Sauerkraut

by Kelly Jones

  Try box on. Measure where eyeholes go. Mark with chalk. Take box off.

  When a non-ghostly adult is present, carefully cut square eyeholes with the box cutter.

  Draw evenly spaced chalk lines for where you want the bottoms of the windows to go.

  Cut up lots of tinfoil windows.

  Stick tinfoil windows in rows along the lines.

  Rub off the chalk lines.

  Test out your skyscraper costume with some cool moves!

  “We should cut out some armholes,” I told him.

  “That’s what I thought too,” Eli said. “But Ms. Izdebski said you still can’t move your arms enough to be useful, and it looks better this way. Plus, she says you need to hold the box steady from the inside so it doesn’t roll around on your head.”

  We measured to find out what part of Eli’s arms could stick out of the box, but his teacher was right: the box was going to get in the way.

  “I don’t know, man. This looks tough to dance in,” I told him.

  But Eli just smiled. “That’s why we’re starting now, so I have time to practice in it. You should see the advanced-level costumes!”

  While Eli put on Uncle Gregor’s coveralls and gloves and sprayed the box, I read the articles Harry had found for me about how to build a computer, and thought about the games I wanted to put on it. Then we decided it was time to work on the seesaw.

  HD AND ELI’S GOAT OBSTACLE COURSE: THE SEESAW

  SUPPLIES:

  One cylindrical log (about 10 to 12 inches in diameter)

  One wide board (about 8 inches wide and 8 feet long)

  Eight 3-inch deck screws

  TOOLS:

  Measuring tape

  Pencil

  Safety goggles

  Drill

  Drill bit that’s a little smaller around than your screws

  Screwdriver bit that fits your screws

  STEPS:

  Measure the length of the board and make a line across the middle with a pencil. Measure and mark two more lines across the board an inch away from the middle, on either side.

  Do a dry run: Lift the board up so that the middle of the board is on top of the log.

  Use your common sense to evaluate your design: Is the end of the seesaw sticking up so high that a goat could fall off of it and get hurt? Could a goat on the lower end get catapulted into the sky if someone jumped up on it?

  Ask a responsible adult who is not a ghost to supervise so you can use the drill.

  Put the board on a flat surface. Put your safety goggles on. Put the drill bit into the drill.

  Drill four holes along each line on either side of the middle of the board.

  Have someone hold the board in place on top of the log. Carefully drill through the holes you already drilled and into the log. (Watch out for goats—they like to come see what you’re up to.)

  Take out the drill bit and put in the screwdriver bit. Carefully screw the board onto the log.

  Wiggle the board and make sure it’s secure.

  Stand back, and let the goats try it out!

  Mr. Z. came over to supervise our drilling and box-cutting. When Rodgers and Hammerstein jumped on the seesaw, he said he’d probably never laughed that hard in his life, and that he admired our inventive young minds.

  * * *

  When we got home, we found out that Mr. Z. had taught Oma about the History Channel, so she could catch up on the world, and Oma had sent Mr. Z. to pick things up at the store for her, and had baked her cherry kuchen.

  “Now we will have a kaffeeklatsch!” she said, beaming.

  “Um, I’m not supposed to drink coffee,” Eli said. “But whatever that is smells really good.”

  “Sorry, Oma—Mom’s going to be mad if we have dessert right before dinner,” I said. “House rules.”

  Oma frowned, but she didn’t argue. At least, not after Mom came home and explained the dessert rules to her.

  So after dinner, Oma served us all pieces of her cherry kuchen on Mom’s special plates.

  Dad was the first one to take a bite. He closed his eyes and stopped chewing.

  “Do you need to spit it out, Mr. Schenk?” Eli asked him, putting his fork down.

  “Spit out my Kirschenkuchen?” Oma asked, glaring at Eli.

  Dad opened his eyes and smiled. “No, no—it’s delicious. It reminds me of my aunt’s kuchen. I haven’t tasted it since she died.” Dad’s eyes looked kind of like he might cry, even though he was still smiling.

  Oma settled back, and patted his hand. Perhaps hers was good too, she wrote. But I will teach you how to make mine.

  Dad nodded. “I’d like that, Oma.”

  “You better learn fast, though,” Eli told him.

  “Why is that?” Dad asked.

  “We think Oma’s going to level up at the fair, remember?” I told Dad. “She might not be around after that.” I got kind of a lump in my throat when I said it.

  Dad looked like maybe he did too.

  After we finished our kuchen (it was pretty good—like cake with cherries on top), Oma handed Dad the photo she’d picked out. Mr. Z. had helped her frame it.

  “How about here?” Dad asked, holding it up in the middle of the wall.

  Oma studied it carefully, then nodded at me, so I told Dad to go ahead.

  “Would you tell us about the photo you chose?” Mom asked her while Dad got out the hammer and one of the special art hangers he’d brought home.

  Oma picked up her pencil. This is a photo of my grandson, Hans Gerhard, when he was six years old. A neighbor girl had a camera, and Hans Gerhard begged her to take a photograph of him.

  I stared at the photo. My granddad—Oma’s grandson—was just a little kid, giggling at the camera like Asad does. The lady sitting next to him had her arm around him. She was smiling at the camera.

  “Is that you, Oma?” Dad asked.

  Oma nodded. Yes. Every day, after school, we would take a walk together, and then we would have a kaffeeklatsch: cocoa for him, coffee for me, and something sweet, and we would tell each other about our days. My Kirschenkuchen was his favorite.

  “You must really miss him,” Mom said quietly.

  Yes, Oma wrote. Now, who would like more kuchen?

  After that, Mom and Oma came to an agreement: We could have a kaffeeklatsch with Oma in the afternoons when we got home, as long as it was a small piece of something not too sugary, with milk, not cocoa, at least two hours before dinner.

  “If you write us a list, we’ll pick up whatever ingredients you need,” Dad told her. “And I would prefer that another adult is home when you use the oven or stove.”

  I have been cooking since before you were born, Oma wrote, frowning.

  “Yeah, but what if there was a fire, and your sauerkraut burned up because nine-one-one couldn’t hear you?” Eli asked.

  “And your photos and everything?” I added. “And our house?”

  Very well, Oma wrote. Hans Dieter, I will need you to find some of my things for me.

  So we made a list.

  FIND FOR OMA:

  Recipe cards

  Two square cake pans

  Gugelhupf pan (kind of like a Bundt pan, with a hole in the middle, but Oma says Mom’s Bundt pan won’t work, she needs hers instead)

  Batter bowl (a big green glass bowl with a handle)

  Poppy-seed grinder (has a handle that turns)

  And we must invite Mr. Ziedrich again tomorrow, she wrote.

  “I have an idea for how you can do that, Oma. Do you know how to type?” I asked.

  “Of course I can type,” Oma said. “You have found a typewriter for me?”

>   I smiled. “Not exactly…Mom and Dad, can I help Oma get her own email address?”

  I did at least an hour of sorting every day, after we took the goats to see Mr. Z. Then Eli worked on his recital dance and especially on his solo. (I think he comes up with a new version every single day.)

  Sorting out Uncle Gregor’s basement didn’t go fast, because there were a LOT of boxes. But it wasn’t really hard either. I mean, maybe somebody can use four bags of sweaters with fake pearl buttons, but Mom said not her, and Oma said she never gets cold anymore, and Eli said it might freak people out to see a sweater flying around anyway, like it surprised Dad when she forgot to take her apron off and came to say hi. So I knew which pile to put all those in.

  I labeled a new pile too: stuff to ask Oma about. I put all the kitchen stuff in there, and all the photos, and anything with old handwriting that was hard to read. That way, I wouldn’t give anything she really wanted away by accident.

  Mom stopped by a couple of times to pick up bags and bags of clothes with no holes or anything, to take to a place out near the farms she works with. (You don’t give people stuff that’s already trashed, because that’s not respectful.) And Dad took the boxes of records and fourteen lamps to the Maple Falls thrift store on his lunch break. After that, we had a LOT more space to work.

  Then, when we got hungry or bored, we made some lunch, and worked on Eli’s costume and my computer notes, and on the GOAT Obstacle Course, and read, and thought up more ghost research to try during our kaffeeklatsch.

  Oma stayed home and got ready for our kaffeeklatsch. Mr. Ziedrich came over most days before we got back, so Oma could bake stuff, and sometimes Oma invited Ms. Stevermer too.

  I have to say, kaffeeklatsches are a pretty good invention. I kept Mr. Z. up to date on how my projects were going, and Eli tried out his solos before a test audience. We filled Oma and Mr. Z. in on the comics we were reading, and Mr. Z. shared what he’d been reading about new inventions and scientific discoveries and some pretty cool projects we might build someday. And of course Oma told us all about how the sauerkraut was doing. (Pretty good, I guess, even though it just sat in the crock smelling like old socks. At least, it wasn’t moldy.)

  Ms. Stevermer always asked how our ghost research was coming along. So we shared our notes with her, about how far Oma could go from her crock, and how we’d proven that the goats could hear her and see her, and what happened when Oma took a bite of something (it fell straight through her mouth and onto the floor, and Oma said she couldn’t even taste it), and how long Oma could hold her breath if she stuck her face in the bathroom sink when it was full of water (we all got bored after twenty minutes). We told her our theory that maybe our ages had something to do with why we could see Oma and no one else could. She thought we should explore that further, when we had time.

  I’d found a couple more of Oma’s recipes, so she made these moon-shaped almond cookies that were pretty good. And I found her bowl with the handle, and she decided she liked Mom’s cake pans better than hers anyway. But I hadn’t found her special gugelhupf pan or her poppy-seed grinder yet. (I thought I did the other day, but it turned out to be somebody else’s meat grinder, and Oma said no way, we definitely could not give that a try with her poppy seeds, so that went back to the pile that somebody else could use. And we already tried putting poppy seeds in the food processor. Didn’t work.)

  When we were done catching up, Mr. Z. asked Oma a lot of questions about her family, and saved all the answers in a stack for us.

  I caught Dad reading them in the kitchen one day after dinner while Oma was playing checkers with Asad in the family room, and Eli was doing hockey-style announcing for them.

  Dad saw me, and put the page down with a smile.

  “You know you could ask her stuff too,” I told him. “She loves to talk about her family.”

  Dad nodded. “You’re right, I should. I was just thinking…Do you remember your grandma Schenk?”

  “Not really,” I told him. “She didn’t make sauerkraut, did she?”

  Dad shook his head. “Nah, she was interested in other stuff. I wish I could have asked her some of these things before she died, though. Then I could tell you and Asad more about her.”

  “Sorry, Dad—I think if she was in the basement, Oma or I would have run into her by now. Tell you what, though: I’ll find a binder, and we can make a section for Oma, and a section for Grandma Schenk, and maybe Grandpa Schenk and Great-Aunt Gerta too, and you can write down whatever you do know,” I said.

  Dad smiled, even though he still looked kind of sad. He reached out and gave me a hug. “That’s a great idea. And who knows, maybe your uncle remembers some stories about them.”

  We still got to have dessert after dinner too, so we could keep up with everything Oma baked. Asad begged her to make brownies, but she just smiled and told him she’d make something he would love. (She made him something called zwieback that she said was a cookie, but it looked more like a cracker, and kind of tasted like one. It had raisins. It didn’t go well.)

  In the sixteenth box, I found another frame.

  Mom got to pick the next photo for our wall. It was of her in her fancy wedding dress, sitting on Dad’s lap at their wedding. Uncle Gregor is pretending to push Dad’s wheelchair at the camera person, and Grandmom and Grandpop Davis and Aunt Nia are all laughing.

  Mom told us about how she and Dad had been talking about getting married when their army contracts were up. When Dad got injured right before then, they decided to do it as soon as he got out of the hospital, even before he got used to his new leg.

  “I told your dad I was not going to sit on the sidelines at my own wedding, though,” Mom said, laughing. “So I danced every single dance in that ridiculous dress—with your aunt Nia, your uncle Gregor, my parents, and all our friends.”

  “Didn’t you get bored watching everyone else dance?” Eli asked Dad.

  Dad shook his head. “I could have watched her all night,” he said, smiling. “Besides, she saved all the slow dances for me.”

  “Dance with me too!” Asad said, and Mom and Dad laughed and led him into the kitchen, where there was more room for dancing.

  Oma floated over to where Eli and I were sitting. “Did my grandson come to the wedding?” she asked, still looking at Mom’s photo.

  “Nah, Grandpa Schenk died before they got married, when Mom and Dad were in the army and Uncle Gregor was still in school,” I told her. “Mom only met him once or twice, when they were on leave.”

  Oma stared from Mom’s photo to hers, and back again. Maybe she was crying, or maybe her eyes were just glowing more than usual.

  * * *

  The day I finished sorting the twenty-sixth box in Uncle Gregor’s basement, I found Oma’s special gugelhupf pan and poppy-seed grinder in a box with a bunch of National Geographic magazines. I took them all out and shook them, and a recipe card fell out, for something called Mohngugelhupf. I put the magazines in the pile that someone else could use, and packed the rest up to give to Oma at our kaffeeklatsch.

  “This is wonderful, Hans Dieter!” Oma cried, swooping in to give me a ghostly kiss on the forehead. She stuck her ghostly fingers into the poppy-seed grinder. A few very dusty poppy seeds fell out the bottom.

  “Careful, Oma!” I told her. “I bet that thing could take your finger right off.”

  “Wait, did you have to flatten out your fingers or something to get them in there?” Eli wanted to know, opening his notebook. “Could you stick your finger through these fork prongs so I can see how it works?”

  “Perhaps I could clean that for you,” Mr. Z. said.

  Oma floated the poppy-seed grinder over and dropped it in Mr. Z.’s hands. “Tomorrow we can make my Mohngugelhupf!”

  “Actually, Eli and I are going to Rose’s RadioJunkYardBirds tomorrow,” I told her. “I need to
make a list of exactly what components I’m buying for my project.”

  “That can wait,” Oma said. “Tomorrow is Mohngugelhupf day! You will love it as much as my grandson did.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to hurt Oma’s feelings, but I wasn’t sure how to tell her I really wanted to do my plan, not hers.

  “I bet we will, Mrs. S.! Well, unless it has raisins in it,” Eli said. “But we can’t help you tomorrow, because this is the next step of HD’s plan, and we have to keep him on track for the fair. You know how that goes.”

  Oma’s ghostly form drooped a little. “But…I wanted to bake this with him.”

  “Sorry, Oma, but Eli’s right,” I said. “I could help you the next day, though.” It might get me a little off track on the basement project, but I could probably catch up, if I skipped the obstacle course for a couple of days.

  Mr. Z. came back in, drying off the pieces of the poppy-seed grinder with a dish towel. “I haven’t used one of these since I was a boy, helping my oma.”

  Oma grabbed her pencil. Tell Hans Dieter how much he will love helping me tomorrow, she wrote, and shoved the paper at Mr. Z.

  Slowly he set the pieces down, and picked up the paper, looking at my face.

  “HD finished box twenty-six today.” Eli opened my notebook and showed him the steps of my plan. “We’re supposed to go to Rose’s tomorrow and make a list.”

  “Ah, I see,” Mr. Z. said.

  “Well, I do not see,” Oma muttered.

  Mr. Z. settled back into his chair and tapped his fingers together thoughtfully. “The first time I tasted Mohngugelhupf, I knew it was magic,” he said at last. “We were visiting my oma—yes, for kaffeeklatsch—and she took the pan out of the oven. I could not imagine what could make that glorious smell!”