One Hundred Spaghetti Strings Read online

  Since there was basically the whole loaf of banana bread left, I made a couple peanut butter on banana bread sandwiches for my and Nina’s lunches. When they were packed up and dishes were in the sink, I ran up and put my five dollars in my ice cream sundae bank. I tucked in Wiley and put a book next to him: Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath, one of my very, very favorites.

  Nina burst into my room and threw something on my bed, then disappeared, closing the door behind her. There on my unicorn sheets were three bras. A purple one, a white one, and a light-blue one. Only the white one had been worn, because the other two had tags on them. I remembered when Auntie Gina had made Nina get these—once when we were getting new shoes in Dillard’s when I was in third grade and Nina was in sixth.

  “Hurry,” she called from the hallway. “I’m not being late on my first day of eighth grade. I’ve been waiting to rule the school since kindergarten.” The floor rumbled as she pounded down the stairs in her big black boots.

  I pulled off my T-shirt. It took a couple tries getting on the white bra, but I finally managed to clasp it together in back. Now that I had it on, I got this great panic that I might not really need it after all and that people at school would look at me and see it through my shirt and laugh. But the pink dress hanging in my closet made me think that, yes, I needed it. Yes, it was time.

  I tramped down the stairs and met Nina in the kitchen, and we locked the door behind us. Right as we were getting on our bikes, she got a call on her cell from Auntie Gina wishing us a happy first day of school. My eyes welled up and Nina rolled hers, and everything that morning was just happening too fast.

  As we pedaled down Buckingham Road, I thought about how Dad didn’t really know us yet. How he had to get to know us because, if he didn’t, maybe he would get bored and maybe he would go back to California. And then, with Auntie Gina all moved into Harry’s house, I didn’t know what would happen to me and Nina.

  But our dad was home now, and he would get to know us. And like us. He would eat my breakfasts, and he would see the way that Nina looked out for me. And he would like that. And he would stay.

  Greasy Spoon

  I knew California had all those fancy beaches and famous people, but I couldn’t see why anyone would want to leave Greensboro. By summer’s end, the crepe myrtles and magnolias were all overgrown, and their petals littered the sidewalks like when meat is so tender it falls right off the bones. I remember at Grandpa Falcon’s barbecues, he’d do barbecued pork chops and beef ribs and chicken legs. And I remember how, when you picked up a drumstick, hunks of juicy meat would slide right off the leg bone. For me, it’s all about the cooking down here. Yam-pecan pies, Brussels sprouts and egg whites, chicken and waffles. I didn’t know what kind of foods they cooked in California—I guessed fish because it was next to the ocean—but my dad was born here in North Carolina, and I was hoping that he still liked that Southern cooking.

  The bike ride to the Greensboro Four school only took about ten minutes, and when we got there, me and Nina headed right into the gym for the first community meeting of the year.

  Greensboro Four was a private school, and we had both gone there since kindergarten. Every summer Auntie Gina had to fill out the State Grant for Family in Crisis paper. She had to show how our mom still lived at the Place and how our dad was kind of not really being our dad. She would sign her name where it said “guardian,” and then the state of North Carolina would pay our tuition. I started noticing these papers the summer before third grade, when our dad had just moved to California.

  On the paper this year, Auntie Gina said that our mom was still at the Place but that our dad was coming back. Thank goodness our tuition still got paid for. All my friends were here at this school. And with Dad’s shaving cream smell in our house, Auntie Gina’s stuff all gone, and me with those new straps under my shirt, I liked coming back to Greensboro Four, where I recognized everything.

  Once everyone was all seated with their grades, Principal Schmitz-Brady welcomed us back to school.

  “Our campus is not simply a school, it is an education celebration, a breeding ground for risk taking, for standing up against adversity, and for realizing our full potential.”

  Me and my best friend, Lisa Rudder, made faces at each other through this speech.

  Like she did at the beginning of every school year, Principal Schmitz-Brady talked about the courage of the Greensboro Four.

  Our school was named for these four black college students who sat at the Woolworth’s white-persons-only lunch counter in 1960. After six months of more black people coming in and sitting at the counter, Woolworth’s officially opened up their lunch counter to everyone, not just whites.

  There was a book in the school library all about it that every second-grade class read that showed black-and-white pictures of the lunch counter—of guys in chef hats frying French fries, flipping burgers, and putting cheese on top of what looked like tuna melts. I didn’t know why I remembered those pictures, but I always did. Auntie Gina would call a place like that a greasy spoon, like Your House over on Battleground. You can see the guys cooking the food right there from your table and it usually smells like bacon.

  While our principal talked more, I was thinking how I couldn’t wait to get to the library. The cooking section was only half a shelf long, but I liked looking at the books anyway, even though I’d read them all before. As far back as I could remember being at this school, I’d be checking out The Spatula Cookbook or Feast for 10 while other kids were checking out Dr. Seuss or Magic Tree House.

  I was definitely in and out of Principal Schmitz-Brady’s speech about bravery because I was thinking about books and tuna melts. I knew she was talking about big, important history, and I liked what my school stood for, but I was just picturing myself behind that counter frying those burgers.

  “Imagine how you would have felt,” she said, “if you were hungry and you were forbidden to sit down and share a meal with others.”

  She went on for a little bit longer and then she dismissed us to our advisory classrooms. While me and Lisa walked out of the gym together, Lisa went to put her arm around me and accidentally felt the strap underneath my shirt. Her eyes got big behind her purple glasses, and she opened her mouth in an O shape. She took my hand and reached it around to her back, and I felt the strap underneath her shirt.

  We took each other’s hand and squeezed.

  “I don’t know if I really need it,” I said. She brought me right in front of her, held my arms out to the sides, looked down, and said, “Yes, you do. I’m the one who doesn’t really need it. But who cares. I wanted to wear one anyway, to get practice.”

  We got to our two advisories that were right next to each other. They usually don’t put best friends in the same advisory group.

  Before going in, Lisa said, “So, how is it with your dad?”

  “Weird.”

  “Has he said anything?”

  “Just normal stuff. ‘Hi.’ ‘Bye.’ That kind of stuff. I can’t think of anything to say to him.”

  “Well,” she said, “eventually you’ll think of something. Or at least you know Nina will.”

  Yeah, maybe Nina didn’t always say the nicest thing, but at least she said something.

  After advisory came math, my favorite. Even though Mr. Richmond was older than math itself, he always made it fun. Then science and social studies. All the teachers just said welcome, and we did overviews of the year or played games. Then lunch. Everybody was pretty jealous of my sandwich.

  “What, pray tell, do we have here?” asked this boy Joe Glorioso. He’d been in our class since kindergarten.

  “Peanut butter on banana bread,” I said.

  He lowered his head to the sandwich and took a big breath. “It smells like a divine creation from the kitchen of a celebrity chef.” Me and Lisa couldn’t stop giggling.

  Principal Schmitz-Brady happened to be hanging around the cafeteria right then and walked over to us.

>   “Ms. Sandolini, may I ask what we have for lunch today?”

  I told her.

  “You are headed for the Food Network, my dear,” she said as she trotted off to another table.

  Last period was English. Lisa’s favorite. My least favorite. Mrs. Ashton talked all about this huge project due at the end of the year.

  “It’s an autobiography,” she said. “In two parts.”

  Some people groaned. Joe Glorioso clapped twice and said, “Hear, hear! Let the woman speak.” People laughed. Mrs. Ashton snapped her fingers and raised her hand. Pretty soon everyone got quiet again.

  “Part one: you will express who you are in the form of a letter written to you, from you.”

  Lisa was nodding and smiling. Mrs. Ashton continued.

  “Part two: your mom or dad or guardian will express who they think you are in the form of a letter written to you, from them.”

  Lisa glanced at me from across the room, and she raised her eyebrows a couple times. She loved writing assignments, but there was a panic settling into my bones. Write a letter to myself about who I am? It was so much easier to do magic squares in Mr. Richmond’s class than it was for me to think about something like this.

  Toward the end of the period, Mrs. Ashton gave us five minutes of journaling time to write down our first thoughts about this autobiography assignment.

  “Folks,” she said, “my advice all year about this autobiography will be to be honest.”

  In my journal I wrote down a recipe for tuna melts. Then I froze up at the thought of asking my mom or my dad to write me a letter. I had a mom and a dad, sure, but not like Lisa or normal people had a mom and a dad. Not like you were supposed to have.

  Unsalted Peanuts

  Sunday was our day that me and Nina and Auntie Gina went to the Place to see Mom. But this morning there was this big thing because Auntie Gina forgot she’s working in the ER now on Sundays. At the last second, a new arrangement got figured out.

  Nina put her cell on speaker, and it went like this:

  “Why can’t we just ride our bikes over there?” asked Nina.

  “It’s too far for you guys to go alone,” said Auntie Gina.

  “We ride to school by ourselves.”

  “Nina, your dad will walk you over to the church, and Jean Sawyer will meet you after mass and take you. And that’s that.”

  “Why doesn’t Dad just take us?”

  “You know your daddy doesn’t have a car.”

  Obviously he didn’t have a car—he took the bus everywhere. What Nina wanted to know was Why doesn’t Dad visit Mom? Why does Jean Sawyer have to take us?

  Well, fine. With Auntie Gina, sometimes that was just that. Dad walked us the six blocks to St. Theresa’s. There was this second when we didn’t know if he was actually staying for church or if he was just leaving us off—turned out he was just leaving us off. He said that he would see us later that afternoon, that Jean would drop us off at home. I didn’t have to look at Nina to know that she was making a face at his back as he walked out the church doors.

  After mass, Jean was waiting to take us to Mom’s. “My Steffy and my Nina!” she said, grabbing us both in a big hug.

  “Jean!” me and Nina said at the same time.

  “My gosh, will you girls stop growing already? Nina, you’re gonna tower over me any minute.”

  We always loved seeing Jean. Everyone did. She was always carrying bags of something interesting—fresh flowers or warm muffins. She basically did everything at church: gave out Communion, Doughnut Sundays, the carnivals and book fairs, barbecues.

  We had known her our whole lives. Right after our mom’s accident, we went to go live with Jean and her mom and dad for a while. Those memories for me are fuzzy, but there are pictures somewhere of me and Nina riding on her back in her living room when we were really little.

  Because she sometimes had to go into the hospital, you loved her even more because you knew she didn’t feel good sometimes, and you hoped she was okay. But she always got to come out of the hospital and live at home, and she wasn’t like Mom at the Place. She was an extra grown-up in my life who knew I loved cooking and remembered what books I liked to read.

  Today she seemed like she was feeling perfect, hugging us both hard and smelling like cinnamon. She hummed to the radio in the car, while me and Nina ate her fresh-baked scones, and going with her and not Auntie Gina turned out to be fine. Jean walked us into the Place and said she would be waiting for us in the lobby when we were ready to go.

  I followed Nina down hallway D and then into the rec room. Mom sat at the piano in the corner. She had the same smile for us that she had for anyone who came.

  “It’s your girls,” said Helen, her nurse, who was probably older than salt. Mom jumped up from the piano bench and gave us big hugs.

  “Hi,” she said. We kissed and hugged her back. There was that hospital smell: the generic soap from the bathrooms, the medicine-y breath. I wondered what Mom smelled like before the accident. Did she wear perfume or pear lotion? How did she fix her hair?

  “Let me play a little for you,” Mom said. “I’ve been practicing.”

  Helen sat back down with us on the couch across from the piano.

  “Listen to ‘Let There Be Peace on Earth,’” Mom said.

  She leaned forward and put her finger on the sheet music and then looked down and put her hands on the keys and started. Mom wasn’t the best piano player in the world. There were lots of wrong notes that made you make a face without meaning to. It’s mean, but I would have maybe been embarrassed by her. But the only other resident around right then was snoring on the other couch with his legs open. Nina texted a little bit behind the piano bench while Mom performed for us.

  We clapped when she finished. “You finally got that last part, didn’t cha?” Helen said. Mom nodded, and Helen hugged her and rubbed her hands.

  “Good for you, Mom,” I said.

  “I liked it.” Nina came around and hugged her and kissed her cheek.

  Auntie Gina had made up her mind that everyone who came in and talked to Mom could say only good and nice things to her. We could only be hugging her and kissing her and telling her she was doing such a good job at everything she tried to do. She’d said that when she visited Mom when she was in a coma, she would make the doctors who were in there not talk in front of Mom about bad things that could happen. She always says that we should have seen her right after she woke up from the coma—she couldn’t even go to the bathroom by herself let alone find the words to tell someone that she even had to go at all. Now Mom was playing the piano. Auntie Gina would tell you that it’s because people said the right things in her presence.

  But still, she had a TBI (officially, a traumatic brain injury) and had to be introduced to us every time we came. We still had to tell her things about ourselves. I knew it was bad, but sometimes I just didn’t feel like every time we met telling her how much I loved cooking. I just wanted her to know it forever.

  Helen brought out the snack tray. We always braced ourselves for the hoards derves at the Place. I know it’s really spelled “hors d’oeuvres” from looking in my mom’s Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but me and Nina called them “hoards derves.” That’s what I’d say when we’d play fancy party when we were little. Nina would put on one of Auntie Gina’s dresses and high heels, and I’d serve pimento cheese and bologna on crackers.

  I always felt guilty eating the hard candies and stale popcorn and unsalted peanuts that the nurses brought out. A taste of the bland, everyday life there. I wished I could plop our whole kitchen into this place and make pasta for all the residents one day. Or I wished Mom could come home with us for dinner sometime. But really, I couldn’t imagine seeing her anywhere but here.

  There was this little hint of an idea that was happening in me on that day, something with food and Mom—how basically all I had of her was her cookbook, how she was kind of just as much a stranger to me as Dad was, really, even thoug
h I saw her every week. There was just too much else happening to make me fully know what to do with this idea yet, but it was there, hinting at me.

  At the Place, I always felt ashamed about this, but after a while it got boring. Maybe it wasn’t boredom but just too much longing for a miracle. They said that brain injuries were mysterious, and all victims recovered differently. So maybe she’d get back to normal someday, or maybe she wouldn’t.

  I liked that she could play the piano and knit and do all that, but it would have been good if she asked me about a thing I’d said the last time we saw her. Like, how was the first day of fifth grade? How did the spaghetti turn out?

  It would have been good if she could do some deducing, like in math, and figure things out: If Auntie Gina wasn’t with us, who had dropped us off? Why?

  It would have been good if she could have asked, “How do you like living with your dad?”

  Brussels Sprouts and Egg Whites for Din-Din

  Grandpa Falcon used to make Brussels sprouts and egg whites for dinner all the time. While we ate, the chickens in his slanting, homemade coops would bawk their heads off from the front yard. Auntie Gina loved this meal, but she’d say it was for hayseeds, that it was our duty as Italians to teach these Southerners to really mangia. But even though I was half Italian, I was also a hayseed, because I was born in Greensboro, just like Grandpa Falcon and my dad were.

  After I turned off the eggs and popped bread into the toaster, I tiptoed upstairs with an idea. Dad would be home soon from work, but for now, it was just me and Nina, who was texting on the couch.

  In the back bedroom, his fat, zipped-up duffel bag was on the floor. The bedspread was rumpled, but the bed was not even actually gotten into. Out in the bathroom it was all me and Nina’s stuff: toothbrushes, toothpaste, a hairbrush, the lavender soap Auntie Gina got us. Floss. Hair stuff in the little green thing. A big bottle of Nina’s new face cream stood in place of Auntie Gina’s old makeup in the medicine cabinet, and of course all Auntie Gina’s everyday things were gone with her. There was no man stuff anywhere. You’d think at least a toothbrush. It kinda felt like he was just visiting.