Holy Enchilada

by Henry Winkler

  I think if we’re putting our best foot forward, then she should take off those icky gray shoes she wears every day and put on some cool green and yellow Nikes—or at least spray the insides with odor eaters.

  Ms. Adolf walked up and down the aisles with her roll book and put a check next to your name when she thought your desk was clean enough. I was the last one to get a check. I filled up one whole wastebasket with the stuff she made me throw away. There was some really good stuff in my desk, too. A half-eaten granola bar that I was saving in case of emergency. Hey, you never know when hunger will strike. A dried-up blueberry-scented marker that still smelled a tiny bit like blueberries. I was going to miss that marker. Oh, and the seven paper clips bent into triangles that I use to play desk hockey.

  After lunch, Principal Love came to our class to give us a lecture on how we were supposed to behave around Yoshi. Principal Love is a short bald man, but his voice sounds like he should be an NBA player with bushy black hair.

  “Each of you is representing not only this school, but this city, this state—all of America!” Principal Love said in his tall man, bushy hair voice. “You are representing us when you walk, when you talk, when you skip, and when you hop. You are representing us when you raise your hand, but not when you don’t raise your hand.”

  Oh, in case this isn’t making any sense to you, don’t worry. I forgot to tell you that no one ever understands what Principal Love is saying. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either, because there is always a look of confusion in his eyes when he lectures us.

  I knew I couldn’t look at Frankie or we’d start to laugh. I did glance over at Ashley. She looked like she was hypnotized, just staring at the mole on Principal Love’s cheek. Oh, I forgot to tell you about that, too. Principal Love has this mole on his face that’s shaped like the Statue of Liberty without the torch. When he talks, it looks like the Statue of Liberty is doing the hula.

  As Principal Love droned on, Ashley looked over at me and rolled her eyes back until you could only see the white parts. That’s not easy to do, but Ashley can do lots of body tricks like that. I knew I couldn’t laugh, but I couldn’t hold it in. A little snorting sound leaked out through my nose. Ms. Adolf shot me the death look. I held my nose and pushed that snort all the way back into my brain.

  During art period, a bunch of us volunteered to go to Mr. Rock’s room in the basement to make a welcome sign for Yoshi. His room is the biggest one in our school, so we had plenty of room to spread out and make a really big sign. Mr. Rock is the music teacher at PS 87 and a really cool guy. In fact, he’s the one who first suggested that I be tested for learning differences. He has learning differences, too, but he always points out that they didn’t stop him from achieving his dream of teaching.

  Mr. Rock rolled out a long sheet of brown paper while Frankie and Hector Ruiz mixed up paints. Ryan Shimozato had brought a slip of paper with the words WELCOME, YOSHI written in Japanese characters. Ryan’s dad, who was born in Japan, wrote it out for him. We were going to try to copy it onto the sign.

  Those characters looked really complicated. Ryan said there are almost two thousand of them that combine to make up the Japanese language. Boy, it’s a good thing I wasn’t born in Japan. If I had to learn to write all those characters, I never would have gotten out of kindergarten.

  “Mr. Rock, can I decorate the sign with rhinestones?” Ashley asked. “I brought some pink ones from home. Maybe they’ll remind Yoshi of the cherry blossoms in springtime in Japan.”

  A blast of dragon breath came shooting in from the hallway door. I knew that breath. It was Nick McKelty breath—the breath of peanut butter turned bad. I spun around and, sure enough, the big jerk was slithering into Mr. Rock’s room. Who asked him to help?

  “Rhinestones!” laughed Nick McKelty. “How girlie is that!”

  “Ashley is expressing her creativity,” Mr. Rock said to him. “Everyone in here is free to be creative.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Ashley whispered to McKelty as she whipped out a baggie of rhinestones and her glue stick. “I ought to rhinestone your mouth shut.”

  Frankie and Hector finished mixing the paints, and brought them over to the paper. Ryan and I were ready to start outlining the Japanese letters. McKelty reached over, stuck his beefy arm in front of everyone, and grabbed a paintbrush, almost knocking the jelly jars of paint over.

  “I’m one of the best artists on the Upper West Side,” he said, like anyone believed him. “I won an art trophy once, and it’s so big, I can hardly fit it in my room.”

  We call that the McKelty Factor: truth times one hundred. No one even pays attention when he brags like that. But since no one has ever been to his house for a play date—except Luke Whitman once—we couldn’t really catch him in the lie this time.

  “Oh, by the way, dude, we’re painting in Japanese,” Frankie said to him. “You know how to do that, don’t you?”

  McKelty squinted down at the Japanese letters on Ryan’s paper. When he looked up, his big face was even blanker than usual. He didn’t have a clue what to do. His eyes scanned the room for someone to pick on.

  “Hey, Zipperhead,” McKelty shouted over to me. “This is a good job for you. Your handwriting looks like Japanese even when you’re writing in English.”

  “That’s enough of that kind of talk,” Mr. Rock said to McKelty. “We don’t make fun of anyone in this room.”

  I told you Mr. Rock was cool.

  “I’m just saying what’s true,” McKelty said with a shrug of his beefy shoulders. “Zipper Boy’s writing looks like he does it with his big toe.”

  Mr. Rock walked over to Nick and took the paintbrush out of his hand.

  “The door is this way,” he said, pointing to the hall.

  “Huh?” said Nick. “I know where the door is.”

  “Then use it and leave,” said Mr. Rock. “When you can stop making fun of other people, you’re welcome back.”

  McKelty turned all red in the face. He just stood there, but so did Mr. Rock. Finally, Nick the Tick muttered something under his disgusting breath and stomped out.

  I wanted to jump up and down and shout. Man, was it ever good to see McKelty sent out of the room.

  Mr. Rock came over to me and handed me a paintbrush.

  “Now, Hank, I believe you’ve got some painting to do,” he said, giving me a pretty firm shoulder squeeze.

  I took the brush and started to paint. I decided then and there that as soon as I got the chance, the first person I was going to introduce Yoshi to was Mr. Rock.

  He’s what I call putting your best foot forward for America.

  CHAPTER 7

  I WAS SO EXCITED ABOUT MEETING YOSHI that I couldn’t sleep all night. By the time the school bell rang the next morning, I was already glued to the window of my classroom, staring out at 78th Street. Every time a car pulled up in front of my school, I was sure Yoshi and his dad would step out of it. I couldn’t wait for them to get there.

  I don’t know if you’ve already got a picture in your mind of what Yoshi would look like, but I sure did.

  In my mind, he would be smallish, probably about my height. (Some people might call that short, but I like the word smallish better.) Of course, he’d have jet-black hair that would probably be cut in floppy bangs straight across his forehead. I had seen that hairdo in all the pictures in the books Ms. Adolf had brought us on Japan. I thought he’d probably be wearing a uniform. Ms. Adolf told us that most Japanese kids wear uniforms to school. He’d be walking quietly and respectfully next to his father because Japanese children are taught to be very well-behaved around older people.

  But I’m here to tell you that Yoshi Morimoto was nothing like what I expected. Not even a little bit.

  When I first caught sight of him rounding the corner from Amsterdam Avenue onto 78th Street, Yoshi was whizzing along the sidewalk on a black skateboard with bright orange flames. He had some pretty cool moves, too, shooting ahead of his dad and then doing a 360 to give his
dad time to catch up. He was taller than me, maybe even taller than Frankie. And that was no uniform he was wearing. He was dressed in denim jeans and a New York T-shirt with a Big Apple on it, the kind you can buy in Times Square. He had on silver sneakers that looked like they had just been flown in on a spaceship from another galaxy. They might have been the coolest shoes I’ve ever seen.

  And forget the floppy bang thing I talked about before. His hair was gelled into a porcupine. A really good-looking porcupine.

  “Here he is!” I shouted.

  Everyone in the class rushed over to the window. Katie Sperling was the first to get there. She pressed her face against the glass and looked out.

  “Wow,” she sighed. “He’s hot.”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said. “He’s cool.”

  “That’s an awesome skateboard,” Hector Ruiz said.

  “I wonder if I could get my hair to do that,” said Luke.

  “Ms. Adolf, can we go downstairs and say hi to Yoshi?” I asked.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary, Henry,” she said. “Principal Love is there to welcome him and escort him up here.”

  “But Principal Love is the most boring person on Earth,” I answered.

  Hank Zipzer, did you just say that?

  I slapped my hand over my mouth. What was I thinking? You can’t just insult your principal in front of your teacher. But the words fell out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

  Everyone in the class was laughing hysterically. I closed my eyes and waited for Ms. Adolf to get really mad.

  “You have a point,” Ms. Adolf said. “He is a tad on the long-winded side. Actually, boring is a good word.”

  Wow! Maybe there is a human being underneath all those gray clothes.

  Ms. Adolf let us go downstairs to greet Yoshi, all thirty-two of us.

  “That was an awesome thing to say,” Frankie said to me as we hurried down the stairwell. “My man Zip, telling it like it is.”

  My big mouth is always getting me in trouble. For once, it had done something right.

  CHAPTER 8

  WHEN WE GOT DOWNSTAIRS, Principal Love was standing on the steps by the school entrance, making his welcome-to-our-school speech. I’m no fashion expert, but even I could tell he had some pretty weird clothes on. Principal Love usually wears these nerdy black Velcro shoes that squeak when he walks down the linoleum halls. Those are bad enough. But on special days, he wears another pair of sneakers that he’s painted in our school colors, blue and yellow. I’m not kidding. One shoe is blue, and the other is yellow. He had hauled out those beauties especially for Mr. Morimoto and Yoshi’s arrival.

  As if wearing the blue and yellow shoes wasn’t goofy enough, Principal Love also was wearing a fluffy blue and yellow scarf that his wife knit for him. It had long, hairy tassels on the ends that reached down almost to his knees. He looked more like a crazed clown than a principal, especially compared with Mr. Morimoto. He, on the other hand, was wearing a black overcoat and black leather gloves, and his hair was all slicked back and classy.

  I kept watching Yoshi as Principal Love yapped on and on like he was the president of New York City. Yoshi was looking down toward Amsterdam Avenue, checking out the cart on the corner that sells hot dogs and warm pretzels. I was thinking that maybe I’d ask him later if he wanted to stop by there for a hot dog. Then, a sudden thought struck me:This kid probably doesn’t speak English!

  I mean, why would he? He lives in Tokyo.

  Wow. This was going to be a problem. The only words I could say in Japanese were ee-chee and nee. Unless Yoshi was really into counting, we weren’t going to have much to talk about.

  Wait a minute, Hankster. You’ve got hands. People talk with their hands all the time.

  I thought I’d give it a try. Yoshi was still watching the guy at the hot dog cart who was grilling up a new batch of hot sausages with onions. I coughed really loud to get Yoshi’s attention, then tried to make eye contact with him. Finally, he looked over at me. I flashed him a sign with my hands that I thought said, “Hey, buddy, let’s swing by that hot dog cart later and chow down.”

  Yoshi looked a little confused, so I flashed him the sign again. I thought my sign language was pretty clear. I pointed to the cart, then pantomimed squirting mustard on a foot-long hot dog and eating it. I was rubbing my stomach to signal how yummy the hot dog was when, suddenly, I felt Frankie tapping me on the shoulder.

  “Where are you, Zip? He’s talking to you,” he whispered.

  I looked up and realized that Principal Love had stopped his speech and was speaking to me.

  “Do you need to be excused, Mr. Zipzer?” he was saying.

  “Who me?”

  “I thought perhaps from the way you were moving, that you need to—you know—use the boys’ facilities.”

  Facilities? What was he talking about? The science lab? The supply closet?

  “The restroom,” Principal Love said, talking out of the side of his mouth as if no one else would hear him.

  Oh! He thought I had to go to the bathroom!

  No wonder. I realized that my hand was on my stomach, and I was rubbing it in big circles.

  Everyone was laughing. I wished I had a huge bottle of invisible ink so I could pour it all over myself and disappear.

  “I’m fine, Principal Love. Really I am. Go on. I’m very interested in what you have to say. We all are. Aren’t we, guys?”

  There was a lot of snorting from the other kids as everyone choked back a laugh. Principal Love went on with his speech. Ms. Adolf flashed me an icy look.

  “Can you please try to act normal for once?” Frankie whispered to me. “She’s watching you. If you keep on screwing up, she’s not going to allow Yoshi to stay at your house.”

  “And if he doesn’t stay over, I’ll die,” Ashley whispered.

  “What’s it to you?” I asked her.

  “What’s it to me?” she repeated. “Look at him. He’s soooo cute.”

  What was going on here? Ashley Wong, my best friend and pal, talking like an airhead?

  It turns out that Ashley wasn’t the only kid in class who was in love with Yoshi. Everyone, boy or girl, immediately thought he was the coolest person they had ever seen. He just had that look about him, the kind of look that says, “I’m me, and there are not many others like me around.”

  When Principal Love finished his welcoming speech, which seemed like it lasted a thousand hours, everyone in my class immediately surrounded Yoshi. Ms. Adolf clapped three times to try to get our attention.

  “Let’s take Yoshi to our classroom, pupils,” she said. “You’ll have plenty of time to get to know him there.”

  Ms. Adolf started up the stairs and we all followed her, herding Yoshi into the middle of our group. Hector Ruiz carried his skateboard. Ryan Shimozato walked next to him.

  “Sensei,”Ryan said, pointing to Ms. Adolf.

  Yoshi smiled and nodded.

  “Sensei,” he repeated.

  “That means ‘teacher’ in Japanese,” Ryan explained to a bunch of us who were crowding around.

  “It’s so great that you learned Japanese from your dad,” Ashley said.

  “Actually, I learned it from The Karate Kid,” Ryan answered. “That’s what they call the karate teacher, Mr. Miyagi.”

  “I love that movie,” Thomas McAndrews said. “I’ve seen it a million times. We’ve got all three on DVD.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, we’ve got ten DVDs of it,” piped up Nick McKelty. “Maybe even twelve.”

  “Right, McKelty. And my name’s Bernice,” Frankie said.

  We all laughed.

  “Karate Kid is a cool movie,” someone said as we trudged upstairs.

  I looked around to see who was talking. I didn’t recognize the voice. I thought maybe it was Luke Whitman doing one of his bad movie star impressions that all sound alike.

  “Mr. Miyagi kicks butt,” said the same voice.

  I looked around again, and this time I saw who w
as talking.

  It was Yoshi!

  CHAPTER 9

  WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED Yoshi could speak Japanese and English? That’s two entire languages, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. I mean, I have enough trouble just with English, and I’ve been trying to speak it since I was born. The idea of me learning another whole language is ... well... it’s not even an idea.

  Yoshi’s English wasn’t totally perfect, but he could say a lot. He told us that at his school in Tokyo, which is called the Bancho School, kids are taught English starting in kindergarten. He and some of his friends also learn English with a special tutor after school. That’s like what I do with Dr. Berger, who gives me special tutoring in reading comprehension after school. I guess it’s not exactly the same. I mean, those guys have an excuse for needing a tutor in English. They’re Japanese. What’s my excuse?

  It turns out that Yoshi is also a total fan of American movies and TV, and watching them helped him learn English, too. After we got to class, Luke Whitman wouldn’t settle down. He kept doing his zombie walk where he crashes into everybody’s desk like he’s a dead guy. It was funny at first, but then, when he wouldn’t stop, it got annoying. Finally, Yoshi looked at Luke and said, “Oh, behave!” just like Austin Powers says in the movies. We all laughed so much, Ms. Adolf had to clap her hands about thirty times to get us to behave.

  Ms. Adolf kicked off Yoshi’s day in our class with fun, fun, fun like only she can come up with. She must have gone to the College for Teachers Who Know How to Ruin Fun for Everyone. I’ll bet she was the best student they ever had, too.

  For starters, she had us all draw a picture of the Japanese flag. Fortunately, it’s a plain white flag with nothing but a solid red circle in the middle, so we were done with our drawings in about thirty seconds. She made us give them all to Yoshi. The poor guy was sitting there at a desk, with thirty-three red circles stacked up in front of him. He didn’t really know what to say. I mean, what do you say to that? Wow, they really are so round. Or, Where’s the closest wastebasket?