Gator on the Loose! (8 page)

“Did not.” Razi stuck out his bottom lip and pressed his face to the door. “He was moving too fast. I want to see him standing still.” Razi pulled away from the keyhole. “Now he’s asleep. That’s boring.”

“I don’t think he’s asleep,” Keisha said, forgetting about the guests herself and pressing her face to the door. “I think he’s still frozen with fear. Imagine all the places this poor alligator has been today. He’d be so much happier tucked into a muddy wallow, up to his snout in mud.”

“Wait … don’t tell me….” Aaliyah stood still, remembering. “A wallow …”

“Let me say. Let me say it!” Razi’s voice rose in excitement.

Keisha clapped her hand over his mouth. “You’re going to scare the poor thing to death,” she said.

Razi broke away and ran down the stairs. “I’m gonna tell Mama. You almost stuffocated me!”

While all this was going on, Wen was examining the alligator through the keyhole. “He is small,” she said. “Maybe he’s a Chinese alligator.”

“I didn’t know there were alligators in China,” Keisha said. Secretly, she thought she knew everything there was to know about alligators. But this was news to her. “How can you tell?” Keisha asked Wen.

Wen shrugged.

“Speak Chinese to him … duh.” Aaliyah turned to face the girls, flipping her braids so that they clicked like a bunch of chopsticks falling into a bowl.

“What should I say?” Wen wanted to know.

“Sing something,” Keisha said. “A lullaby. That lullaby you sing in Chinese is so pretty.”

Wen’s grandmother, Nei-Nei, was always singing to her. Keisha loved to listen.

“Okay. I will sing ‘Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, sleep now, you’re safe with me,’” Wen decided.
“Yao-yao-yao, yao-yao-yao, xiao bao bao, kuai shui jiao….”

Wen’s voice was very soft and high when she sang. It sounded to Keisha like the wind when it goes through the tops of the trees in Riverside Park.

“Nope,” Aaliyah said, keeping watch as Wen finished her song. “He didn’t even wave his tail, but I do hear something….” She pulled her head away from the door and turned to listen. “You must have left the hose running,” she said. “I can hear it.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. When the water was on, you could often hear it rattling through the pipes of the old house. Keisha looked through the keyhole. She was sure Daddy had turned off the tap before he went downstairs. Still, water was running somewhere.

Keisha went into her bedroom so she could see down to the backyard where they’d left the hose. From the window, she saw her brother lying down, rolling back and forth in the bare spot beneath the horse
chestnut tree. Usually, that spot was filled with dirt, but now it was mud because the hose
was
on and water was spurting from the nozzle.

Keisha pushed the window open. “Razi Carter!
What
are you doing? Mama’s gonna kill you!”

“I’m making a wallow for the alligator,” Razi shouted back. He did not stop rolling.

“Oh, Razi. When Mama sees this—” Keisha pulled her head back into the house. Mama would be mad at
her
for this. She was supposed to be watching Razi. How could a girl be expected to watch Razi and make sure an alligator didn’t escape from the bathroom at the same time?

She pushed her head back out of the window. “You’re all muddy,” she yelled at Razi.

“It’s how the alligators do it,” he yelled back. “You said.”

Suddenly he sat up. “I got dirt in my eyes.” He began to rub and rub.

“Don’t rub!” she called down to her brother. “I’ll be right there.”

Keisha knew that if she didn’t rescue Razi from this situation, he would have not only the sting of dirt in his eyes but also a lecture that included several wise Nigerian sayings like “He who digs a pit for others is just as likely to fall into it himself.”

She rushed back to Wen and Aaliyah, who had figured out a way they could both see through the keyhole at the same time by pressing their heads together.

“He doesn’t look good,” Wen said. “Maybe he’s hungry.”

“Mama and Daddy are out buying food,” Keisha told them. “But I’ve got another emergency. Will you two make sure this door stays closed?”

Wen and Aaliyah locked arms. “We will,” Aaliyah said.

When Keisha got outside, water was gushing from the hose—oooh, that would make Mama angry, too!—and Razi was still crying over the dirt in his eyes. He
wasn’t making it any better, either, by rubbing his face with his dirty hands.

“Razi. Hold still. I can’t help you if I can’t look at what is hurting.”

Razi stopped for a moment and covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. Then he started in again. Keisha rolled up her pants and kneeled down next to Razi. She reached out for his hand.

“You’re still rubbing it in.”

“I know!” Razi said, pulling away from her and crying some more.

Keisha sat back. Every older sister had her limits. Wrestling with her brother in a muddy gator hole was not something Keisha Carter was willing to do.

She’d have to figure out another way. Keisha stood up and ran over to the shed, where they kept the gardening tools. She rooted around in a pile of seed-starting trays and tulip-bulb food because she knew it was over here somewhere. Yes! The spray nozzle.

Razi loved the spray nozzle. Mama didn’t let him play with water too much, but when she watered the vegetable patch, she let Razi stand with one foot on either side of the okra row holding an umbrella. That way, he could pretend it was raining and her plants still got watered.

Keisha turned off the water, ran back to her brother and waved the spray nozzle. “Look what I’ve got!” She attached it to the end of the hose and turned the water back on, all to the tune of unhappy Razi’s crying.

But when she pressed the handle and a fountain of soft rain began to fall on Razi’s head, he stopped rubbing his eyes and put his hand out to catch the rain.

“Instead of being an alligator, you can be Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” Keisha said. “This is your first shower.”

“I go in the shower with Daddy,” Razi said, tipping his head up to taste the rain. “When I’m six, I can go in by myself.”

“When you’re six and you can hold the soap without dropping it … and when you can take all your clothes off by yourself.” She moved the nozzle so it was aimed at the back of Razi’s shirt.

“I can take my clothes off by myself!”

“Not when they’re wet you can’t.”

“Can.”

“Prove it. I dare you.”

A dare was one of the few situations where Razi could focus his whole self, from his fingers to his toes. Razi loved to win a dare. Before you could say “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free,” he was down to his underwear and struggling to unlace his sneakers.

Wen called out from the open window, “The baby’s crying. Should I get him up?”

“Yes, but make Aaliyah promise to stay by the bathroom door.”

“Okay. No Grandma sightings yet.”

Keisha rinsed out Razi’s muddy clothes while her brother danced like a prizefighter around the horse chestnut tree. “He did it, ladies and gentlemen.” Razi thumped his chest. “He won the double dare!”

Wasn’t a double dare
, Keisha almost said out loud.

Wen appeared on the back steps, with Paulo in her arms, just as Mama and Daddy pulled into the garage.

“We have frogsicles,” Daddy said, holding up a bag of frozen frog parts.

“And chicken.” Mama climbed out and took in the mess around her: her son twirling around the tree in his underwear, the muddy patch beneath their feet, the running water and Wen struggling down the steps with baby Paulo. Mama took the sleepy baby and cradled him in her arms.

“Just don’t tell me that Grandma is watching that alligator,” she said in her calm Mama voice.

“No, Mama. Aaliyah is watching the alligator, and Grandma is upstairs lying down with a wet washcloth over her eyes.”

Mama cupped Keisha’s chin in her free hand. “Keisha, my girl, I know there is a good story—”

“I’m Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile and I just had my first shower. Keisha double-dared me to take my clothes off and I won!” Razi raced around the tree again, waving his fists in the air.

Keisha looked up at her mama. What could she add to that?

The next morning, a CFC was held at the kitchen table. Grandma was in her new bathrobe made of organic hemp. She had two of Keisha’s plastic butterfly barrettes on the lapel and was wearing the pink headband that made her eyes look more lifted, though Keisha still wasn’t sure how that worked. Razi was underneath the table in his superhero pajamas, eating graham crackers spread over a napkin. Daddy had given him a set of old lug nuts, and he was picking them up with a super-sized magnet.

“I’m concerned about this alligator,” Daddy said, putting peanut butter on a cracker and handing it to the baby. “The little guy seems listless.”

“What’s ‘listless’?” Keisha wanted to know.

“He’s got no get-up-and-go,” Grandma said.

“Isn’t that good?” Razi asked from under the table. “He had some of that yesterday, and it made a lot of crisis for everybody.”

“Well, I think he needs a checkup.”

“It’s Memorial Day, Mom. Nobody’s open. I’ve got a call in to Dan Malone at the zoo, but we’ll have to wait until Tuesday.”

Mama was at the stove finishing the corn porridge. “I looked in on the little one this morning, Fred. You’re right. It seems too quiet.”

“We need a house call.” Grandma took the bowl Mama handed her. “Keisha, be Grandma’s best girl and get me the sweet milk.”

Keisha got the can of sweetened evaporated milk from the fridge.

“Mom,” Daddy said, spooning porridge into his mouth, “how do you get a house call when the offices are closed?”

Grandma reached into the pocket of her fluffy bathrobe and pulled out her cell phone. “I have Dan’s cell phone in my directory. I put him on speed dial after I had that run-in with the box turtle.”

Grandma didn’t ask the other Carters if they thought it was a good idea to bother Dan Malone on a holiday weekend. She simply put on her reading glasses and punched in the number.

“Dan? Is that you? I didn’t wake you up, did I? You’re where? At the cemetery? Well, I guess that makes sense. They don’t call it Memorial Day for nothing. The problem is, Dan, we’ve got an alligator emergency on our hands….”

Grandma didn’t mess around. As it turned out,
Dan’s grandfather, a World War II veteran whose grave Dan was decorating for the holiday, was in a cemetery not far from the Carters’ house. Dan Malone would make a house call.

“Ask and ye shall receive.” Grandma flipped her phone shut. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” She patted her robe. “Heavens to Betsey Johnson!” Grandma exclaimed. “I better get dressed.”

She took one last bite of her porridge. “Here, Keisha, finish mine. You can use some meat on those bones.”

“Well, that’s a new development,” Daddy said as Grandma hurried past. “So much for a CFC.”

“I’m glad,” Mama said. “That little one is not right.”

“Maybe you should give him some graham crackers,” Razi said. “You can mix them with sweet milk and make them mushy like you do for Paulo.”

“Maybe …” Mama dished out another bowl for Daddy, handed Keisha a spoon and passed her Grandma’s bowl. “Maybe Dan will want some porridge.”