Keisha let her shoulders relax. “Razi-Roo, I’m proud of you,” she whispered.
“You’re a poet and you didn’t know it,” Razi whispered back.
Chapter 6
“Carters’ Urban Rescue!” Razi shouted into the phone on Monday morning. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to answer the business line, but this morning he’d asked Mama, since he was now an official member of Wild 4-Ever, if he could and she’d said, “We’ll see.”
But Mama’s hands were wet, Grandma was upstairs wiping off the lipstick she said was “too winter” and Keisha was wrestling Paulo into the stroller. Ever since he started pulling himself up and balancing, Paulo didn’t like to be put in the stroller unless he was tired. So he arched his back and Keisha had her hands full to keep from dropping him onto the kitchen floor.
“Yes, we have a skunk, too!” Razi was saying. “He lives in the forest now. Under the big tree. Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh … Mama!” Razi held out the phone. “It’s for you!”
“I’m right here, Razi. Let him grip your fingers a little while, Ada. Grandma isn’t down yet, so we have some time.”
“Skunk tracks and cat tracks look alike, Mr. Peters. Can you see the toenails? … Well, they shouldn’t be that hard to see if you got a good print.… Skunks cannot pull back their toenails, so they show right in the print.… All right, then. Can you see well enough to count the number of toes? … I understand. We will come by this morning. Mrs. Zadinkis invited me to come and pick some squash and beans for my pepper soup.… Thank you, I would love a tomato.”
Mama had a pot of red pepper soup going on the stove most mornings, even when it was hot outside. Red pepper soup was made out of tomatoes and peppers and chicken broth. Then Mama added whatever vegetables she had around. Red pepper soup was for guests as well as for family. Anyone could drop by and have a little around dinnertime. Mrs. Zadinkis liked to drop by when she was in the neighborhood, so she gave Mama lots of good things from her garden. That’s when Mama liked to say: it takes many raindrops to make the pond from which we drink.
Keisha was glad she hadn’t finished putting Paulo in the stroller because now she had to buckle him into the car seat in back. He was just as stubborn about being put in his car seat. But Mama had a way with him. It was a short trip to the community garden and soon they were driving on the old track that had become a service road for people to load and unload their equipment and produce.
Mama loved to honk. It was a habit she learned growing up in Nigeria, where people greeted each other with their horns. So as she honked her greeting, heads popped up all over the garden and hands waved to them. Keisha marveled at how much things could change in a garden from one week to the next. She and Wen and Aaliyah often rode by the community garden on their bikes, and it seemed like, once it got hot, the plants grew a foot every time. By this time in August, you couldn’t even see the neighbors’ yards that backed up to the garden because the sunflowers and hollyhocks were so tall. Straight rows of bush beans, long yellow peppers and juicy ripe tomatoes filled the gardens. Squash leaves, like big fans, grew right out onto the service road.
“Careful, Mama,” Keisha said as they came close to squashing a basketball-sized watermelon that sat near the edge.
Mama pulled the truck over to the side and the children tumbled out.
Razi started to run in the direction of a big patch of daisies, but Mama caught his hand. “I need you with me.”
He skipped alongside Mama as she went to the message board near the big toolshed. The shed was the gathering place for all the gardeners because it had the tools, potting soil, wood chips, watering cans and other things that they needed.
In the summertime, gardeners were in the garden all the time, but in the fall, when no one was around, children sometimes messed with the shed. Last fall, they’d broken the lock and left the tools all over the ground. Someone threw a rock and shattered the window. Though the window was due to be fixed, Mama was tsking about the way the shed looked when her nose caught something in the air.
It seemed like everyone smelled it at the same time.
“That’s stinky garbage,” Razi said, plugging his nose.
“Mama?” Keisha caught up. “Skunk?”
Mama pursed her lips, thinking.
“How will we find Mr. Peters?” Keisha asked, trying to get her mind off the smell.
“The honking will spread the word.…” Mama sniffed again. “There is something about that smell.…” Mama touched her long fingers to her forehead, thinking.
Sure enough, an older lady in a plaid jumper and tennis shoes came over and put her hand on Mama’s shoulder.
“I’m Mrs. Peters,” she said. “You won’t hurt it, will you? I’ve read terrible things on the Internet about what they do with nuisance animals.”
Even though it was hot, Mrs. Peters hugged herself tight and shivered. “Though I have to agree, that smell … is one of the most unpleasant. Even the tea from my thermos smells like it now.”
At the same time Mrs. Peters was talking, Razi tugged on Mama’s hand. She leaned over and whispered to him: “Where I can see you.” Then she looked at Keisha in a way that told her eldest daughter it was her job to watch her brother.
Straightening up, Mama took Mrs. Peters’s hand in both of hers and said, “Fayola Carter.”
Mrs. Peters looked into Mama’s eyes. “Jane.”
“And Mr. Peters?”
“He’s spraying the aphids off our mums.” Mrs. Peters put her hand up over her eyes so she could see the far part of the garden. “Not with poison, mind you. Just a strong jet of water.”
“Where did you spread the flour?” Mama asked.
“Over on this side of the shed.”
As Mrs. Peters led the way, Mama asked Keisha, “Does this smell like skunk to you?”
Keisha thought about it. Skunks had a smell that was all their own. It was a little like rotten eggs, a little like dead things.
“Mama, look!” Razi was excited. “I found his hidey-hole.”
No matter how many times Keisha told Razi it was called a den, Razi insisted that burrowing animals lived in hidey-holes. Call them what you wanted, Razi was an expert at finding them.
“As you can see”—Mrs. Peters pointed to the evidence—“this is where we spread the flour.”
Mama kneeled down and examined the tracks. “You see, Mrs. Peters? No toenails and only four pad marks. You’ve had a cat travel through here.”
“We have dozens of cats,” Mrs. Peters said, laughing. “I’m not surprised about that.”
Keisha noticed a few boards on the shed were peeled back and rotting, especially where Razi was on all fours. The entrance to the tunnel was not easy to see unless you were close to it. But when they bent down to look, Keisha could see that under the shed, the dirt was packed hard and the hole was wide.
No cat was responsible for this den.
She and Mama must have been thinking along the same lines because Mama said, “Wide for a skunk.” Mama pulled Razi into her arms and away from the hole. “Maybe a woodchuck. Have you been missing any flowers?”
“Now that you mention it, Mr. Johnson lost a whole patch of petunias in one day. He thought the neighborhood children were picking them.”
“Well, let’s take a look. You should be able to tell the difference,” Mama said. “If they are being eaten—” Razi broke free and squiggled farther into the hole. Keisha grabbed his hand. Grandma always said if you lost your trouble, Razi could find it.
“Come and jump rope with me, Razi,” she said.
At the same time that she added, “You can count,” Razi asked, “Can I count?”
No one liked it when Razi counted because he lost track and then made up the numbers. Even when he used the mechanical counter that Aaliyah kept in her purse, he would get distracted by a butterfly or a passing car and stop pressing the counter. Still, Keisha remembered they’d left the ropes in the back of the truck and this would be a way to distract Razi while Mama talked
to the Peterses and the other gardeners about woodchucks and skunks.
As they passed the truck on the way to the petunia patch, Keisha said to Mama, “It could be a skunk that lives down there. Maybe he moved in after someone else moved out.”
“But why would he spray in his own den?” Mama wondered.
“That’s what I was thinking … maybe someone or something found him in the shed and that’s where the smell is coming from … not under the shed.”
“There’s something about that smell.…” Mama leaned in and got Keisha’s jump rope. She also pulled out the live trap.
“Well, go and jump. I want to set this up and find Mr. Peters. And Mrs. Zadinkis. It looks like the pattypan squash may be ripe.”
“I don’t want to jump, Key. I want to play hip-hopscotch,” Razi said. “We could do it right here on the path.” Keisha looked at the wide path. It would be easy to scratch out a hopscotch board with a stick, and she always carried her lucky marker in her pocket. It was a stone that fit just right in the palm of her hand. Mrs. Vanderest had let her paint it when the other kids were painting the big rocks.
“Okay, but I better draw it.” Keisha dropped the rope and found a short, stubby stick. You had to make bigger squares for hip-hopscotch because the whole point was to dance inside the lines. You tossed your marker into a square, hopped to the square it landed on, called out a dance move and then danced it. Unlike counting for jump rope, Razi was very good at hip-hopscotch.
“Me first,” Razi called as Keisha stood back to make sure she’d drawn it right.
“Okay, okay. Where’s your marker?”
Razi held out both hands. “Please? I’ll be careful. I promise.”
Keisha put her blue rock with the purple dots in Razi’s hand. “All right. If you promise.”
Razi tossed the marker into the third square. He skipped on one foot to the square with Keisha’s marker and called out, “MJ Step,” then proceeded to dance the Michael Jackson step, where you put your hands in your pockets and slid out first one leg and then the other.
“Good job, Razi,” Keisha said. As she watched her brother skip to the next square, Keisha’s mind skipped to the thought of a little skunk, curled up in its den. Skunks liked to burrow, and anything on the ground—logs, porches, sheds—was a good place for them to live. But it wasn’t like a skunk to spray in its own den. What had happened to make it feel afraid?
“Drag turn with the disco arms!” Razi called out, and he waved his arms so hard he almost lost his balance.
Keisha felt a drop of sweat trickle down her temple. It was hot standing in the sun. She listened to Razi’s skip-skip-skid on the ground.
“Heel-toe with a puppet walk.”
That’s it! Keisha thought. It’s hot! Skunks are covered in fur. Why would it be curled up in its den? Skunks didn’t always use dens in the summertime.
“Oh no! Key, I threw it too far.”
Ooh. Keisha hated it when Razi interrupted her problem-solving process. “Well, go find it, Razi. You know it’s my favorite. You promised.”
Keisha looked down at her shoes again, trying to remember. It just didn’t seem likely that a skunk would be curling up in a den when it was so hot out. This was the hottest time of the year. All of a sudden, Keisha saw Mama’s shoes.
“The trap is set.” Mama pulled Keisha to her and wiped her daughter’s face with the hem of her dress. “I put some grubs in a little bowl. Just what skunks like. But even if we don’t catch a skunk, we should figure out what has been visiting. Those flowers were eaten, not picked, and woodchucks love to eat flowers.” Mama picked up Keisha’s rope and began rolling it up.
“Now, where is your brother? I don’t want him anywhere near that trap because it’s hard to set—”
Mama was interrupted by a very Razi-like scream. Keisha whirled around just in time to see Razi leap out of the bushes at the end of the garden and run toward them.
“He’s going to bite me!” When he reached Mama, Razi grabbed the material of her dress and tried to hide himself in it.
“Razi. Little one, hush. Who is going to bite you?”
Razi was gulping for air. It didn’t help that his head was buried in Mama’s stomach.
“That bad dog. He was growling at me.”
“I don’t see a dog, Razi.” Keisha looked in the direction Razi had come. The bushes were tall and tangled, and a honeysuckle vine filled with orange flowers grew across the top. There was no sign of a dog or any commotion beyond what Razi was causing.
“I was looking for Keisha’s marker,” Razi said, sniffing. “With the purple polka dots. I thought I saw it in there.”
“Saw it in where, Razi?” Mama was examining Razi’s arms. He was covered with little scratches, and there were seedpods in his hair.
“The bushes. That’s where the bad doggy is. Bad dog! No!”
Razi had been afraid of dogs ever since he’d been knocked down by a big one at Millennium Park when he was three. It also didn’t help that Harvey, the Bakers’ dog, lunged at him every time they passed the Bakers’ fence.
“Keisha, go see what this boy is talking about,” Mama said, brushing the pods out of Razi’s hair. “I’ll take Razi with me to get our squash from Mrs. Zadinkis and meet you by the truck.”
What Keisha wanted was her marker. She loved that marker. She walked slowly over to the spot where Razi came out of the bushes. This area got sun all day, so the vines of the trumpet honeysuckle were thick.
Just as she started to part the bushes to look in, Keisha did hear a low growl. It wasn’t like Harvey’s snapping scary growl. It was a small-sized growl.
As her eyes got used to the dark inside the bushes, Keisha saw a curly-haired dog, no bigger than a watermelon, lying on its side—panting. It tried to get up when it saw her. It growled again. Keisha had been around animals enough to know this was not an I’m-going-to-bite-you growl but a defensive growl.
“What is it, Keisha?” Keisha felt Mama’s warm hand on her back.
“It’s hurt, Mama. Its front legs are funny. And it has some big scratches on its behind. They might be bites.”
Mama parted the bushes further and took a close look. “This dog needs medical attention right away,” she said. “I’m going to get the cell phone out of the truck and call Bob. I’ll get a box and a towel, too.”
Chapter 7
The next morning, Grandma clomped up the basement stairs, her arms full of supplies. “They don’t call it Mephitis mephitis for nothing,” she said, to no one in particular. “I bought two quarts of tomato juice at the Dollar Store yesterday. The rest of the ingredients should be here in my secret stash.…” She rummaged through the box she’d brought up. “Where’s that hydrogen peroxide?”
“There’s one bottle in the medicine cabinet and you’re borrowing some more from Mrs. Sanders. You just called to ask,” Keisha said. Keisha and Razi were sitting at the kitchen table, coloring. Keisha had her favorite drawing book next to her—How to Draw Baby Animals. It was opened to the puppy page.
“‘Puppies have larger heads compared to their bodies than full-sized dogs,’” Keisha read aloud as she sketched.
Razi was working on a picture from a coloring book they’d given him at his Safety Town class. He was coloring all the police officers purple. He started a song: “Me-phi-tis me-phi-tis. It smells like your armpits!”
“Has Mama called yet?” Keisha asked Grandma. Mama and the baby were at the community garden checking on the skunk trap. Mama had also promised that she would swing by the vet clinic at the Humane Society and check on the little dog they’d brought in yesterday afternoon. Keisha wondered if anyone had claimed her yet.
“No, not in the thirty seconds since you asked me the last time. Where is the Z-Team? I can’t do this without hydrogen peroxide.”
“Me-phi-tis me-phi-tis me-phi-tis.” All Razi cared about was his new-sounding word.
“What does that mean, Grandma?” Keisha had to almost shout to be heard over
Razi’s noise. She knew it was a Latin name, one that helped people all over the world no matter what language they spoke identify an animal, but the words usually meant something.
“In Latin it means ‘stink,’” Daddy said, coming up from the basement with the box that their new computer had arrived in. “Mom, how many times have I told you not to climb the stepladder in the basement? You could fall.”
“That’s what my gentle yoga class is for,” Grandma said. “Look.” Grandma put her hands over her head and bent way backward. “I call this cat-diving-backward-into-pool,” she said. “I’ve got the body of a twenty-year-old. Razi, give me a hand here.”
Razi was good at pushing Grandma back to her starting point. He stood on his tippy-toes and pushed on her shoulders until she was in her spaceship-heading-to-the-moon pose.
Using his pocketknife, Daddy began to cut the flaps off the box. “I guess they named it Stinky stinky because when they spray, skunks smell so bad that’s all you can think about.”
He walked over to Grandma’s ingredient box and looked at the contents. “Hmmm … vinegar, baking soda. Where’s the hydrogen peroxide?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Grandma said. “I thought the Z-Team was coming over with it.”
“If you call Mama on her cell,” Keisha said as she continued to color soft brown puppy ears, “she can pick some up at Perkins Drugstore by the vet clinic. Daddy, did you know she’s going to check up on the dog?”
Before Mr. Carter had a chance to answer, Grandma said: “Who’s going to check up on Mrs. Sampson? That’s what I want to know.”
Keisha made extra curls on her puppy’s ears. From what Mrs. Sampson had told them, the baby crow was doing just fine, but Keisha agreed that Mrs. Sampson could use some checking up on, too.
“Her milk was sour,” she said. “I could smell it all the way in the dining room.”
“You should have opened the refrigerator. Oooo-weee!” Grandma plugged her nose.
“We can check on Mrs. Sampson when we check on the baby crow,” Daddy said. “If she’s as good a nurse as she says she is, that fledgling might be able to be released this afternoon.”
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