by Meg Medina
“Step on it, Merci,” she says. “It feels gross.”
I slather on what I can and call it a day.
“OK,” Lena says, pausing over Edna like a surgeon. “We’re going to start plastering, so don’t move or talk. We don’t want it to crack.”
“I am going to the afterlife,” Edna says dramatically. Then she takes several cleansing breaths.
I hate to admit it, but she doesn’t move a muscle. Lena hoists a bucket of water onto a desk and puts it next to our pile of plaster strips. We dip each one and crisscross them in place. I work on Edna’s head, while Lena and Hannah work the larger pieces on her body. It doesn’t take long to finish the first layer, but you can still see through it in spots.
“You OK, Edna?” Lena asks.
“Mmm-hmm,” Edna says.
We point the fan at her and wait for fifteen minutes before starting layer number two. This one is trickier. Lena shows us how to use our thumbs to smooth the slime down around the edges as we go.
“How do you know so much about art?” I ask her as we work.
She shrugs. “I’ve always done it. My grandfather was a painter.”
“Hey, mine, too,” I say. “Sol Painting, Inc.”
“Not the same kind, probably. Mine painted portraits, the ocean, that kind of stuff. My dad has some of them still hanging in his gallery in Delray.” She shrugs. “I’m not as good, but I like the quiet when I paint. And the colors.”
“Same here,” I say. “It’s not that different painting rooms.”
Lena thinks about that and smiles. “You’re right.”
We work together, all three of us. Hannah tells us about her grandfather, too, who lives in Miami and is married to someone very young. He and her Nana don’t get along.
It takes us most of the class hour to finish everything. But by the time the bell rings, we have a pretty good-looking cast of our dead queen.
Ms. Tannenbaum turns the fan on again to dry her faster and nods in approval.
“Good work, ladies,” she says. “You, too, Edna,” she adds loudly. “Very professional.”
Everyone gathers to see what we’ve done. Even though it’s still gooey, we can see that it’s going to be perfect.
Lena checks the clock. “She’ll be completely ready in fifteen more minutes.”
“That’s a wrap!” Hannah says, and we throw little pieces of plaster at her.
Then we get busy cleaning up the soggy drop cloths and dump the buckets of gray water in the grass outside.
Edna stays still as a stone the whole time.
Lena turns off her beeping watch and runs her fingertips over the surface. It’s rock hard and smooth. “I think our queen mummy is ready.”
Ms. Tannenbaum unplugs the fan. “All right. Why don’t you girls remove the mold while I get this back to Mr. Shaw’s art room? I’ll be back in a flash.”
“Positions,” Lena says.
I stand at the head, just as we planned. Hannah and Lena get on either side of the cast. We’ll have to lift the cast at exactly the same time so it doesn’t break apart.
Lena leans down and talks near Edna’s ear. “OK, Edna, I want you to wiggle your fingers and legs and face very gently. Not too much; we just want to loosen the mold a bit.”
The rest of the kids who are still working stop what they’re doing and come to watch. It’s a little creepy to see the cast start to move. It’s like those horror movies about the undead.
“That’s enough.” Then Lena turns to us. “When I say three, we lift together slowly.” The room gets very quiet in anticipation. “One . . . two . . . three.”
The feet and sides loosen as we lift together. I pry the sides of the face mask away easily and pull upward. But suddenly, I hear Edna cry out from below.
“OUCH! Stop!”
We all freeze. “What’s the matter?” I ask.
“My face is stuck.”
“That can’t be,” Lena says.
But sure enough, when I peek underneath, I can see that Edna’s eyebrows are pulling up with the plaster.
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh what?” Edna says. One of the cucumber slices slips off, and she give me a side-eye as best she can. “What do you mean, ‘uh-oh’?”
“Hold on a second,” I tell her. Then I stand up and whisper to Lena. “A little problem below, chief.”
She bends down to look and her eyes grow wide. “Hang on,” she tells Edna. Then she whips back to us. “Didn’t you use the Vaseline?”
“Of course I did.”
“Maybe you didn’t use enough? Or maybe you didn’t get close enough to her eyes?”
“I was hurrying,” I say, trying to remember. “She was rushing me.”
“You must have missed her eyebrows!” Lena says.
“Well, now what do we do?” asks Hannah.
“Get me out of this,” Edna calls to us.
“Just a second,” I say. Then I turn back to Lena and Hannah. “Let’s rip it off fast,” I suggest. “My aunt gets her eyebrows waxed all the time. How different can it be?”
Hannah’s mouth drops open in horror.
The boys start cracking up, especially Michael.
“Oh my God!” Rachel says, when they tell her what’s so funny. “Is Edna really stuck?”
“Quiet,” I snap.
“I’m stuck?” Edna shouts. “Who said that? Is that you, Rachel?”
“Let’s try one more time,” Lena says quickly. We pull up as gently as we can, but the skin under Edna’s eyebrows just stretches up with us until she yelps again. “You’re killing me!”
“She’s glued in, all right,” says Michael. “Glad it wasn’t me.” And then the boys just double over in hysterics.
“Help!” Edna says.
“We’ll have you out in a second,” Lena says. “Quick. Come here and hold this side up,” she says to Rachel. Then she jabs her fingers into the petroleum jelly. “Hold still, Edna. I’ll try to loosen you.”
But there’s no such luck. We use the whole rest of the jar of Vaseline, but when we pull again, Edna swats at us with her free hand.
“OW!”
Lena looks at me gravely across the plaster we’re all holding. “There’s only one thing to do,” she says. She walks slowly to Ms. Tannenbaum’s desk and fetches a pair of scissors from the pencil cup. She swallows hard. “Close your eyes, and don’t move a muscle,” she tells Edna.
“Wait,” I say. “I messed it up. I’ll get her out.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod and take the scissors.
“What are you doing?” Edna says when she sees me zeroing in above her eyes.
“It’s the only way, Edna. Now hold still.”
It’s hard to keep my vision in focus, especially since my eye is doing its nervous crawl. My hands are shaking as I snip, snip, snip along Edna’s brows.
Finally, she’s loose. We lift the cast carefully and set it on the floor. Edna sits up and yanks the plastic bags from her body. Her face is shiny with grease, and the skin around what’s left of her eyebrows is bright pink. Hannah takes one look at her and covers her mouth. The boys go into more laughing fits. It makes me want to slug them.
“Quit it,” I say.
Michael Clark is the first to catch his breath enough to speak. “Your eyebrows look weird,” he says, wiggling his own.
Edna scowls. “Mirror!” she says.
Jamie fishes in her backpack and hands her a compact with kitten ears on it. Edna flips it open. All I hear after that is her scream.
That’s when Ms. Tannenbaum rushes back in. “What on earth is this racket about? I could hear you down the hall!” she says, frowning. “Boys, quiet down at once!”
No one has time to reply. Edna hops down from the desks and snatches off the rest of the plastic bags. “Look what this idiot did to my eyebrows after all the help I gave them!” she says, pointing. “Just look! They’re ruined!”
She’s not wrong. I tried to be careful, but I ha
d to cut close to the skin with those big scissors to free her. Now her brows are patchy and crooked. Half of the left one is mostly gone. What stubble is left is covered in little balls of plaster, too.
Ms. Tannenbaum’s face darkens. “Oh, no . . . no, no, no, no, no, no, no . . .” She takes Edna’s face in her hands to inspect the damage.
I try to explain. “But we had to get her out, miss. We had no choice.”
Ms. Tannenbaum closes her eyes as Edna starts to bawl. Then she puts her arm around Edna’s shoulder and guides her to the door. “Let’s go see Miss McDaniels,” she says, sighing. “Looks like we’re going to have to call home.”
MAMI IS WAITING FOR ME at the prescription counter. We’re picking up Lolo’s new medicine before the store closes for Thanksgiving. It’s supposed to be like a new set of brakes for his memory loss. At least, that’s what the doctor says.
I put the eyebrow pencil on the counter. It’s Midnight Brown, the color Tía Inés said.
“Did you get the card, too?” Mami asks.
I slide it on the counter and try not to make a face. I picked one with a picture of a rock that has worried eyes. No hard feelings? Inside it’s blank, so I can apologize to Edna in my own words, the way Mami says I should.
Thankfully, the card is kind of small. If I write in big letters, I won’t have to say much.
“Forgetting something?” Mami holds out her palm. On top of everything, I’m paying for my mistake. Literally. Ten dollars zapped from my bike fund.
“I don’t even know what to write,” I tell her. “I’m pretty sure she’s not speaking to me. Why would she read a note?” I try not to think of Edna’s face, all red and rubbery, or how everyone laughed at her.
“We’re eating at three,” she says as we walk home. “You have plenty of time to figure out what to say by then. Speak from the heart.”
“Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump,” I say.
“Funny,” Mami says.
Lolo and the twins are in the yard picking grapefruits while I try to write something.
Papi planted the tree the same year that he and Mami, Lolo, and Tía Inés all chipped in to buy Las Casitas. It’s a big tree now, and while it’s never been great for climbing, when it blooms late in the winter, the white flowers make the whole yard smell pretty. Those flowers become the fruit eventually in the fall. Abuela likes us to leave the fruit on as long as possible, even though some of it is ready in October. It’s the secret to their sweetness, she says. Letting things ripen and not rushing them.
Lolo holds the ladder steady against the trunk. All I can see of Axel are his skinny legs. The rest of him is hidden inside the canopy.
“Twist the stem,” Lolo tells him from below. “Turn until you hear it snap.”
A grapefruit drops with a thud and rolls near my chair like a dirty softball. I reach into my pocket for my phone and zoom in. I’ll add this picture to what I’ve already taken. Abuela at her sewing machine. Tía Inés rolling her hair. Mami and Papi watching TV.
“When is it my turn?” Tomás asks. He’s tiptoeing around the trunk, creeping up on lizards as best he can. He pulls on Lolo’s pants. “When?”
“When I tell you it’s time, compadre,” he says.
I watch them for a while. It’s a good day for Lolo, at least. Maybe the medicine will work. Maybe we’ll have Lolo the way he’s supposed to be for a long time.
I turn back to the card in my lap, but it’s hard to concentrate. The whole yard smells of orange and garlic, and my stomach keeps growling. We don’t eat turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving like most people around here. Not even pumpkin pie.
Instead, we always start Thanksgiving with a cut grapefruit, sugar sprinkled over it the way Lolo likes. Abuela bakes four chickens and boils a big pot of white rice. Tía makes her famous coconut cookies. Mami insists on a salad, of course. Then, like most people, we say “gracias, Señor” and eat until our pants nearly pop.
“What matters is not the menu,” Mami is fond of saying. “It’s that we spend the day feeling grateful.”
“Although not for ruthless colonizers,” Roli likes to add. He’s been nursing a well-researched grudge against Thanksgiving for years.
Hmpf. Right now, I’m not feeling very grateful at all — for anything. When we get back to school on Monday, I’m supposed to report directly to Miss McDaniels for a meeting with our headmaster. That’s simple code for “I’m in trouble.” Hannah says she saw Mrs. Santos come to pick Edna up after our disaster in social studies, and it didn’t go well. Hannah tried to apologize and explain what happened, but Mrs. Santos was even more upset than Edna.
“I don’t get it! Anyone can see that we didn’t do it on purpose,” Hannah grumbled.
Can you sue people for ruining your eyebrows? I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
I look at the card in my lap again. I read in one of Papi’s business etiquette books that you should never write an e-mail or a letter when you’re mad because you’re likely to shoot your mouth off and say something you’ll regret. Such as:
DEAR EDNA,
YOU BASICALLY GOT WHAT YOU
DESERVED FOR WRECKING MY COSTUME
AND I’M GLAD. OFFENSE INTENDED.
FROM MERCI
But the weird thing is that I can’t write that. Even though Edna can be awful, I know I made a mistake. I didn’t have as much fun watching her get laughed at as I would have thought, either. She did agree to help us, and watching Michael and the other kids make fun of her felt all wrong.
So, I decide to stick to the facts, which Roli says never fail anybody. I write her a letter that feels true.
Dear Edna,
I’m sorry we messed up. It really was an accident. I was trying to rescue you because life stuck inside a plaster mask wouldn’t be fun. I hope your eyebrows grow back fast. The average kid’s hair grows in at about 0.14 mm each day, so in a few weeks you should look like new. Until then, use this.
Merci
I seal the makeup pencil in the envelope when I’m done.
Then I walk over to the tree, where Tomás has dug a hole out of boredom and is kicking at the loose grapefruits like they’re soccer balls.
“We have to eat those, you know,” I say.
He pulls on Lolo’s pant leg again. “Is it my turn?” he whines.
I’m afraid Lolo will get impatient. I should probably make myself useful. “Hey,” I tell Tomás. “I have an idea. Come with me.”
Tomás isn’t the most trusting kid, especially when he’s not with Axel, but he follows me to the carport. Lolo’s bike is there, right next to mine.
I grab my bike and lift him onto the handlebars. He’s heavier than I remember, and he’s lost a front tooth, which I can’t believe I haven’t noticed. Abuela saved Roli’s and my first teeth in an old cough-drop tin. I wonder if Axel’s is there, too, or if she’s been too busy to notice. Or maybe it’s just been me who hasn’t been paying attention.
“Hang on tight, OK?”
“Vroom!” he says.
I start pedaling.
We start a big, slow loop of Las Casitas, going by each of our houses. Papi and Roli are setting up the patio table and hosing off the chairs. Mami is standing by the kitchen window, chopping lettuce and talking with her brothers on the phone. I wave at Tía and Abuela, who are listening to the radio as they cook in the kitchen. The smell of our holiday dinner reaches to every corner of our yard as we go.
“Don’t let that boy fall,” Abuela warns me. Or is it Lolo she’s talking to? I can’t tell, I’m moving so fast.
“Faster! Faster!” Tomás shouts as we zoom along.
I pump my legs hard and lean into the turns as he squeals. Round and round we go until my legs hurt and my shirt is soaked in sweat. White seat stuffing flies in all directions, and for once I just don’t care.
How many rides did Lolo give us over the years? I can’t count them all. But now it’s me who’s pedaling, and Tomás trusts me at every swerve. He’s laughing so l
oud that we barely hear it when, at last, Lolo whistles to let us know it’s Tomás’s turn to climb.
I let him off and straddle my bike. Breathless, I snap a picture as he runs back to Lolo and our tree.
GOING TO SEE THE HEADMASTER at Seaward Academy is scary. So I’m surprised when I get to school to find not only Edna — wearing sunglasses — waiting on the bench but also Hannah and Lena sitting there, too. I told them about having to see Dr. Newman when they texted me over the weekend to see if I’d gotten in trouble.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
Lena stands up. “I know you said not to come, but since we were on the mummy committee together, we wanted to help explain what happened.”
“Again,” Hannah says, pointedly.
She takes a step closer to Lena. Then they both turn to Edna.
“We’re so sorry, Edna,” Lena says. “All of us.”
Edna ignores her.
“Please, Edna, be reasonable,” Hannah says. “What else can we do except apologize?”
Miss McDaniels comes through the door just then. She looks at Lena and Hannah and frowns.
“Hurry, or you’ll be late to class, ladies.” Then she holds open the door that leads to the back offices. “Edna? Merci? Follow me.”
Lena gives me a worried look.
“Thanks for coming,” I whisper before I go. “There’s no sense in all three of us taking a hit. I’ll tell you what happens later.”
Edna and I follow Miss McDaniels past the stinky flowers and along all the back offices until we finally reach a big wooden door. She opens it.
Inside is the longest and shiniest table I’ve ever seen. Dr. Newman sits in a padded chair at the far end. He’s wearing a red bow tie and is checking his phone. To my surprise, Ms. Tannenbaum is waiting for us, too. The sight of her sends a wash of relief over me.
“Good morning, girls,” she says as we take a seat on either side of the table.
