The Zippity Zinger #4 (3 page)

“Well, say hello,” Frankie said, “because he just arrived.”

Even though Frankie and Ashley are my best friends, I just couldn't tell them the truth. It sounded too crazy. One minute, I'm the worst ball thrower in history. The next minute, I throw like I'm on fire. And the reason is that I'm wearing my sister's red monkey socks. You see, that sounds crazy even to me and I'm the one who's saying it.

“Hey, I just remembered that my clothes are in the dryer,” I said. “I gotta go, guys. See you later.”

“Hank?!” Ashley called out as I bolted for the door.

“Can't do it, Ashley,” I shouted back without turning around.

Papa Pete, Ashley, and Frankie just stood there staring at one another.

Just as the door to the building closed behind me, I heard Papa Pete say, “I'll talk to him.”

“Well, good luck,” Frankie answered. “I know Zip, and he doesn't sound like he's in a listening mood.”

WHILE WE ATE OUR CRUNCHY DILLS that afternoon, Papa Pete tried to talk me into pitching for the Yellow Team. I said no. With or without monkey socks, a guy knows his limits.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I have learning challenges. Certain things in school are really hard for me, like reading and math and spelling. And certain things out of school are hard for me, too, like throwing and catching. There are so many things to concentrate on that my mind just sort of goes blank. My mind and my hands don't seem to like each other. They sure don't listen to each other.

I'm not bad at all sports. My best sport is archery, which I did at camp last summer. I even won a Master Archer pin for hitting ten bull's-eyes in a row. Too bad I don't live in Robin Hood's time. I would have been such a cool dude, running around in those green tights, shooting off my bow and arrow to protect people. Cool dudes with bows and arrows aren't too welcome on the Upper West Side of Manhattan these days.

After Papa Pete left, I went to my room to study for my social studies test. I was lying on my bunk bed with my headphones on and my book on the Hopi Indians open next to me. There was a really interesting picture of the oldest house in America that was built for the chief of the Hopi over one thousand years ago. I stared at the picture, thinking about all the things they didn't have way back then—toilets, skateboards, striped toothpaste, cell phones, Pop-Tarts. Of course, even if they did have Pop-Tarts, they couldn't have eaten them because they didn't have toasters, either.

“Hank! How many times do I have to call you?” I could hear my dad yelling through the headphones. He tapped me on the shoulder and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Don't do that, Dad. You scared me!”

“I've been calling you for the last five minutes,” he said.

“I was studying.”

“With headphones on?” he said. “You shouldn't be listening to music while you're studying. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“I'm not listening to music,” I said. “Here, listen for yourself.”

I handed my dad the earphones and he put them on.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It's Dr. Berger, reading from our social studies book.”

Dr. Berger is the learning specialist at my school, and she works with me sometimes to figure out how I can best study my way. She is really nice, and doesn't think I'm even a little bit stupid.

“She recorded some Hopi facts for me to listen to,” I told my dad. “She thinks maybe they'll stick in my head better if I listen to them while I'm looking at the book.”

“Sounds like that would be more confusing,” my dad said. “If the TV is on when I'm doing a crossword puzzle, I can't concentrate on either of them.”

“It's working for me, Dad,” I said. “I know so much about the Hopi that I didn't know ten minutes ago. Like did you know that—”

“Save it for the table,” my dad interrupted. “Dinner's ready.”

“What are we having?”

I always ask that question with some fear, and I have a good reason for that. My mom is what you'd call an experimental cooker. At her deli, the Crunchy Pickle, her goal is to bring lunch meats into the twenty-first century. So, instead of making salami and corned beef the regular way, she makes them out of tofu and soy and a bunch of other low-fat, low-taste things. At home, our kitchen is her science lab. She'll whip up a leek and soy-milk soufflé at the drop of a hat, and then throw in a side of mock tuna with bean sprouts just for fun. Most of her dishes taste like what I imagine paper tastes like.

“It looks like lasagna,” my dad whispered, “but I don't know what Mom has planted under that top layer of noodle. I do know this: The noodles are made from wheatgrass.”

“Do we have to mow them before we eat them?” I asked.

That made my dad laugh, which is not something that happens every day. Or even every week.

We sat down at the dining room table, which is actually the part of the living room that we call the dining room. It was the five of us Zipzers. That would be my mom, the lovely Randi Zipzer; my dad, Stan; my nine-year-old sister Emily; and let's not forget her not-so-lovely iguana, Katherine. Katherine was wrapped around Emily's neck like a scaly scarf.

I don't usually love it when Katherine joins us for meals. First of all, looking at a scaly face when you're eating doesn't do much for the old appetite. And, second of all, she has this long grey tongue that shoots out onto your plate and steals the best part of your dinner. If there is a best part, that is.

My mom cut into her green lasagna experiment, and put a huge helping the size of Montana on my plate.

“Dig in, everyone,” she said with a big smile. She looked so happy with her creation.

I dug in. My fork went in and found what was buried under the wheatgrass noodle. I don't know what it was, but let me just say this: Whatever it was made the wheatgrass noodle look delicious by comparison. It was dark brown with flecks of black. And it was oozing.

“What's this, Mom?” I asked. I was afraid of the answer. Very afraid.

“Mushroom puree with crushed blueberries,” she answered. “Taste it, honey.”

All eyes were on me. I put some of the mushroom puree on my fork and shoved it in my mouth quickly. I've found that if you don't breathe while chewing, you don't really taste what's in your mouth. I didn't breathe. I chewed and swallowed and took a big gulp of milk. Then I smiled at my mom who was waiting for my comment.

“Wow,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “Wow, wow, wow.”

“I knew you'd like it.” My mom smiled.

I looked over at Katherine and when my mom wasn't looking, slipped her a big bite of the lasagna. She shot her long tongue out, and faster than you could say “I'm going to barf now,” her tongue sprang back in her mouth and she buried her head in Emily's hair. I looked under the table for Cheerio.

“I hate to do this to you, boy,” I whispered, “but I'm a desperate man.”

I held a bite of the lasagna in my hand and slipped it under the table. Cheerio took one sniff and started spinning around in circles. He actually spun himself out from under the table, across the living room, and over to the front door. He wanted out, and I didn't really blame him.

“So, Hank, how's your studying going?” my mom asked.

“Great, Mom. My brain is getting so full of information about the Hopi.”

“It doesn't take much to fill up your pea brain,” said Emily. She is really smart, the total opposite of me, but I wasn't going to let her get away with that remark.

“Hey, Emily,” I said. “I'll bet you don't know how many kinds of corn the Hopi Indians grew.”

“Seven,” she said in her Miss Know-It-All voice.

“Twenty-four,” I answered. It's not often I know something Emily doesn't know, so I went in for the kill.

“I'll bet you don't know what a
kiva
is,” I grilled her.

“A chocolate bar from Switzerland,” she said.

“Hey, so close, yet so far,” I said. “It's an underground room that you can only get to by ladder where the Hopi built fires and had their religious ceremonies and sweated a lot.”

“That's great, Hank.” Emily made a face at me. “Now can we talk about something interesting, like the digestive system of the gecko?” Emily is a major reptile person. As if you couldn't tell.

“Emily, let Hank tell us about the Hopi tribe,” my mom said. “He's doing such a nice job studying for his test tomorrow.”

“I didn't know you could learn so much just listening to a tape,” I said. “Like, did you know that the Hopi think of themselves as caretakers of the Earth? They believe you can't own the land, but you have to share it with everybody. And they make these dolls called
kachinas
and they use them to pray for rain and other things they need.”

“Who doesn't know about
kachinas?”
Emily said.

“Oh, really. Then what kind of wood are they made out of?” I said.

“I know,” Emily answered. “I'm just not in the mood to say.”

“As if cottonwood was right on the tip of your tongue,” I said.

“Honestly, Hank, you learn three little facts and you think you're so smart,” Emily said. “Those of us who are going to be on the Brain Buster Team in the Olympiad have to know a million things like that.”

Everyone stopped eating and looked at Emily.

“Em, sweetheart, I didn't know you had been chosen for the Brain Buster Team!” my dad said. He gave her a big kiss on the cheek, barely missing Katherine, who stuck her snout out to get in on the action.

“My teacher strongly suggested that I lead the Blue Team to victory by becoming a Brain Buster,” Emily said, glancing over at me with her smarty pants look. “I was the first third-grader they asked.”

My dad smiled so big you could see that the wheatgrass had gotten stuck between almost every tooth.

“Oh, yeah? Well I have some Olympiad news myself,” I said before I even knew what was coming out of my mouth. “I am going to pitch for the Yellow Softball Team.”

My mouth wasn't listening, though. It went right on.

“Yeah, Ashley and Frankie were practically begging me today. They saw me throwing with Papa Pete in the courtyard and I was on fire.”

My dad picked up his glass of water with lemon wedges and held it up.

“Here's to my two Olympians,” he said, and took a big gulp.

“This pitching thing, that's a very exciting change for you, isn't it?” my mom said.

“I never missed the center of Papa Pete's glove. I was having a lucky day,” I said, taking a swig of my milk.

“Oh, speaking about lucky,” Emily said. “Mom, remind me to make sure I wear my lucky monkey socks on Tuesday for the Olympiad.”

I nearly choked on my milk.
Did she just say what I think she said?

“What do they look like?” I asked.

“The red socks with the pink monkeys stitched on them,” Emily said. “They always bring me luck. I wore them when I got one hundred percent plus ten extra-credit points on my math test. And I wore them when I got the solo part in the Winter Sing. And . . . ”

I didn't hear the rest of what she said. All I could do was look very slowly, so that no one would notice, down at my feet, which were covered in my sister's lucky monkey socks.

Maybe they
really were
the reason I could suddenly pitch.

No, it couldn't be.

No way.

AFTER DINNER, I TRIED to go back to studying for my social studies test. I had already finished listening to the tape, so I picked up my book and looked at the pictures. It had a whole page of pictures of
kachina
dolls. One was wearing moccasins with tiny beads. Another one had a cape made out of rabbit fur. In one hand he had a big spear, and in the other he was holding an orange, black, and yellow shield covered in feathers. But no matter how long I stared at those pictures, all I kept seeing were monkey faces on each doll.

I've learned that when I have a powerful problem in my brain, it hangs around in there and takes up all my thinking space until I deal with it. I definitely had monkey socks on the brain, which isn't very comfortable, so I decided to deal with it.

I dialed Frankie's number. You know when you really want to talk to someone, how it seems like the phone rings forever? That's what happened. It felt like it took fifteen rings before Frankie's dad answered.

“Hello, Dr. Townsend,” I said.

“Ah, it's the young Mr. Zipzer,” he said. “Always a pleasure to hear your mellifluous voice on the phone.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I had no idea what I was thanking him for. He's a professor of African-American Studies at Columbia University and he uses words that are a block long. They're so long, I don't even know how he gets them all out in one breath.

“Frankie was just talking about you at dinner. He said you're developing quite a rotation on the pitched ball.”

“Thank you,” I said again. This time, I thought I actually understood him.

“When did this nascent talent of yours emerge?” he said.

“Dr. Townsend, I would love to um ... conversate with you,” I said, “but I've got a situation that demands Frankie, so could we conversate later?”

“I understand the immediacy of your predicament,” he said.

I was hoping that meant good-bye. It must have, because he put down the phone and called for Frankie.