Free The Death of Pie by Tamar Myers Page A

knows exactly why – this diner became regionally famous for its breakfast sausage and pancakes. Americans, you see, have a perverse fondness for mixing savoury and sweet in the same meal.
    Perhaps this perverse characteristic will help explain my relationship with Wanda. She was the fraternal twin sister I’ve always had but never wanted. We were always friends, but we began being best enemies in grade school, beginning with the day she dipped one of my braids into a pot of bright blue poster paint. I retaliated by mashing a wad of chewing gum into the base of her ponytail. To say that we developed a hair fetish might be going too far, but we were still pulling pranks in high school, when I might have stepped over the line a wee bit.
    Wanda must have been about seventeen then, and she wore her long, hardly-ever-been-washed hair in a rather loose French twist that we, her classmates, all called her ‘hot-dog bun.’ Well, one day the Devil got into me and I slid a real hot dog, a one hundred percent meat wiener down into the space created by the twist. The fact that Wanda’s hairdo managed to keep its shape must be credited to the great number of hairpins that she used, plus all the accumulated grime and oil which must have acted as a sort of cement. Nonetheless, the weight of a plump wiener composed of pig lips, jowls and usual by-products caused the ‘bun’ to sway this way and that, like the cradle in the nursery rhyme.
    However, much to my relief, the bough did not break and the baby did not fall – if you get my drift. Thankfully, no one saw me do it, except for God and maybe Granny Yoder. The latter’s malevolent, but unseen presence in our school cafeteria might explain the horrific taste of just about everything that was served, or at the very least why the milk in those little cartons was invariably spoiled, no matter what due date was stamped on them.
    Now where was I? Oh, yes, because my crime went undetected, and because the Hemphopple family were hygienically challenged, the presence of a wiener in Wanda’s wobbly wonder was not immediately detected. In fact, it wasn’t until a full week later, on a warm spring day in boring Mrs Lehman’s boring American History class, that a stray cat jumped through an open window and headed straight for Wanda’s hair. I’ve been told that it was like a scene straight out of a movie. If indeed this is the case, then I can see now why it is that so many people pollute their minds with cinema. I’m telling you: Wanda’s battle to save her bun from the destructive forces of a hungry pussy was extremely thrilling to watch.
    â€˜ Brava! ’ I’d cried, temporarily forgetting the depth of our schoolgirl antipathies.
    Unfortunately, the pussy had prevailed, pulling open Wanda’s pungent bun, thus releasing the rotten weenie, which had somehow managed to catapult over to boring Mrs Lehman’s desk and land in the middle of her open copy of American History for a New Generation . In that moment Mrs Lehman ceased to be boring. Although Mrs Lehman was a faithful Mennonite who did not believe in dancing, she did a jig of sorts while bellowing like a bull that had just been made into a steer. She was obviously trying to flip whatever it was off of her book, but when that didn’t work, she took the next logical step and chucked history out the window altogether.
    â€˜You!’ she roared, then able to focus her attention on Wanda. ‘March to the principal’s office.’
    Somehow, also in that moment, Wanda immediately knew that the origin of the fetid food was none other than Yours Truly. She arched her back, looking so much like a cat that the authentic feline in the room hissed, and leaped through the back window.
    â€˜You!’ Wanda then screeched at me. ‘It was you who put that thing in my hair.’ She whirled and faced Mrs Lehman. ‘Magdalena Yoder put a human finger in my