Karen brings her salad to the table. It looks normal, but you have to be careful with any food Karen makes.
I hear the door to Mom and Dad’s room open. They’re coming down the stairs.
Karen whispers, “Don’t talk on and on like you usually do. Let Mom and Dad talk. I’m sure they have something to tell us.”
Mom and Dad come into the dining room.
Mom takes her seat at one end of the table. Dad sits at the other end.
“Danny,” Mom says. “I know you set the table because there are no napkins.”
Karen gives me a dirty look.
Mom says, “If Karen set the table, there would be napkins but no glasses.”
I want to give Karen a dirty look, but I’m not sure how to do that.
I once tried to practice making dirty faces with a mirror. It just looked to me like I bit into something that tasted yucky. I decide to practice some more. I’m already ten. At my age, I should be able to give someone a dirty look.
I bring in the big bowl of spaghetti. Karen brings in the salad and the small bowl of sauce.
Mom and Dad each take a large helping of Karen’s salad. I watch them taste it.
“Very interesting,” Dad says.
Food shouldn’t taste interesting. It should taste good.
“What spices are in here?” Mom asks.
“Ground cumin, ginger, and pepper,” Karen says. “Salt is not good for you, so I didn’t use any.”
Cumin? Ginger? No salad for me!
I finish my first serving of spaghetti and I’m ready for more. I fish in the bowl for the long pieces. They’re fun to eat.
Dad puts down his fork and says, “I have something to tell you.”
Here it comes.
“I lost my job. I was fired.”
Today my dad lost his job and Mrs. Waffle got one.
Karen asks, “Did you do something wrong?”
Dad shakes his head.
“My boss said I was a great salesman but he’s giving my job to his brother-in-law. Mr. Crandel said family comes first.”
I tell Dad, “That’s so not fair.”
Mom says, “I agree, but life is not always fair.”
I wonder if my parents will run out of money. Food and clothing are expensive. Mom only works three days a week.
I put my fork down. I’m no longer hungry.
“Dad,” Karen asks. “Did you really like selling plumbing things?”
“It’s not the plungers I liked. It was the people. As a salesman I spent all day meeting and talking to people. I’m a real people person.”
“What’s a people person?” I ask. “Aren’t all persons people and all people persons?”
“What I mean is, I like to be with people, to work with them.”
“Your dad will find something,” Mom tells Karen and me. “He’s too good a salesman to be out of work for long.”
I tell them about Mrs. Waffle’s new job.
“Maybe Dad can get a job in her bakery. He could put the sprinkles on cookies or the raisins in the raisin bread.”
“We’ll see,” Dad says.
Mom puts her fork down. I look at her plate. She ate all her spaghetti, but she left a mound of salad.
“Who wants dessert?” Mom asks. “Who wants ice cream?”
I do. There’s always room for ice cream, especially butter pecan.
It’s Tuesday morning.
“Look what I have,” Calvin says on our way to school. He shows me a purple lollipop. He shakes his lunch bag. “I have a lot more. I’ll give them out.”
I shake my head.
“Don’t you get it?” Calvin asks. “It will be funny.”
“No, it won’t,” I tell him. “It would be mean. It would just remind Mrs. Cakel of her lost dog.”
Calvin takes the wrapper off. “Purple is my favorite flavor,” he says and puts the candy in his mouth.
Calvin takes the lollipop out of his mouth and says, “Lots of people talk to their pets. I know that and I have a lot of questions for Lollipop. I want to know what Mrs. Cakel says about me. I want to know what class she’s putting me in for next year.”
I think he’s joking but I’m not sure. He has some strange ideas.
We’re outside the school now and I tell Calvin to finish his lollipop. He pulls it out of his mouth and shows me that there’s still a lot left.
“You have to finish it,” I say. “You can’t let Mrs. Cakel see it.”
Calvin bites it.
“That’s bad for your teeth,” I tell him.
“You said I have to finish it and I’m not going to waste a purple,” he says and takes another bite.
Sometimes Mrs. Cakel stands by the door to our room and greets us when we walk in, but not today. She’s in the room sitting behind her desk and she’s slouching. Her slouch tells me she hasn’t found Lollipop.
Calvin sits in the front row, and when Mrs. Cakel goes to the board to write something, he takes a lollipop from his pocket and waves it at me. He thinks it’s funny.
“What’s with the lollipop?” Annie asks him during lunch.
Calvin tells her and Douglas about Mrs. Cakel’s dog. He tells them that this afternoon, after we do our homework, we’ll start our search for what he calls Mrs. Cakel’s Candy-On-A-Stick dog.
“What?” Douglas asks.
“A lollipop is a candy on a stick,” Calvin explains.
“I can’t go with you,” Annie says. “Clover Street is too far from my house.”
“I’m getting a swim lesson,” Douglas says.
He turns his head and reaches his arms up and moves them like he’s swimming right here in the cafeteria.
“Let’s eat,” Calvin says.
He reaches into his lunch bag and takes out his marshmallow-banana-carrot-on-whole-wheat-bread sandwich.
“Not again!” he complains. “Every day it’s the same thing. I hate this stuff.”
I tell my friends about Dad.
Douglas asks me, “What’s he doing today? It must feel funny to him to stay home.”
“This morning he has an appointment with some employment counselor. Maybe he already has a new job.”
That’s what I say, but I don’t really think it will happen so fast.
Calvin takes out a few lollipops.
“Who wants one?”
“I want orange,” Douglas says. “Oranges have vitamin C.”
“Lollipops are just sugar and artificial flavoring,” I tell him.
“What about the stick?” Calvin asks.
“And a stick.”
Annie takes a green lollipop and I take a red.
I tell everyone, “We have to finish them before we get back to class. We can’t let Mrs. Cakel see our lollipops.”
“Mrs. Cakel is not the only one really attached to her pet,” Douglas says. “My dad’s sister is my Aunt Selma and she has a parakeet. Aunt Selma makes me say, ‘Hello, Petey.’ So I do it and you know what? Petey never says, ‘Hi, Douglas. I’m glad you came to visit.’”
Annie says, “Mrs. Cakel and your Aunt Selma should get some people friends.”
“Lots of people already have all the friends they want,” Calvin says. “Along comes someone new and people just ignore him. Maybe they think he’s strange. Making friends is not always so easy.”
Calvin is talking about himself. When he first came to our school, lots of kids in our class ignored him. Some kids thought he was strange. Some kids still think that. Sometimes I think that, but I like him anyway.
I take the wrapper off my red lollipop and pop it in my mouth.
“Do you know what I think?” Annie asks as she tears the wrapper off her pop.
“You think you’ll be the first girl football player in the NFL,” Doug
las says. “You think you’ll be a doctor, electrician, scientist, writer, and cartoonist.”
“Yes, and I think green is the best lollipop flavor.”
Calvin shakes his head.
“They all taste the same. If I blindfolded you and gave you a pop, you wouldn’t know what flavor it was. I like purple because I like the way it makes my tongue look.”
Calvin sticks out his tongue. It’s purple.
“Once I mixed red and blue food coloring in a soda bottle cap. That made purple. I dipped a Q-tip in and wiped it on my tongue. Then I wiped it on my nose, cheeks, and chin. Mom said I looked like a big grape.”
I look around the cafeteria, at all the kids eating and at those waiting on line for more food and drinks. I think about what we do every lunch period when we first get to the cafeteria. We eat. We talk later.
“People like to eat,” I tell my friends. “Dogs like to eat too.”
“Is my tongue orange?” Douglas asks and sticks out his tongue.
“That’s how we’ll find Lollipop,” I say. “We’ll start out at Mrs. Cakel’s house and look for places a dog could find something to eat.”
Douglas still has his tongue out.
“It’s orange,” I tell him.
That afternoon, I don’t pay much attention in class. I keep thinking about Lollipop. Meat. That’s what dogs eat. Where would a stray dog get meat?
I ask Calvin that on our way home.
“Sometimes people find a lost dog and keep it. Sometimes they don’t know whose dog it is.”
“Mrs. Cakel put signs up everywhere,” I say. “And I’m sure there’s a collar around Lollipop’s neck. Whoever finds her will know whose dog she is.”
We get to our block and Calvin says, “Let’s do our homework in my house. This is Mom’s first day on her job and I’m sure she brought home some donuts.”
His mom left for work really early, like five something in the morning.
“I’m not sure this job will work for her,” Calvin tells me. “Mom doesn’t like to get up at five in the morning.”
Calvin gives me his cell phone. I call home to tell Karen where I’ll be and Dad answers the phone.
“Be home by six,” Dad tells me. “I’m making hamburgers for dinner.”
I wonder how Dad’s schedule will change at whatever his new job will be. I wonder if he’ll get a new job.
Calvin was right. His mom brought home jelly donuts and lots of other bakery treats. There’s a tray of them on the kitchen table.
“Eat something before you do your homework,” Mrs. Waffle tells us.
She gives each of us a donut.
“I gave each of them two shots of raspberry jelly,” she says. “‘This will keep you from getting mumps,’ I told the donuts before each shot. ‘This will keep you from getting measles.’”
Calvin was right. She talks to the donuts.
The donut she gave me is heavy. It must be all the jelly.
I bite into one end of my donut and red jelly squirts out the other end. It’s all over Calvin’s shirt. Calvin’s donut squirts onto my shirt. Mrs. Waffle wipes our shirts with a paper towel, but instead of cleaning them she spreads the jelly.
“Leave it,” Calvin tells her.
“Wait,” she says. “I’ll put them in the washing machine. I’ll clean them super-fast. Meanwhile, you both can wear Calvin’s clean shirts.”
She hurries to Calvin’s room while I unbutton my shirt. She comes back with two T-shirts. On the front of the one she gives Calvin is the picture of a donkey and the message, “Don’t get close to me. I kick.” On the front of mine it says, “I dunt spel gud.”
That’s true. Calvin doesn’t spell good.
Calvin and I put on the T-shirts.
I take another bite of my donut. Well, not really a bite, more of a nibble. I don’t want to get jelly on Calvin’s T-shirts.
“It’s good,” I tell Mrs. Waffle. “It’s really good.”
“And really messy,” she says. “Maybe that’s why my boss kept telling me, ‘Just one squirt. Just one squirt.’”
We drink some milk, eat some cookies with sprinkles, and eat another donut. I bite into this one over the sink. We also do our homework.
“Mom,” Calvin says when we’re done. “Danny and I are going out. We’re going to look for Lollipop.”
“You’re still hungry? You can eat candy after all that cake?”
Calvin tells her that Lollipop is the name of Mrs. Cakel’s dog and then we leave.
We get to Mrs. Cakel’s house and I tell Calvin, “We’re two dogs and we’re hungry. Where will we go to get something to eat?”
“Ruff! Ruff!”
“I’m serious. Where would a hungry dog go for food?”
“Ruff! Ruff!” Calvin says again.
There is no car in Mrs. Cakel’s driveway so we know she’s not home. We both stand in front of her house and think.
“The garbage,” Calvin says. “Dogs, cats, raccoons, and bears all will eat from garbage pails. Maybe someone on this block has a can with a loose lid.”
“I can’t imagine the dog on those posters with its poodle haircut eating garbage. I can’t imagine her eating crusts of bread and licking sticky candy wrappers. And if Lollipop was right here, why wouldn’t she go home?”
“Maybe she doesn’t like Beatrice Cakel,” Calvin says. “Nobody really likes that woman.”
I shake my head. That’s not it.
“There are a bunch of stores near here. I think one of them is a butcher shop. Maybe someone there is feeding her scraps of meat.”
“Lead me there,” Calvin says. “Ruff! Ruff!”
We walk farther from our block toward the shopping area. There are Lollipop posters on some of the trees, but not as many as there are on Clover Street. I take down one of them and put it in my book bag.
“It’s so I can show Lollipop’s picture and ask people if they saw her.”
We pass the drugstore at the corner.
“Look at that,” Calvin says and points to a sign in the drugstore window. “They’re selling air conditioners for a dollar. We could use one.”
“That’s hair conditioner.”
“Air conditioner, hair conditioner, what’s the difference?”
“One keeps you cool and the other nourishes your hair.”
As soon as I say it, I feel stupid. I know he didn’t think they’re selling air conditioners for a dollar.
Of course, with Calvin, I can’t be sure.
The third store from the corner is a butcher shop. We look in back. It’s clean. There are no meat scraps or open garbage cans.
“Let’s go inside,” I say. “Maybe they’ve seen Lollipop. Maybe they’re feeding her.”
The man behind the counter is cutting meat for a customer. Calvin points to the many red stains on his apron and whispers, “Maybe he ate one of Mom’s jelly donuts.”
He didn’t. The red is blood.
“Can I help you?” the man asks.
“We’re looking for a dog.”
“I don’t sell dog meat.”
“We’re looking for this dog,” I tell him and show him the poster with the picture of Lollipop.
He shakes his head. He hasn’t seen her.
I put the poster back in my book bag. The man takes off his apron.
“It’s closing time,” he says. “It’s time for dinner.”
Dinner!
I look at my watch. It’s six fifteen.
“I’ve got to get home,” I tell Calvin.
“Thanks,” I tell the man and hurry out the door.
“I’m late again,” I tell Calvin.
I’m running home and Calvin has trouble keeping up. I’m pretty fast. Maybe I’ll join the track team in high school.
“I’l
l see you tomorrow,” I tell Calvin and hurry into my house.
“You’re late,” Mom says. “Wash your hands and sit down.”
I wash and sit in my seat at the dinner table. Dad gives me a plate with a hamburger on a toasted bun and some fries.
“Where did you get that shirt?” Mom asks. “‘I dunt spel gud’!”
“His teacher probably gave it to him,” Karen says. “Did you fail another spelling test?”
I forgot I was wearing Calvin’s T-shirt.
I tell my parents and Karen about Mrs. Waffle’s donuts. I also tell them about our search for Lollipop and our idea to look for places a lost dog would get something to eat.
“It’s good of you to look for Mrs. Cakel’s dog,” Mom says. “Next time let me know if you’re going to be late.”
“Lollipop!” Karen says. “That dog probably ran off to court to legally change her name.”
“I think Danny is right,” Mom says. “The dog has to eat, so places that might have leftover meat are good places to look. But you know, the shop you went to is not the only place in town that sells meat. Every supermarket sells meat, and we get our meat two blocks from that store, at the kosher market.”
We don’t eat ham or anything from a pig. That’s not kosher. We also don’t eat lobsters, clams, or shrimp.
Dad tells me, “Restaurants sell meat meals and they have lots of leftovers that they throw out.”
“Here’s a picture of Lollipop,” I say and show them the poster. “Let me know if you see her.”
“There’s a reward for finding the dog,” Karen says. “Is that why you’re looking for it? Maybe if you find her dog, Mrs. Cakel will promote you to the fifth grade.”
Mom says, “Stop teasing your brother. He’s a good student.”
I put ketchup on my hamburger and bite into it.
Yuck!
I take off the top of the bun and look at what I’m eating. The meat is burnt on the outside and almost raw inside. I wonder if Lollipop would eat this.
I hope Dad gets a job soon and Mom cooks the hamburgers again.
The Squirting Donuts Page 3
