sunny, opens the door for Magnolia and Iris; Magnolia is astonished at how quiet, spacious, and clean the apartment is. After they return Jessica’s sock, she invites them to stay for a bit. As they talk, Magnolia learns that, although Jessica lives in luxury, she rarely sees her mother and is quite lonely.

When Jessica misremembers what Magnolia’s mother does, thinking that she runs a department store, Magnolia agrees with this. The shocked and disappointed look on Iris’s face prompts her to tell the truth. Jessica is envious of how many people Magnolia must get to see each day at the laundromat and how much time Magnolia gets to spend with her mother. Magnolia tells Jessica she should come with them on their next sock-returning mission, but Iris is clearly against the idea. After Magnolia shows Jessica the next sock they will try to reunite with its owner, Jessica says that its polka dots remind her of a Dalmatian. She suggests they check with their building’s dog walker, but she says that she cannot come with them, as her mother expects her to stay inside.

As Magnolia and Iris wait in the lobby for the dog walker, there is tension between them. Iris accuses Magnolia of worshipping Jessica and says that they do not need anyone’s help because she’s worried about being excluded by Jessica and Magnolia. When Magnolia protests that Jessica seems lonely, Iris says that everyone is lonely sometimes. She points out that Magnolia was lonely before Iris came along. Embarrassed, Magnolia claims that she was fine without Iris and does not need her now. She immediately wishes she could take the words back, but Iris storms off.

Magnolia does not know how to fix things with Iris, or if she should even try. She decides to work on the case of the spotted sock by herself. She finds the dog walker surrounded by a huge number of dogs of every description. The dog walker tells Magnolia that his first client was her mother, who let him walk Mr. Pants to drum up business. Magnolia asks how so many dogs can get along so well, and the dog walker explains that sometimes they do fight—but they have to work it out so that everyone can move forward together.

Magnolia does not get any useful information from the dog walker. Without Iris, the quest is beginning to feel like just a boring errand, anyway. She decides to at least try one of the ideas Iris suggested: the polka dots look like boba, and the sock’s owner might be the owner of Plop Plop, a boba shop in Chinatown. At Plop Plop, she sees three girls laughing and talking together, and she feels sad again about Iris. She thinks that she doesn’t fully understand how to be a best friend. Without Iris there to support her, she feels shy about asking the clerk about the sock. She finds a way to show the clerk the sock without directly asking whether it is hers and realizes it is not.

Realizing she has left her knapsack in the lobby of Jessica’s building, she hurries back. She sits down on the bench and begins to cry. The doorman, Mr. Yoon, brings her knapsack. He spots the sock and tells her it is his. Aware of her fight with Iris, he tells her that he once believed it was better not to get attached to people because they might leave. Eventually, he realized that “endings are inevitable, natural, because people evolve [and] circumstances change” (108-09). He tells her that he does not think her friendship with Iris is over yet, though, and Magnolia agrees that “it [is] far too early for an ending” (109).