Gator on the Loose!

by Sue Stauffacher

  “But, Mama, I—”

  “Do not ‘But, Mama’ me now, Ada. That alligator could bite off your toe!” And she rushed out after Daddy.

  In Nigeria, “Ada” was the word for “first daughter,” and Mama always called Keisha that when she wanted her to act like a grown-up. It would help if Keisha’s family could learn to stay calm during an emergency. If Mama had thought it through, she would realize how unlikely it was for a small, scared alligator to bite off anyone’s toe. Alligators did not nibble at their prey the way you would an olive on the snack table. They dragged it under the water, drowned it, let it get all mushy and soft and then shook it hard until it broke up into bite-sized pieces. To get your toe bit off, you’d have to practically set it right into the alligator’s jaw.

  Keisha glanced over at Razi.

  Well, in his case, Mama might have a point.

  “Ding-dong,” Mr. Sanders, the postman, said as he knocked on the back door. “Mail’s here. Mmmmmm. What is that delicious smell?” Mr. Sanders always said “ding-dong” even though he knocked on the back door, and he always said “What is that delicious smell?” because there was always something delicious cooking in Mama’s kitchen.

  “Soup! Did I get my package?” Razi loved to see Mr. Sanders. He was certain he was going to get a package, though he didn’t know from whom. But the package never came.

  “I’m sorry to say there is no package for Mr. Razi Carter. However”—Mr. Sanders rummaged through his bag—“when I opened my cereal box this morning, I found this little item, and it had your name all over it.”

  “Where?” Razi asked, looking at the crinkly plastic packet that Mr. Sanders held out to him.

  “It’s just a saying,” Keisha told Razi. She took the packet from Mr. Sanders and put it on the counter. “First things first, Razi. Say hello to Mr. Sanders.”

  “Hello to Mr. Sanders,” Razi said, stretching his arm over the counter to reach where Keisha had placed the packet. “I want to see my name, Keisha.”

  “Your name isn’t on it,” she told her brother. “It’s a way of saying that Mr. Sanders found something you would like.”

  Why did Keisha have the feeling that the gift wasn’t something she would like? The cereal-box toy looked as if it made noise. While Razi was fond of things that made noise, the rest of the Carters were not.

  “What is that long face for?” Mr. Sanders asked Keisha. “I don’t suppose this would cheer you up. It’s for our soup.” Mr. Sanders pulled a fat white vegetable from his pocket and held it out for Keisha to see.

  “A potato?” Razi guessed.

  “Good guess, but no.”

  “Hmmmm …” Keisha took the vegetable in her hand. Last year, when she was having trouble remembering her countries for geography, Mr. Sanders would quiz her by bringing vegetables from around the world. Usually the vegetables ended up in Mama’s soup, but first Keisha would check her big map to see the country they came from. It was much easier to remember something you held in your hand and could taste and feel than names printed on a sheet of paper.

  “I’ll give you a hint. Its nickname is yam bean.”

  “Then it must be from Nigeria,” Keisha said, “because they love yams in Nigeria.”

  “Nope. I didn’t want to tell you its full nickname because that would give it away. But another nickname would take you to a whole different continent.”

  Keisha gave the yam bean back to Mr. Sanders. She wasn’t in the mood for a vegetable mystery. Normally, she would like it, but right now what she needed to do was figure out how to find an alligator. She took two small steps backward to be closer to the door to the hall.

  “It’s called either a Mexican yam bean or a Chinese turnip. Go figure. But its real name is jicama, and it is a staple in Central America.”

  “Hee-ka-ma, hee-ka-ma!” The way Mr. Sanders pronounced the word sent Razi into a bounce. Bouncing also got him closer to the packet on the counter. “Do alligators like hee-ka-ma?”

  Mr. Sanders didn’t seem at all surprised by the way Razi changed the subject. Three years of working in the Alger Heights neighborhood had taught him all about Razi. He quickly washed his hands and began peeling the skin off the jicama, using the knife and cutting board Mama always left next to the soup pot.

  “I haven’t asked my alligator friends about jicama,” Mr. Sanders said, slicing off a piece and holding it out to Keisha. “But next time they come by for a game of cards, I’ll be sure to try it on them.”

  “We could ask ours, but we lost him,” Razi informed Mr. Sanders. “He was taking a bath and then Grandma said ‘Jumpin’ Jimmy Choo’ and then she said ‘I could swear that door was closed’ and then Mama and Daddy made us promise to stay in the kitchen and then—”

  “Can baby Paulo try some jicama?” Keisha broke in, trying to redirect the conversation. She didn’t think they should tell Mr. Sanders about the alligator. He liked to chat with all the neighbors, and it wouldn’t look very good for Carters’ Urban Rescue if people knew they’d caught the alligator in the city pool only to lose it in their house.

  “Well, sure. I think he’d like jicama. It’s sort of a cross between a water chestnut and an apple. But about this alligator—”

  Razi had finally reached the packet on the counter. He grabbed it by the corner and held it out to Mr. Sanders. “Please open this for me. Please? I’ll give you a marble. I’ll give you a bottle cap.”

  “I’ll help you, Razi.” Keisha took it and tore it open. She didn’t want him to trade away the baby. Last week, he’d offered baby Paulo to the grocery clerk for a Snickers bar. Besides, she wanted to get a good look at this whatever-it-was.

  It was a plastic case, no bigger than a deck of playing cards, with a sticker on it that made it look like a music player. She could tell right away that if you pulled the ring on the string dangling from the case, it would play a song. This was a song she was about to become very familiar with. Keisha wondered if she’d like it.

  Mr. Sanders put down his knife. “What I think you do, buddy, is pull on this string here…. Wait a minute … it’s tangled….”

  While Mr. Sanders was messing with the toy, Keisha broke off a small piece of her jicama and put it in baby Paulo’s mouth. She’d found this to be the very best way to test whether something was going to taste yucky. If babies didn’t like something, they made a horrible face and spit it out. It was a fine thing to do if you were a baby, but it didn’t go over very well when you were ten.

  There was a great deal of clattering in the hall outside the kitchen, and Grandma was explaining to Daddy, “Of course the back door is latched. It was latched when I went out to water the primroses, and … well, I latched it for sure the first time, but I had to go back out to scare the Zingermans’ cat away from the bird feeder. That time, I can’t be sure.”

  Baby Paulo, whose mouth had just been full of Cheerios a moment before, made an unhappy face, but he didn’t spit out the jicama. This meant it might not be too bad. Keisha threw another handful of Cheerios on his tray and popped the rest of the jicama in her mouth.

  “It tastes crunchy,” she said, speaking loud enough to cover up the Grandma noises in the hall. “Mmmmm. You should try it, Razi.”

  But Razi was on the kitchen floor, full of concentration, trying to figure out how to untangle the string on the music player.

  “I’ll get the dog crate from the truck,” Daddy was telling Mama. “Tell Mom to wait for me outside.”

  Keisha wished they wouldn’t talk so loud.

  Mr. Sanders resumed chopping his jicama and then stopped to look at Keisha. “This wouldn’t have something to do with the alligator Mr. Ramsey found at the city pool this morning, would it?”

  “Uhhhh …” Keisha was not nearly as good as Razi at making up stories. She looked at Mr. Sanders, wide-eyed, until baby Paulo started banging on his tray.

  Ordinarily, Paulo was a mellow baby. Just watching life unfold at Carters’ Urban Rescue was interesting enough that he didn’
t need much more than to be fed and held and to have his diaper changed. But after Cheerios came yogurt, and every once in a while, the Carters got so busy that they forgot the yogurt part. So Paulo had to bang. If that didn’t work, he had to fling anything that was within reach: his Winnie-the-Pooh bowl with the suction grip, his blue sippy cup, even his bib. Daddy said Paulo was going to be a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, he had such a strong arm.

  “Oops,” Keisha said as Cheerios bounced off the baby’s tray and onto the floor. “I forgot the yogurt.”

  She ran to the fridge, nearly tripping over Razi.

  “Got it!” Razi said, and pulled the string. The room filled with the tinny sound of a tune you could hear on the radio up and down the block every day. It was from Possum and Blossom, a cartoon movie that Daddy had taken Keisha and Razi to last Saturday when it was raining.

  The movie was about two possums and their life in the city. Very unrealistic if you knew the least little bit about possums.

  “It’s ‘Possums in Love’!” Razi began to sing in a loud voice.

  Keisha wondered how long the toy would last before it had an unfortunate accident. Or maybe she could convince her friend Aaliyah to trade Razi something for it. Aaliyah was very good at persuading.

  “Mom, before you go out, can you see if we have any rats in the freezer downstairs?”

  “Why do I always have to get the rats? It’s hard to do those steps in high heels. Let Keisha do it.”

  “She’s in the kitchen watching Razi and the baby!”

  Keisha heard Grandma stomping down the basement stairs. A moment later, she heard the front door slam.

  Mama rushed in from the hallway. She, too, almost tripped over Razi.

  “Again!” Razi said, and yanked on the cord.

  “Mr. Sanders … welcome.” Mama stopped, took a deep breath and tugged on the hem of her shirt. “I see you smelled my soup.”

  “Yes, and I’m adding to it,” Mr. Sanders said. He’d cut the jicama into matchstick-sized pieces and was dumping them into the pot. “So much going on here this morning …”

  “Yes … yes.” Keisha could tell that Mama’s mind was also on alligators, not on chatting with Mr. Sanders. “So nice of you to stop by. Please eat as much soup as you like and take some home for Mrs. Sanders.”

  “I only have time for one small bowl.”

  Mr. Sanders knew where everything was. He pulled the ladle from the jug on the counter and a bowl from the cupboard above the sink.

  “I always time my breaks for your house, as you know,” he said, sipping his soup. “I’ve been here for twelve minutes, leaving me three more to eat this delicious soup.” Mr. Sanders focused on slurping while Keisha and her mother exchanged glances.

  “Mom, are you looking out here?” Daddy’s voice was right outside the window.

  Paulo’s banging got louder.

  “I keep forgetting the yogurt,” Keisha said.

  “I wish you could stay longer, Mr. Sanders, but I remember your motto: No rain or snow or soup can keep you from your appointed rounds.” Mama took the empty bowl of soup from Mr. Sanders’s hands and opened the back door.

  “I see it! Right there. It’s an alligator tail,” Keisha heard Grandma say.

  “That’s the garden hose, Mom.” Daddy had obviously reached the place where Grandma was standing.

  “Actually, we don’t have an official motto at the post office.” Mr. Sanders was now leaning out the door, looking around the side of the house to see what Grandma and Daddy were talking about. Keisha leaned outside for a look, too. “It was the Greek historian Herodotus who said: ‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.’ He said that about twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s on the New York City General Post Office, which was built in—”

  “You have to admit it’s the same color.” Grandma was talking in her my-hearing-aid-isn’t-quite-working voice.

  “But alligators don’t have spray nozzles on their tails.”

  “Very funny. I wasn’t looking at that part. I was looking at the twisty part.”

  Mama gave Mr. Sanders a serious look before she said, “Good day, Mr. Sanders. We don’t want to keep you from your appointed rounds, do we?”

  With a little wave, Mr. Sanders was out the door, and Mama pushed it closed. Tight.

  “Keisha, please give the baby his yogurt! And do not let anyone leave this room until we find that alligator!” Mama touched the tips of her long fingers to the place where her hair met her forehead. She always did this when she was thinking.

  “We can’t find it inside. Your father thinks the little alligator will sniff for water, so we are going to look across the street where water collects by the drain. Muddy places. That is where the little alligator would go. I’m leaving Grandma in charge. Oh goodness …”

  Mama got a wide-eyed look that Keisha had never seen before. She didn’t say anything more before rushing back into the hall.

  If Mama had given her just a minute, Keisha would have suggested taking Razi along. He was excellent at finding mud—messes of all kinds, really. But it was hard to think straight when the baby looked so unhappy. His bottom lip pushed out, Paulo was also tugging at his ear. If he started to rub his eyes, it would be too late. Paulo would have a meltdown. When Paulo had a meltdown, he cried for hours. Grandma said he could filibuster better than Senator Strom Thurmond. It had only happened three times in the history of the Carter family, but every baby had his limits. Keisha opened the refrigerator door again.

  “Razi, can you please distract the baby while I get his yogurt?”

  Razi jumped up. If there was one thing he was good at—besides finding mud—it was distracting. “Here, baby Paulo, listen to this.” Razi dangled the music player over the tray.

  But baby Paulo had had enough. He made a little howl, and before you could say “Mexican yam bean,” he grabbed the music player and sidearmed it up and out the open window. It fell into the garden, still singing about sprinkling stardust sent from above over not one but two possums in love.

  Chapter Five

  Mr. Sanders did like to share information, so Keisha wasn’t surprised at all when his twin boys, Zack and Zeke, appeared at the back door. Daddy had called them the Z-Team ever since they’d helped her out in first grade when her classmate Marcus knocked her down trying to steal the basketball at recess.

  Zack and Zeke had rushed over. “We’re big,” Zeke said as he gave Keisha a hand up. “But we’re sensitive, too.”

  Zack turned around and shook his fist at Marcus. “Try some of this if you can’t stop pushing.”

  When Keisha told Daddy about what happened, he marched right over to the Sanderses’ house to compliment the boys on their fine behavior, which included not punching Marcus. It was right about this time that Mr. Sanders started dropping off little packages for Razi.

  It was like Mama said: “The bird who remembers his flock mates never misses the way.”

  Zeke and Zack looked exactly alike except that Zack had a chip in his front tooth from riding down Second Street shouting, “Ladies and gentlemen—no hands!”

  Keisha opened the back door and pulled them into the kitchen.

  Zack was the first to shout, “Where’s the gator? We want to wrestle it.”

  Shouting wasn’t good for baby Paulo’s digestion.

  Keisha shhhhhed the boys and then whispered, “I think he’s outside.”

  Zeke saw baby Paulo’s unhappy look and went over to him. “Hey there, buster,” he said, rubbing Paulo’s cheek.

  “Well, let’s go, then.” Zack grabbed the doorknob. “I don’t want to be in here when all the action’s outside.”

  Keisha had turned away from Paulo to talk to the boys, so her yogurt-filled spoon was heading in the wrong direction. Paulo started to yelp.

  “Do you suppose my mama would let you hang around outside when there’s an alligator on the loose?”

&nbs
p; Zack let go of the doorknob and shoved his hands in his pockets. Even the Z-Team was a little afraid of Mama.

  “True, but your grandma’s out there. She keeps stepping on the garden hose.”

  “I think we should call the police and have the alligator arrested,” Razi said. He’d taken the spoon from Keisha and was feeding the baby. Keisha let Razi take over because Razi was also good at feeding babies.

  The phone rang.

  “It’s for me!” Razi dropped the spoon on the baby’s tray.

  Correction. Razi was good at feeding babies when there wasn’t anything more interesting to do. Just like the mail, the phone was never for Razi, but he was always sure it was.

  “Hello? Aaliyah? We can’t talk right now because we have to call the police to get the alligator arrested.”

  “Razi!” Keisha was still whispering, though she knew there wasn’t much point. “We’re not supposed to tell.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Grandma let him out of the bathroom.”

  “Give me that.” Keisha tried to grab the phone.

  “Wait, we got cut off….” Razi was punching buttons.

  “Ouch!” Aaliyah was saying on the other end of the line. “You’re making me deaf, Razi.”

  Zack quick picked Razi up and dangled him upside down. Zeke started to tickle him.

  “Stop!” Razi was giggling. “Don’t stop. No … stop!”

  Razi dropped the phone, and Keisha almost lost her balance catching it. When she put the phone to her ear, she could hear Aaliyah laughing. “Sounds like you’re playing hip-hopscotch. I better come over.”

  Aaliyah loved hip-hopscotch, which you played just like regular hopscotch, but you had to do a different dance move when you landed in each square.

  “But I stop at alligators. You know I do not hopscotch with alligators,” Aaliyah said. “Key, do you really have one over there?”

  Keisha wasn’t sure what to say. “We did,” she finally said. “We do. We just can’t put our finger on him at the moment.”