Free A Star is Born by Walter Dean Myers Page B

out with the cooking, and Mom sat down. I didn’t want to sit down because I didn’t think just the girls should be doing the cooking.
    The pot we had wasn’t big enough, and I had to go downstairs and borrow a pot from Mrs. Santana on the second floor. When she heard what we were doing she came up and started sniffing around.
    â€œIt smells like it’s going to be all right!” she said.
    By the time we put the pot in the oven, it was already smelling like something delicious and I was getting a little excited. Kambui was still trying to be cool, looking over the directions, but my layback had got up and walked out.
    What I was seeing was that LaShonda was slowly taking over the kitchen. Bobbi was on top of things and they had me doing the cleaning up. Mom was getting to be a happy spectator and Mrs. Santana was talking about how her family used to cook together in San Juan.
    â€œEverybody cooked!” Mrs. Santana said. “Abuela ruled the kitchen. She always had a wooden spoon in her hand and if you didn’t do something right — whack! — you got hit. Then afterward we would all sit down and eat together and everybody would be laughing and talking because we had all helped.”
    Mrs. Santana was talking about being a family and I could feel what she was saying. In a way, that was what LaShonda was saying, too, and I wished I had thought about asking her to bring her brother over.
    Mom wasn’t really into cooking that much, but I could tell she was glad to have us all over to the house. I wondered if that’s what she missed not being with my father.
    â€œWe’re going to have enough food to feed an army,” she said. “Start thinking about who else we can have over.”
    It took almost three hours before the whole meal was finished. Me and Bobbi put our table together with a card table and covered them both with a big tablecloth while Mrs. Santana put on some yellow rice. We got the table set and put out all our plates while Kambui started calling around inviting people to dinner.
    Who we had over:
    I asked LaShonda to call Chris and she did, but she had to get Mom on the phone to ask someone to bring him to our place. Mrs. Askew, from St. Francis, came with him.
    Kambui’s grandmother came over and said that the apartment smelled like “the back door to heaven.” Mrs. Owens was really short but kind of wide and friendly.
    The last person to show up was Mr. Santana.
    â€œDon’t speak nothing but English!” Mrs. Santana told her husband.
    â€œVoy a hablar inglés! No se preocupe!” he answered.
    There were ten of us altogether when we sat down to eat. Mrs. Owens said grace, and we dug in.
    It was good. I didn’t like the duck that much and the sausages didn’t taste like I thought they would, but it was all okay. Mrs. Santana liked it the most, or maybe Mr. Santana did, but he just sat there eating and mumbling in Spanish.
    Mrs. Askew thought the meal was “creative” and “a memorable experience.” Whatever. In the end we had pulled off making a dinner, had eaten some stuff that was good but that we would probably never eat again, and had a new topic to talk about.
    Chris sat next to LaShonda and I could see them together, almost as if it was some kind of dance. LaShonda smiled at us and talked when she was supposed to, but all the time she was moving along with her brother. When his arms got to swinging too wildly she held them down. When he began to open and close his hands very quickly, she took both of his wrists and brought his palms close so that they touched. Once she passed her hand in front of his face in a downward motion. It was a dance so subtle that it was almost invisible.
    Chris never looked directly at anyone. He was an alien among us and we were aliens to him. I knew then that LaShonda was stronger than I could ever be — than I would ever want to be.
    For a moment I was loving on LaShonda,