Holy Enchilada

by Henry Winkler

  Before I could say a word, Mr. Morimoto was heading over to the center table. Yoshi and Ashley were right behind him.

  “He can’t eat those,” I said to Frankie.

  “You know what you have to do,” Frankie said.

  “What should I tell him?”

  “You’ll come up with something, Ziparooney. You’ve got ten seconds and counting.”

  I went charging after Mr. Morimoto. He had taken a paper plate and handed another one to Yoshi. They were already at the enchilada pan.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said to him. “But may I suggest you try the squid in its own ink? Or how about a plump, tender snail swimming in buttery snail juice?”

  “Perhaps later, Hank,” Mr. Morimoto said. “My mouth is watering for a nice, spicy enchilada. It’s not easy to find good Mexican food in Tokyo.”

  There’s the good kind of spicy. And then there’s the get-me-to-the-hospital-because-my-mouth-all-the-way-to-my-stomach-is-on-fire kind of spicy. Our enchiladas were in the second category for sure.

  What if they make Mr. Morimoto sick and he winds up in the hospital? No, Hank. That can’t happen. Stand up! Be a man!

  I had no choice. I had to stop Mr. Morimoto from eating the enchilada. Period. End of thought. And that meant telling him the truth: that I dumped in too much chili powder because I couldn’t read the stupid recipe.

  Why can’t my learning differences just go away, vanish like the magic scarves Frankie makes disappear up his sleeve?

  Suddenly, there was Frankie at my side, standing next to me like always in times of trouble. He took me by the arm and pulled me far enough away so we could talk in private.

  “Let’s just go tell Mr. Morimoto the truth, Zip.”

  I don’t want to! I hate the truth!

  “He’s a cool guy. He’ll understand.”

  That’s not the point. I don’t want to feel stupid in front of everyone ... again.

  “You’ve got to tell him now, dude. Check it out. He’s already got the enchilada on the serving fork.”

  I can come up with another reason why Mr. Morimoto shouldn’t eat that enchilada. I know I can!

  “Let’s go, Zip. Now.”

  Think, Hank, think!

  CHAPTER 22

  TEN REASONS WHY MR. MORIMOTO SHOULD NOT EAT THAT ENCHILADA

  By Hank Zipzer

  1. In America, it is considered extremely rude to eat red and yellow foods on Thursday.

  2. It’s a little known fact that chewing chili powder will make you go bald.

  3. This is National Don’t Eat Foods Beginning with “E” month.

  4. That enchilada is the earth home of a band of miniature alien beings. I know this because I saw their spaceship land in the cheese.

  5. Luke Whitman has already licked them with his snail-slime tongue.

  6. Many people are allergic to enchilada juice. If they eat it, their bottom lips blow up, fall off, and try to find Mexico.

  7. Yikes! I’m out of time. Mr. Morimoto is about to take the first bite! Mr. Morimoto! Stop! Stop!

  CHAPTER 23

  “STOP!” I SHOUTED OUT LOUD.

  Incoming! Mr. Morimoto’s mouth was open, and the enchilada-filled fork was heading into it.

  “Wait!” I hollered, just before the fork touched his lips. “Don’t eat that enchilada.”

  It seemed like everyone in the Multi-Purpose Room got quiet and turned their eyes on me.

  “What’s your problem, Zipper Boy?” said Nick McKelty. “You put rat tails in those enchiladas?”

  “I think I put in too much chili powder,” I said, hating to admit it but knowing I had to. “When Ms. Adolf got sick a few minutes ago, that was all my fault.”

  “How was it your fault, dear?” asked Ms. Shimozato.

  “I wasn’t sure how much chili powder to put in,” I said. “So I put in a pinch. Then another. And another.”

  “That sounds fine, dear,” said Ms. Shimozato.

  “It was. Until I put in a two more whole spoonfuls,” I went on. “Then another pinch. Or three. Or four. Or five.”

  “Why didn’t you follow the recipe, young man?” Principal Love asked.

  There it was. The Big Question. I stared at his Statue of Liberty without the torch mole. Was she laughing at me? It sure looked like it.

  The room got even quieter than before. Everyone was waiting for my answer. There was only one truthful answer to Principal Love’s question: I didn’t follow the recipe because I couldn’t read it and I couldn’t figure out what on earth that fraction meant.

  But the other real truth was, my learning differences were not something I wanted to discuss right then in front of the whole world. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be chatting about your personal brain problems in front of a room full of people either. But everyone was waiting for my explanation, so I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out.

  “Breathe, Zip,” Frankie whispered to me. “Oxygen is power.”

  I took a deep breath, then spoke.

  “To be honest, I had trouble reading the recipe,” I said. There, at least I had begun.

  Everyone in the room looked at one another and waited for me to go on. This was the part I was dreading. The fraction problem, the freak-out, the words floating across the page. Ick, ick, and triple ick.

  I took another deep breath, but just as I started to talk, Mr. Rock popped up from the back of the room and came springing over to me. He threw his arm around my shoulder.

  “I have trouble reading recipes, too,” he said. “They get splattered with tomato sauce and smeared with butter and covered with brown gravy—and then you can’t even read what’s on the page. Cooking’s a messy business, isn’t it, Hank?”

  All the grown-ups in the room nodded in agreement. Ms. Shimozato launched into a story about how she once splattered a whole pot of potato leek soup all over her cookbook when she forgot to put the top on the blender. Suddenly, no one was paying attention to me anymore.

  Mr. Rock, you’re a genius!

  “Thank you,” I whispered to him. “I really didn’t want to go into the whole story.”

  “Your learning differences are your business, not theirs,” whispered Mr. Rock. “You tell who you want to tell.”

  Just then, who do you think came strutting back into the room? Ms. Adolf! When she entered, everyone clapped. She smiled and took a little bow, as if getting a gas attack in public deserved a big round of applause. Her face wasn’t red anymore. It was back to its original gray.

  I knew I owed her an apology. I’m not a total idiot, you know.

  “Ms. Adolf,” I said. “I’m so sorry about the enchiladas.”

  “What do you have to be sorry about, Henry?”

  “I’m sorry that they burned your mouth and made you sick,” I said, carefully staying away from any mention of the gassy part of the attack. I thought that might embarrass her.

  “They didn’t make me sick,” she said. “I never even tasted your enchiladas, although they did look surprisingly delicious.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, Henry. I told you earlier that the cuisine of Mexico does not sit well with me. It gives me gastric distress.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Nick the Tick whispered to Luke Whitman.

  “Mexican food makes her fart,” Luke whispered back.

  Nick nodded. “Copy that,” he said.

  “But if you didn’t eat our enchiladas, then what made you sick?” I asked Ms. Adolf.

  “It was the pigs in a blanket,” she answered.

  McKelty’s dish! No way! This is the greatest thing ever! That big lug is going to have to take the fall for Ms. Adolf’s gas attack. Oh, yeah! Life is good.

  “Hey,” McKelty protested. “There was nothing wrong with my pigs in a blanket. I made them myself.”

  “Well, Nicholas, it was right after I ate one that I had my little problem,” she said.

  “It
wasn’t so little,” muttered Luke.

  “What did you put in your pigs in a blanket?” Ms. Adolf asked Nick.

  “They’re just cut-up hot dogs wrapped in a biscuit with mustard and a spoonful of horseradish,” he answered.

  “Horseradish!” Ms. Adolf said as if saying the word made her mouth burst into flames again. “Why, Nicholas McKelty, horseradish is incredibly spicy!”

  “It is?” McKelty said. “Then why would they give it to horses?”

  All the grown-ups started to chuckle. McKelty laughed, too. The jerk didn’t even realize that they were laughing at him.

  “Horseradish isn’t for horses, Nicholas,” said Ms. Adolf. “They call it horseradish because it is made from very large radishes.”

  “Actually, horseradish was bottled in the 1850s, making it one of the first convenience foods,” said a nasal voice. It was Robert, the walking encyclopedia, joining the party in his usual fact-filled way. “Some native people as far back as the ancient Egyptians rubbed it on their foreheads to cure headaches,” he added, in case he hadn’t already been boring enough. “Others tossed it up into their armpits for bruised ribs.”

  I ask you, how in the world would any nine-year-old in his right mind know a thing like that? Even more mysterious is, why would he care?

  “In Japan, we call horseradish wasabi and put it on our sushi,” said Mr. Morimoto.

  “Wasabi kicks butt,” Yoshi said. “It is very spicy. It clears your nose.”

  “We know about that, don’t we, Hank?” It was none other than Lizard Woman Emily, who had followed Robert into the room. “Hank was once personally attacked by a small pile of wasabi in a Japanese restaurant. He put up a good fight, though.”

  That was a decent thing for Emily to say. She could have told everyone that my nose had almost left my face, permanently looking for a sink filled with cold water—which was closer to the truth.

  Nick McKelty can’t stand it when anyone else gets a compliment of any kind. He always has to hog the attention for himself.

  “That’s nothing,” he said, pulling himself up to his full humongous height. “Once, I ate the hottest chili pepper in the world. They say even a lick of it can kill you, but I chomped down ten of them, just like that.”

  “Right,” Yoshi said. “And my name is Bernice.”

  Frankie reached out and gave Yoshi a high five.

  “Way to go, Yosh Man,” he said.

  “Who is this Bernice?” asked Principal Love. “And why is everyone always talking about her?”

  In case you hadn’t noticed, Principal Love isn’t too strong in the sense of humor department. Maybe he and Ms. Adolf are related.

  “Many Japanese people enjoy spicy food,” said Mr. Morimoto. “Personally, I find the spicier, the better.”

  I looked at Frankie and Ashley, and they looked back at me.

  “Okay, Mr. M.,” Frankie said. “If you’re such a spice fan, have we got something for you.”

  The man said he liked spicy, and spicy was already on his plate.

  “Dig right in to that enchilada,” I said. “We made it special for your taste buds.”

  Mr. Morimoto popped the first bite of enchilada into his mouth. He was quiet for a minute. Then his eyes started to tear up. His nose began to run. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose.

  “Hank, may I have some water, please?” he said in a raspy voice.

  Oh, no. I was frying the taste buds of the principal of a sister school from another country.

  Mr. Morimoto took a sip of the water I brought him.

  “This enchilada has a great deal of—I don’t know how to say it in English,” he said. He turned to Yoshi and said something in Japanese. Yoshi nodded.

  “My father says this enchilada has a great deal of zing,” Yoshi said.

  “Is that good?” Principal Love asked.

  “It’s very good,” Yoshi said. “Zing kicks butt.”

  I thought Principal Love was going to fall over on his face and crush the Statue of Liberty to bits. If one of us had said the words “kick butt” to him, he would have thrown us in detention for a week. But Yoshi could get away with it. What was Principal Love going to do? You don’t put a guest from a faraway country into detention. That would be very rude, multi-culturally speaking.

  Mr. Morimoto ate the whole enchilada. He drank a lot of water, too, and blew his nose after every bite. He ate two more enchiladas after that one. We had to get him an entire box of Kleenex.

  “Thank you for an excellent meal,” he said when he was finished. “That was most delicious.”

  “Ikeru,” Frankie said. “We had fun making it.”

  “Yeah, you can see it all on the video we made,” Ashley said.

  “I promise that Yoshi and I will play it for the children in my school,” Mr. Morimoto said.

  “They’ll like the iguana part,” Ashley said. “The lizard’s got talent.”

  “Did you hear that, Robert?” Emily said. “Katherine’s going to be an international TV star.”

  “Let’s tell her all about it after school,” Robert said.

  I made a mental note to be sure to be really busy after school.

  CHAPTER 24

  THAT NIGHT, EVERYONE CAME OVER to our apartment for a party. As a way to say thank you, Yoshi gave me his silver sneakers, the ones that looked like they flew in from another galaxy. They were about three sizes too big, but I didn’t care. Even if they were a little on the floppy side, they were still the coolest shoes I’ve ever seen. I used the old stuff-a-pair-of-socks-in-the-toe trick, and they were as good as mine.

  I gave Yoshi my Mets sweatshirt to take back to Japan, although Frankie tried to get him to take his stinking Yankees sweatshirt instead. Can you believe that? Yoshi gave Frankie his Japanese rap CD. Frankie taught Yoshi the magic trick where you pull a nickel out of someone’s ear.

  “But we don’t have nickels in Japan,” Yoshi said.

  “It will work with a yen, too, dude,” Frankie said. “It’s a very multi-cultural trick.”

  Ashley gave Yoshi a button she made that said ikeru in turquoise and yellow rhinestones. Yoshi gave her his chopsticks that had slivers of sparkly mother-of-pearl at the tips. He said it was okay if she wanted to add a few pink rhinestones of her own.

  My mom cooked what she considered to be a typical American dinner, hamburgers and fries. Except that there was no meat, nothing fried—and, by the way, no taste either. Fortunately, we had all eaten so much at the Multi-Cultural Day Lunch that we weren’t hungry. We offered Cheerio the leftovers, but he took one whiff, ran into the kitchen, and hid in the cupboard with the pasta pots. He must have learned that from Katherine. She was in Emily’s room, going over her TV career plans with Robert and Emily. By the way, they asked Ashley if she wanted to be Katherine’s manager, and she’s considering it.

  “Feel free to use the bathroom,” my mom said to Mr. Morimoto about a thousand times during the evening. She was really happy when he finally did feel free to use it to wash his hands. And when he told her he thought the pagodas on the wallpaper were beautiful, I thought she was going to kiss him. Luckily, she kissed my dad instead, which was a good move on her part.

  Speaking of my dad, I hadn’t seen him that happy since he came in third in the tri-state crossword puzzle tournament in Jersey City. He showed Mr. Morimoto his mechanical pencil collection, of course. My dad has gotten used to people throwing a quick eyeball on his m.p.’s and then changing the subject as fast as they can. Most people have a limited interest in mechanical pencils and the thickness of the lead. You can’t blame them. That’s just the way it is.

  But it turns out that Mr. Morimoto has a collection of floatie pens—those ballpoint pens that have water inside and little objects like boats and palm trees that float up and down in the bluish liquid. When my dad heard that, the two of them became instant soul brothers. They blabbed about pens and pencils way longer than any two people ever have on the face of this planet.
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br />   The best part of the night was when Papa Pete came over, because he brought a fresh batch of his garlic dill pickles. That is our favorite snack in the whole world. Papa Pete and I always go out on our balcony and munch on pickles as we watch the moon come up and move across the New York City sky. Trust me, life in my city doesn’t get any better than that.

  “Would you gentlemen like to join us on the balcony for a pickle?” Papa Pete asked Yoshi and his dad, after my friends had left to go back to their apartments.

  “It is my honor,” said Mr. Morimoto, bowing.

  “Mine, too, ojiisan,” Yoshi said.

  We climbed out onto the balcony. It was a perfect spring night, just cold enough to make your nose turn red. You could smell the city—a little bit of pizza, a little bit of city traffic, and a dash of roasted peanuts.

  Papa Pete reached into the plastic bag, pulled out a nice crunchy pickle, and handed it to Mr. Morimoto, using a piece of waxed paper the way we do at our deli.

  “Enjoy,” he said.

  “My teacher said you wouldn’t like these,” I told Mr. Morimoto.

  “Your teacher doesn’t like Mexican food, either,” Mr. Morimoto answered.

  As he took his first bite of the pickle, it snapped off and crunched between his teeth. That’s how you can tell when they’re really fresh.

  “And here’s one for my new grandkid,” Papa Pete said, giving Yoshi a pickle and a pinch on the cheek at the same time.

  Snap! The pickle crunched between his teeth, too, as he bit into it.

  Papa Pete and I reached into the bag and each grabbed a pickle for ourselves.

  “These are delicious,” Mr. Morimoto said. “I see where Hank gets his ability to cook.”

  “So the enchiladas turned out good?” Papa Pete asked.

  “Very, very good,” said Mr. Morimoto.

  “Did they have enough zing?” Papa Pete asked.

  “Oh, more than enough,” I answered.

  Yoshi smiled at me. We both knew we were going to remember those enchiladas for a long time.

  Then we were quiet. Just the four of us crunching away, watching the moon come up low and orange in the New York City sky.