Farah Rocks Florida

by Ruaida Mannaa

  Suddenly, there’s that gruff voice again. “What are you doing here?”

  I look over my shoulder and see Dr. Fisher.

  He’s scary enough, but now there’s something even scarier about him.

  In his right hand, he is holding a tiny, white skull.

  “Holy hummus!” I shriek, then jump up and run like lightning back to Grand Bums.

  Chapter 8

  Sitti is napping on the sofa. My heart is still hammering from seeing Dr. Fisher with a skull. I have to tell Mr. Delacroix he was right about that. While Sitti dozes, I sneak the rocks out of my pockets and run them under water in the bathroom sink. Then I wrap them in a towel and put them under my bed.

  I go on the Internet to see if I can find anything about the new rock I discovered, but there is nothing. I don’t even know what search terms to use.

  When Sitti wakes up, she asks me if I want to take a turn cooking something tonight for dinner.

  “I don’t know how to cook,” I tell her.

  She stares at me.

  “I can make sandwiches, but not anything that has to be cooked on a stove.”

  Her mouth hangs open in surprise. Then she shakes her head: “Can’t embroider. Can’t cook. Can barely speak Arabic.”

  She throws up her hands and tells me she’s taking the shuttle to go grocery shopping. Now, I’m annoyed with her for sure, so I say that I’m staying behind to do my schoolwork and call my parents. The truth is that I don’t want to be around her right now.

  Sitti leaves me her cell phone, and I call my parents.

  “Samir is okay,” Mama says after she answers the phone. “Want to talk to him?” Of course I do, because I haven’t really heard his voice since that night when he woke up sick.

  “Hi, Faw-wah,” he says in a whisper-soft voice. His voice is low. He sounds nothing like my brother, who is always a huge wave of energy and fun.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Sleepy,” he says. “But guess what? I have a TV in my woom.”

  He tells me that the Lius came to visit him, and they brought food for Mama and a Tommy Turtle DVD collection for him. That’s been his favorite cartoon character basically since he was born.

  Later, Mama comes back on the phone and tells me that his surgery for VSD is set for two days from now. “They’re waiting until he gets a little stronger. They want him to be ready,” she says. “He will be fine, inshallah,” she says calmly. “How are things going with Sitti?”

  Here’s what I want to say: She loves me. I know that. But she’s bossy. She thinks I don’t know how to do anything. And she cleans all day even when there is nothing to clean.

  Here’s what I actually say: “Great, Mama. Everything is great.”

  My teachers at the Magnet Academy prepared packets of homework and sheets for me to complete while I am in Florida. For a language arts assignment, I need to look up Sparta online in the student encyclopedia. But instead, I do what I have been doing almost every day: I Google VSD.

  The websites all have the same basic information:

  VSD is a common type of heart defect, often found among prematurely born children. It is a hole in the wall that separates the two lower chambers of the heart. It often requires surgery to be repaired.

  So much for focusing on Sparta.

  I pick up Sitti’s embroidery instead and try to work on my stitches. Cross over and then back around to form the x, like she taught me.

  I wish I could take my thread and stitch up the hole in Samir’s heart myself. That would make everything all right again.

  Because Sitti is still not back, I take the embroidery and head down to the dining hall. It is empty except for Cal, who is preparing dinner. He passes me an orange soda. I try to give him Sitti’s plastic card so he can charge me, but he just waves me off.

  “Thank you!” I say.

  “You’re welcome,” he says, giving me his huge smile. “It’s nice for all these old folks to have a young person around.”

  I sit by the big fountain and work on my cross-stitch. I place Sitti’s piece, the picture of the bulbul, in front of me to use as a model.

  Suddenly someone behind me says, “Why are you stitching a Passeriforme?”

  It’s Dr. Fisher, and I look around wildly to see where Cal went. Of course, he’s nowhere to be seen.

  I’m alone with the Grouch.

  The Grouch who collects skulls.

  I look back at the old man, standing there, with his hands in his shorts pockets. His shirt is like the one he wore on the plane—cotton, with buttons down the front and big, green palm leaves stamped all over it.

  “It’s a bulbul,” I say. It sounds like I am squeaking.

  “Speak up, girl,” he barks. “What did you say?”

  “It’s a bulbul,” I repeat.

  “Ah… ,” he says, pausing. “Yes, a Pycnonotus xanthopygos.”

  “A what?” I ask, staring at him.

  “A white-spectacled bulbul. It’s known for that yellow vent.”

  “What’s a… a vent?” Now I’m curious.

  “It’s that patch on its… well, on its backside.”

  And then he does something I completely don’t expect.

  He blushes.

  The Grouch from the airplane actually blushes.

  “Backside is not a bad word, just so you know,” I tell him kindly because maybe when he was a little kid, a long, long time ago, it was.

  “Well, thanks for that.” He examines my stitching. “I didn’t know that Minotaurs can embroider. Is Fay teaching you?”

  I nod. “I’m not very good yet.”

  “No,” he agrees, “you’re not.”

  I blink because I cannot believe that he is so rude! But I’m starting to think that this is just his personality. “Well, there’s a lot of counting,” I explain. “And sometimes I mess up.”

  “You will improve.” He says it like a command. Not like, Don’t worry, you will get better, but, Hey you! You WILL do better. Then he gives me a strange look. “Why did you scream when you saw me earlier?”

  I really wish Cal would walk by now. Right now would be a good time.

  “It was just an odd reaction,” he continues, “don’t you think? I mean, I know we don’t have a lot in common. You’re a Minotaur and I’m a human, but isn’t screaming a little dramatic?”

  Holy hummus, did he just make a joke? I wonder. I think he did, and that gives me the courage to be honest with him.

  “Well, maybe it’s because you were walking around carrying a skull,” I say hesitantly and lift up my shoulders. “Like, who does that?”

  “I am a scientist,” he says, sniffing the air as if there is a bad odor suddenly. “And specifically, I am an ornithologist. Do you know what that is?”

  “Nope.”

  “A scientist who studies birds. I collect the remains of birds—their bones, their skulls—when I find them.”

  “Okay.”

  He bends down until he is looking me right in the eye. “They are already dead when I find them,” he says, as if to make sure I understand.

  “That’s… good to know,” I say. He kind of snickers, as if he liked my joke. Except that I wasn’t joking.

  “And what were you doing in the woods?” he asks.

  I tell him about the strange rocks I found. He tells me to bring them down to breakfast one day so he can examine them.

  Then, without even saying goodbye, he turns and walks out the door.

  “You okay, there?” asks Cal, who appears suddenly, carrying a huge sack of rice over his shoulder.

  “I think so.” I watch Dr. Fisher’s tall form, heading out toward the pond at Grand Bums.

  “He’s a strange man,” says Cal.

  Yesterday, I would have agreed.

 
Today seems different.

  Today, I think maybe Dr. Fisher is just a lonely, sad person.

  Chapter 9

  Allie calls me the next day to tell me all the news from the Magnet Academy.

  Our friend Brian Najjarian got picked to go on a special field trip to Washington, D.C., to visit some of the Smithsonian museums.

  June Jordan, our friend from writing club, wrote a new poem that is being printed in the school’s newsletter.

  And Enrique LeBrand scored the winning points in the school’s big basketball game.

  “Ms. Maximus said on the announcements that the Magnet Academy’s basketball team has never been so good, and she said Enrique was the star!” Allie says in excitement.

  “That’s so cool! He must have been happy.”

  “He was blushing like crazy,” Allie says, laughing. “I wish you could have seen it,” she says wistfully.

  Suddenly, I miss her and all my friends so much that a big ball of emotion starts growing in my chest. I just let Allie talk and talk. I’m afraid to say anything for a second because I’m afraid I will cry. I miss Samir and my parents and even, sort of… just a little, Ms. Maximus.

  I have been here in Florida for nearly two weeks, and Sitti reminds me every day that I don’t know how to embroider, I don’t know how to cook, and I stumble over words in Arabic.

  Before I came, Mama told me to be good and make Sitti happy. I have never tried so hard at something and still failed.

  “Hey, we still need an idea for our Rock Stars presentation,” Allie reminds me. “I’m stuck.”

  I tell her about the strange stones that I found in the forest here at Grand Bums. “I don’t know what they are yet, but there is someone here who might help me,” I tell her.

  “There’s an actual forest behind your grandma’s building?”

  “Well, not really,” I say. “It’s more like a pond and then a patch of trees.”

  “So, not a forest.”

  “No.”

  “So, why’d you call it a forest?” she asks in confusion.

  “Because forest sounds more interesting.”

  She giggles. “I miss you, Farah Rocks.”

  Mama and Baba call me an hour before Samir’s surgery.

  “He will be okay, Farah,” they both say, except I am tired of hearing the word okay. What does that even mean? Does it mean he will be back to normal, running and playing and reading? Or does it mean that he will just be alive, but different, and someone I don’t even recognize?

  Why don’t adults just trust you enough to tell you the truth? Maybe it’s because they don’t know the truth.

  Sitti talks to them too, and she tells them, “I will pray for him,” and then hangs up the phone. She takes my hand and hauls me to the chapel, where we light candles for Samir again and she sits and prays on her rosary.

  Strangely, I am calm again in the chapel with her, listening to her voice. She is repeating some prayers in Arabic. I know them from church, but I like the way they sound in her voice, like whispers hovering in the air between us.

  Back in the condo, though, my worries creep back. I start to read, but then put the book down. I walk around the apartment, but there is nowhere to go, and how many times can you pace around a small room anyway? I go to my own room, close the door, and pull out the towel from under the bed. I carefully take out my mystery rocks and stare at their lines and colors.

  But I have to admit, even these don’t interest me right now. Not when Samir is in a hospital room, having his heart stitched back together.

  Sitti knocks on my door, and I shove everything quickly under the bed.

  “Why are you on the floor?” she asks.

  “I, uh…”

  “Come on,” she says briskly. “It’s time for a lesson.”

  She decides that I need to learn how to cook.

  “I can make sandwiches,” I say again.

  “Arab girls cook. And they cook very well,” she says, like it’s a fact. Like it’s something I have been missing. I wonder if she would stare up at Ms. Maximus, right in the eye, and tell her that cooking should be a part of the Magnet Academy classes.

  She would. She would do it, I am sure.

  “What should we start with?” she mutters to herself, looking around her kitchen. “Something easy.”

  “Hummus?” I suggest. When she nods, I open the cabinets and look around. I find eight bottles of olive oil, two bags of dry lentils, and a jar of tahine. “Where’s the chickpeas?” I ask. “I don’t see any cans.”

  “Cans?” She almost shouts this word, and even though she is little, she is loud. I jump back so hard that I end up sprawled on the kitchen floor.

  “Yeah, cans,” I tell her, standing up. “Cans of chickpeas.”

  “Oh, my goodness, my goodness… ,” she mutters again, and then she opens another cabinet and takes out an old coffee container. Instead of coffee, though, it’s filled with hard, dry chickpeas. “We have to make them fresh, not from a can,” she mutters.

  She tells me to fill a small pot with exactly four cups of chickpeas and then fill the pot with water to the brim.

  “Okay, now what?” I say after I’ve done that.

  “Now, we wait,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “They have to soak for a couple of hours, and then we will cook them.”

  “Oh. Why soak them first?”

  She pulls out one bean and squeezes it. “It’s dry,” she explains in Arabic, “so it’s hard. We have to get water inside of it first, so the cooking doesn’t take so long.” She pauses. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Even though she speaks superfast, I do. I follow every word she says.

  “So the water gets soaked in through the skin?” I ask her in Arabic.

  She turns on the light above the stove and holds the bean under it. “Look here,” she says. She pulls off her reading glasses and holds them up to the bean. Her reading glasses become like a magnifying glass, and the bean looks five times bigger. “There is a small hole, here,” she points.

  “I see it.”

  “Every bean has a hole like this. So the water gets in, and makes the bean softer. Then, when we cook it, it will cook faster.”

  I have to admit that is pretty cool. I start to pull other beans out of her cabinet—red beans, black beans, speckled beans. Every one of them has a hole, she says, like a little mouth to drink water.

  “So what do we do while we wait?” I ask.

  “We bake bread.”

  For the next two hours, we mix dough in two big pots. Sitti shows me how to measure carefully, how much water to add to a specific amount of flour, how much yeast and salt to mix in. “You have to measure correctly,” she says.

  One time, I accidentally add too much flour, and she stands there, figuring out in her head how much more yeast she now needs to add to the bowl to even it out. More math!

  The dough feels so good under my hands. I have to use my shoulders and elbows when I push the big mound to get all the air pockets out. It’s like playing with clay, and I think this is the first real fun I have had since I arrived.

  Sitti goes to the closet and brings back a stack of clean, soft, white sheets, which we spread on the table and the counter. She shows me how to form the dough into flat ovals and lay them carefully over the sheets. I’ve never made pita bread before, not even with Mama.

  When we have thirty pancake-like doughballs lying everywhere, Sitti covers them with more sheets, as if she is putting a baby to bed.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we wait.” She is secretly laughing at me. I can tell by the way her lips press together, like she is trying not to crack up.

  “Cooking requires a lot of waiting,” I complain.

  “Sometimes, you have to wait for good th
ings.”

  We check on the beans, then she tells me to sweep the floor while she dusts. There is no dust anywhere, and I only collect a tiny pile of dirt in my dustpan. She bends down to look at it, and then looks at me like it’s my fault there was even one speck in her house.

  Finally, she says, “The dough has risen,” and she fires up the oven. She explains, “The yeast here is like a hungry creature. It eats away at the bread, and it makes it less tough.”

  I peer at the bread. “It looks the same to me.”

  She clucks her tongue against her teeth, like I’ve said something wrong. “Inside the bread now, there are little bubbles of gas. See?” She uses her finger to show how tall the bread pancake is. “It’s higher than before. The yeast created lots of air pockets inside to lift it up.”

  “You’re talking like the yeast is alive,” I say, giggling.

  She glares at me. “It is alive.”

  I nod in agreement, though I think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. We lay the dough pancakes on wide, metal trays and put them in the oven. As soon as one tray is done, we pull it out and slide in the next one. Sitti dumps the finished bread loaves on the white sheets so they can cool off.

  There is a knock on the door, and Sitti tells me to answer it because she needs to pull out the next tray. Outside her door are Mr. Delacroix, Cal, Mitch, and Agatha.

  “Fay is baking again, isn’t she?”

  “We can smell it in the whole building.”

  “You want eat?” Sitti says in her English, coming up behind me.

  “Yes!”

  And they all surge in, like the quacking ducks at the pond.

  Sitti tells me to close the door, and I peek out into the hallway to check if anyone else is there. At the end of the hallway, his eyes closed, sniffing the aroma in the air, is Dr. Fisher.

  He opens his eyes and sees me, then hurries away.

  Chapter 10

  After everyone leaves, Sitti and I try to call Mama and Baba on their cell phones, but there is no answer for a while. We clean the kitchen and start boiling the chickpeas to make hummus.