Holy Enchilada

by Henry Winkler

  He was very polite, though, you could tell. He flipped through the red circles and acted like he was really impressed.

  “Cowabunga!” he said, sounding a whole lot like Bart Simpson.

  “Hey, Yosh Man, you watch The Simpsons?” Frankie asked.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” Ms. Adolf answered. “That youngster Bartholomew Simpson sets such a rude example for children.”

  The last thing you want to do is get into a conversation with Ms. Adolf about any TV show, let alone The Simpsons. Once, she told us that she doesn’t think children should ever watch cartoons, because they’re silly. She believes there’s no point in being silly when you can be serious about history or alphabetizing.

  “Bart Simpson kicks butt,” Yoshi whispered to Frankie and me, when Ms. Adolf was erasing the board. I stuck up my hand and he high-fived it.

  This kid Yoshi Morimoto was okay. He was more than okay. He was awesome.

  Heather Payne raised her hand and asked if she could share something she had brought in. Ms. Adolf, who loves Heather Payne more than life itself because Heather always does everything right, smiled at her and said of course she could. If I had asked to share something, she would have smiled and said a big, fat no.

  Heather reached into a brown paper supermarket bag she had brought from home and pulled out a black and red flowered dress. Well, it wasn’t exactly a dress, but it was a dress-coat kind of thing. Heather walked to the front of the class and put it on.

  “Does anyone know what this is?” she asked, turning around a couple of times like a model.

  “Dracula’s bathrobe?” Nick McKelty shouted out. Then he opened up his gigantic mouth and laughed like he had just told the funniest joke ever invented. You could see bits of his breakfast burrito still wedged in between his two front teeth. No one else in the class even chuckled, and Yoshi looked at him like the moron that he was. I thought Heather Payne was going to cry.

  “That’s not funny, Nick,” she said, which was the first thing Heather Payne ever said that I completely agreed with. Well, that’s not exactly true. Once she said that she was allergic to shrimp, and I am, too.

  “I know what it is,” Katie Sperling said, before Ms. Adolf could even call on her. “It’s a kimona.” She turned to Yoshi and gave him the most beautiful smile you have ever seen. “Isn’t that right, Yoshi?”

  If Katie Sperling ever smiled at me like that, I would melt into a little puddle of cherry Jell-O right in front of her eyes. But Yoshi actually got embarrassed. He looked down at his feet and shifted around in his chair.

  “Kimono,” he said. “There’s an o at the end.”

  “Oh! Thank you, Yoshi,” Katie said, batting her green eyes at him.

  “The kimono is what traditional Japanese women wear,” Heather said. “My neighbor Mrs. Yamazaki let me bring this one in to show you.”

  Heather walked up and down the aisles so we could all see the kimono. Suddenly, the door opened and Principal Love came in with Mr. Morimoto right next to him. They were on a tour of the school. Mr. Morimoto smiled at Heather.

  “You look lovely in your kimono,” he said, bowing to her. “My wife, Yoshi’s mother, was married in a white kimono with cherry blossoms on it, which is worn in the springtime.”

  Ashley’s hand shot up in the air.

  “Did it have any pink rhinestones on it?” she asked.

  Mr. Morimoto smiled. “No, it did not,” he said. “But that sounds like a very beautiful idea.”

  “Speaking of beautiful ideas, I saw a package of Mallomars in the teachers’ lounge this morning,” Principal Love said to Mr. Morimoto. “How about if we head over there for a mid-morning snack? Like I always say, the Mallomar is the classic American cookie. Yes sir, the Mallomar is the classic American cookie.”

  Principal Love always says everything twice. We’re used to it, and we just stop listening after the first time he says something—sometimes even before.

  “There are so many ways to eat a Mallomar,” Principal Love went on, raising his voice so we all could hear, as if we wanted to. “Personally, I like to peel off the chocolate first, and then suck the marshmallow into my mouth, flattening it with my tongue until it’s nice and gooey. I save the cookie part to be dunked into cold milk.”

  His Statue of Liberty mole was doing jumping jacks now, which it does when he gets excited about his topic. Poor Mr. Morimoto. He had no idea what Principal Love was talking about.

  “My brother Lester starts with the cookie part and saves the chocolate-covered marshmallow for last,” Principal Love said. “There’s more than one way to skin a Mallomar, that’s what I always say. There’s more than one way to skin a Mallomar.”

  Principal Love threw his head back and laughed really loud. Mr. Morimoto smiled politely, but I’ll bet he was looking for an emergency exit. If I were him, I would have been.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Yoshi,” he said. “It is your honor to spend the night with one of your fellow students.”

  “Oh, no, sir. The honor is mine,” I said. “I am the fellow student.”

  I couldn’t help it. It just shot out of my mouth, and then I smiled from ear to ear. I looked over at Yoshi.

  “We’ll have fun at my house,” I said to him.

  “Ikeru,” he said to me.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “That’s what we say in Japan. It means ‘that’s cool,’ ” he said.

  “Ikeru, dude,” I said. “Right back at you.”

  He held up his hand and I high-fived it.

  Mr. Morimoto smiled at Yoshi and bowed to me. He turned to leave the room, but old Principal Love was right behind him. I could hear him starting in on why Mallomars were better than Fig Newtons as his Velcro shoes squeaked out the door and chased Mr. Morimoto down the hallway.

  CHAPTER 10

  HAVING YOSHI IN OUR CLASS was the most fun I’ve had in school all year.

  When we went to the art room, our teacher Ms. Anderson said we were supposed to be drawing a still life of vegetables. Instead, she let Yoshi show us how to draw a really neat super-hero from a Japanese comic book. He was a very good artist. As he outlined the character, his tongue curled back and forth along his lower lip. You could tell he was concentrating really hard.

  At recess, we played softball. Frankie pitched and Yoshi hit a homerun over the Amsterdam Avenue fence. He said he wants to be a professional baseball player when he grows up. Unfortunately, he likes those stinking Yankees, just like Frankie. I’m a Mets fan myself because they are truly the best team in the U. S. of A.

  In music, Mr. Rock had brought in some tapes of traditional Japanese string music, and we listened to them. I won’t lie to you. I thought they were a little on the screechy side, but Frankie liked them. He said they sounded like the music his mom plays when she’s teaching yoga class. Then Yoshi reached into his backpack and pulled out a CD he had brought with him of a new Japanese rap group. We put that on, and Mr. Rock even did a little break dancing. I couldn’t understand the words, of course. But the music sounded like the stuff we listen to here.

  At lunch, Yoshi took out some chopsticks he had brought with him and tried to teach us how to use them. Most everyone was terrible at it. It was Swedish meatball day, and let me tell you, there were lots of Swedish meatballs rolling around our cafeteria floor. Ashley’s grandmother had taught her how to use chopsticks, so she was great at it. She and Yoshi had a chopstick battle to see who could pick up the smallest bit of food without dropping it. When Ashley won, Yoshi bowed to her and she got the giggles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ashley get the giggles like that.

  I was a little worried about our sleepover that night. After all the fun things we had done that day, I wondered how I would come up with anything really interesting to do. Suddenly, hanging out and watching TV seemed kind of dull.

  In the afternoon, Frankie came up with one of his usual brilliant ideas. He made up a game show called “Ask the Yosh Man,” and somehow, he talked M
s. Adolf into letting us play it. When Frankie Townsend flashes you the Big Dimple and turns on the charm, even teachers can’t say no.

  Here’s how we played: Frankie put Yoshi in a chair in front of the class. Then each person got to ask him one question. Yoshi could either tell the truth, or make up a fake answer. Then we’d get to yell TRUE if we thought it was the true answer, or FALSE if we thought he was making it up.

  “What’s your favorite sport?” Thomas McAndrews asked him first.

  “Baseball,” Yoshi said.

  “TRUE,” we all shouted.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Kim Paulson asked.

  “I have one sister named Bernice,” Yoshi said, grinning at Frankie.

  “FALSE,” we shouted.

  “Have you ever eaten a raw snail?” Luke Whitman asked.

  “No, but I eat raw octopus,” answered Yoshi.

  “FALSE,” we shouted. But we were wrong on that one. Yoshi told us people in Japan eat raw octopus often. Luke Whitman said if he ate octopus, he’d spit out the suction cups on the tentacles.

  “Have you ever seen a real live sumo wrestler?” asked Ashley.

  “Yes, my uncle is one,” Yoshi said.

  “TRUE,” we all shouted. And it was! How cool is it to have an uncle who’s a sumo wrestler? I thought it was great that my uncle Gary owns a video store and gives us discounts on DVDs. But Yoshi had an uncle who weighed 432 pounds and wore a diaper.

  “What’s your favorite food?” Ashley asked.

  “Enchiladas,” Yoshi answered.

  “FALSE,” we all shouted, laughing.

  Guess what? We were wrong on that one!

  Imagine our surprise when Yoshi said his absolute most favorite food was cheese enchiladas. He had only had them once when their school had a visitor from Mexico, but he had never forgotten them.

  A lightbulb went off in my head. Suddenly, I knew what we were going to do that night. We were going to make a dish for the buffet lunch tomorrow. Chef Hank was going to teach Yoshi Morimoto how to make cheese enchiladas.

  You’re probably wondering if I’d ever made cheese enchiladas before.

  You know what? There’s a first time for everything!

  CHAPTER 11

  AFTER SCHOOL, we were all going to walk back to our apartment building together—Frankie, Emily, Yoshi, and me, with Robert tagging not far behind. Ashley had to go to soccer practice, so she was going to meet up with us later, after dinner.

  While we waited on the front steps of school for my parents to pick us up, Yoshi showed us a few of his skateboard moves. He was working on perfecting his kick-flip and he actually did one—not once, but twice!

  Emily kept staring at him with that same goo-goo-eyed expression that Ashley had when she first saw him. On a scale of one to ten, I’d say Emily was interested in Yoshi one thousand and fifty-seven.

  “There she goes again,” Frankie whispered to me as he watched Emily staring at Yoshi. “She’s doing that eye thing she does at Robert.”

  “The girl is a goo-goo-eye machine,” I whispered back. “It’s so embarrassing.”

  Robert kept trying to get Emily to notice him. He was jealous of how much attention she was paying to Yoshi, no doubt about it. Emily and Robert have a special nerd-to-nerd kind of connection. Let’s just say they’ve bonded over their love of the wonderful world of reptiles. So every time Yoshi would attempt a kick-flip, Robert would turn to Emily and say something like, “Snakes have no eyelids or ear holes.”

  Poor little guy. No one cared—not even Emily, at that moment.

  I was expecting to see my mom and dad, so I was really surprised when Papa Pete came jogging up 78th Street to our school. He waved to Mr. Baker, the crossing guard, and panted to a stop right in front of us. He was breathing pretty hard, although he’s in good shape for an almost sixty-eight-year-old grandpa.

  As soon as Yoshi saw Papa Pete approach us, he hopped off his skateboard, came over to him, and bowed. That was a strange sight. My grandpa looks like a big, warm, fuzzy grizzly bear in a strawberry-red jogging suit. He’s definitely not the kind of person you bow to.

  “Hello, grandkids,” Papa Pete said, reaching out to give each of us a pinch on the cheek. I was curious to see if he was going to pinch Yoshi, too, but he didn’t. Instead, he bowed back.

  “You must be Yoshi,” he said. “I’m Papa Pete, Hank’s grandfather.”

  Yoshi bowed again. “It is an honor to meet you, ojiisan.”

  “Hey, Yosh, you can call him Papa Pete,” Frankie said. “We all do.”

  “In Japan, we call older men ojiisan,” Yoshi said. “Out of respect.”

  Papa Pete broke out into a big smile and twirled the end of his long handlebar mustache with his fingers.

  “Right! It’s about time I got a little respect around here,” he said, giving Frankie and me a playful chuck under the chin. Then he turned to Yoshi. “How would you like to come with ojiisan on a little ‘Welcome to America’ celebration?” he said. “I have in mind some bowling and a root-beer float.”

  “I have never seen root beer float,” said Yoshi. “I didn’t know it could.”

  We all had a really good laugh, including Papa Pete.

  “We’re going to have a good time, Yoshi, my boy,” he said.

  And then he did just what I knew he was going to do. He reached out and gave Yoshi a big pinch on the cheek. Yoshi seemed surprised, but I think he liked it. There isn’t anybody who doesn’t like Papa Pete. He is the greatest, warmest, funniest, smartest grandpa around.

  We headed down Amsterdam Avenue toward McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl, which is Papa Pete’s home away from home. He’s a champion bowler, and a champion root-beer-float drinker, too. By the way, in case you recognize the McKelty name, the bowling alley is owned by Nick the Tick’s father. He’s a nice man. No one can understand how that idiot he has for a son got born into his family.

  “Where’s Mom and Dad?” I asked Papa Pete as we dodged our way along the crowded sidewalk. “I thought they were coming to pick us up.”

  “They’re still at the apartment,” Papa Pete answered. “They’re busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Your mother got it into her head that they had to put up new wallpaper in the bathroom,” he answered. “I don’t know why she picked today of all days to do it.”

  I knew, but I didn’t say anything.

  “She thought they’d be finished by now,” Papa Pete went on. “But—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “There was a little accident involving the iguana and a can of wallpaper paste.”

  Emily, who has all-powerful hearing when you even breathe anything about Katherine, flew into a total panic.

  “What happened to Katherine?” she asked. “Is she hurt?”

  “Katherine is fine,” Papa Pete reassured her. “She stepped in the wallpaper paste and got stuck to the kitchen floor for a few minutes, that’s all.”

  “You mean she was glued to the linoleum?” Emily yelled.

  “We soaked her feet in water and got her unstuck,” Papa Pete explained. “She’s absolutely as good as new. Except she keeps smelling her toes.”

  Frankie and I burst out laughing.

  “Oh, so you think it’s funny that Kathy was stuck to the floor!” Emily shouted at me.

  “No, Emily.” I could barely answer because I was holding my sides, I was laughing so hard. “I don’t think it’s funny, I know it’s funny.”

  “Hank, when will you grow up?” she said.

  “In about another eight years,” I howled.

  I was behaving badly and I knew it. But I couldn’t stop. Yoshi was behaving much better than I was. He reached out and patted Emily’s arm.

  “I would like to meet your lizard,” he said to her in a kind voice.

  “You would?” she said. “Oh, Kathy would love that.”

  Emily smiled so big, you could almost see her molars. And she had another goo-goo-eye attack, too. Boy, that really got to Robert.
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  “Actually, Yoshi,” he said, “I don’t recommend that. The iguana can be very moody around new people. I don’t think Kathy would like you.”

  Wow. Robert Upchurch gets grumpy. Iguess love will do that to a guy.

  “Robert! Of course Kathy wants to meet Yoshi,” Emily said.

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Did she tell you?”

  “As a matter of fact, she did,” Emily said. “We have a special way of communicating. I know what she’s thinking, and she knows what I’m thinking.”

  “Actually, I have developed the knack of iguana communication myself,” Robert said. He had that annoying little bubble thing going on in his throat, and he needed to clear it real bad. Poor guy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  It didn’t matter, anyway. We had arrived at McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl and we were already running up the stairs to get our bowling shoes on.

  It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Yoshi was a very good bowler. And you should have seen him on the arcade games. Was there anything this kid couldn’t do? He had magic fingers and killer concentration. I hardly ever play arcade games because my mind always wanders and I’m never able to win.

  After we bowled, Papa Pete treated us all to root-beer floats. Yoshi thought the float was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted—next to enchiladas.

  After we had slurped down the last speck of float, Papa Pete let us play one game of air hockey before we had to leave. Yoshi and I were neck and neck, and Frankie was watching, when guess who showed up. I’ll give you a hint—rotten egg bordering on vomit breath.

  You got it. Nick McKelty. He hangs out there a lot because it’s his dad’s place.

  “I got winners,” he said, hunkering down and leaning his rashy elbows on the table.

  “Sorry, McKelty,” I told him. “We have to go after this game.”

  “What’s the big rush?”

  “My grandpa’s going to take us to Gristediano’s.”

  “To the supermarket!” he snorted. “You Zipzers really know how to have a good time. What are you going to do after that? Introduce Yoshi to plastic bags at the dry cleaners? Or maybe get wild and go to Drago’s Shoe Repair for some new heels?”