Close to Famous (15 page)

Was she kidding? “I was at your house, but you were sick.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “It comes and goes. I thought you'd be coming by so we could talk about reading.”

My heart fluttered at that, but then I remembered Lester saying she could be friendly one minute and then ignore you for months.

“What book do you have there, Foster?”

I showed her Sonny's cookbook. She leafed through it. “Maple pecan cupcakes with maple frosting. My, that sounds dangerous.”

I looked over at the page she was reading. I want to make that!

“Miss Charleena, here's what you've got to know. Reading's a serious thing with me. I want to do it, and I'm scared to try.” This next part was harder. “But if it's not a serious thing with you—I mean, if you'd just lose interest after a while—I'm not saying you would, but just in case . . . then, I don't think we should do it.”

She closed the book with a snap and handed it back to me.

I wanted to evaporate like spit on a hot road. “I shouldn't have said that, Miss Charleena. I'm sorry.”

“Foster, I
do
want to talk with you about reading.”

That sounded like she meant it. “Miss Charleena, I want to read Sonny's book. Can you teach me?”

“This is too hard to start with—”

“No! This is the one I want to read!”

“I understand, but—”

“No, ma'am, you don't understand. This book's got my name on it!”

“Well then, Foster McFee, we'll give it a try.”

I'd better warn her. “I've got to tell you something else, Miss Charleena. I've tried reading before. I tried with everything I had, and my brain closes up.”

She nodded. “My teacher told me some people come naturally to reading and others have to work twice as hard. There's nothing wrong with having a different way of learning. What's wrong is when people blame you for it.”

“Come by tomorrow and bring your book. But not too early. I need my beauty sleep.”

And with that, she sped away.

I SAUTÉED RED peppers and red onions, added ground beef, and sautéed that, too. “I don't know if anyone can teach me to read, Mama.” I'd told her all that happened with Miss Charleena.

“I admire how you're open to the process even though it's been hard,” she said.

“It's been impossible.” I added tomato paste to the pot, salt, pepper, chili powder, and a little cinnamon.

Mama smiled. “What I can tell you, Baby, is you've got grit, smarts, courage, and heart.”

I stirred a pinch of sugar into the chili. “I'm kind of scared to try again, Mama.”

“That's natural. Just take the next step and don't look too far down the road.” She looked over her reading glasses at me. “I know what you've got inside.”

I woke up at 5:30 A.M., which I figured was way too early to head over to Miss Charleena's, but I can tell you, every part of me was awake!

I got up, washed, and got dressed without waking Mama. I stood by the sink, looking at Lester's daddy's stupid, dead fish.

I said, “I want you to know that I'm going to do something important today. More important than a fish could understand. I don't know why I'm telling you, except that I want to say it out loud, so here goes. Today, I'm going to start learning to read!”

I pretended the fish wiggled his fishtail like a dog.

“I know it's going to be hard, so I'm getting ready for that, but I just feel this time I'm not going to get caught up in all the things that have held me back. I guess you know about getting caught, don't you?”

I stood there for a minute.

“All right then. I'm going.”

I delivered the butterscotch muffins and chocolate cupcakes to Angry Wayne, and he handed me an envelope with money in it.

“Mr. Wayne, you were supposed to keep this money so I could pay you back for the food you gave me for Helping Hands.”

“Take the money,” he said.

“But sir—”

Betty sipped her coffee. “Don't mess with the miracle, Foster.”

I was hoping to see another miracle at Miss Charleena's, but when I got there Macon opened the door.

“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

“What do you want?”

“Miss Charleena and I have an appointment.”

“What about?”

“About . . .
stuff
. . .” I decided to be mature. “How's your movie coming?”

“It's not.”

“How come?”

You'd have thought I'd asked him to jump off a building. “
It's just not, okay
?”

“She's watching TV.” He walked away.

I went into the room off the kitchen. Miss Charleena was sitting on a big couch watching a wide-screen TV. A lady in a long skirt was talking to a group of kids not in America. Then I realized, that wasn't just any lady, that was Miss Charleena. She was much younger than she is now, but still!

“This is my big scene,” Miss Charleena said. “I played a teacher in India.” I sat down and watched as the lady, I mean Miss Charleena, looked at the kids and said, “Boys and girls, I want to tell you a story. One day a businessman was traveling in India, and he happened to see a huge elephant standing there with his front foot chained to a small fence. The businessman knew the elephant had the strength to yank that fence down, so he asked the trainer why the elephant stood there like it couldn't move. ‘Ah,' said the trainer, ‘this is how you train an elephant. From the time he was a baby we had that chain around his front foot. He tried to break free when he was little, but couldn't do it. By the time he had grown, he'd stopped trying. That great elephant didn't know his own strength.' ”

Miss Charleena as the teacher looked at the children. “That happens to all of us from time to time. I believe it is time for you to realize your strength and use it.”

The kids looked at each other, and one by one they began to stand.

My heart was pounding. I stood, too.

“Yank, darlin'.” Miss Charleena pointed to a big word in Sonny's cookbook.

Appetizers
.

I made a face. “It's a great word,” she explained. “Look.” She wrote out
app e tiz ers
. “Can you sound some of it out?”

I put my hand over the
app
. “App,” I said. I put my finger on the
e
. “E.” I got through the
tiz
and the
er
after some work.

“And see, this word comes from other words you know.
Appetite
,
appetizing
. So, the next time you see it, it can be a clue.” Miss Charleena tapped the book. “We've got a world of recipes here.”

She opened the book to a page. “Can you sound that out?”

I looked at it.

“We're starting pretty fast,” I mentioned.

She wrote out
ba na na
. “Another great word. It's written exactly as it sounds.”

Slowly, I sounded it out and Miss Charleena handed me an actual banana.

“But the word
cake
has a tricky letter,” she told me. “
C
can sound like a
k
as in
cake
, or it can sound like an
s
as in
cereal
.”

“Why did they do that?”

“There are rules for cooking; there are rules for letters and words.”

“Always preheat the oven,” I said. “Make sure the butter is softened before you cream it.”

“You've probably learned dozens of cooking rules. You're already good at learning rules.”

I never thought of it that way.

But, after an hour, my brain was close to busting. Twice I shouted, “I can't get it! It's too hard!” But not once did I run out of the room. Not once did I feel embarrassed, because Miss Charleena kept saying, “Take your time. Do this at your speed.”

When we got to the end of the banana cake recipe, I was so sick of it, I didn't want to make this cake at all. But slowly I could sound out “mash the banana with a fork” on my own, because not one of those words was tricky. People should spend more time using nontricky words, in my opinion. Miss Charleena even handed me a fork and I mashed a banana on her counter and thought about what the words looked like in Sonny's cookbook. I'd love to turn this recipe into cupcakes.

I heard a noise and looked up. Macon was standing at the kitchen door.

I'd forgotten he was in the house.

“I didn't mean to interrupt,” he began.

I felt my face turn red. He'd probably been standing there forever, thinking how dumb I am mashing a banana with a fork and saying it out loud.