by Ann Cameron
“What is it?” he asked.
“Banana Spaghetti,” I said.
“Banana Spaghetti!” he said. “I never heard of it!”
“It’s a new invention!” I said. “It will be a one hundred percent surprise.”
Julian likes surprises. “So how do we make it?” he asked.
“Simple!” I said. “We have bananas and we have spaghetti. All we have to do is put them together.”
Julian thought about it. “We’d better get up early tomorrow,” he said. “Just in case.”
At 6 A.M. we went downstairs very quietly and turned on the lights in the kitchen. We went to work.
We mashed up three ripe bananas. I took out the can of Chef Marco’s Spaghetti. In the picture on the can, Chef Marco had his arms spread out wide, with a steaming platter balanced above his head on one hand.
I decided to stand that way when I brought Mom the Banana Spaghetti. I would go up the stairs ahead of Julian with her plate, so Julian couldn’t take all the credit.
I held the can and Julian opened it. We put the spaghetti in a bowl. It had a lot of tomato sauce on it—the color of blood.
“We have to get the tomato off!” I said.
We put the spaghetti in the sink and washed it with hot water. It got nice and clean. We put it on a platter.
“It looks kind of spongy,” Julian said.
“It will be good,” I said. “We just need to put the sauce on it.”
Julian dumped all the mashed banana on the top.
“Banana Spaghetti!” I said.
“Taste it!” Julian said.
But I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“You try it!” I said.
Julian tasted it. His lips puckered up. He wiped his mouth with a kitchen towel.
“It will be better when it’s hot,” he said.
We put it in a pan on the stove and it got hot. Very hot. The banana scorched. It smelled like burning rubber.
Julian turned off the stove. We looked into the pan.
“Not all of it burned,” Julian said. “Just the bottom. We can put the rest on the plates.”
We did. Then we looked at it.
Banana Spaghetti was not the way I had imagined it. It wasn’t yellow. It was brown. It wasn’t happy. It looked miserable.
It looked worse than turnips, worse than eggplant, worse than a baked fish eye.
“Maybe it’s better than we think,” Julian said. “When you don’t like some stuff, Mom always tells you it’s better than you think.”
“Will she eat it?” I asked.
“She’ll eat it because we made it,” Julian said.
“That might not be a good enough reason,” I said.
“You can tell her just to try a little bit,” Julian advised.
That seemed like a good idea. “Let’s take it upstairs,” I said. I handed Mom’s plate to him.
“No,” Julian said. “You take it up. It’s your invention.” He handed the plate back to me.
I put the plate on a tray with a knife and a fork and a napkin. I started up the stairs. I tried holding the tray above my head on one hand, but it was very tippy. I couldn’t do it the way Chef Marco did. And I wasn’t happy like Chef Marco, either. I wished Julian was with me.
I climbed five steps. It’s better than you think, I told myself.
On the sixth step I just sat down with the tray in my lap and stayed there.
I heard the door to my folks’ room open. I heard feet hurrying down the stairs. My dad’s.
He stopped when he saw me.
“Huey,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“Thinking,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Going for coffee—what is that stuff you’re holding?”
“It’s Banana Spaghetti,” I said. “I invented it. Julian and I made it for Mom. We thought it would be good. But it didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.”
My dad sat by me and looked at it. I passed it to him.
“It does seem to have a problem,” he said. “Maybe several problems.”
He sniffed it and wrinkled his nose. He got a faraway, professional look on his face, as if he was comparing it with all the banana foods he had ever tasted in his life. He looked as wise as Chef Marco.
“Banana Spaghett,” he said. “It’s a good idea. You just need to make it differently.”
“How?”
“Spaghetti is usually made of flour and eggs,” Dad explained. “But I think we could make it from flour and banana. After I have my coffee, we can try.”
We went to the kitchen. Julian had eggs out. He was getting a frying pan.
“You can put that frying pan away, Julian,” my dad said. “We’re making Banana Spaghetti.”
He flicked the switch on the coffee maker. In a minute coffee spurted out, and he poured himself a cup and sipped it.
“I’m ready,” he said. “Peel me three bananas, boys!”
We did.
“Now put them in this bowl and mash them!” he said.
We did. They came out sort of white, just like the first ones we mashed. And flour wasn’t going to change the color.
“Dad,” I said, “I want Banana Spaghetti to be yellow. It’s not going to be yellow, is it?”
“Not without help,” my dad said. “Look in the cupboard. Maybe there’s some yellow food coloring in there.”
We took everything out of the cupboard. Toothpicks, napkins, salt, burn ointment, cans of soup, instant coffee, six pennies, and a spider web. At the very back I found a tiny bottle of yellow stuff. I showed it to my dad.
“That’s it!” he said. “Put some in, Huey! Just a few drops.”
I did.
“Stir that yellow around,” he said.
We took spoons and did it.
“Bring me the flour,” he said.
We did.
He dumped some in the bowl.
“This is tough to mix,” my dad said, “so let me do it.”
With a fork he mixed the flour and banana into a dough.
“Julian! Spread some flour on this counter!” he said.
Julian did.
My dad set the dough on the floured counter. “I have to knead this dough,” he said. “You boys clean the cupboard and put everything back in it.”
We did, except for the pennies. We asked if we could have them, and my dad said yes. We put them in our pockets.
Dad rolled up the sleeves of his pajamas and pushed the dough back and forth under his hands, twisting and turning and pressing it hard, until it was smooth and not sticky.
“The dough has to rest so it will be stretchy,” he said. He covered it with an upside-down bowl and put a big pot of water on the stove to boil.
“What should go in the sauce?” he asked. “It’s your invention, Huey, so you decide.”
I tried to think of the best ingredient in the world.
“What about—whipped cream?” I asked. I never had any spaghetti that way, but I thought it would be good.
“Whipped cream! A great idea!” my dad said.
I poured cream into a bowl. Dad got the electric mixer out, and I beat the cream.
“How about—sugar?” Julian said.
“Sugar is right,” I said. Julian poured some in.
“Now,” my dad said, “what about spices? How about—oregano?” And he gave me the oregano bottle so I could smell it.
It smelled like pizza. “No!” I said.
“How about—cinnamon?” he asked.
Julian and I both smelled the cinnamon. “Yes!” we said.
“And how about—ginger?” He handed me the can.
Julian and I both smelled it. Julian said no. I said yes. Banana Spaghetti is mine, so I won. My dad shook in some ginger, and then he beat the cream till it was thick and fluffy.
“How about—sliced banana?” Julian asked.
I said yes. We sliced a banana. My dad stirred it into the cream.
We all tasted the sauce. It was d
elicious.
“Now,” my dad said, “the spaghetti.”
He uncovered the spaghetti dough and asked us for the rolling pin and the flour.
He rolled the dough, and then we rolled it some. Finally, when it was thin and stretched out like a blanket, he folded it over two times and cut it into strips.
Julian and I separated the strips and unfolded them. They were long and smooth and yellow. We held them in our hands gently, like Christmas tree tinsel.
The water in the pot was boiling as if it wanted to jump out. We stood on chairs by the stove and dropped in all the spaghetti strings at once. They sunk and swam in the pot for just a minute before my dad dipped in a fork and fished one out.
He tasted it.
“Done!” he said. “Quick! Get the plates ready!”
We did. Dad set a strainer in the sink. He poured everything out of the pot. All the water washed down the drain. The spaghetti stayed in the strainer. He divided the spaghetti on the plates and shook some cinnamon over it. I spread the sauce on top. It looked good—except for one thing.
“Just a minute!” I said. I found a bag of chopped peanuts and tossed some on top of each plate of Banana Spaghetti.
“Is that everything, Huey?” my dad said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Delivery time!” Julian said.
I went first with two plates. Julian came behind me with the other two plates. My dad came last, with silverware, coffee, and orange juice on a tray.
My hands were full. I knocked on the bedroom door with the edge of one plate.
“Come in!” my mom said. I hoped she would be just waking, but she was sitting up in bed, reading a book. She looked hungry.
I set one plate on the bureau. I brought the other to her the way Chef Marco would have done it, held out like a gift.
“Happy Mother’s Day!” I said.
“What is this?” she said.
“Just—Banana Spaghetti,” I said.
My dad handed her a fork. She tasted it.
“Delicious!” she said. “Very strange, but very delicious.”
“Dad and Julian helped me,” I said. “But it’s my invention.”
We arranged everything so we could all eat on the bed. When we had eaten all the spaghetti, we had second helpings of sauce.
My mom scooped up the last bit of her sauce with a spoon. “Banana Spaghetti! What a wonderful breakfast!” she said.
And I was very proud. Just yesterday there was no such thing as Banana Spaghetti in the whole world—and now there is. Just like one time the telephone didn’t exist, or television, or space stations. A lot of people believed those things could never exist. But then some great inventor made them.
I am an inventor. And a chef.
And I know what I want for dinner on my birthday. Banana Spaghetti. With chocolate shavings over the sauce, and seven yellow candles on the top.
Julian had a book from the library. By reading the book, he was learning to be a tracker and a guide and a scout. He had shown it to Gloria. He wouldn’t show it to me.
“I could learn too,” I said.
“You couldn’t!” Julian said.
“I could too!” I said.
Julian shook his head. “A tracker is strong and silent. You’re too little—and you talk all the time.”
I hate it when Julian acts like that. It makes me want to fight him. But I didn’t say one word. I just went away.
In the night I woke up and went downstairs. Julian’s book was lying on the couch in the living room. I picked it up. I couldn’t read it all, but I could see it was about tracks.
It had pictures of the hoof and paw prints of almost every kind of animal. It showed deer tracks and raccoon tracks, the tracks of zebras and giraffes and elephants.
I looked out the living room window. I could hear the wind. I could almost hear many animals outside. Very quietly I opened the front door and went out. I still had the book in my hand.
There was a full moon. I could see my own shadow on the grass, but I couldn’t see any night animals. I looked for tracks, but there weren’t any.
In real life I really had seen raccoon tracks once. I looked through Julian’s book until I found some. I decided to copy them. I found a sharp stick and went to where our driveway divides our lawn in two parts. The driveway isn’t paved. It’s pebbly and sandy.
Raccoon tracks look almost like human hands, with narrow fingers and long, sharp claws for fingernails. I stood on the grass and used my stick to copy them along the edge of the driveway
I walked on the grass to the street. Then I walked on the paved street to the other side of our driveway I copied more raccoon tracks on that side—so it looked like the raccoon had turned around and gone back to the street.
I hid my drawing stick in the hedge and went back in the house. I was careful not to leave any footprints. I put Julian’s book back on the couch, just the way he’d left it. I climbed the stairs, tiptoed past Mom and Dad’s room, and went back to bed.
In the morning I went down to breakfast. Julian was running into the kitchen with his book in his hand.
“Dad! Dad!” he shouted. “A raccoon was here last night!”
“Really?” my dad said. He went outside with Julian to study the tracks, and I went along.
Julian showed Dad his book. When Dad bent down to look at the tracks, I tried to look at Julian’s book too. But Julian wouldn’t let me. Whenever I tried to, he covered it with his arm and poked me in the ribs with his elbow.
My dad stood up. “It sure does look like a raccoon was here!” he said. “Sometimes those little rascals come round to eat food out of garbage cans. From now on, we’ll need to keep the lids on tight.”
The next night I woke up. I looked at the clock that sits on top of the brick on my night table. It was 1 A.M.
Julian was asleep with his pillow over his head. I went down to the living room.
I found his book on top of the TV, open to a page on African safaris. I went down to the basement and got my dad’s hammer. I took it and the book outside. The moon was not quite as big as the night before, but there was plenty of light for working.
Every few feet I mashed up small spots of sandy ground with the hammer. Then I rounded them out just right.
I stood up and compared them to the picture in Julian’s book. They looked the way they were supposed to—just like zebra tracks. Zebras leave hoofprints like horses. Their tracks are deeper in the ground than raccoon tracks. That’s why I used the hammer.
In the morning, Julian was so excited he was yelling.
“Mom and Dad!! Huey! Come look! There was a zebra here last night!”
We all ran outside. My dad studied Julian’s book and the tracks.
“Hard to believe,” my dad said, “but it sure does look that way!”
“Could it have been a horse?” my mom asked.
“All the horses around here wear shoes,” my dad said. “These tracks don’t show shoe prints.”
Gloria came over and saw the tracks. “Ama-a-a-zing!” she said.
She and Julian decided to make a zebra trap. They made the cage out of straight sticks tied together with rope. I brought them the rope from the basement.
“We should put a carrot in the cage to attract the zebra,” Gloria said. So Julian did.
He asked permission to sleep on the front porch, so he could watch for the zebra and catch it. Gloria got permission to sleep over and help.
Julian asked if I wanted to sleep downstairs with them to watch for the zebra. “We could take turns watching and sleeping,” he said.
I said there wasn’t room for three of us on the porch. Besides, I was tired.
But in the night I woke up. I looked out the bedroom window. The moon was not as big or as bright as the night before. I went to the basement and got a hammer, a chisel, and a flashlight. I crossed the living room on silent feet and peeked out the window to the porch.
Julian was on the floor in his sleepi
ng bag with his pillow over his head. Gloria was sitting up with her back against the wall, facing the zebra cage. But her head was tipped over on her shoulder. She was asleep.
On tiptoe I went out on the porch. The porch has one board that squeaks. I didn’t step on it. The tracking book just touched Julian’s hand. I put the hammer, the chisel and the flashlight under my left arm. I was scared I would drop them. I bent down. Very carefully, I reached out with my right hand. Very gently, I took the book. Julian and Gloria did not wake up.
I walked to the zebra cage. I set my tools down on the grass.
Carrots are one of my favorite foods. I picked up the carrot in the cage. I bit off half and ate it. I used the flashlight to check the rest of the carrot for tooth marks I had made on the other half. I worked on them with my fingernail to make them look bigger. Then I put the flashlight down and put the carrot back in the trap.
I used the hammer to make more zebra tracks—into the trap and back out again. I checked them with the light from the flashlight. They were okay. When I finished, I found a fallen pine bough. I used it to brush out all my own tracks.
I went to the edge of the street. At the edge of the street there is a narrow, sandy place. There was room for some very good tracks. Elephant tracks!
Elephants are really heavy. Their tracks sink in. I used the chisel to soften up the ground before I made the tracks with my hammer. I made fat, round tracks, with bumps for the toe marks—five each on the front feet and three on the back, just like the picture in Julian’s book. Afterward, I shined the flashlight on them. They looked good.
“The zebra was here!” Gloria said in the morning. “He was here—but I fell asleep. Huey! You should have helped us watch for him!”
“I’m too little,” I said. “I’m afraid of zebras.”
Julian and Gloria took my mom and dad and me outside and showed us the tracks—and the marks in the carrot.
My dad studied the carrot. “Those are tooth marks all right,” he said.
My mom took the carrot and examined it. “Some kind of tooth marks…” she said. “But—” She never finished what she was going to say, because Julian was shouting and pointing at the street.
