The Manny Files book1 (10 page)

On my birthday last year Uncle Max and I rolled in the mud.

This year my birthday is on the last day of school. Ms. Grant said that I could bring cupcakes or cookies to celebrate. Everybody brings cupcakes or cookies. I wanted to bring something original.

Like wedding mints. Or mocha lattes. Or kebobs.

I finally decided on Dutch babies, which are kind of like crepes but have more powdered sugar. We usually have Dutch babies for breakfast, but this year they would be the perfect birthday treat to set the standard for all of next year’s parties.

The morning of the last day of school and, most important, of my party, the manny helped me mix flour, eggs, milk, and sugar into a bowl and then fry them in a pan like large pancakes. The manny sang, “Yes, sir, that’s Dutch baby. No, sir, don’t mean maybe,” while he collected the powdered sugar, lemons, and strawberries to take to school.

The manny drove me to school because I had too much stuff to carry on the bus and Mom was afraid that I would drop the Dutch babies on the floor of the school bus and they would be trampled.

I said, “Trampled babies would probably make the front page of the newspaper.”

The manny laughed at my joke.

Mom rolled her eyes the same way that Lulu does.

I told Ms. Grant that my party treat would be appropriate for a first-thing-in-the-morning party. She smiled when I said the word
appropriate.
I think that won her over, because she held up her hands and said, “Quiet, y’all, Keats is fixin’ to hand out a birthday surprise. Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.”

I think the manny won her over too. When
we walked in, he said, “Wow, Keats, she’s even prettier than you said.” I looked over at Craig to make sure that he didn’t hear what the manny had said. Craig didn’t hear. He was searching through his messy desk for a pencil.

Ms. Grant flipped her hair like she was one of Charlie’s Angels and asked the manny if he wanted to stay and help with the party. The manny sat in a desk that was way too small for him. It was one of those desks that had the chair attached to it, so he couldn’t scoot the chair out. He squeezed lemons on the Dutch babies and covered them with powdered sugar and strawberries while the kids sang to me.

Then Sarah sang, “And many more on channel four, Scooby Doo on channel two, naked lady on channel eighty.”

Everybody laughed. Ms. Grant wasn’t going to until she saw the manny laughing.

Then Scotty sang, “This is your birthday song, it isn’t very long,
hey!
”

“All right, y’all, that’s enough,” said Ms. Grant. “Remember, nobody gets to take a bite until the birthday boy takes one first. Keats, do you want to have your friend help you?”

She pointed to the manny.

The manny stood up and started walking with the whole desk and chair attached to his bottom.

The kids all laughed.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

He removed the desk and followed me, holding the plate while I passed out Dutch babies to my classmates.

“What are those?” asked Craig.

“Dutch babies,” I said.

“Oooh! I’m not eating any babies,” said Craig.

The manny said, “Don’t worry. There aren’t any bones, and we removed the eyes.”

The kids all laughed again, and I put a Dutch baby on Craig’s napkin.

When I was just about finished passing out the treats, I looked over at Craig. He had powdered sugar on his lips and he was leaned over so that his elbow covered his Dutch baby. He looked like he’d been kissing the chalkboard.

I didn’t even care that he hadn’t waited for me to have the first bite.

He liked them and I knew it.

The manny gave me a high five and said, “I’ll be back to pick up you. Lulu, and India after school.”

He even gave Ms. Grant a high five and said, “Catch you on the down low.”

All the kids laughed. Even Craig.

We spent the rest of the day spraying cleaner on our desks and organizing Ms. Grant’s storage closet. There was a whole shelf full of Lulu’s old projects. I accidentally stepped on one when it fell on the floor. I “accidentally” threw it in the trash, too.

When the bell was about to ring, you could hear every classroom in the building counting down.

“Five, four, three, two, one. Wooohoooo!”

It was so loud that Ms. Grant had to cover her ears. Ms. Grant doesn’t like it when people are loud. At an assembly once I was talking when I wasn’t supposed to be. I was sitting by Sarah and asked her where her mother got her Tabu perfume, because I wanted to get some for Grandma.

“Shhhhhh!” Ms. Grant said.

She did it so loud I thought she was going to start flying around the room like a balloon does when it isn’t tied in a knot and you let go of it.

It made me laugh out loud to think of Ms. Grant flying around the auditorium.

I had to stay after class and clean the Lulu shelf in the closet.

Today Ms. Grant didn’t make anybody stay after school. In fact, she ran faster than I’ve ever seen her move to get to the classroom door. She stood there and said good-bye to each of us as we left, like she was an airline stewardess and we had all been guests on a yearlong flight. I gathered my things and said good-bye to Ms. Grant, and then I raced to meet India at her classroom. We walked out of the school until next fall.

The manny was parked right in front of the school. He had a long black wig on his head and black circles painted under his eyes. He kept sticking his tongue out. The Volkswagen Eurovan had a song blasting out of it.

The manny said that the song was by Alice Cooper, a famous rock star from the seventies who dressed in tight clothes and looked like he never slept.

I’ve never heard of a boy named Alice, but he
sounds like a vampire and he screams more than he sings.

When we climbed into the van, Lulu was already inside lying flat on the floor.

“Close the door before anybody sees me!” she screeched in horror.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KEATS
was written all over the windows in shoe polish, and there were cans hanging off the back like somebody had just gotten married. Kids stopped to read the windows.

“What’s up, homeslice?” the manny asked, and handed me a pair of sunglasses to put on. He handed India a pair too.

We drove away from the school.

Everybody waved to us.

I ran into the house to tell Mom and Dad that the Dutch babies were a big hit and that next year I wanted to take foie gras and toast tips. Foie gras is duck liver. My dad bet me five dollars that I wouldn’t eat it, so I did. I liked it. It tasted like buttery, mushy bologna. I had foie gras at the fancy restaurant where the guy who seats you looks you up and down when you walk in. He starts with your shoes, then slowly scans up to the top of your head and then back down to your shoes again.

I always wear my bow tie.

I think that’s why we always get a good table.

As soon as I reached the living room, Grandma yelled out, “Bon voyage!”

She must have just taken her pills.

The living room was draped from floor to ceiling in red streamers and balloons, with a
WELCOME TO KEATSTOCK, DON’T EAT THE GREEN M&M’S
sign taped to the wall. It looked like the stage of the Democratic National Convention when the presidential candidate is announced. I saw it on television last year. A man wearing a dark suit and blue tie danced like Frankenstein to “We are family, I got all my sisters with me.” His wife, who wore a red dress and looked like someone in a teeth-whitening commercial, danced and waved to the audience while she swung her daughter’s arms in the air. India said that this was why politics and entertainment should never mix.

Grandma’s bed was covered with balloons and streamers. She looked like she was riding on a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float. She even waved with an elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist. The same way the Rockettes do it in the parade. Whenever the Rockettes come on in the parade, Mom, Dad, India, and Uncle Max join arms and kick their legs in unison in front of the television.

Uncle Max can kick pretty high. One time he kicked a lamp off of Mom’s desk. I would’ve grounded him, but Mom just laughed.

I got to choose what we had for dinner that night. Fish sticks, mashed potatoes, and spinach. I’ve liked spinach ever since I saw Popeye eat it on television when I was two years old. I used to sing, “I’m Popeye the sailor man, I live in a garbage can, I love to go swimmin’ with
bald-headed women, I’m Popeye the sailor man. Toot, toot.”

I just learned last year that I have been singing it all wrong.

After dinner Mom brought in a cherry cheesecake with nine candles on it. Cherry cheesecake is my favorite. Grandma used to make it for me, but this year she gave Mom her recipe so that she could make it.

I blew out the candles and made a secret wish.

Everybody cheered, and I started to open my presents. The first present was from Mom and Dad. It was a clothes valet. It was made of oak and had a place to hang your shirt and jacket and your pants, and even a wooden dish on top to keep cuff links, watches, and pocket change in.

Mom and Dad got me a clothes valet because every night before school, I lay out my clothes. I pick out underwear, socks, shoes, pants, a shirt, and a sweater and lay them in the middle of my room. Every time Dad walks by my room, he’s startled because my clothes are lying in the middle of my floor like a body, only flat on the floor, like a body doing the yoga corpse position. We did yoga last spring in PE. I was the only one who could do the tree position. The next week we played basketball. I scored a basket, but it
was accidentally for the other team. Everyone forgot how good I was at yoga.

Dad said, “Now you can hang your clothes up and I won’t call 911 every time I walk by your room.”

He’s so dramatic. I heard Mom call him dramatic once.

Lulu, India, and Belly gave me a grown-up watch with a black leather braided band. Instead of numbers the face of the watch had Roman numerals. I didn’t know how to read it, so when anybody asked me what time it was, I’d write it down on paper. “I:VI” meant one thirty. “VII:IV” meant seven twenty. “XX till X” meant twenty till ten.

I kept the watch in the wooden bowl on top of my clothes valet.

Uncle Max had wrapped up one of his paintings for me to have. It was bigger than our television. He had used thick black paint as a background and had painted two angel wings on it. The wings had some real white feathers glued into them. His card said, “Use your wings to fly away, then use them again to come back.”

I opened Grandma’s gift next. It was her canasta jar full of dollar bills.

Grandma’s pills kicked in: “I thought you could use the money to buy some car insurance.”

I counted it later. There were twenty-seven one-dollar bills in it. A few weeks later I asked the manny to take me to Saks Fifth Avenue to spend my new money. I bought a pair of red cashmere socks. I thought the money would have gone further than that. The manny pulled out his American Express and bought a matching pair of socks for himself and a pair for Grandma’s cold feet.

“Plastic goes a lot further than cash,” he said, signing his receipt.

The last gift that I opened was wrapped in bright red wrapping paper and was tied in white ribbon. The card said, “To: Keats. You’re starting to look old. I love you. The manny.”

I tore off the wrapping paper and saw a red Saks Fifth Avenue box. I carefully opened the box because I wanted to save it to keep pictures in.

Inside the box was a silver money clip with my initials engraved on it.

“That’s so your money doesn’t get mixed up with your pocket trash,” said the manny, smiling.

I hugged and kissed everyone and thanked them for the gifts. Uncle Max and the manny left in the same car. They were going to a late movie.

The manny said, “See ya round town, clown,” and they left.

I ran to my room and hung my clothes for the
next day on my new valet. I put the cards from Uncle Max and the manny in the Saks Fifth Avenue box and put it in the top drawer of my dresser. I took out the dollar bills from the jar of money that Grandma had given me. I folded them neatly and placed them in the silver money clip.

At bedtime I turned out all the lights in my room except for the reading lamp by my bed.

I began to write in my journal.

The summer light shines through the window and in on Grandma every evening. It reflects off her metal bed and makes little dancing lights across the ceiling. The sun makes her face look like she had a makeup artist prepare her for a
Vanity Fair
photo shoot.
Vanity Fair
is a glossy magazine that has full-page photos of movie stars and politicians. Mom bought a subscription to
Vanity Fair
over the telephone. She told me that 12 percent of her money went to help the Special Olympics. We go to cheer at the Special Olympics every year. Sarah’s cousin Roger competed in the hurdles last year. He got second to last, but he jumped up and down and celebrated like he had gotten first.