“Well, what about Saturday?”
“I’m busy Saturday afternoon,” I said. “But I could go later, maybe.” Safta was taking me shopping for a bar mitzvah suit. It was marked on the calendar, with all the appeal of a dentist appointment.
“I’m busy Saturday night,” said Scott. “And on Sunday, David and I have a project to work on.”
“I could help,” offered Hector. “Then you’d be done quicker and we could still do the other stuff.”
Scott shook his head before I could say anything. “It’s for history. We have Hudson and you have Simmons.”
Now I knew Scott was just making up stuff to avoid Hector. We didn’t have anything to do for history. And I wanted to practice, because it was fun and because we needed to. I was going to say something, maybe not bust Scott, but let Hector know we could work it out, when I saw Heather walk over to Kelli Ann’s table, lean down, and whisper. Maybe she was whispering about me.
I had a choice. I could either go hang with Scott, and learn how to talk to girls without mixing up my words or sounding like I was having a panic attack, or I could hang with Hector, and possibly end up being someone who thought that suddenly yelling funny face in a crowded cafeteria was a good idea.
It wasn’t exactly fair. I apologized to Hector, but in my brain, not out loud. Then I said, “Yeah, Sunday’s out. Maybe another time?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Hector, way too quickly. He stood up and brushed the crumbs off his shirt, which was one of the ones he’d gotten from Walt Disney World. It had Goofy on it, instead of Mickey, because he felt like Mickey got all of the attention and it wasn’t fair to the rest of the characters. “I need to go to the library again. You guys want to come?”
I hadn’t finished eating, and Scott just shook his head. As soon as Hector was out of earshot, Scott leaned forward and said, “I’ve been thinking about it. We’re going to have a hard time getting a cover for the shelter. The hole is getting too big, and we need a really thick cover to protect us.”
“So what do you want to do about it?” For a second, I got a crazy picture in my head of a long, narrow, deep hole, with us stacked on top of each other.
“We need to make tunnels.”
That made more sense. “Tunnels. Like in The Great Escape?” The Great Escape was an old movie about POWs who secretly dug tunnels to get out of a Nazi prison.
“Exactly. The tunnels will give us room to stretch out, and the earth can provide protection from the radiation.”
I thought about it some more. “You remember that in the movie, the tunnels kept collapsing, right?” I felt kind of proud of myself, for thinking of something Scott hadn’t considered.
Scott already had an answer. “That dirt was loose. We’ve got Virginia clay. It’s thick. It won’t collapse.”
I pictured us living in tunnels of dirt like the earthworms the eighth graders thought we were. Maybe we’d meet in the middle and play Trivial Pursuit, to make the time go faster. That made me think of Hector, who wouldn’t be there.
“If we make tunnels, we could make room for more people. With tunnels, you don’t even really have to hang out with anyone if you don’t want to,” I said, hoping Scott would get the hint.
“Or just not invite them in the first place,” said Scott. “Watch this.” He wadded up the wrapper from his hamburger and threw it in an arc. The wad of paper dropped perfectly in the middle of Heather’s table of friends. Heather got up and fake-stomped her way back to us.
“Scott Dursky! Quit throwing stuff at our table.” You could tell that she was trying to hide a smile.
Scott shrugged. “I was bored.”
“You just said that you were busy and that’s why you couldn’t tell me what happened in French.”
“I’m not busy anymore,” Scott said. “Do you want me to tell you or not?”
Heather smiled. “Oui,” she said. Heather didn’t take notes, but I did, in my head, on how to have an actual conversation with a girl.
When I got home from school on Friday, Safta had already put Lauren to work, peeling potatoes for latkes. Even though Lauren and I go to the same school, we never walk together and we never arrive at school or home at the same time. I guess it was Lauren’s bad luck that she got home first. She looked up long enough to give me a dirty look over the mound of potato peels.
“Did you have a good day at school, David?” asked Safta.
“It was adequate,” I told her.
“Well, have a snack and then practice your haftorah,” said Safta.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” said Lauren. “When I get home, it’s Lauren put your backpack down and help with the potatoes, and with David, it’s have a snack?!”
“You can have a snack, too. Have a bite of the potato,” said Safta.
“Raw?”
“So have an apple. I’m sorry, princess of my heart, but your brother has to practice.”
I actually had no plans to practice my haftorah, but I played along. “I really should get to work.” I threw in a sigh for good measure.
Lauren glared at me and then at Safta. She was wearing a yellow smiley face button, but it was the only part of her that seemed happy. “This is so unfair! I bet he’s not even going to practice.” She put on her headphones and turned on her music, even though Mom has told her that it’s rude to listen to music on her Walkman in front of other people.
“Go on and practice, David,” said Safta. “We’ll take care of this.”
Lauren turned away from us to scrape the potato peels into the trash. She had started singing along to the music, telling someone to call her, repeatedly. She sounded just like Deborah Harry, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
After all that, I felt like I had to practice, so I did. I also read a couple of chapters of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, but no one needed to know that. When I went back downstairs, Lauren wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, but Safta was. Bao Bao was trailing after her, half barking, half whining.
“Go away, Boo Boo,” Safta said. “I need to fry the latkes.” There was a frying pan on the stove, glistening with oil.
“His name is Bao Bao,” I reminded her.
Safta tried again. “Bo Bo.” This time she made the long o sound.
I tried again. “Ow, like when a dog barks. Bowwow. Bao Bao.”
“That is not how this animal barks,” Safta said. She leaned over and looked Bao Bao directly in the eyes. He sat and wagged his tail. “Go away, dog,” she said. “I’m cooking here.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Wai Po walked into the kitchen and looked into the pan. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“I’m doing what wrong?” said Safta.
“Cooking.”
I thought Safta’s head might actually pop off her neck. “Do you mean cooking latkes? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“If that is what you’re making, then yes.”
Safta turned and stared at Wai Po. It was hard to tell whether she was smiling or baring her teeth. “I have been making latkes for more years than I can count, and before that, I watched my mother make them, who watched her mother make them, and so on and so on.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Wai Po. “Doing it wrong for a long time doesn’t make it right.”
I tried to run interference. “Wai Po, would you like to go for a walk?”
“In a minute.”
“I think Bao Bao really has to go.”
“He is fine.”
Wai Po pulled out her wok and poured oil into it. While it was heating up, she hooked little metal racks to the edge.
“Look,” she said. “You put in a whole pancake to see if the oil is hot enough, but all you need is a chopstick. When the chopstick has bubbles, the oil is hot enough. Also, the wok keeps the oil from spattering and making a mess.”
“I don’t make a mess,” said Safta stiffly.
“And you are using paper towels to soak up oil! See, the latkes can just drain on the racks.”
&n
bsp; Safta sighed. “All of this,” she said, waving her hand around in a circle, “is just bells and whistles. Smoke and mirrors. The only thing that really matters with a latke is taste.”
“Of course,” Wai Po said.
They both set to work, making latkes. Right about the time that the latkes were flipped (Safta used a spatula while Wai Po used chopsticks), I had a really terrible realization.
I was going to be the taste tester.
I started to back out of the kitchen, but they were onto me. Safta held up her hand. “Don’t go anywhere, David. We have a job for you.”
“Eating my latkes won’t be a job,” said Wai Po. “It will be a pleasure.”
I was trapped. I alone was going to decide which grandmother was going to be happy, and which one was going to be angry, because I was pretty sure they weren’t going to accept a tie. Each latke that came out of the pan or wok brought me one step closer to my fate.
But then I thought of something. One person couldn’t announce a tie, but two people could.
“Lauren!” I shouted. “It’s time to eat latkes.”
Wai Po leaned over her row of latkes, deciding which one to offer for judging. Safta used her spatula to lift one up to her nose, sniffing it.
The next thing that happened can only be described as a perfect storm, where everything goes wrong. Wai Po turned away from the stove, holding her choice of latke in her chopsticks at the exact same time Safta turned away from the stove, holding her choice of latke on the spatula.
The two kitchen utensils clacked together like swords, and sent the spatula latke through the air. It hit Lauren in the face as she walked in the kitchen door.
If you’ve ever wondered what it sounds like when someone gets hit by a latke, it sounds like a muffled whap. If it happens in the presence of two grandmothers, it’s a muffled whap followed by a pair of shrieks.
“Lauren!” Wai Po dropped her chopsticks and ran. She cradled Lauren’s head.
“Let me look!” said Safta.
“Let me look,” said Dad, who had come to investigate. He turned Lauren’s forehead so he could see it properly. “Let’s put a cool washcloth on it, just to be on the safe side, but I think she’ll be fine.”
“This is what happens when there are too many cooks in the kitchen,” announced Safta.
“The latke being held by the cook with chopsticks wasn’t the one that hit Lauren,” responded Wai Po.
Mom came in and dropped her keys on the counter. “What on earth?”
I didn’t want to say anything, but at the same time, I didn’t want my grandmothers to start in. While I was grasping for the right words, Lauren announced, “I got hit in the face with a latke.”
It’s very hard to hear the words I got hit in the face with a latke without at least smiling a little. Even Safta and Wai Po relaxed.
“Oh, goodness,” said Mom.
Lauren moved the washcloth so Mom could see. Even though Dad was the nurse, we always wanted Mom to see our injuries, too. The red mark had faded.
“Looks good,” said Mom. “And at least it wasn’t David that got it!” She laughed. “We wouldn’t want him to have a red mark on his face for his bar mitzvah!”
Lauren looked at me and glared. “It’s all about you,” she said.
“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked her. “Ask them to throw latkes at my face?”
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
Safta and Wai Po went back to work. Between them, we had a whole, giant mountain of latkes in less than forty minutes. We were even more careful than we were at Thanksgiving. Dad, Mom, Lauren, and I all made sure to eat equal numbers of both the traditional and wok-cooked latkes.
Shopping for bar mitzvah clothes with Safta was the worst possible way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
This was not a piece of trivia. It was the truth. Plus, it was eight days before Christmas.
Safta ran her fingers over the directory, looking at the list of clothing stores. “Is this it?” she asked. “A J.C. Penney and a suit shop? And a Gap? A gap is a hole. Who wants to buy clothes from a hole?”
“Chess King is a clothing store,” I pointed out.
“It sounds like a game store.”
I gave up. The mall was packed. Christmas carols blared from the speakers, making the air seem even stuffier.
I wished my mother had just ordered a suit from a catalog, or else taken me herself. But my grandmother said, “This time with David would be a gift.” She made it hard to argue.
“I’m picking out his tie,” my mother said.
“Can’t you just buy something?” I asked my grandmother. “And I’ll try it on at home?”
“No, no. We need a good fit. You don’t want to look like Adam Goldberg, who didn’t even tuck his shirt in, at his bar mitzvah. And the father? He looked like a schmuck and a half with ear flaps.”
I didn’t know what that even meant, but I knew I didn’t want to look like one. I also didn’t want to look like a guy who hung out at the mall with his grandmother. I had already seen some girls from my English class at the Hallmark store. Of course it was some, because it was a law that a girl couldn’t be alone at the mall. She had to have at least one friend, preferably enough to make a pack.
I tried to walk far enough behind Safta so it didn’t look like we were together, but that only made her turn around and tell me, loudly, to hurry up.
We tried J.C. Penney’s first. “What kind of pants are these?” asked Safta, holding up a pair of gray pants and frowning. “Why are they so baggy? And who needs a zipper over the calf?”
“They’re called parachute pants,” I said. “They’re really popular.” I didn’t want a pair of parachute pants—I was fine with jeans—but I felt obliged to defend them.
“Why are they called parachute pants? Because the only reason you’d wear them is if you were falling out of an airplane?” Safta flagged down a saleswoman. “Excuse me, where are your suits? You know, proper clothing for decent people?” A group of girls walking by giggled when she said that.
I looked away. And that’s when I saw, at the far end of the store at the jewelry counter, Kelli Ann’s best friend, Michelle.
My brain did the math: If Michelle was in J.C. Penney, and Michelle and Kelli Ann were best friends, then Kelli Ann was probably in J.C. Penney, too. And if Kelli Ann was in J.C. Penney and saw me with Safta, I was toast.
“Can we go?” I asked. Safta acted like she didn’t even hear me. She dragged me to a back corner of the store, where the saleslady told her she could find suits for “little boys.” I didn’t mind going in that direction, because it was farther from the jewelry counter. But I didn’t think a little boy’s suit was what you should wear the day you are supposed to become a man. It turned out that the suits looked just like the suits my dad wore when he was forced to dress up, though.
Safta held up the largest one, in navy blue, against me.
“Could this one fit?” she asked. She made me turn around. I did, but I bent my knees, hoping that the clothing racks would provide some cover.
“Why are you squatting down? Stand up straight!” She was loud enough for the whole store to hear.
“Put on the jacket,” commanded Safta. I tried to cram the suit jacket over my puffy winter coat.
“It’sfinecanwego?” I said.
Safta sighed. “David, stop this nonsense! Take off your winter coat and try it on properly.”
I did what she told me, so that she would stop being so loud. The arms came down over my hands in a flappy way that made it look as though I didn’t have any hands at all. Safta grabbed a jacket that was two sizes smaller.
“Turn around,” she said. If I spun like that in PE, I would have gotten a better grade in our dance unit. “You know what? You really don’t have much of a tuchus. It’s flat, even for a boy your age. Maybe it’s your Chinese genes.”
If Kelli Ann only heard Safta, she would figure out it was me, because who else would talk about tuchuses and f
lat Chinese butts in the same sentence?
“Safta,” I said, hoping to stop her before she could tell the whole store about the history of rear ends, and my rear end in particular. I tried to think of something that would make her stop. “Let’s keep shopping. At other stores. I want to see all my choices and … I want to spend more time with you.”
“More time with your little old safta?” She was practically purring. “This time is special for me, too. Oh, David, I wish I could have taken you to New York. Better selection, better prices …”
I poked my head up over the clothing racks and scanned the store. I didn’t see Michelle at the jewelry counter anymore. Even better, there was a clear path from the boys department to the entrance to the mall.
“Okay, let’s go.” I felt as if I was in one of those war movies, where the hero is trying to get from one foxhole to another by speed and perfect timing. Safta just strolled behind me, oblivious to the danger around her.
The next shop was called Suitings. It only had men’s clothes, which made me feel a lot safer about who I would run into there.
“Much better,” she said. “And look at the selection!”
If by selection she meant varying shades of black, brown, gray, and blue, then yes, I guess she was right. But it all pretty much looked the same to me.
“So are we having a special occasion?” asked the salesman, whose nametag read JEAN-PAUL. I was betting he made up the “Jean” part so he’d sound French and expensive.
Safta smiled. “My grandson’s bar mitzvah!”
“I see, I see.” Jean-Paul took out a measuring tape and began holding it up to me. I felt like a piece of furniture.
“He’s very small in the shoulders,” said Jean-Paul. “That will limit us somewhat.”
“He’s built like his sister,” agreed Safta.
I actually thought my shoulders were getting bigger from digging. Or maybe if I hadn’t been digging, things would be worse.
“We can definitely rule out double-breasteds,” said Jean-Paul. “Those are for men with more girth.”
Safta nodded enthusiastically. “And have you noticed his tuchus? Like a pancake.”
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