Death by Eggplant (2 page)

“It's really about your just being born, Bertha.”

Mrs. Menendez pointed another warning at Nick, but talked to me.

“Well, you wanted extra credit, Mr. Hooks. This is it. And this time you'd better do it. I believe you have a few academic areas that could use help.”

What she meant, though she didn't know it, was that I'd had a better-than-average cooking year, devoting hours and hours to technique, craft, and original recipes. Unfortunately, since there are only twenty-four hours in a day, this also meant a worse-than-average school year. I was just getting by in most subjects, doing worse in
Spanish, and outright failing math. Coincidentally, these were the two classes I had with Mrs. Menendez, plus homeroom. At least homeroom wasn't graded, though I suspected that, even now, a suggestion in her eerily perfect penmanship was sitting in the principal's in-box.

“Take care of your baby for ten days,” she continued, “bring her back unharmed, and I'll add . . . three points each to your math and your Spanish grades. Miss Rogers has agreed to do the same for science. She thinks you need a lesson in responsibility.”

“Miss Rogers would do that for me, after Harry?”

“What did you expect, revenge? None of us, yourself included, I'm sure, want you back here next year.”

I looked down at the bag. Did I want to do it? Absolutely not! But three points each would bring Spanish and science up to my usual C. Most important, it would bring math up to a D. If I didn't do it, I faced summer school for sure, maybe even repeating eighth grade.

Not
go to high school next year? It was unthinkable. How could I get early admission into the Culinary Institute of America if I had to repeat eighth grade? I bet Emeril passed eighth grade . . . Wolfgang Puck . . . Julia Child. . . .

My mental roll call of cooking greats was interrupted by a nasal whine.

“Can we all get the same extra credit?” Judy Boynton waved her hand eagerly.

With Mrs. M. as teacher, Judy's grades had nose-dived
this year, too—from A+ to A. She had cried at every report card. Now her eyes were shiny with envy as she stared at the flour sack.

“Why, yes,” Mrs. Menendez said. “Everyone is eligible for extra credit. You do realize, however, that each of you has a
different
lesson that needs to be learned. Tell me, Miss Boynton, do you want me to think of a very special project, just for you?”

Thinking about what “very special” might actually mean, Judy lost that hopeful, shiny expression. She dropped her hand. “Uh, no, thank you, Mrs. Menendez.”

“Good.” She turned back to me. “Last chance, Mr. Hooks.”

I stared at the bag.

“You'll thank me for it,” she continued. “Meeting a challenge like this could mean the difference between
no
college and one of the country's best schools.”

Like the Culinary Institute. Reluctantly, I nodded.

“No, don't let him have her, Mrs. M.!” Dekker pleaded. “Don't put that sweet little baby in danger just to teach Bertha a lesson. She'll never make it out alive!” Nick grabbed his throat, gagged, then fell out of his desk onto the floor. Kids gaped openmouthed. All year, Nick had been in trouble, but he had never gone this far. Maybe it was the heat. Or maybe it was the prospect of summer vacation, just two weeks away.

“That's it!” Mrs. Menendez stamped her foot. She began
to say something, changed her mind, wrinkled her brow, and thought. Suddenly the annoyance on her face smoothed out, and she smiled. “You get your own flour sack tomorrow, Mr. Dekker.”

He picked his head up from the floor and shook his thick black hair away from his face. “What for? I don't need extra credit.”

“You do now. Your ever-slipping grade for deportment just scraped bottom.”

“But you said we'd each get a different project.”

“I said you each needed to learn a different lesson. And the lesson
you
need to learn, Mr. Dekker, is that you're no better than anyone else. You're the
same
as everyone else. So you're going to get the same assignment.”

“Thanks a lot, Bertha,” he hissed, as I walked back to my seat. Still on the floor, he grabbed my foot and almost tripped me as I passed. “I'll remember this.”

Of course he'll remember it, I thought. After all, he is my mortal enemy.

 

When I walked home after school, the flour sack in my knapsack seemed to get heavier with each step. Every house I passed tempted me with its neatly trimmed lawn. Each was surely home to good, decent people. I could safely leave my flour sack on its doorstep and feel no guilt. But the certainty of a failing grade kept me going.

I was surprised to find my mother's car in our driveway.
My mother was a little strange, even for a parent. Mornings, she taught courses like “Uncovering the Real You,” everywhere from senior centers to executive dining rooms, when some big company president needed coaching in weirdness. Three afternoons a week, she attended classes herself. Right now she was supposed to be in “Exploring Past Lives,” with the emphasis on Egypt.

For my
future
life, she decided I was going to be a world-class dream interpreter. Last year she had dreamed about the number 1127, and I jokingly said it was a sign she should play the lottery. She not only won, she won $1,127. The good part was that we ate dinner out for a week. I picked fancy four-star places, took notes, and within a month, produced fair duplicates of what each of us had ordered. The bad news was that, because I had told her to play the lottery, now she thought I was going to levitate in her footsteps and be a guru like her or something.

Not guru.
“Professional see-er of possibilities”
was what she once tried to put on her tax return. My dad convinced her to change that to “lecturer and consultant.”

Whatever she was, she was always busy. Wednesdays she had class, so I hadn't expected to find her home now, nor did I want her to be the first to check the mail. Stepping inside the door, I was even more surprised by the smell.

“Mom?” I sniffed the air. For a few seconds, I was confused, then I realized that something was cooking.
Something was cooking, and
I
wasn't in the kitchen. That did not make me happy.

I found her at the stove, stirring a pot so hard that goop splashed out and turned the clean enamel into a bad work of art.

“Are you okay, Mom? I mean, you're cooking. Food and all.”

“Hmmm? Oh, yes dear, I'm fine.” She scooped up a bit with a wooden spoon and tasted it. A baffled look crossed her face. In that moment we probably looked a lot alike. We were both tall, blond, and average looking, though my mother was much thinner. And her hair wasn't blond anymore. This month, with her past-life classes, she had dyed it red with something she called henna.

“Is it for us?” I asked. I sniffed again, hoping the answer was no. The mixture smelled like something you would use to disinfect gym socks.

“No, Bertie, it's for me,” she said, waving the spoon. “This is a re-creation of an ancient Egyptian meal. It's supposed to strengthen my fledgling memories of my past life if I've done it right.” She closed her eyes, scrunched up her face, and took another taste. “I think I'm getting something.”

Worried, I opened the refrigerator to check that she hadn't used the makings of tonight's supper. For the main course, I was making a savory galette, which was a fancy name for an oversized tart. I found the stuffing ingredients still there—leeks, cream, and goat cheese. Good.

Satisfied, I dished out a bowlful of plain yogurt, piled some fresh strawberries in the middle, ringed the bowl with kiwi slices, and dotted the whole thing with black raspberries for contrasting color. Then I sat down at the table with my snack.

“You'll never guess what Mrs. Menendez did to me today,” I said. “She gave me a baby to watch for ten days.”

“A baby?” my mother repeated absently.

“Actually she said it was
my
baby.”

“
Your
baby?” That got her attention. “You have a baby?”

“For the next ten days. Can you believe it? In sitcoms, the baby project is always for older kids and it never takes that long.”

My mother looked around the room.

“Is the baby here?”

“Sure, it's in my backpack.”

“Your backpack!”

I laughed. “It's all right, Mom. See?” I pulled out the bag of flour. During the last few minutes of class, I had doodled onto the sack a pair of crossed eyes, a pug nose, and a mouth with a tongue hanging out, drooling. I held it up. “My baby.”

“Oh, how cute!” my mother said. She took the bag from me and tilted it this way and that, till it somehow found itself cradled in the crook of her arm. Then she mouthed something that looked suspiciously like “Cootchie, cootchie, coo.”

I never should have drawn the face.

My mother turned to me. “She needs a name, don't you think?”

“A name?”

Her voice became thoughtful. “Ten days is a very long time for a baby to go without a name.”

“Baby?”

“Well, she's
supposed
to be a baby, isn't she? How can you give her the care she needs, the care your
school project
needs,” she added, squinting at me meaningfully, “without total and perfect visualization? On some level, this bag must really become a baby for you to do well. Like this, see?” My mother smiled at the bag and tickled it under its flap. “Cootchie coo.”

That time she said it out loud.

“Mom?” I tried to laugh. “You're scaring me.” Next she would ask what the flour sack's sign was, to see if we were compatible.

“Hmmm, a name . . . ” She bit her lip in concentration. “Let's give the baby my real name. Let's call her Cleopatra.”

My mother was right. Ten days was going to be a
very
long time.

“Don't forget your lunch, dear.”

I nearly choked on my shredded wheat. My mother hadn't made my school lunch since the second day of kindergarten.

This morning she was in full uniform, wearing a purple caftan and a red burnoose, which was a hooded thing that draped over her head and shoulders. Her eyes were outlined heavily with black and she had a gold snake bracelet high up on one bare arm.

“Lunch?” I looked warily at the brown paper bag she held.

“Yes, as long as I was making lunch for Cleo, I thought I should make yours as well.”

“You made Cleopatra lunch?” I asked.

“Of course I made Cleo lunch. You didn't expect to feed the baby in the school cafeteria, did you?” She dropped a second brown bag onto the table, then tousled my hair. “What would you get her, silly? Tuna surprise?
Now, what sort of a grade would you get with that?”

This was all making my head spin. My mother had never taken such an interest in my schoolwork before.

“By the way,” she added, “where
is
your sister?”

“My sister? I thought she was my baby.”

“
Your
baby?” She laughed. “Bertram Hooks, you're an eighth-grade boy. The school couldn't possibly expect
you
to have a baby. So she must be your sister. Now, where is she?”

“Uh . . . in my knapsack.”

“Well, that just won't do. She needs fresh air. Carry her to school. I'm sure your teacher will be watching for little things like that. Then I'll run out this afternoon and buy you one of those dear little papoose holders so you can strap her to your chest.”

“Dad!” I ran from the kitchen.

I caught my father hurrying from the bathroom, buttoning his shirt with one hand, combing his blond hair with the other, all the while talking into a cell phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. My father was tall, like my mother and me, and thin, like my mother, unlike me. It was as though two string beans had somehow given birth to a butternut squash. I guess being “stocky,” as the clothing saleswoman so tactfully put it, was an occupational hazard of cooking.

“No, you're wrong,” he was saying into the cell phone. “It's 14.2359 percent.”

“Dad!”

He held up a hand for me to wait. “I triple-checked the figures myself,” he said. “If we use 14.235
8
percent, then we might as well start selling gambler's insurance to lottery players.”

My father was the head actuary at an insurance company. That meant he calculated the odds on weird things like, what were the chances that a left-handed Eskimo in a red turtleneck was going to get hit by a yellow 1990 Volkswagen driven by a Norwegian sailor on shore leave?

“Dad!” I tugged on his shirttail. “I've got to talk to you
now
! It's Mom,” I said. “And it's an emergency.”

“Look, Jim, I'll call you later,” he said. “I've got something very important going on here.” He clicked the button and gave me a tired smile. He was probably up most of the night again, suspended between his laptop and his cell phone.