“You flick your wrist.”
“I want to try!”
I pictured eggs all over the floor. “You have to be older.”
She flopped down. “You have to be older for everything!”
“Not for grape jelly.” I handed it to her. “You put it on the table.”
She held up a book. “After breakfast will you read me a story?”
I wished I could. I beat the eggs. “I might have to leave right after.”
“I’ll read it to you,” Garland told her. “What’s your name?”
“Delilah May Canning.”
“I’m Foster,” I said.
“That’s a boy’s name!”
I added a little salt. “Do I look like a boy?”
“Nope.” Garland plugged in the toaster. That got me grinning.
I scrambled eggs. Garland toasted bread. We fed nine people breakfast. I hadn’t felt this good in I don’t know when.
Delilah May Canning held her book up. “It’s time for my story!”
“You read it,” I told Garland. I took Sonny’s cookbook from the top of the refrigerator and headed home.
I’d just come out of FOOD when Miss Charleena pulled up in her little blue sports car. She was wearing a hot pink top, white jeans, and long gold earrings, and she was smiling. “Where have you been?”
Was she kidding? “I was at your house, but you were sick.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “It comes and goes. I thought you’d be coming by so we could talk about reading.”
My heart fluttered at that, but then I remembered Lester saying she could be friendly one minute and then ignore you for months.
“What book do you have there, Foster?”
I showed her Sonny’s cookbook. She leafed through it. “Maple pecan cupcakes with maple frosting. My, that sounds dangerous.”
I looked over at the page she was reading. I want to make that!
“Miss Charleena, here’s what you’ve got to know. Reading’s a serious thing with me. I want to do it, and I’m scared to try.” This next part was harder. “But if it’s not a serious thing with you—I mean, if you’d just lose interest after a while—I’m not saying you would, but just in case . . . then, I don’t think we should do it.”
She closed the book with a snap and handed it back to me.
I wanted to evaporate like spit on a hot road. “I shouldn’t have said that, Miss Charleena. I’m sorry.”
“Foster, I do want to talk with you about reading.”
That sounded like she meant it. “Miss Charleena, I want to read Sonny’s book. Can you teach me?”
“This is too hard to start with—”
“No! This is the one I want to read!”
“I understand, but—”
“No, ma’am, you don’t understand. This book’s got my name on it!”
“Well then, Foster McFee, we’ll give it a try.”
I’d better warn her. “I’ve got to tell you something else, Miss Charleena. I’ve tried reading before. I tried with everything I had, and my brain closes up.”
She nodded. “My teacher told me some people come naturally to reading and others have to work twice as hard. There’s nothing wrong with having a different way of learning. What’s wrong is when people blame you for it.”
Miss Charleena, you don’t know what you just said to me.
“Come by tomorrow and bring your book. But not too early. I need my beauty sleep.”
And with that, she sped away.
Twenty-One
I SAUTÉED RED peppers and red onions, added ground beef, and sautéed that, too. “I don’t know if anyone can teach me to read, Mama.” I’d told her all that happened with Miss Charleena.
“I admire how you’re open to the process even though it’s been hard,” she said.
“It’s been impossible.” I added tomato paste to the pot, salt, pepper, chili powder, and a little cinnamon.
Mama smiled. “What I can tell you, Baby, is you’ve got grit, smarts, courage, and heart.”
I stirred a pinch of sugar into the chili. “I’m kind of scared to try again, Mama.”
“That’s natural. Just take the next step and don’t look too far down the road.” She looked over her reading glasses at me. “I know what you’ve got inside.”
I woke up at 5:30 A.M., which I figured was way too early to head over to Miss Charleena’s, but I can tell you, every part of me was awake!
I got up, washed, and got dressed without waking Mama. I stood by the sink, looking at Lester’s daddy’s stupid, dead fish.
I said, “I want you to know that I’m going to do something important today. More important than a fish could understand. I don’t know why I’m telling you, except that I want to say it out loud, so here goes. Today, I’m going to start learning to read!”
I pretended the fish wiggled his fishtail like a dog.
“I know it’s going to be hard, so I’m getting ready for that, but I just feel this time I’m not going to get caught up in all the things that have held me back. I guess you know about getting caught, don’t you?”
I stood there for a minute.
“All right then. I’m going.”
I delivered the butterscotch muffins and chocolate cupcakes to Angry Wayne, and he handed me an envelope with money in it.
“Mr. Wayne, you were supposed to keep this money so I could pay you back for the food you gave me for Helping Hands.”
“Take the money,” he said.
“But sir—”
Betty sipped her coffee. “Don’t mess with the miracle, Foster.”
I was hoping to see another miracle at Miss Charleena’s, but when I got there Macon opened the door.
“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”
“What do you want?”
“Miss Charleena and I have an appointment.”
“What about?”
“About . . . stuff . . .” I decided to be mature. “How’s your movie coming?”
“It’s not.”
“How come?”
You’d have thought I’d asked him to jump off a building. “It’s just not, okay?”
Okay.
“She’s watching TV.” He walked away.
I went into the room off the kitchen. Miss Charleena was sitting on a big couch watching a wide-screen TV. A lady in a long skirt was talking to a group of kids not in America. Then I realized, that wasn’t just any lady, that was Miss Charleena. She was much younger than she is now, but still!
“This is my big scene,” Miss Charleena said. “I played a teacher in India.” I sat down and watched as the lady, I mean Miss Charleena, looked at the kids and said, “Boys and girls, I want to tell you a story. One day a businessman was traveling in India, and he happened to see a huge elephant standing there with his front foot chained to a small fence. The businessman knew the elephant had the strength to yank that fence down, so he asked the trainer why the elephant stood there like it couldn’t move. ‘Ah,’ said the trainer, ‘this is how you train an elephant. From the time he was a baby we had that chain around his front foot. He tried to break free when he was little, but couldn’t do it. By the time he had grown, he’d stopped trying. That great elephant didn’t know his own strength.’ ”
Miss Charleena as the teacher looked at the children. “That happens to all of us from time to time. I believe it is time for you to realize your strength and use it.”
The kids looked at each other, and one by one they began to stand.
My heart was pounding. I stood, too.
“Yank, darlin’.” Miss Charleena pointed to a big word in Sonny’s cookbook.
Appetizers.
I made a face. “It’s a great word,” she explained. “Look.” She wrote out app e tiz ers. “Can you sound some of it out?”
I put my hand over the app. “App,” I said. I put my finger on the e. “E.” I got through the tiz and the er after some work.
“And see, this word comes from other words you kno
w. Appetite, appetizing. So, the next time you see it, it can be a clue.” Miss Charleena tapped the book. “We’ve got a world of recipes here.”
She opened the book to a page. “Can you sound that out?”
I looked at it.
Banana Cake with Fudge Frosting.
“We’re starting pretty fast,” I mentioned.
She wrote out ba na na. “Another great word. It’s written exactly as it sounds.”
Slowly, I sounded it out and Miss Charleena handed me an actual banana.
“But the word cake has a tricky letter,” she told me. “C can sound like a k as in cake, or it can sound like an s as in cereal.”
“Why did they do that?”
“There are rules for cooking; there are rules for letters and words.”
“Always preheat the oven,” I said. “Make sure the butter is softened before you cream it.”
“You’ve probably learned dozens of cooking rules. You’re already good at learning rules.”
I never thought of it that way.
But, after an hour, my brain was close to busting. Twice I shouted, “I can’t get it! It’s too hard!” But not once did I run out of the room. Not once did I feel embarrassed, because Miss Charleena kept saying, “Take your time. Do this at your speed.”
When we got to the end of the banana cake recipe, I was so sick of it, I didn’t want to make this cake at all. But slowly I could sound out “mash the banana with a fork” on my own, because not one of those words was tricky. People should spend more time using nontricky words, in my opinion. Miss Charleena even handed me a fork and I mashed a banana on her counter and thought about what the words looked like in Sonny’s cookbook. I’d love to turn this recipe into cupcakes.
I heard a noise and looked up. Macon was standing at the kitchen door.
I’d forgotten he was in the house.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he began.
I felt my face turn red. He’d probably been standing there forever, thinking how dumb I am mashing a banana with a fork and saying it out loud.
Now he knew I couldn’t read.
He’d probably tell everybody!
Like Daddy learned in the army, I could stay and fight or leave without too many casualties. “I’ve gotta go,” I said, and headed toward the door.
“Foster,” Miss Charleena said, “wait!”
Reading had caused me enough wounds. I was outta here.
“Foster!”
I ran past Macon, not looking at him. He was laughing at me, probably, thinking I was stupid.
I ran out the back door and raced down the hill. I heard the awful siren blaring from the prison. I was in my own kind of jail where the gates lock tight, and no matter what, you just can’t get out.
Twenty-Two
I WAS BREATHING hard when I got to the main road. I was remembering, too, all the way back to first grade when I got put in the lowest reading group, the Daisies. Some kids called us the Dandelions.
“Dandelions, dumb dandelions,” they’d shout.
I ran toward Fish Hardware, remembering the guy who worked at the ice cream place in Nashville, who sneered at me when I said I wanted chocolate. He pointed to a big board. “What kind of chocolate?” I didn’t know, I didn’t care, I just wanted to get out of there. So I ran off, just like now.
“If you applied yourself, Foster . . .” Mrs. Ritter always told me.
I only knew about applying glue to something to make it stick. Applying myself to school seemed like school would stick all over me and never come off.
“What in the world are we going to do with you?” Mrs. Ritter asked.
I could think of a few things.
Take it easy on me.
Teach me different.
Care about me just a little.
So many times that year I wanted to shout, “It’s not like I’m waking up in the morning and trying to mess up. I just don’t get it!”
And now Macon knew.
I got to Fish Hardware. Mama always said if I was ever in need she’d drop everything.
I walked inside past brooms and hammers and lightbulbs and tools of every kind. I walked past Amy.
“Hi, Foster.”
I didn’t say hi back.
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head. I heard Mama’s voice coming from the back.
“If I were you, I’d paint it a deep blue and use this bright white paint on the windows and ceiling. That room will pop like you can’t believe!”
I walked over to where Mama was talking to a big woman who had her back to me. “Hi there,” Mama said to me.
I started crying. I didn’t mean to, honest.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Amy headed over. The big woman turned around.
It was that principal, Mrs. Dupree!
That made me cry harder.
“Foster,” Mama said. “What happened?”
Mrs. Dupree stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“We can’t live in this town anymore!” I shouted. “We can’t!”
I pulled the sheet around my bed. It wasn’t much of a place to hide. I felt like I did when I was little, throwing a sheet over a table and sitting underneath it. I needed a fort where nobody could reach me. Normally when I’d get upset, I’d hug Daddy’s pillowcase and it would make me feel a little better.
All I had was a sleeping pillowcase with nothing special inside. I threw it on the floor.
I hated Huck!
“Foster.” It was Mama. “Someone’s here to see you.”
“I can’t see anyone right now.”
I heard a girl’s voice say, “I’ll just leave them here, Mrs. McFee.”
I dried my face on my shirt and pushed the curtain back. Amy was standing there holding the prettiest flowers. “I thought these might make you feel better, Foster.”
“That’s so nice. I’m sorry I ran out.”
“Everybody has bad days.” She looked around the Bullet. “This is so cool. You have your own inner sanctum.”
Amy and I had a chocolate cupcake, and it didn’t take long before I told her I wanted to be the first kid on the Food Network.
“The way I’ve got it figured, the cooking world needs a famous kid chef who isn’t afraid to stir things up. That’s a cooking joke.”
She laughed. “I can see you doing that, Foster! I’ve got a dream, too, but it’s dumb.”
“Dreams aren’t dumb.”
“Well,” she whispered. “I want to be a singer.”
I told her about Mama.
“I’ve heard her singing to herself, Foster, and I thought, she’s so good!”
“You should talk to her about it.”
“I couldn’t . . . I mean, I could. I’m brave about hardware, but singing is so personal.”
She needed some coaching. “Look, you can’t wait for people to come to you. You’ve got to get out there and make your own breaks.”
She looked down nervously.
“I’ve been at this awhile. It takes time.”
I told her about my NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP sign that I had back in Memphis. I didn’t mention that I tore it up in sixth grade after Johnny Joe Badger called me the “stupidest girl in Memphis.” There were some pretty stupid girls in that town.
I told her how Eddington Carver and I were watching this ant crawling around trying to carry something twice his size. The ant kept dropping it, but he picked it back up again and again. Eddington counted seventeen times.
“You’ve got to be like an ant,” I told her.
I told her how it took years for Sonny Kroll to become a famous chef. “Nobody wanted him at first. He wrote letters, he knocked on doors, he made DVDs. Finally, he got a break. And you know what he said? He appreciated it all the more because it didn’t come easy.”
I figured that was enough for one day. I also figured I should probably take my own advice.
Mama, Kitty, and Lester were standing outside the Bullet as A
my left. Something didn’t feel right. As Amy headed down the road, Mama said, “Lester heard something on the news, Baby.”
“What?”
Lester put his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Well, this cook you love so much, Sonny Kroll. I’m sorry to tell you, but it seems like he was in a bad accident.”
I felt a bolt go through me.
“He got knocked off his motorcycle, and he’s in the hospital. He’s in critical care.”
“No!”
“He’s in a hospital in California,” Lester added.
“He’s not going to die!”
“Honey, I don’t know. They said on the news he’s in a coma.”
“People can get better from that, right?”
Lester nodded. “Sometimes.”
“But sometimes means yes, right?”
Tears ran down my face.
Don’t die on me, Sonny. Don’t die.
It was late. I couldn’t sleep. Sonny always wore a helmet when he rode that bike. I pictured him lying by the side of the road.
I can’t just lie here.
I went to the kitchen quietly and looked at his cookbook. I got a piece of paper and a pen. The clock read 11:38 P.M. How come I could read a clock and not a book? How come I could write my name and not a letter?
This is what I wanted to write:Dear Sonny,
I never wanted to be good at writing the way I do now. If I was good, I’ d write you a poem about all you’ve given me. You’ve brought so many ingredients into my life. You’ve taught me to be brave and to always share what I’ve got with other people. You’re not just a cook, you’re my friend, and I want you to know I’m cheering for you here in West Virginia to get better. I want you to know that I’m only twelve, but I’ve been watching your show for five years, since my daddy died. I want you to know that I think you’re close to the best man I know.
Your #1 Fan,
Foster McFee, soon to be seen on Cooking with Foster
But I didn’t know how to write all that down. Slowly, I wrote what I could:Deer Sonny