Holy Enchilada Read online

  Why couldn’t you ever just have a regular conversation with this guy? Why was he always on your case?

  “For your info, dude,” Frankie told him, “we are going to buy supplies to make enchiladas. We’re bringing them for the Multi-Cultural Day Lunch tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yeah,” McKelty said. “Wait until you see the pigs in a blanket that I’m bringing. They’ll be a million times better.”

  “Pigs in a blanket?” Frankie said. “You mean those little hot dogs wrapped up in biscuit dough?”

  “Not just regular hot dogs, Townsend,” McKelty said. “These are special hot dogs. My dad got them from—”

  McKelty stopped for a minute. You could just feel his slow brain trying to come up with some outrageous story we were all supposed to believe. Frankie didn’t give him the chance.

  “I know, dude,” Frankie interrupted. “Your dad got them from the King of Hot Dog Land, who he met while sitting in the floor seats at the Knicks game just before he slept over at the White House while teaching the president to bowl.”

  “How’d you know?” McKelty said.

  We just laughed. Yoshi laughed, too. I’m sure he didn’t actually understand all the words we were saying, but he got the picture about McKelty. A jerk is a jerk in any language.

  “You’re supposed to bring a dish from another country tomorrow,” Robert said to McKelty. “That’s why they call it the Multi-Cultural Day Lunch.”

  “So what’s your point?” McKelty asked.

  “The point is pigs in a blanket aren’t from another country,” I said.

  “They are, too,” said McKelty. “They’re from Kansas.”

  “News flash, Big Dude. Kansas isn’t a country,” Frankie said.

  “I knew that,” McKelty growled. “I just wanted to see if you did.”

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

  That cracks Yoshi up every time Frankie says it.

  I glanced over at McKelty just to enjoy the look on his face. In that one second, Yoshi shot the puck past me and scored the winning goal.

  “He shoots, he scores,” he said, in absolutely perfect English.

  “Where’d you learn that?” I asked him.

  “PlayStation NHL hockey game,” Yoshi answered with a shrug.

  And they say video games aren’t educational.

  CHAPTER 12

  PAPA PETE SAYS YOU SHOULD NEVER GO TO the grocery store without a list. While he was saying good-bye to his buddies at the bowling alley, we decided to take his advice. Frankie, Yoshi, and I sat down to make a list of what we needed to get at Gristediano’s to make our enchiladas. Robert and Emily refused to participate. When you read the list, you’ll see why.

  OUR GROCERY STORE LIST

  By Hank Zipzer, Frankie Townsend, and Yoshi Morimoto

  1. Get all the things you need to make enchiladas.

  2. We wish we knew what those were, but we don’t have a clue!

  3. Well, that’s not totally true. We know it’s not broccoli or octopus.

  4. Octopus and cheese enchiladas. Barf-o-rama!

  5. Help!

  6. We’re stuck in this list and we can’t get out!

  7. How should I know what’s in an enchilada? I’m from Japan!

  8. Enchilada, schmintzalada! We’ll figure it out later!

  I know. You don’t have to tell me. It’s a stupid list. But hey, it was really funny at the time. I guess you had to be there.

  Emily said we were acting like dumb boys. Robert said we were acting like immature boys. But I say this to you: We’re only ten. We’re entitled to lose it once in a while.

  CHAPTER 13

  THIS IS THE KIND OF GUY PAPA PETE IS. He took our list and looked it over. He didn’t say one tiny word about how silly or stupid it was. All he said was, “Come on, kids. Let’s get cracking. We got a batch of schmintzaladas to make.”

  Papa Pete is an expert cook. He started the Crunchy Pickle and ran it for his whole life until he retired and turned it over to my mom a couple of years ago. Almost everything in that deli is made from his recipes. Potato salad, red cabbage coleslaw, pastrami sandwiches with Russian dressing, tuna melts with tangy cheddar, black bean soup with sour cream. Everything tastes delicious. Except for the stuff my mom makes. She says she’s trying to bring deli food into the twenty-first century, but I think she should have left it back in the twentieth century when Papa Pete was cooking.

  Papa Pete told us he knew what was in enchiladas, and I trusted him completely. Anything he cooks comes out great.

  We walked over to Gristediano’s and cruised through the aisles, pushing our cart. Papa Pete called out the ingredients for the enchiladas, and we raced around the aisles to find them. We got tortillas and tomato sauce and cheese and garlic and a can of jalapeño peppers and sour cream. Then Papa Pete took us to the spice aisle.

  “Now for a little zing!” he said, pointing to rows and rows of spice jars.

  I looked through the spice jars. I saw curry and sage and dried parsley and cinnamon, but I didn’t see anything called Zing.

  Papa Pete ran his finger along the jars until he came to one that said Hot Chili Powder. It was filled with a dark red ground-up spice.

  “This,” he said, tossing the jar into our cart, “is what you need to give your enchiladas a little zing.”

  “I don’t know what is zing,” Yoshi said.

  “Zing is what puts hair on your chest,” Papa Pete told him.

  “Eeuuuww, who wants that?” said Emily.

  “It’s an expression, my darling grand-daughter,” Papa Pete said. “It refers to the kind of food that packs a wallop. Kicks up your taste buds. Puts a little spice in your life. Explodes on your tongue.”

  “Like wasabi,” Yoshi said.

  “Exactly,” Papa Pete said, holding his finger up in the air like a nutty professor I saw in a movie once. “You’ve had wasabi, Hankie. Remember that spicy green horseradish you ate at Planet Sushi?”

  “Oh, that!” I said.

  How could I forget that? ne night, our family went to a sushi restaurant on Columbus Avenue for my aunt Maxine’s birthday. I’m not a big fan of raw fish myself, but all the grown-ups ordered a huge platter of sushi. On the corner of the platter there was a little pile of stuff that looked like green mustard. I love mustard, so I took one of my chopsticks and put a smidge of the green stuff on the end. It didn’t smell like anything bad, so I popped it in my mouth. Let me tell you this: The minute that stuff hit my tongue, I thought my face was on fire. That tiny speck of green horseradish was so spicy, I was sure my whole nose was going to fly off my face and go running all the way to Central Park and jump in the pond to cool off.

  I looked at the jar of red chili powder in our cart.

  “If this stuff is anything like that wasabi, then maybe we should forget about the zing,” I said.

  “Hankie, live a little,” Papa Pete said. “You need a dash of spice in your enchiladas. Otherwise they wouldn’t be enchiladas.”

  “You mean schmintzaladas,” Frankie said.

  We all cracked up, even Papa Pete.

  We were all still laughing when we left Gristediano’s and headed home.

  CHAPTER 14

  MY MOM MUST HAVE ALERTED the entire apartment building that we were having a special visitor. When we turned the corner onto our block, I could see most of our neighbors standing under our green awning, waiting to say hello to Yoshi. There were so many of them, for a minute I thought they were welcoming the president of Japan and not just a fourth-grader like me.

  Frankie’s parents were there, and Ashley’s, too. Her grandmother, who lives with them, was holding a plate of steamed pork dumplings. She probably thought we needed a backup in case my mom made one of her usual experimental taste-free, mock-tuna-filled dinners.

  Good thinking, Grandma Wong!

  As we got closer to our building, I could see Mrs. Park, who lives on the fourth floor, yelling at Mr. Grasso, who’s right above her on the
fifth floor. She always complains that he leaves his TV on too loud at night. Little Tyler King, who lives with his mom on our floor, was dressed for bed in his Spider-Man pajamas and Elmo slippers. I just love little kids in their pajamas. They’re so squeezable, like baby koala bears—although I’ve never actually squeezed one of those. I’d like to, though.

  My mom and dad were there, waving at us like lunatics. Our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Fink, was there, too. I like her, even though she almost never wears her false teeth and you can see her pink gums when she smiles. She has a crush on Papa Pete, but he doesn’t have a crush back on her. I’m pretty sure that’s because of the no-teeth problem I just mentioned.

  “Peter!” Mrs. Fink called out when she saw us coming. “I’m over here.”

  Papa Pete handed me the bag of groceries.

  “You carry these, Hankie,” he said. “I’m taking off before she invites me up for her poppy seed upside-down sponge cake. Everything she bakes is cockeyed.”

  “You can’t leave,” I said to him. “You need to help us make the enchiladas.”

  “Hankie,” Papa Pete said, taking my face in his hands. “I would fly to the moon for you. I would pluck a star out of the sky for you. I would catch a whale with my teeth for you. But I’m sorry, darling boy, I cannot spend another evening watching Mrs. Fink gum her poppy seed cake into mush.”

  “Look on the bright side, Papa Pete,” Frankie said. “At least none of the poppy seeds gets stuck in her teeth.”

  “I need you to back me up on this, young man,” Papa Pete said to Frankie. “You have all the ingredients you need. And I’m sure you kids can find a recipe for cheese enchiladas somewhere.”

  “Mom has hundreds of cookbooks,” Emily said.

  “No, I meant with real cheese, not soy cheese,” Papa Pete said. “Maybe try the Internet.”

  “I’m quite good at research, if I do say so myself,” said Robert, puffing up his skinny little chest at Emily, who couldn’t take her eyes off Yoshi.

  “We’ll be fine, Papa Pete,” Emily said. Easy for her to say—she wasn’t the one bringing in the enchiladas for the whole school to eat.

  “Just be careful your mother doesn’t slip any mung beans in when you’re not looking,” Papa Pete warned.

  Mrs. Fink had taken a white handkerchief out of her sleeve and was waving it at Papa Pete. He went into a whole big pantomime, pointing to his watch like he was really late for something. Quickly, he kissed Emily and me on the heads, and pinched Frankie, Yoshi, and yes, even the cheekless wonder, Robert. Then he took off down Amsterdam Avenue like a bolt of lightning.

  “Ojiisan is cool,” Yoshi said. “I like your family, Hank.”

  Emily grinned at Yoshi with that same goofy smile she’d had all afternoon.

  “Don’t get carried away,” I whispered to her. “I’m sure he wasn’t talking about you.”

  “How do you know?” she snapped.

  “Fourth-graders know these things.”

  “Yeah,” Robert piped up, his nasal voice cracking really badly. “We do.”

  “Yoo-hoo, little man,” Frankie said to Robert. “You’re in the third grade.”

  “But not for long,” Robert said. He had a point there.

  Cheerio was on a leash, standing next to my dad. The minute he saw us walking toward them, he went completely nuts. He’s already pretty nuts, so he didn’t have far to go. He started spinning in circles around my dad’s legs until my dad was all wrapped up in his leash like one of those old Egyptian mummies.

  My mom had to undo the leash to get my dad untangled, so Cheerio took off and came running to us. He sniffed at Yoshi, then started nipping at his ankles. That’s what he does when he likes someone. Yoshi bent down to pet him, and Cheerio licked his face like it was a liver-flavored doggy biscuit. Boy, if Ms. Adolf could have seen my little Cheerio with Yoshi, she’d take back what she had said about him being dangerous. He is without a doubt the sweetest dog on four short legs.

  Finally, after saying hello to everyone in the apartment, we were able to get into the elevator and ride up to the tenth floor, which is where we live. My mom unlocked our apartment door, and we all went into the living room. Everyone but Yoshi, that is. I stuck my head back out in the hall and saw him sitting on the floor, taking his shoes off.

  “You get mud on your feet or something?” I asked him.

  “In Japan, we take our shoes off before coming into the house,” he said. “It’s a sign of respect.”

  Boy, did I feel like an idiot, multi-culturally speaking.

  There wasn’t time for me to be embarrassed, though. The Zipzers had zipped into action. Everyone in my family wanted a piece of Yoshi, and he was being pulled in a million different directions.

  My dad nabbed him first and showed him his mechanical pencil collection.

  “Ikeru,” Yoshi said, politely touching a couple of the shiny silver pencils.

  My dad broke into a big smile.

  “Ikeru,” he repeated. “A five-letter word meaning ‘It’s good!’ in Japanese. That was in my crossword puzzle last week and I missed it! Thank you, Yoshi!”

  If you’re Stanley Zipzer, life just doesn’t get any better than that.

  While my dad was demonstrating to Yoshi how you change the lead in a mechanical pencil, my mom kept interrupting.

  “Feel free to use the bathroom anytime,” she told Yoshi about a million times. I knew she really wanted him to check out the new wallpaper she had put up. I think she was very proud of it. It was yellow, with green pagodas.

  Emily dragged Yoshi into her room to meet Katherine, who didn’t even hiss at him. She didn’t look at him, either. I think Old Kathy was still recovering from being glued down to the kitchen floor. A thing like that has got to affect you, even if you are a lower life-form.

  To make the evening totally perfect, my mom even made a good dinner. Well, that’s because she didn’t really make it. She picked it up from the deli. Vlady put together an assortment of mile-high sandwiches for us—roast beef, pastrami, chicken salad, and turkey with Swiss. There was enough for Frankie and Ashley and Robert to come, too.

  “What are you children going to do after dinner?” my mom asked.

  “Homework,” I answered.

  “I’m dreaming,” Emily said. “Hank Zipzer is going to do his homework. No way.”

  “Maybe Hank is turning over a new leaf,” my dad said. He loves that expression. Every time I get a really, really bad grade like a D on my report card, which is every time I get a report card, he tells me it’s time to turn over a new leaf. I’ve turned over so many new leaves, my tree is almost naked. By the time I get to sixth grade, that tree will be completely bare.

  “We’re going to make enchiladas,” I announced to one and all.

  “You just said you were going to do homework,” my dad pointed out.

  “This is our homework, Dad. We’re supposed to bring in a dish for the Multi-Cultural Lunch. Our group has decided to bring enchiladas.”

  “Oh, I have a lovely recipe for enchiladas with mung beans,” my mom said.

  I was in the middle of taking a sip of apple juice. When I heard the words mung beans, I burst out laughing and sprayed poor Robert all over the front of his white shirt. Even though I accidentally sprayed some of the apple juice on our new place mats, too, no one got mad at me. Not even my dad. We were all just in a great mood. In fact, if you had been standing outside our apartment and listening, all you would have heard was the sound of us laughing.

  Oh, yeah, and my mom saying, “Yoshi, feel free to use the bathroom anytime.”

  CHAPTER 15

  IT DIDN’T TAKE US LONG to find an enchilada recipe. Robert found a site that had seventy-two of them. We chose Mama Vita’s Killer Cheesy Enchiladas. The recipe was the sixty-seventh one on Mama Vita’s Killer Recipe site, right in between her Killer Shrimp Burritos and her Killer Pinto Bean Soup. Personally, I didn’t know how anything involving pinto beans can be killer. If you ask me, they’re like
wet paste that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

  After we decided on which recipe we were going to make, we printed it out and called Papa Pete. He thought it sounded fine, so we were good to go. My mom said we could be alone in the kitchen as long as we called her when it was time to turn the stove on.

  “I know where the pots and pans are,” Emily said, who was trying to impress Yoshi and act like she cooked all the time.

  We all started digging through the cupboards. I pulled out a frying pan. Frankie was reaching for another pot and got shoved by Robert, who stepped on my frying pan. He went sliding across the kitchen floor like he was on a snowboard.

  “Attention, everyone,” Ashley said, getting out a wooden spoon and tapping it against the countertop like she was a judge in a courtroom. “This isn’t working. We need to get organized.”

  Ashley is great at running things. Frankie and Ashley and I have a magic act called Magik 3. Frankie is the magician, and we made Ashley our manager. It was one of the smartest things we’ve ever done. She’s so good at it, she managed us right into earning a grand total of $58.60. And we’re not even out of fourth grade yet!

  “For starters, everyone can’t do the same job,” Ashley said.

  “Good thinking, Ashweena,” Frankie said with a nod. “I’ll put together all the ingredients.”

  “Great. Hank, you read Frankie the recipe and tell him what he needs,” Ashley said.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  It wasn’t the best job for me to get, since reading isn’t exactly my strong point, but I didn’t want to announce that in front of Yoshi.

  “What should I do?” Robert asked.

  “Disappear?” Frankie suggested.

  “Okay,” said Robert. “I’m only in third grade, anyway.” He went into the living room to help my dad work a crossword puzzle.

  “Emily, you and Yoshi can be the assistant chefs,” said Ashley.

  Ordinarily Emily would have thrown a hissy fit to be the assistant anything, but she was just happy to be next to Yoshi.