Cookies & Milk, page 5
Alex quickly returns with a pen. I write down Brad’s formula from our A+ quiz.
I point to the top line on the left. “Yield is a fancy word for ‘amount.’ It’s how much of something you want.” I then point to the line below. “And this is how much of something you have.” Alex has a blank look on his face.
“I’m already confused,” he says.
I continue writing on the paper. Hopefully, Alex will get it. “It’s actually not that confusing. Dad’s current recipe fills his ceramic bowl with batter. But we need ten ceramic bowls of batter to fill this big metal one. So, we divide one into ten. That gives us a conversion factor of ten.”
“Basically, if we want enough batter to fill this bowl, we need to multiply each ingredient by ten,” Dad answers. “I get it. Good job, Little Man. You just fine-tuned our recipe. I should have thought of that. I guess math isn’t so dumb after all. Who knew?” Dad gives me a wink.
No way. Dad knew how to do this all along? Is this his idea of summer school or something? I am not getting pranked by my own dad. Let him deal with the other items on his list by himself. I’m done.
Dad continues. “Alright, I’m going to convert the ingredients—and I’m going to forget what I saw with this mixing bowl. This time. Now, let’s get to fixing this store. I want you boys to start pulling up that old carpet out front. Someone is coming to lay some nice new wooden floors. The wood is gonna give this place a real vibe.” Dad disappears into the kitchen.
If Dad’s such a math genius, why can’t he pull up his own carpet? Ugh, I can’t believe I have to touch it.
Alex and I look down at the littered sea of orange shag below us. “It’s like walking in a sandbox made of cigarette butts,” he says.
“I know,” I say, nodding in agreement. “It’s disgusting.” I stare at the carpet. It’s tightly tucked into every corner of the store.
“How are we gonna rip this up?” Alex wonders.
“We just need to pull really hard. C’mon, let’s get this over with as quick as we can.” I’m done helping my dad.
I lead Alex to the corner of the room. We both grab the edge of the carpet where it meets the wall. “On the count of three. One. Two. THREE!” We pull. Hard. A little too hard. The carpet breaks away from the floor and sends us flying backward across the room. We land on our backs. A cloud of dust engulfs us. Our heads are covered in cigarette ash. Alex starts coughing. Hard. He looks like a cat trying to hack up a fur ball. I feel I might choke to death. THIS is the way it ends. Suffocating in an orange shag sea of cigarettes. I pull my shirt up over my mouth and nose, leaving only my eyes visible. Through the ashy snowfall, I see Alex’s fur-ball cough turn into a full-blown laugh.
“Your head. It looks like it’s vanishing.”
I hold on to the neck of my shirt and slowly sink the rest of my head down. From inside my shirt, I call out, “Alex! There is a ghost among us. The headless ghost of Hollywood! Beware of the orange carpet!”
I pop my head back through my shirt just as a man walks inside the store. Through the fading dust cloud I can see him wobbling—like he’s trying to keep from falling off a balance beam. Alex and I sit straight up.
“What the hell is going on in here?” the man slurs angrily. Alex and I can smell his breath drifting across the room. He’s totally drunk. Dark crud is caked on his clothes. It looks like he took a shower in a school bus exhaust pipe. Alex and I are frozen. We’ve never been this close to anyone who looks like they might pass out or punch us.
“We’re opening a store selling chocolate chip cookies.” Dad appears out of nowhere and steps in front of us. Alex and I exhale at the same time. Dad glares stone-faced at the drunk who sways back and forth like… well… like a drunk. Slowly, his eyes fall shut. I look up at Dad above me. Then I look at the drunk. Is he asleep?
Without warning, the drunk’s eyes snap back open. He nearly falls over before stepping forward three times to catch himself. His filthy foot lands right next to my pinky finger. The drunk slowly rises up and looks at my dad like he’s angry at him about something.
“Coons? Selling cookies? Ha!” The drunk spits on the carpet, stumbles around, and wobbles out of the store down Sunset Boulevard.
Alex, Dad, and I all hold our breath. Dad soon exhales. If he’s breathing, I guess we can, too. Alex and I let out big sighs. Dad helps us to our feet then locks the door.
“What does that mean, Dad?” I ask. “Coon.”
Dad turns around. He looks like he did in the Rock and Roll Ralphs yesterday. Like he’s caught in a daydream. But not a happy one.
“It’s nothing. It’s just a drunk man talkin’ nonsense.” Dad makes his way back to the kitchen. “You boys get the rest of that carpet up.”
Alex and I stare out the front door.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” I ask.
“I hope not,” Alex wishes. Then he adds, “Hey, Ellis?”
“Yeah,” I say. My eyes are fixed on the door. I can hear Alex clear his throat.
“I know what that word means.”
Keeping It Real Always
Alex and I sit silently in the middle of the store. We’re still in shock. I softly blow my harmonica. That drunk’s voice is still in my head. Coon. He said it like it was some dirty animal.
“That word is like the N-word,” Alex explains. “My uncle said it at our house once. My dad kicked him out.”
I don’t understand why Dad said it was nothing. I climb down the mountain of carpet and march into the kitchen. Dad is measuring chocolate chips. I take a deep breath.
“Dad, I want to know what that word means.”
Dad looks up. He takes his own deep breath. He looks like I do when I’m trying to decide whether or not I should lie about something. Alex pokes his head into the kitchen. He wants to hear this, too.
“Have you ever insulted someone at school?” Dad asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” I mumble. I’m not sure if I want Dad to know about the time I called Amanda Freeman a pig face.
Dad wrinkles his forehead. His eyes squeeze shut. He pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks like he’s trying to remember something or forget it. “That word is an insult, Ellis. Said by bullies who want to scare you. People who think they are better than us.” Dad opens his eyes. He stares at Alex and me. “We are not bullies. And we will not be scared by bullies. You hear me?”
“Yes, Dad,” I reply. I need to apologize to Amanda if I ever see her again.
Dad looks through the kitchen door at the mound of orange carpet we pulled up. His face suddenly changes like he’s seen a ghost. “Man, I don’t believe this,” Dad says, shaking his head. “He finally showed up.”
Dad unlocks the front door, letting a man inside. It’s not the drunk bully. This man looks like he just landed from outer space. He’s wearing a dashiki. Only this one is super long. It hangs to his ankles, which are laced in leather straps from the sandals on his wide feet.
“Wow, your Afro!” I say out loud before I can get the words back in my mouth. This man’s Afro is huge. It’s perfectly round. I’ve never seen an Afro like this one. It must take him all morning to comb it. The man looks down at me. He flashes a blinding smile.
“Thank you, Big Brother. My hair is my pride and my strength. You got yourself a good start there,” he says, gently patting my hair. He turns to Dad. “Pops, aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“Ellis, meet…” But before Dad can finish his sentence, the Afroed stranger grabs my hand and greets me himself. “DJ Wishbone—Keeping. It. Real. Always. K.I.R.A.” He says K-I-R-A like he is counting—slapping a different part of my hand on each letter. It feels like I’ve been given his secret handshake. I didn’t even know adults had secret handshakes. DJ Wishbone seems like he has lots of secrets. I feel nervous and excited around him at the same time.
“DJ Wishbone?” Dad asks. “That’s your name these days?”
“At your service, Pops,” DJ Wishbone says proudly. “You been listening to my show?”
“No, I’ve been a little busy,” Dad replies. Then he says to me, “Ellis, uh… Wishbone… is someone I’ve known a long time. I also hear he’s the new host of the afternoon radio show on KIRA. The radio station down the street.”
“That is the truth,” Wishbone declares. “I’ve been on the air for two months. When are you going to stop by the radio station, Pops? We’re finally neighbors. It’s almost like the old days.”
Honestly, I can’t tell if Dad and Wishbone like each other or hate each other.
“How long until we get some cookies, Pops?” Wishbone asks, looking around the empty store. Dad points to the sign on the door.
“Want me to show you around, Mr. Wishbone?” I offer.
“I’d love that, Big Brother. But I need to get on the air. My show starts in less than an hour. I just dropped in here to see what was shaking. Whadda you say, Pops? Let Big Brother come down to the station? I’ll take care of him.”
“Please, Dad?” I beg. Hanging out in a radio station? That’s got to be the coolest thing ever. I can’t even imagine how many albums are inside a radio station.
“Maybe next time,” Dad says, shooting me down. “Right now, we need to fix this store.”
Wishbone takes a step back. “That’s cool, Pops. Catch you on the flip.” He looks down at me and says, “I’m just down the block when you’re ready for the funk.”
Wishbone walks out and heads down to the edge of Sunset Boulevard. Alex and I turn to Dad, waiting for some kind of explanation. Who is he? Where does he come from? And what is the funk? We wait. And wait. Nothing. Dad doesn’t say a thing. Alex breaks the silence.
“How did you meet Wishbone, Mr. Johnson?”
Dad locks the door and goes back into the kitchen. “Not now, Alex.”
All Dad says is “It’s nothing” and “Not now.” That’s it. Alex and I will have to find out about Wishbone on our own.
“I don’t know about you, Ellis,” Alex says. “But I think I’m ready for the funk!”
I’m definitely ready. I just wish I knew what it was.
The Divorced Dads Bungalow
Dad’s Rambler stops in front of Alex’s house. All three of us are sitting up front on the bench seat. I begged Dad to let me sleep over at the Reedys’ again. He told me I can’t spend every night there. I don’t know why. I hate staying at my dad’s apartment. It’s awful. It’s so bad that I would rather stay at Grandma’s place. But that would never happen. Grandma always says, “I don’t want no smelly boys gettin’ in all of my business. I keep to myself.”
Alex slides across the seat and gets out of the car. He sticks his hand back through the half-open window. One palm slap, two fist bumps, then grab pinky fingers.
“Catch you on the flip, Ellis,” Alex says. “Thanks, Mr. Johnson.”
“We’ll see you back at the store soon,” Dad promises.
Not soon enough.
The Rambler pulls away from the curb. I look at Alex waving goodbye through the side-view mirror. Man, this is going to be a long night.
Dad’s apartment building is about twenty minutes from Mom’s house. But twenty minutes in Hollywood is a LONG distance. Technically, Dad’s place is called a bungalow. I guess that means it’s a really small house. There are four bungalows all clumped together. They look like cabins. A sad little garden sits in the middle of all of them. Whoever built this place must have thought a garden would make it less sad looking. They were wrong. All of the bungalow windows have bars covering them. As Dad unlocks his door, another man walks out of his bungalow, across the sad garden. He shuts his door and locks it before glancing over and smiling.
“Got your kid for the night?” he asks, knowing the answer. “I’m on my way to pick up mine. A little mischief time with Dad. One week on, one week off. Have fun!”
Oh, did I mention that everyone who lives here is a divorced dad? It’s like summer camp for divorced dads. The door opens, and Dad turns on the light. It’s just like I remember it from my last sleepover. The lime green carpet is almost as ugly as the store’s old orange shag. It’s cleaner, though. One thing I’ll say about Dad is that he’s clean. Everything is in its place.
“I got your room all ready for you,” Dad says. My “room” is the sofa bed pulled out into the middle of the living room. Dad’s room is behind the closed door. The bathroom is in there, too. I sit on the bed cross-legged, quickly adjusting when a mattress spring pokes me in the butt.
Dad throws down his leather shoulder bag and opens the fridge. “Let’s see what we have for dinner.”
Nothing. Of course. The refrigerator is empty except for three navel oranges, a bottle of Vernors ginger ale, and a carton of eggs. Aside from cookies, Dad doesn’t really make much. I doubt anyone makes dinner in the Divorced Dad Bungalows. Dad closes the refrigerator and claps his hands together. Here we go. This happened the last two times I slept over. Dad acts like he’s going to cook dinner, he opens the refrigerator, realizes there’s nothing to cook, claps his hands, and announces…
“We’re having dinner at Tiny Naylor’s!”
Tiny Naylor’s is not your typical restaurant. It’s a drive-in restaurant. You get to eat dinner in your car. In fact, cars are parked around the restaurant in a big circle. All of them are covered under a large slanted canopy. It looks like all of the parked cars are sitting under the wings of a huge bird preparing to fly. Straight ahead through the window of the restaurant kitchen, I can see “Tiny.” He’s the owner. He’s actually not tiny at all. He weighs three hundred pounds. That’s just a guess. But trust me, he’s big, not tiny.
A waitress attaches a tray to Dad’s side of the car. She has electric red hair. She looks like she belongs in an old black-and-white movie. Her name tag says RUTH. I try rolling down my window, but it gets stuck halfway like it always does.
“Why don’t you roll down the back window, sweetie?” Ruth suggests. “I’ll attach the tray back there, and you can reach over the front seat for your food.” That’s a good idea. I roll down the back window. The redheaded waitress attaches my tray and winks at me. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Dad bites into his patty melt. A string of Swiss cheese gets caught in his beard. I immediately reach for the curly fries.
The sound of Dad’s chewing fills the car. Mom says he smacks his food. It drives her crazy. I automatically turn to do Mom’s work for her.
“Dad…”
“What’s up?” Dad says with a mouthful of patty melt.
I almost tell him to stop but decide against it. “Never mind.” Smacking food in your own car should be allowed. Besides, I realize I was just smacking my curly fries.
Dad and I start slurping our milkshakes when we hear three short car horn beeps next to us. Through Dad’s open window, I see the Divorced Bungalow Dad wave to us. His son sits next to him sheepishly.
“Hey, guys!” he says, wiping his face with a napkin. “Look at us. Mischief time with dads. Feels good, right?”
“Uh… sure does,” Dad says. Then he turns to me and whispers, “As Grandma would say, this fool better git. You think he’s gonna talk to us all night from over there?”
I laugh and grab another handful of curly fries. “I don’t know. They might want to eat in the back of the car with us.”
“Hey, don’t talk with curly fries in your mouth. It’s rude.” Dad’s only kidding this time. He puts his arm around me and gives me a squeeze just as Ruth the waitress brings us the check.
“Now that’s a pretty picture,” she says, looking at us. “You two stay out of trouble, now.”
Back at the bungalow, Dad and I each brush our teeth with one hand and hold our stomachs with the other. I walk through Dad’s bedroom and hop onto the sofa bed, tucking myself tightly between two loose springs. Dad kisses my forehead.
“’Night, Little Man,” he says. “Rest up. We have a big day tomorrow.” I can hear Dad’s stomach grumbling. He rubs it. “Man, that milkshake is making my stomach feel funky.”
“Is that what Wishbone meant?” I ask Dad.
Dad takes a second to remember what I’m talking about. “No, this definitely is not the same funk. There is a big difference between feeling funky and getting funky.”
Man, the funk is complicated. “Dad, I’d really like to visit Wishbone at his radio station. Can I, pleeeeasse?”
“We’ll see, Little Man,” Dad says. That probably means no. “Now, rest!”
The bedroom door closes. Lying on the sofa bed in the dark, I think about Dad at Aunt Della’s. Is this what he felt like? He said he was so happy sleeping on her sofa bed. But I miss my own bed, and waking up with Mom and Dad in the house. I wonder how Mom is doing with her “me time.” I can hear my stomach gurgling. I lie on my right side, my left side. I can’t get comfortable. Plus, every time I move, the bed squeaks. I could use some earplugs.
From the other side of the door, I hear Dad’s voice. “That’s a whole lotta squeaking out there. Your stomach feeling funky, too?”
“Yeah, I think the milkshakes may have been too much.”
Dad opens the door and invites me inside. “C’mon and get in bed with me.”
No argument from me. I grab my pillow, slide over the broken mattress springs, and slip into bed next to Dad. We lie side by side. His foot touches mine under the covers. Our stomachs are gurgling. I hear the bathroom faucet dripping into the sink.
“I gotta call the landlord about that faucet,” Dad whispers.
“I don’t know, I kinda like it. It has the same beat as that Muddy Waters song.” I sing along to the water drip under my breath.
Now, when I was a young boy
[Drip, drip. Drip, drip.]
At the age of five
