Dear Opl (9 page)

After I manhandled the monster into the sink and cleaned the cobwebs from it, I followed the Grunch's instructions. I sliced my banana after peeling and tossed it into the blender with the strawberries and yogurt. I whizzed it up. No kidding. That's what the recipe said to do. Whiz. I added the rest bit by bit, whizzing in between, until I felt sure we'd have nothing more than pretty-colored glue in frosty, tall glasses.

I poured the goop into three cups—G-pa was going to drink this too—and watched a few lumps plop into each glass. McDonald's shakes did not plop.

Ollie helped G-pa up from his Lay-Z-Boy and handed him a glass of the pink goo. He raised it to his nose and took a whiff. “Smells good.”

“Define good,” I said, bringing the glass to my lips.

Before I'd had a chance to take my first sip, I saw beyond the rim of my cup that Ollie had finished his. He planted the glass on the counter with a thunk and smiled, revealing a thick, pale-pink mustache resting on his top lip. “Wow. That's just what I needed. I'm ready to go kick Jacob Berndowser's butt!”

“No you are not,” G-pa announced before taking a tentative sip.

“Yeah, G-pa's right. It's hard to conjure up fear when you're facing someone dressed as Snow White. Maybe the evil queen would work better.” I was growing tired of all the girlie costumes.

“No way,” Ollie said. “Mom would never go for that.”

“And neither do I, Ollie,” G-pa added. “You're not kicking anyone's butt unless I'm there to watch.” He turned to me. “I'm going with Ollie to talk to this Jacob kid's folks and find out what's going on.” He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Hey, this ain't bad. Even the chunky bits at the bottom are kinda tasty.”

I took a sip. It was sweet. Maybe not as sweet as the strawberry shakes at McDonald's, but still sweet. And it tasted like strawberries…and bananas. And it was a little bit chewy with whatever made it chewy—even though I didn't put any gum in it. I raised my eyebrows. “Okay, so it doesn't suck. Go figure.”

Ollie looked at me with his pink peach fuzz—except it was strawberry. “What will you make next?”

“Well,” I said, sizing up the kitchen, “since I've made a mess, I'd bet my making days are over, don't you think G-pa?”

“Nope. From now on, when you cook, I clean. But I'll help you with your new recipe book. We'll do it every other day. In fact, I'm looking forward to Sunday. I'm sure it'll be a heck of a lot better than any crappy chicken nuggets—or whatever Sunday's menu usually offers.” He took another swig from his glass. “Yup, this is mighty nice. I wouldn't mind a few more of these now and again.”

G-pa grabbed a dish towel and moved toward the sink. “You go on upstairs and finish your homework. And don't forget to jot down on your mom's shopping list all the junk you need for Sunday. She'll expect to see it there.”

I trudged off to the stairs and mumbled under my breath, “Junk? Junk is a four-letter word in this house if you put it next to the word food. Junk will be ignored if it's written on
her
list.”

Get comfortable and get tall. Leave your life situation trailing behind you and on the back burner while you float around and find what feels like
center
to you.”

I tried picturing what getting tall would look like. I slowed down my breath, which I practiced each time I passed the soup kitchen dude. It's not that he looked
scary
; he just looked
different
. And different made my heart rattle around in my chest. But with all of Aura's mindful breathing drills, I could now manage a calm yoga wave with all the sweeping of arms practice we'd been doing in class.

I imagined leaving Mom and my diet blog, which was no longer about my diet but rather a random place people came to ask for free advice. Yesterday, a girl had written in asking, what was the best way to clean her bedroom mirror, and I had to admit I'd never done it. Since I avoided mine, I had no idea if it was dirty or clean.

“Let your
in
breath fill up the spaces inside you, and push the release of air all the way outside. Every last molecule.”

We were studying air molecules in science class. Mr. Inkster explained how they behave differently in hot or cold temperatures. I knew I behaved differently in hot and cold temperatures. In fact, I had brought it up the last time I'd checked in with Dr. Friedman. We'd compared notes over one of the scary things I researched about diabetes.

I'd told her how I hated to be hot. “I read that some study showed people with diabetes ended up with broken body thermometers. It's like their internal fan goes on the fritz and they just get hotter and hotter and hotter.”

Beth looked at me above her black chunky glasses, which had slid down her nose a little bit. “Are you talking about autonomic neuropathy?”

“No,” I said. “I'm talking about how scary it would be if things got so bad that the only way I could cool myself down was to start panting like a dog because my sweat glands conked out.”

Beth let out a funky snort but then pushed her glasses up her nose and looked at me with her serious eyes. “Opal, I want you to be careful with what you Google. There is a lot of misinformation out there on the web. But yes, you're partially correct. One of the side effects of diabetes can be damage to the nervous system, and that damage can affect how a person's body regulates temperature.”

“Is that going to happen to me?”

“Not on my watch, kiddo. But remember, we're all part of a team here. You need to be doing your bit too—like your yoga classes. How are those going?”

“A little bit good. I'm getting the hang of the lingo, and I really like the teacher. Talk about one person who has total command of her climate control. Aura doesn't get too much of anything. She's one cool cucumber.

“And if I had to look like any vegetable, I think I'd probably choose that one. It fits in perfectly with how Aura wants us to think. Long and straight. I bet pretty soon it might even flatten out my pudgy parts.”

“Rome wasn't built in a day, Opal.” Beth smiled at me.

And neither was all this pudge
, I thought to myself.

• • •

What is a knife? This was a question I posed to my blog readers an hour after the dinner where I almost lost my life. These were some of their answers:

Evilgenius:
A knife is a multipurpose instrument. Made maybe as early as two and a half million years ago. It's a sharpened shard of cold, hard metal. Although one can make a knife out of other things. Especially if you've had experience. Like time in the slammer. Or a few years in the Boy Scouts.

This one was from
beautynbrains
:

My grandmother is superstitious and uses knives for all sorts of cures, good luck charms, and protection. She says that if you're a woman in labor and you put one under your bed, it'll cut your pain in half. She keeps a black-handled one under her pillow to keep away nightmares. But she says don't make the mistake of laying your dinner knife across either your spoon or your fork because you might be mistaken for a witch. A hanging will soon follow.

The last answer was from
Blackhawk
:

Don't forget all the ways people carry knives. If you're a chef, you carry it wrapped up in a roll. You can keep it in your pocket, like a twelve-year-old boy. Maybe try dangling it from your belt, like a samurai or a fancy dress military man. Or strap it to your leg and tuck it into your sock, like a burly Scotsman.

All of that babble meant nothing to me a few hours ago. What mattered a whole bunch was the piece of my thumb that joined the cucumber I was slicing for my recipe from the Grunch's cookbook. One minute it was there, and the next it was a little disc of flesh on my cutting board.

I howled like a pack of wolves at the moon. I bounced around the kitchen holding a blood-squirting digit until I'd gathered the whole family to witness my slow death. I ended up in my favorite yoga position, child's pose, holding my thumb as close to my heart as possible with the hopes that maybe some of the blood would leak back in.

G-pa lifted me up and plopped me on the counter by the sink. He ran the sting-y-est cold water he could find and put my finger under the stream. I'm pretty sure it had been mixed with some sort of acid. Then he told Ollie to get him his big tube of Super Glue. G-pa has had a lifelong love affair with two things the smartest inventors known to mankind have introduced to the world. WD-40, a fancy can of oil, takes first place. I'll never forget what it stands for because G-pa is always reminding us. It's
water
displacement-40th attempt
. He says the fella who made the product was a go-getter and the name revealed he wasn't a giving-up kind of a guy. This stuff takes the squeak out of anything. And apparently, it can keep flies off cows, although I haven't had a chance to check that last one out for sure.

Super Glue wins second prize. Two guys made it by mistake, which in G-pa's mind is how the best stuff in the world gets discovered.

He loves his Super Glue and usually carries it around in his front pocket, right next to his Swiss Army knife. It gets dabbed onto everything from broken toys to shaky furniture. And according to him—and all the smart surgeons of the world—it's the best way to stick skin back together. Like the sliced off bit back onto my thumb.

“Is this the first time you've handled a knife?” G-pa asked me while gluing.

“That wasn't a knife—it was a hatchet!” I shouted. “Stupid, stupid, evil knife!” I acted snappy even for me, and by the look I got from G-pa, I could tell he held his tongue only because he knew I was in pain. And boy did it hurt. Who would have thought such a tiny piece of our body could make such a loud noise?

G-pa placed a bandage over my injury. He plopped me back onto the floor and said, “All right then, let's do this properly.”

“Do what properly?”

“Learn how to handle a knife.”

“What? Dad would have kissed the tip of my thumb and given me cookie. He would have sent me off to watch TV.”

“I ain't your dad,” he said roughly.

“Well, he was
your
son. He must have learned his shtick from someone.”

G-pa looked like I'd hit him in the stomach. He took a big breath and pointed. “Now sit here on this stool. Watch and learn. And this time you'd better pay attention.”

I did. I watched G-pa clean up the mess, throw away the cucumber, and start fresh. He showed me how to keep my fingers and thumb tucked in. How the knife uses the flat part of your fingers to guide it. It looked easy. But I'd been fooled before. There must have been a trick.

“Where did you learn how to do this?”

“KP duty in the service.”

“What's KP?”

“Kitchen Patrol. Everyone had to pitch in.” He picked up his thumb and showed me a hollowed area on the tip. The side of his face moved up into a smirk. “I learned the hard way too.”

Even though I moved slowly, and everything took twice as long now that I'd grown knife shy, I picked up my blade and carried on helping to chop the ingredients. This was a recipe called The Chopped Salad Family. It wasn't until later that I watched the YouTube video. There stood the Grunch, chopping the same recipe. Cucumbers, avocados, lettuce, spring onions, and basil leaves—the same stuff we put in ours. G-pa and I followed his directions to hack up the whole mess on our big wooden chopping board. We even got to make the dressing right in the middle of it all.

We made a well in the center of the salad and added olive oil, red wine vinegar, mustard, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Then we mixed it up with a spoon and tossed it all on the board with our hands. Our hands! That was the shocker. It was almost as fun as working with Play-Doh, only we'd get to eat everything at the end.

When we served the salad for dinner, G-pa put a big hunk of cheddar cheese and some bread on the table too. Mom asked at least twice if we were sure we found the whole tip of my thumb. You could tell she was suspicious because she kept moving all the chopped bits back and forth on her plate. And it didn't help that Ollie kept calling it “The Chopped-Up Family Salad.”

I have never had so much green food in my life, except for green M&M's, green apple Jolly Ranchers, and watermelon bubble gum. Supper was crunchy and grassy and silky and tangy and tasted like the outside world had fitted itself into our salad bowl. Dinner was a big success—not counting losing a bit of my body.

After the ten minutes of watching the child-hater whip together his
Salad
Family
, and congratulating G-pa and myself for doing it right, I went to YouTube and typed in
knife
skills
. Who do you think popped up right away? Yup. The Grunch. I watched his five-minute video on how to handle a blade. Chopping veg—as the Grunch liked to call it—is all about non-wobbly bits. G-pa knew as much as Alfie Adam. I guess Alfie Adam had done a lot of KP duty as well.