Kitchen Chaos

by Deborah A. Levine

  I sit down next to her and then notice Lillian in the back of the room hunched over her math notebook. “Hey, Lillian,” I call. “Come sit with us!” She looks up, smiles, and starts to collect her things. Frankie slams another book, and I kick her gently—but firmly—in the shin.

  Mr. McEnroe strolls past us on his way to shut the door. “Hello, girls,” he says (I can practically feel Frankie melting beside me). “It’s great to see how well the three of you are working together.”

  Frankie shoots Mr. Mac a smile that says, Well, what did you expect? while Lillian and I exchange a look and roll our eyes. I mean, I hope Lillian hasn’t picked up on the extent of Frankie’s snarkiness, but no way has she missed it entirely.

  Mr. McEnroe makes his way to the front of the room. “I have some exciting news to share today. At least I think it’s exciting, and I hope you will too.”

  Frankie nods vigorously in agreement, even though she has no idea what he’s talking about.

  “I’ve decided to add another component to our Immigration Museum project,” Mr. Mac continues. “Since we’ll be inviting all of your parents to join us, I thought it might be fun to give them an assignment of their own. To make things even more festive and inclusive, I’m going to ask your parents to bring in a dish representative of their cultural heritage for everyone to share. We can call the whole event ‘Museum Night’!”

  I look at Frankie and know what she’s thinking: Thank goodness her dad knows how to make some amazing Italian food, because her mom is definitely not going to be allowed anywhere near the kitchen for this assignment.

  Lillian is probably worrying that whatever traditional dish her mother decides to make will be so elaborate, it will outshine our own project.

  And me? I’m wondering where my mom will find the time to whip up anything more “homemade” than microwave popcorn. I make a note in my homework folder to call my dad tonight. It would be so cool if he could come.

  CHAPTER 20

  Frankie

  “DUDE, you are so dead!”

  Man . . . that’s just great. Goons. Here I am bringing Liza and Lillian over to start making some of the pieces of our project, and what are we greeted with as we enter the house but the unmistakable sound of thundering Goons. I motion for Liza and Lillian to come on in behind me. “Watch it, guys, I’m afraid we’re not alone. Keep your eyes open for projectiles and your heads down.”

  They both laugh like I’m kidding. I am so not.

  We put our stuff down in the hallway as far as possible from the monstrous pile of backpacks and skateboards that, unfortunately, means everybody is home. I just can’t win. I lead Liza and Lillian straight to the kitchen because there’s no point in confronting the enemy on an empty stomach.

  Oh, goodie, Dad and Nicky are already there. Deep breaths. Dad’s presence can sometimes keep things under control.

  They seem to be making something in a blender—very loudly.

  “Hi, Dad,” I start over the noise, but Nicky has seen us already and, squealing with excitement, rushes over to Liza, one of his favorite people in the world. He launches into the plot of a comic book about Greek gods that he’s reading. Not only does he love the Greek gods, he totally believes in them, and somewhere along the way he decided that Liza did too. She’s super nice to him, way nicer than I am.

  “Um, hi, Dad,” I say again. Still nothing. “DAD!” He shuts off the blender and turns around.

  “Hello, ladies!” He’s really charming, my dad, so that sounds less dorky than you’d think. “So nice to see you, Liza, and what’s your name, kiddo?” I introduce him to Lillian, right away to avoid another lecture from Liza about being rude.

  “Hi, Mr. Caputo,” they both say together, and then giggle. It’s not that funny.

  “Dad, remember how I said last night that we were coming here to work on our project? We just want to get a little food and start working.”

  “Sure thing, hon, sure thing. We had a ton of super-ripe fruit, so it seemed like a good day for smoothies. Help yourselves. And the avocados were turning, so I made some guacamole earlier. Grab those corn chips on the counter and dig in. Your brothers already blew through here, which is why I hid a pitcher of the smoothies. They should clear out of your hair soon. I think I heard them hunting down their gear for soccer practice.”

  He starts piling up assorted dishes and cleaning the kitchen. My dad likes his domain to be “shipshape,” as he says.

  Just then we hear another crash overhead, and this time the kitchen literally shakes. Liza and Lillian look around, probably wondering if we need to crawl under a table or something.

  “Sorry, guys, that’s just The Goons in motion. Let’s grab some food and spread out at the dining room table. If we’re lucky, they’ll be out of here soon.”

  While Nicky is still telling elaborate tales about Apollo and Hephaestus that nobody in their right mind could follow, I get our snacks together. Liza and Lillian are too nice to blow Nicky off, so I intervene. “Nicky! Cut it out. Right now! Nobody wants to hear it, okay?”

  For a minute he just stares at me, and I think I can see tears in his eyes. I actually start to feel bad, but then he looks at Liza, who gives him one of her biggest smiles. “Liza does.” Then he points to Lillian, who still appears to be listening to his nonsense too. “I like your new friend better than YOU, Frankie!”

  Now that I have everything on a tray, I lead the way to the other room. “I can live with that.”

  They help me push aside all the papers, folders, notices, mail, clean socks, and other stuff that collects, like dust, on our dining room table. I have no idea where it all comes from or how the six of us manage to eat here every day. I remember the serenity of Lillian’s house, and I’m more than a little embarrassed.

  “Sorry about that,” I say as I put out the snacks. “Nicky loves an audience.”

  Liza turns back to pull the pocket doors closed behind us. “Totally okay, Franks. You know I think he’s cute. At least he speaks in full sentences, which is more than I can say for my brother!”

  Lillian steps on a LEGO and looks startled. “Sorry, Lillian,” I tell her. “One of the hazards of Casa Caputo.”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” she says, carefully picking up the LEGO and setting it on a shelf. “I just don’t want to break anything.”

  “Oh, please,” I laugh. “Like they’d ever notice . . .” We attack the bowl of chips and guac and slurp down the smoothies. My dad definitely has a talent for whipping up something delicious out of whatever we happen to have around. Chances are he discovered the fruit in our smoothies buried under a pile of papers and minutes away from rotting, which is what inspired him to make them in the first place. No need to share my suspicions with Liza and Lillian, though.

  Just as we’re about to finally get down to work, the floor throbs and the pocket doors slam back into the walls. The Goons have arrived.

  “Hey, girls! And Frankie! Whatcha doing?” Leo, my oldest brother, booms. He booms everything he says. He’s permanently booming—Mom says he has no volume control. Joey just grins and ransacks the place, like a really moronic robber.

  “Ha-ha. What do you guys want? Dad promised you were out of here.”

  “What? And leave you girls here alone and defenseless? Francesca, how could you suggest such a thing?” Leo snickers again and then socks Joey in the arm. “DUDE, what did you do with the schedule? AM I going to have to kill you?”

  I notice that Liza is looking at him with a certain expression—and I recognize it. No way. No way does she think he’s cute. Impossible. I won’t allow it. Lillian, on the other hand, looks stunned, as though aliens have just landed in my dining room. Now, that is a normal reaction.

  “Why don’t you check the pocket in the master calendar?” I say, not caring if I sound like the know-it-all they say I am. “Isn’t that where all that stuff is supposed to go so Mom and Dad can keep track of it?”

  Leo scratches his head like a cartoon character, making
himself look even dumber than usual. “Duh, Frankie, why didn’t we think of that? ’CAUSE IT’S NOT THERE, genius!”

  Joey pulls a tattered sheet of paper from under the mail, waving it around like he’s found the golden ticket. “Got it!”

  Leo pumps his fist. “Yes!” He grabs his bag and then nods in our direction. “Later, gators. We’re out!”

  And then they’re gone, as quickly as they came. Like the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.

  I shake my head. “They are so repulsive,” I say, and get up to close the doors again. “Now, where were we?”

  “Frankie, you’re so hard on your brothers,” Liza says. “All of them. I mean, they’re not that bad. And at least it’s never dull around here.”

  Even Lillian agrees. “I thought your brothers were funny. My sister is so not funny. Or fun. She’s just perfect, which can get really boring to be around.”

  I give this some thought. For about half a second.

  “Perfect and boring? I’ll take it. My brothers are a nonstop disaster waiting to happen. You can try to be prepared, but it’s never what you think. I spent practically the whole day on Sunday trying to get melted wax out of my clothes because some genius—who wasn’t necessarily Nicky—left a crayon in his pocket that went through the laundry and melted all over the place. There were purple streaks on everything! And the whole time I was scrubbing my clothes with some nasty toxic ‘miracle’ cleaner, all I did was wish I were an only child. But a perfect sister sounds pretty good too. Perfect sisters don’t destroy everything in their path. Caputo Goons and Goon wannabes, on the other hand, do major damage before breakfast. Without even trying.”

  Instead of feeling bad for me, Liza and Lillian are laughing their heads off. Silly me, expecting sympathy.

  “Thanks for the support,” I say. Geez.

  When they finally get a hold of themselves, we actually do get down to work and start to tackle the details of our project, like plotting out the dioramas and making supply lists. The best diorama, I think, will be the one about bagels. Everyone loves bagels, right? But does everyone know who brought them to America? I seriously doubt it. They were brought here by Eastern Europeans, Jews mostly, and sold on food carts in big cities. Why the holes? So they could be stacked up on poles attached to the carts, and when a customer wanted one, all the seller had to do was slide it off. Our diorama will have tiny little bagels being sold by tiny little peddlers in tiny little caps, in the middle of a crowded street scene from the turn of the last century. Thinking about how this is actually beginning to shape up into a real project, I start to feel better. “Awesome” is starting to seem possible, and I don’t plan on handing in anything less than awesome to Mr. Mac.

  We’re deciding what to make for the other dioramas when there’s a loud explosion in the kitchen. All three of us jump out of our seats to see what’s going on and discover that Nicky has decided to make a smoothie for my mom when she gets home, only he forgot to put the top on the blender. Pink globs of cold, sticky smoothie splatter us the second we open the door, and big goopy drops plop onto our heads from the ceiling.

  So much for project planning. Liza and Lillian take off to wash the pink slime from their hair. They’re laughing as they go, but I don’t see what’s funny. Maybe one of The Goons should have just killed me when we walked in. At least that would have put me out of my misery.

  CHAPTER 21

  Lillian

  If there’s one food you can be sure never to find in our refrigerator, it’s cheese. There is nothing Chinese about cheese, and even though my parents have lived in America almost as long as they lived in China, they’ve just never “developed a taste for it,” as Chef Antonio would say. I, on the other hand, love cheese. One of my favorite things about moving to Brooklyn is going to the old Italian grocery stores on Saturday mornings and buying fresh-made mozzarella. If you order it salted—which you should—the guy behind the counter scoops up a big blob of it with his giant tongs and dips it into a vat of salty water before stuffing it into a container and topping it with an extra splash of salt water for good measure. The cheese is so fresh, the container warms your hands, and it’s almost impossible not to stick your fingers in and tear off a piece before you even leave the store.

  Why am I going on about cheese? Because it’s the theme of today’s cooking class, which means my mother is acting even snootier than usual. Unlike last week, when she turned into a living, breathing Wikipedia page about peppers, my mother hasn’t tried to wow the class with even a single fact about cheese today. Instead, while Chef is telling us that people have been making cheese for ten thousand years and that it’s mentioned in Greek mythology (Nicky would be excited!) and pictured in hieroglyphics on ancient Egyptian tombs (cool!), she’s got her arms crossed over her chest and a bored expression on her face. Whatever. Since Mama seems completely uninterested in cheese, maybe I’ll actually get to do some of the cooking today, instead of just helping her do it.

  Just as Chef Antonio is about to introduce our first recipe, the door to the studio slams open noisily and in come Liza and her mom. They’ve got Liza’s little brother, Cole, with them too, and he doesn’t seem very happy about the way Liza’s mom used his stroller to shove the door open. I’m relieved Liza made it—I was starting to worry—but her mom looks stressed out as usual, and I’m pretty sure they hadn’t planned on bringing Cole again.

  Chef rushes over and holds the door open for Ms. Reynolds and the stroller. “I am so sorry,” she says, spinning around to pick up the Matchbox car Cole just threw on the floor. “His ear’s been bothering him, and I think he’s getting another tooth . . . The sitter actually showed up, but at the last minute I just couldn’t leave him.”

  I make eye contact with Liza, who isn’t smiling. She rolls her eyes.

  “Por favor,” says Chef Antonio as he squats down to Cole’s level and hands him the car, “no apologies.” He stands and looks at Liza’s mom. “And no more babysitters. Your little boy is welcome to come here every week—my mother would like nothing better.” Chef gestures to the corner of the studio where Javier is slumped over his phone like always and Angelica is sitting in a window seat doing some kind of intricate needlework. When she sees Cole, she jumps up and claps her hands together, her perfectly penciled lips spreading into a wide smile.

  Liza’s mom unbuckles Cole’s stroller straps, and Angelica immediately swoops him up into her arms. He coos and hands her the Matchbox car, which she pretends to drive up one of his arms and down the other.

  “That’s very sweet of you,” Liza’s mom says as Cole practically bubbles over in giggles. “But too generous. He can be a real handful.”

  “Este chiquito?” Angelica says, leaning in to rub noses with Cole. “A handful of fun maybe! Right, papi?”

  Cole grabs two chubby fistfuls of Angelica’s curls and hollers, “More, more, more!”

  Liza’s mom looks horrified and is about to yank his hands away when Angelica makes it clear she doesn’t mind by giving Cole another nose rub and dancing him over to the window to look out at all the real cars. Liza looks relieved and, grabbing her mom’s hand, pulls her over to the big table, where the rest of us are trying to act like we haven’t been staring at them, transfixed by their family drama. Good thing I remembered to turn off the video camera.

  “Okay!” Chef Antonio bellows, clapping his hands. “The gang’s all here!” Embarrassed, Liza and her mom wave sheepishly at everyone. “Now,” Chef says, “where was I? Oh yes—my favorite question: How did people first discover that milk can become cheese? Does anyone know?”

  Immediately, all eyes are on my mother, who, until now, has blurted out an answer to every one of Chef’s questions practically before he’s even finished asking them. Mama raises her eyebrows, clearly taken aback. Apparently, the origin of cheese is not among her areas of culinary expertise.

  “How about someone other than MeiYin?” Chef quickly asks, saving the day. Relieved, my mother lets out a tiny, nervous laugh be
fore the superior expression settles over her face again.

  Mrs. Newlywed raises her hand halfway. She doesn’t usually say much, so, of course, everyone’s curious to hear her answer. I point my camera in her direction and start taping.

  “Um, this might sound disgusting, but if I remember correctly, a long time ago traders or herdsmen or people like that stored milk in animal stomachs—which contain the rennet that you need to turn milk into cheese. So, at some point, someone was carrying milk in a cow or sheep stomach, and when they went to pour it out, well, it wasn’t milk anymore.”

  Liza and Frankie both look as grossed out as I feel. Everyone else looks impressed, including my mother, even though I can tell she’s trying not to let it show.

  “Perfecto!” Chef Antonio booms, and gives Mrs. Newlywed a hearty round of applause.

  Mr. Newlywed looks surprised, as if he’s just discovered something new and fascinating about his wife. “What?” she says, giving him a playful shove. “I took food science as an undergrad.”

  “So,” Chef says, “now that we know how milk becomes cheese, we’re going to make some cheese of our own. On the prep table behind me is a sheep stomach for everyone—”

  “Ew!” Liza, Frankie, and I scream in accidental unison. A few others around the table gasp in disgust. Even Javier looks up from his phone.

  “Gotcha!” the chef cries, pointing at us. “Lucky for us, there are other ways to make cheese. No stomachs required—except for eating.”

  We all laugh, including Javier. I realize I’m aiming the camera at him and quickly turn it off. My cheeks get hot and I hope he doesn’t notice.

  Our first recipe is for an Indian cheese called paneer, which is really fun to make. You have to heat the milk until it almost boils and then add lemon juice, causing it to form these funny little clumps called “curds.” Then you strain the curds through a cheesecloth, wrap them up, and squeeze out all of the liquid.