The Manny Files book1 (17 page)

We ate in Grandma’s garden. There was a light breeze that cooled off the sunny, hot day.

Belly sat on June’s lap and put both hands on June’s round cheeks. She squeezed her face so that June’s lips stuck out and she looked like a puffer fish.

Belly said, “Are you an Oompa Loompa?”

Belly meant this as a compliment, because she loves the Oompa Loompas from
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Lulu gasped, “Belly!”

It didn’t bother June. She didn’t know what an Oompa Loompa was.

Grandma’s canasta friends hugged us and said that we were in their thoughts. Thelma and Wanda argued over who would drive home. They had bought a new red Audi convertible together. Thelma won the argument, and they drove away listening to Vivaldi.

Grandma liked Vivaldi.

Violet carried her pie plates and walked home with Virginia, who had an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth.

June was the last to leave. Mom had given her Grandma’s canasta cards, the ones that had Grandma’s initials engraved on them. June held them in her fat hands and kissed Belly goodbye.

June said, “She was my best friend, you know. The most interesting person I’ve ever met.” Then she left.

Be interesting,
I thought to myself.

After everyone had left, the manny put “Quando Men Vo” on the CD player. It was Grandma’s favorite song from
La Bohème.
We stood in the garden, and Mom and Uncle Max opened Grandma’s urn and tossed her ashes into the breeze. They blew all around us; some
landed on the hydrangea bush, and a piece landed on my forehead. Belly spun around in circles, looking up into the sky, which was dusted with ash. Dad was on his back looking straight up into the air. India and Lulu were lying beside him.

Nobody said anything.

We just watched Grandma begin her dance around the world.

In the middle of the night I sneaked out of my room to get a glass of cranberry juice. On my way back through the living room I winked at Grandma.

It’s Labor Day weekend, and there are only a few more days of summer vacation left. School begins on Tuesday. I was hoping to get a brand-new teacher who had never even heard of Lulu, but instead I was placed in Mrs. House’s class. Mrs. House was Lulu’s teacher in fourth grade. I met Mrs. House when Mom took me to back-to-school orientation. She was nice. I tried to get on her good side by admiring her white shoes and asking if they were made by Jimmy Choo. I don’t know who Jimmy Choo is, but I do know that the lady who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress last year wore a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes with her vintage Valentino dress. I read it in an issue of
In Style
magazine that Lulu had stolen from the doctor’s office.

Mrs. House told me that her shoes were Hush Puppies.

I tried to peek into Mrs. House’s supply closet to see if there was a Lulu shelf, but Mom caught me and grabbed me by the arm.

The manny keeps pretending to forget my teacher’s name. He calls her Brick House. Like from the song.

He said, “I heard she’s mighty, mighty and she lets it all hang out.”

“‘Shake it down, shake it down now,’” I said back.

Mom and the manny took us back-to-school shopping at the mall. I wanted to go to Saks Fifth Avenue, but Mom said that Saks Fifth Avenue was for special occasions and the fourth grade wasn’t considered a special occasion.

I said to her, “Just remember, I can do all sorts of things at school that will make Mrs. House question your ability as a mother. Write on the desk. Paint my face during art class. Accidentally call her Mom.”

Mom said, “That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”

Lulu thinks that she’s grown up now and talked Mom into buying her a miniskirt. She picked the ugliest color. It is the same color as lima beans. India bought fabric to make a hooded shawl out of. Belly bought an Orange Julius at the food court. She took three sips and then dropped it. It splashed on the shoes of a guy
with a mall security jacket on. Mom apologized, but he still kept one hand on his regulation club hanging from his belt until we had the mess cleaned up.

It got Mom flustered.

Ms. Grant got flustered last year when we finished reading
Charlotte’s Web
in class. She asked us if we thought Charlotte was heroic. The girl with the poofy red hair raised her hand and asked if Charlotte was the spider or the pig. Ms. Grant gave us a writing assignment and put her head down on her desk to rest. I think she fell asleep, because when she lifted her head, there were creases across her hot red cheeks.

When Mom finished cleaning up Belly’s mess, we looked for new jeans for me. I couldn’t find any jeans that fit me right. We tried the Gap, but they didn’t carry a size small enough for me. The saleslady said, “Sorry, maybe you should try BabyGap.”

I wanted to push her into a pile of perfectly folded sweaters.

I ended up having to get a pair of jeans that looked like they were made for first graders or kindergarteners. They were stiff dark blue denim and had golden yellow stitching. On the back right pocket were embroidered the words
SMARTY PANTS.
When I put them on, I looked like
Uncle Max’s junior high pictures, like I was one of the Brady kids. I hated the jeans, but they were the only ones that we could find that fit me.

I bet Saks Fifth Avenue would have the perfect jeans.

At the shoe store Lulu bought shoes that were made out of rubber and made her as tall as Mom. India got a pair of black boots that were made in Italy. Belly got a shoehorn. She didn’t know what it was, but she cried until Mom finally bought it.

I took my shoe off and put my foot on the cold metal thing that measures your foot. The shoe salesman adjusted it, and I pushed my heel forward, trying to make my foot seem bigger.

“Keep the heel pressed on the back,” the salesman grumbled.

My foot had grown a whole size since the beginning of third grade. Even without pressing my heel forward! The bigger your feet are, the more choices that you have in shoes!

The manny picked up a pair of brand-new brown penny loafers and waved them in the air for me to see. They were dark suede and had slots on the top to put pennies in. The salesman went to the back and brought a pair out in my
size. They were a little big, but I pretended that they weren’t. Mom let me get them. The manny pulled two shiny pennies from his pocket and bent down and put them in the slots of my shoes.

I wore my new shoes for the rest of our shopping day. I put my old shoes in the shopping bag, and the manny carried it. My penny loafers made me feel grown up. They made me look like a lawyer out with his family, even though I needed to get back to the office, roll my sleeves up, and talk to my secretary through the intercom. I walked around the rest of the day with my hands in my front pockets. Whenever we stopped in a store, I leaned against the wall and crossed my feet like the models in the Brooks Brothers catalog. I just stared at the pennies in my shoes while everyone else shopped.

The manny told other people that I was his colleague. A colleague is somebody that you work with or that you are friends with. I learned it from Sarah’s mom. She always calls me Sarah’s colleague.

A saleslady asked me, “Are you waiting for your mother and sisters?”

“Yes. You know what a dangerous combination women and credit cards are,” I said, trying to sound as old as I felt.

The saleslady laughed and said I was cute.

Penny loafers were not cute. I had to say something grown up.

I said, “Thanks, toots.”

I had heard somebody say it on television once. A guy dressed in a fancy suit said it to a woman with a feathery hat who served him a drink with an olive in it.

The saleslady laughed again.

Mom turned to the manny and said, “Did you teach him that?”

The manny said, “No. I teach the children only good things.”

Then he laughed.

I looked over to see if Lulu had heard him, but she didn’t. She was looking at fake leather pants. She wants a pair, but Mom says she’s too young for leather pants. Even fake ones.

Mom laughed at the manny too. She knew that the manny taught us all kinds of things. A few weeks before, when Mom and Dad were out to dinner, the manny had come over to make enchiladas and watch movies with us. We were on the couch, and an awful smell came drifting up from the floor in front of us. India and Lulu plugged their nose and squealed, “Ewww.” I held my nose and pretended to gag. The manny held his nose and pointed at the dog.

He said, ‘Oh, gross. Housman squeezed a greaser.”

“Housman squeezed a greaser. Housman squeezed a greaser,” we all chanted.

A few days later Mom took Belly to the beauty shop because Belly wanted a pixie haircut like her friend Analise. When the lady who cut Belly’s hair walked across the linoleum floor, her shoe made a squeaking noise.

Belly held her nose and yelled, “You squeezed a greaser. You squeezed a greaser.”

Mom acted like she had no idea where Belly had learned it, but I think she suspected the manny.

Mom hasn’t been back to that beauty shop since.

When we were done with our shopping, we rested in the food court. Belly had a chocolate-chip cookie with frosting. Lulu and India split a Cinnabon. The manny and I had lemonade from the place where they wear the funny red-blue-and-yellow hats that are too tall for their heads.

After sitting for a while, we gathered all the bags and walked toward the car. The sun was hot on the new, sticky black pavement, and it felt like we were parked miles away. When we saw the car, Lulu and I started to run as fast as we could to it.

“I get the backward seat by the window,” I yelled.

“No. I do. It’s the privilege that comes with being the oldest. Like becoming queen,” Lulu yelled back.

“Firstborn
son
always gets to be king!” I screamed.

I had trouble running my fastest because I was in my new penny loafers that were a little too big. I was almost catching up to her when I tripped over the toe of my shoe and skidded across the pavement. Lulu didn’t even stop to help. She kept running and yelled, “I won, I won,” when she reached the car.

It didn’t hurt.

I stood up and started to pick the tar off my elbow. There was also a tar stain across my shirt. I didn’t care. It was India’s hand-me-down Krispy Kreme T-shirt. I looked down at my penny loafers, and there was a big tar spot on the toe of my left shoe, and the penny was lying on the pavement, stained black and sticky.

That’s when I started to cry.

I couldn’t help it.

Mom and the manny thought my elbow hurt. I went with it. I grabbed my elbow and kept sobbing.

Lulu still got the good seat, but I could tell she felt guilty.

She grabbed my shoe and started to clean off the tar.

The night before the first day of school the manny and Uncle Max came over to help us pick out our clothes for the next day. Lulu modeled her rubber shoes and miniskirt with a pink collared shirt. India modeled faded jeans and a multi-colored shirt. She kind of looked like a roll of Life Savers, but in a good way. I modeled my penny loafers and my
SMARTY PANTS
jeans, which I told them I hated because of those stupid words. I also had on a white button-down shirt and a blazer. Uncle Max said that I looked a little too eager to be at school. The manny said that maybe I shouldn’t wear the blazer. He showed me how to unbutton my shirt a few buttons and roll up my sleeves. He called it relaxed chic. He told me that if I untucked my shirt, nobody would see that my jeans said
SMARTY PANTS.
Uncle Max showed me how to put gel in my hair, starting from the back and working forward.

Belly modeled her shoehorn. She walked through the living room like a runway model with nothing on except a shoehorn balanced on top of her head. She twirled around with her hands on her hips. Lulu grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around Belly.

Lulu hates naked people.

I showed the manny and Uncle Max all of my school supplies. The red plastic box that I had chosen to hold my pencils and erasers. The red plastic ruler. The battery-operated paper shredder that Mom let me get.

The manny helped me fit it all into the sleek black backpack that he had helped me pick out. He said that it looked just like the one he had seen in the Prada store. It looks just like the bag that I saw the hip and trendy people in business suits carrying in New York City.

I got my bag at Target.

Mom made us all take baths and wash our hair. She even cleaned out our ears with Q-tips. She said she was cleaning out the summer sand.