Holy Enchilada (2 page)

“If you would like to volunteer to host Yoshi, please raise your hand now,” Ms. Adolf said.

My hand shot up like a rocket. So did thirty-two others'! In fact, the only person who didn't raise his hand right away was Luke Whitman, and that's because his finger was too far up his nose to get it out in time.

Even though everyone else in the class was volunteering, I thought Ms. Adolf should pick me. After all, if things got dull, Yoshi and I could sit around and count to two in Japanese. I could do that, no problem.

Itchy knee.

WE ALL DECIDED THAT THE ONLY FAIR WAY to pick who was going to host Yoshi was to pull a name out of a hat. After recess, Ms. Adolf told each of us to write our name down on a slip of paper. I thought we should put them in my Mets baseball hat, but some of the girls objected because I had gotten it pretty sweaty at recess. So instead we put the names in Ashley's lavender baseball cap, the one she decorated with a red rhinestone flower and a yellow stem.

Ms. Adolf closed her eyes, reached in, and pulled out one of the slips of paper. Here's what it said:

I WAS VERY EXCITED to have been chosen to host Yoshi. I still had to get permission from my parents before it was totally official. I was pretty sure I could get them to agree if I told them it was an educational experience. They're very big on educational experiences.

“Where is Yoshi going to sleep?” Ashley asked me as we sat down at our usual table in the lunchroom.

“I call top bunk,” Frankie said, just assuming that he was going to sleep over when Yoshi did. “We'll put the Yosh Man on the floor. People in Japan sleep on the floor all the time, you know.”

“That's not going to work,” I answered. “Katherine might sneak up on him in the night and lick him with that sandpaper tongue of hers.” Katherine is my sister Emily's pet iguana, and trust me, you don't want her long, sticky tongue anywhere near any of your body parts.

I opened my lunch bag and groaned. My mom had packed me another one of her science experiment sandwiches. My mom owns a deli called the Crunchy Pickle, and she's trying to come up with a new low-carb high-fiber bagel to sell at the deli. Since I'm always the guinea pig for her weird food experiments, she had packed me a broccoli mushroom bagel for lunch. Hold the cream cheese, of course, because that might actually taste good. Instead, she had covered my greenish-brownish bagel with ground-up garbanzo beans and parsley in soy juice. It looked like the stuff that holds the bricks in our fireplace together.

“I'll trade you half of mine for half of yours,” I offered Frankie. He had a peanut butter and banana on Wonder bread that my taste buds were screaming for.

Frankie reached out and poked at my bagel with his finger. It didn't move.

“I think it's dead,” he said. “Or dying.”

Frankie handed me half of his peanut butter Wonder. After all these years of being my best friend, he just assumes he's got to give me half of his sandwich on the days when my mom is practicing her creative cooking.

“I hope your mom doesn't try to feed one of those bagels to Yoshi,” Ashley said. “He'll go running back to Japan.”

“Actually, that's not possible,” said a nasal voice from behind us. “Japan is an island country consisting of four main islands and more than three thousand small islands surrounded by water. It's not possible to run to Japan. Actually, he would have to swim.”

It was Robert Upchurch, third-grade pest and Ruler of the Land of the Know-It-Alls. He lives in the same apartment building as Frankie, Ashley, and me, and his goal in life is to be our best friend and my sister Emily's boyfriend. Our goal in life is to keep him as far away as possible.

“Anyone object if I join you?” Robert asked, putting his tray down next to Ashley before we could say yes, we all object a lot.

“Hey, Robert, my man,” Frankie said, pushing my bagel over in front of his bony hands. “Why don't you try some of this delicious high-fiber bagel? It'll keep your jaws busy so you can't talk for a while.”

Robert didn't get the insult, which is nothing new. Once when we were taking swimming lessons at the YMCA, a kid looked at Robert in his skinny little swimming trunks and said that he reminded him of a wet rat. Robert didn't feel bad. He just went off on a long rant about how a rat's skeleton can collapse to be thinner than a German pancake, which is why they're able to sneak under refrigerators to get forgotten bites of roast beef.

“Actually, fiber is excellent for the digestive system,” Robert said, picking up the bagel and taking a major whiff of it. Robert is the kind of guy who smells everything before he eats it.

“Fiber keeps your waste products moving through your bowels in a timely and healthy fashion.”

“Robert,” Ashley moaned. “Hasn't anyone ever told you that normal people don't talk about their bowels at the table?”

“I don't see what's wrong with it,” Robert said. “Bowels carry human waste. Human waste is a completely normal product of the body.”

“Yeah, so are boogers and dandruff flakes, but we don't just blab on about them, dude,” said Frankie.

Robert adjusted his tie and took a big bite of his fish taco. That's right. I said tie. Robert is the only kid I know who wears a tie to school. He is also the only kid I know who eats the fish tacos at our cafeteria.

I noticed that Ashley had stopped listening. She was staring at someone across the room.

“I don't believe my eyes,” she whispered, pushing her plastic spoon into her lime Jell-O. “She's walking over here. To our table. I'm serious.”

Frankie and I whipped around to see who Ashley was looking at. Yikes! It was Ms. Adolf. She was heading our way, carrying an overripe brown banana in a napkin.

“Mind if I sit down next to you, Henry?” she asked.

“Of course not,” I said, hoping that maybe I'd get lucky and she would sit down somewhere in New Jersey.

Everyone in the cafeteria had gotten quiet and was just staring at us. It's not natural for Ms. Adolf to cruise up to your table, throw a leg over the bench, and crank up a conversation. She's not exactly your warm and cuddly type of teacher.

“I'd like to talk with you about Yoshi,” Ms. Adolf said, taking a bite of her banana. I noticed that she was eating the brown spot, the very spot that normal people cut off with a knife and throw in the garbage.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Well, Henry, I've been thinking. Don't you think Yoshi would like to see what life is like in a typical American family?”

“My family is going to blow him away,” I said.

Ms. Adolf looked down at the table and saw my broccoli-mushroom bagel covered with garbanzo beans.

“I notice your mother's cooking is not exactly ... uh ... typical,” she said, holding up the bagel, being careful to use the waxed paper it was lying on. “I wouldn't want it to frighten Yoshi.”

She took another bite of her rotten banana. Boy, she should talk about scary food. I could see the rotten banana squishing between her teeth. It looked like the Yellow Blob in there.

“Zip's family is a little unusual, but they're totally fun,” Frankie said. “Did you know they have a pet iguana?”

“Her name is Katherine,” I said. “She sleeps in the bathtub.”

“An iguana in the bathtub,” Ms. Adolf said, raising her eyebrows so high, they almost shot off her forehead. “Is that good lavatory hygiene?”

I have to confess, I'm not crazy about Katherine myself, especially when I catch her hanging out in my underwear drawer. But I sure didn't like Ms. Adolf turning up her nose at our lavatory hygiene.

“Wait until Yoshi meets Cheerio,” I said, trying to change the subject. “They'll get along great. He's the sweetest dog in the world. You've met him before.”

“Oh, that dog!” Ms. Adolf said. “The one that spins in circles until he knocks someone over. You know, Henry, that's not typical, either.”

“It is for him,” I said.

Frankie and Ashley cracked up, but Ms. Adolf just shook her head.

“Yoshi would love Hank's grandfather,” Ashley said.

“Papa Pete is the best,” Frankie added. “He'd make Yoshi an honorary grandkid, just like Ashley and me.”

“I'm one, too,” Robert said. “Even though Papa Pete is always complaining that I'm too skinny for him to pinch.”

“Your grandfather, the one who eats those pickles,” Ms. Adolf said.

“He makes them himself,” I said proudly. “Garlic dills are Papa Pete's specialty.”

“I hate to say this, Henry, but I don't think Japanese people enjoy garlic dills,” said Ms. Adolf.

“Then they haven't lived,” I answered.

“Henry,” Ms. Adolf said, getting close enough to me so I could see the banana gunk between her teeth. “My point is that I think we should put our best foot forward for our Japanese friends. And I'm not sure staying with your family will do that.”

“Yoshi will have a great time at my house,” I said to Ms. Adolf. I didn't know whether to be angry or sad, so I was both.

“Yeah,” said Frankie. “Hank's family is cool. And warm. At the same time. Tell her, Ashweena.”

“They're really thoughtful,” added Ashley.

“Besides, America is a land of diversity,” said Robert to Ms. Adolf. “Hank's family is diverse. Yes, indeed. Very, very, very, very diverse.”

Ms. Adolf sighed. That shut her up once and for all. There was nothing she could say to that. She picked up her banana peel and left.

We all reached over and slapped Robert on the back. Unfortunately, we were too enthusiastic and sent the poor little dude flying right into his plate of fish tacos.

AFTER LUNCH, while the rest of the class worked on their maps of the rivers of North America, Ms. Adolf called me to her desk.

“Henry,” she said. “I want you to make a list of ten things you plan to do with Yoshi while he's staying at your house.”

“That's a great idea, Ms. Adolf,” I said. “I've been thinking in my mind about all kinds of fun things we could do together.”

“Good,” she said. “I'll come by your desk and check your list. And remember, Henry. Spelling counts.”

Spelling counts?
“Spelling counts” has to be my least favorite sentence in the English language. By the way, do you happen to know if it is a sentence? I don't have a clue.

Even though Ms. Adolf knows that I have learning challenges and that spelling is nearly impossible for me, she still grades me down if I make spelling mistakes. She says she thinks students with learning differences should have to learn just like everyone else. They just need to work harder at it. Obviously, she's never been inside my brain when it's trying to spell. Sometimes it's working so hard that you can almost smell the smoke. Finally, it just flops over and says, “I QUIT!”

But I wanted to have Yoshi at my house so much that I really worked at spelling every word on that list correctly. I even looked up a bunch of words in the dictionary, which is not easy for a kid with dyslexia, which is what I have.

At the beginning of the year, I couldn't use the dictionary at all. But I've been working with our school learning therapist, Dr. Lynn Berger, after school. She taught me how to sound out some words so I can look them up. When I do find a word in the dictionary, I feel really proud.

After I had checked every word I wasn't sure of in the dictionary, my list looked like this:

With a little help from Webster's Dictionary

(Okay, a lot of help)

1. Hang out in my room and play video games.

2. Hang out in Frankie's room and play video games.

3. Hang out in Ashley's room and play video games.

4. Watch monster movies on TV.

5. Watch ninja movies on TV

6. Watch old episodes of
Happy Days
on TV.

7. Have a burping contest.

8. Have a burping contest while playing video games in my room.

9. Have a burping contest while watching
Happy Days
on TV.

10. Have a knuckle-cracking contest.

By the way, I spent almost an hour looking for the word “knuckle” in the dictionary. Did you know that there is a “k” at the beginning of that word? I swear to you, I don't know what it's doing there. It just sits there silently, waiting for you to start looking it up under “n.” Luckily, Frankie is a really good speller and told me about that sneaky “k” so I could find the dumb word in the dictionary. Otherwise, our knuckle-cracking contest never would have made the list.

When I was finished with the list, I put my pencil down, sat back, and read it over. It sounded great to me. If I were Yoshi Morimoto and did everything on that list, I would go home thinking that America was the coolest, funniest country in the world.

When Ms. Adolf came over to check my list, I thought her eyes were going to zing out of her head and bounce all over the room like pinballs.

“Henry,” she said, her neck getting all blotchy with those red spots that show up when she's really mad. “I hope this is a joke.”