Dear Opl (10 page)

The soup kitchen guy was nothing but a big buffoon. And I'm not saying that to be mean, because it's actually true. Rudy “Maddog” Marshal said he'd been a rodeo clown for most of his forty-three years. He'd started off when he was twelve, watching the men who came to his father's horse farm. They bred champion barrel horses.
The
best
bones
and
hoofs
in
the
entire
Commonwealth
, his daddy used to advertise.

I found all this out when I stopped to give him my daily fruit from lunch and he asked me to “sit for a spell” so he could give me an update on the now-sparkling bookshop front windows. I knew he was going to tell me he owed me more work, but somehow we ended up talking about what he used to do.

Rudy peeled the thick rind from an orange into one long spiral. The scent of pungent citrus slithered over to where I sat, a couple feet away from him.

“There was a lot of ground training and a good bit of handling with the yearlings, but for the most part, those colts just ran with the broodmare band in the creeks and canyons of the ranch.”

Rudy's accent was like slippery maple syrup—sweet and sticky and covering up a stack of homesick. He stretched out a leathery hand and offered me a segment of the orange. I shook my head. I'd brought it for him, but he insisted. “You don't know what you're missing. You gotta try it.”

I took the piece from him and put the tip in my mouth, wondering how clean his hands were from sitting outside all day long on the stoop of the soup kitchen, holding that sign. I bit into the orange. Juice squirted into my eye. And it stung. But I found it easy to ignore the stinging bit because I had never tasted an orange so orangey before. There should be a better word for it. One that means juicy, tangy, sweet, and puckery.
Orange
doesn't cut it.

Rudy didn't wait for me to comment. He could see on my face how much I liked it. “A colt needs that crucial good training before it ever gets to see his first barrel. After my daddy was done with them, they moved like a long strip of licorice. All bendy round the barrels and such like.” Rudy's teeth looked like they'd seen too much licorice in my opinion. The black kind that stained.

“I'd spent my whole childhood going from one show to the next, watching the men compete and coming back with medals and trophies. Some of the competitions had bull riding—and that was what I liked most. That was real man's work. Lotta people got hurt doing that.” He shook his head, remembering.

“Did you ever see anyone speared?”

“You mean gored? Yes, ma'am. Not a pretty sight. But it ain't happening often.” He rubbed his scraggly beard, tilting his nose to the sky like a hound dog being scratched. “If you're gonna make it as a rodeo clown, you gotta have sure speed. And think on your feet. I liked that part. You had to learn new things to keep the bulls guessing and distracted from whatever they weren't s'posed to look at.”

I heard him sigh. “Why aren't you still working as a clown?”

Rudy looked down at his foot and raised the cuff of his worn blue jeans. He was part machine. There was no foot. Something shaped like a foot fit into his shoe. Above that a series of shiny silver metal pieces gleamed. “Too slow now. I'd be skewered like a shish kebab faster than green grass goes through a goose.”

I made a face. “How'd it happen?”

“That there happened three years back when I was over in Iraq. Soldiering.” He took a long breath in. “It's stuff I don't much like remembering.”

“How come you don't go back to your daddy's farm? Why do you sit here all day?”

Rudy's eyes went wide. “I don't sit here all the time. I work inside most every day from morning till nighttime. Washing dishes, sweeping floors, stocking the pantry shelves, taking out garbage. I help do what I can. But I know there are others who need the work just as bad and could do it just as well. I come out here to take a half hour break to advertise myself, so I can free up this job for one of the others.” He gripped his sun-browned hands and twisted his knuckles. “And I can't go back to the farm. Daddy lost it all after he got sick. Course he didn't make it. The sickness got him. And the bank got the farm.”

I looked at Rudy. I thought about how for months I'd raced past him on the stoop and refused to see him—just like Mom does with me. I ignored him because I was afraid of him. Afraid of a rodeo clown. I doubt Mom ignores me because she's afraid of me. It's more likely she's afraid of the big mess she'd find if she
didn't
ignore me.

“That really sucks. Sorry about your dad. And the farm.”

He shrugged. “Worse things have happened to better people. I'm grateful for a meal a day here. And happier still that my hands ain't idle.”

“A meal a day?”
Whoa
, I thought. I constantly grazed like a cow compared to Rudy. “Are you hungry a lot?”

“You don't get hungry when regrets fill up your belly. I think of all the stuff I should have done. Stuff that would have made my life real different, not found me on these here steps.” He shook his head. “No. I'm not hungry for anything other than a second chance.”

I had to go. It was time for my yoga class. I took a big breath. The kind Aura said to keep practicing. The restorative ones. I wondered if Rudy could be restored. “I'll see you tomorrow, Rudy. Good luck with the advertising.”

• • •

By the time I'd gotten home, the sun had set. Aura had asked me to stick around after yoga this afternoon because she thought I might like to try some meditation. Except, I thought she said
medication
which made my eyes go super wide. I told her our school had a big slogan that always reminded us to
Say
no
to
drugs
. After she sweetly pointed out my blunder and agreed it was a good thing to strive for a life without harmful addictions, she had me sit on the floor in front of her. She told me how we'd try tapping into the powers of the mind—not medicine. I listened to her talk about pain relief and reducing stress, but it was her
creating
happy
moods
phrase that caught my attention. Maybe I could learn how to tap into Mom's power of the mind. If I could find a way to help her out, she might find a way to remember how to be happy.

At first I thought Aura would reveal a secret room inside my head and give me the password to get in. Or show me how to bend spoons with my mind, which could be a super cool trick in the lunchroom. It turns out we just practiced noticing things with our eyes closed.

It's surprising what you'll discover though—even about everyday ordinary stuff—when you can't count on your eyes. Aura always started our classes that way—sitting and breathing with our eyes closed. But with meditation you might start out focusing on your breathing, but then you can move on to more interesting things. Like what's happening on the surface of your eyelids when they're shut. Mine were a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns and designs. I discovered an entire blueprint for my bedroom quilt and a moving blob that looked a little like the International Space Station.

Aura said meditation was all about self-inducing a mode of consciousness. Following that statement was my self-perfected face of confusion.

“Try to invite a specific feeling. Like healing. If there's an area of your body—or even another person's—that needs improvement toward health, imagine it as it is, then with warmth or light or energy, you envision it getting better. You see with your third eye. Your inner eye.”

“Wait,” I had said, “I have another eye inside me? Our science teacher has never mentioned this and we studied the human body last month. Maybe it's something you get only after puberty—like boobs or hairy armpits.”

Aura had just smiled. “It's not a physical eye, Opal. It's a concept. Think of it as a space between your brows and inside your head that you can use like a gate. You find that gate, open it, and can travel to places outside of your physical body.”

I stole a peek at her. “You mean
apparating
? We're going to wake up in someplace like Hogwarts?”

She'd laughed. “Nope. Not like that. I don't know anyone who can do that yet, but maybe someday. I'm trying to say you can travel to these destinations, and by that I mean a place of better health or a state of less stress, by using your mind to get you there.”

This had been a lot to absorb. Finding out I had an extra eye, a whiteboard on the inside of my eyelids, and that I could use my mind like Aladdin's carpet to “go” places was a little overwhelming. Aura said I shouldn't try too hard right away. She said, “If you're going to eat an elephant, you need to take it one bite at a time.”

I told her I hoped never to find myself in a position where I'd have to eat one of those, but I'd found out in the past, ketchup can make most anything taste better.

It wasn't until I stepped through the front door of our house that I remembered elephant was not on the menu tonight. Neither were chicken nuggets, and that was what I really wanted. G-pa wasn't budging on the whole
nothing
from
the
freezer
campaign. So instead, this evening's meal was eggs. I'd spent the night before watching the Grunch make perfect omelets for himself. He ooohed and ahhhed over his creations. It looked super easy. The Grunch said it was “dead simple.” So I chose it as my next family recipe.

At first, eating breakfast for dinner surprised Mom, but I couldn't remember having eggs for breakfast. We've only ever had cereal. Cocoa Puffs, Froot Loops, and Cap'n Crunch appeared as regulars. And if we wanted a little variety we would have Pop-Tarts. Since the whole sugar thing had come up, all those were replaced with alternatives.

G-pa told Mom last week she needed to get home earlier on the nights I cooked. “If the kid goes to the trouble of doing a science experiment in the kitchen, the least we can do is be her lab rats. Make sure you're here by seven.”

So with all my ingredients purchased and prepared, I scanned over the participants of tonight's attempt. I had whizzed up the eggs to a froth. Foam perched on top of the muddle mess like a kid with way too much shampoo on his head. Cheddar cheese had been shredded into a mound with only one knuckle grazed. Thank goodness it had been G-pa's and not mine because he handled injury with quiet style. I cannot pretend something does not hurt, and more often than not, I find making an extra fuss worth the effort.

We chopped a few cherry tomatoes, which disappeared every time Ollie zipped by the bowl. “Hey!” he said, grabbing another handful. “Mr. Muttonchops is a vegetablearian. He loves these guys.”

Lastly, we had two little bowls filled with G-pa's mushrooms and olives. I have never liked either of these. They look similar. Both equal parts gray, green, and brown. Certainly not eye-catchy. If I saw that stuff in the fridge, it would be garbage bound within seconds. Why would anyone put muck-colored bits into their food? And G-pa told me mushrooms were considered fungus. Like this was a good thing to reveal. According to the brothers Merriam and Mr. Webster, a fungus is a parasitic, spore-producing organism that includes molds, rusts, mildews, smuts, mushrooms, and yeasts. It's a good thing G-pa didn't see me scrape off the blue fur from the cheddar cheese before handing it to him to grate. He would have told me I threw out the best part.

No matter what ingredients we used—both everyday and fancy-pantsy—these would be masterpiece omelets. Someone would have to get their sketch pad to memorialize the works of art.

After following the Grunch's directions, I had a nice hot pan with a glug of olive oil in it and my egg froth liquid ready to pour. I held my breath and tipped the bowl over until all of the yellow goop sizzled in my pan. A few seconds later, I started adding the other ingredients, layering the tomatoes, the cheese, and a couple of olives in the middle. I refused to put the shrooms in anybody's other than G-pa's for health and sanitary reasons. If he wanted to take a chance with his life by placing something in his food that the rest of us would take a wire brush and a bucket of bleach to, then that was his choice. I wanted to live until tomorrow.

The Grunch said when your eggy edges started to bubble up away from the sides of the pan, you fold it in half, cook it for thirty more seconds and then slide it off your pan and onto your plate. I'm not sure what world the Grunch cooked in, but certainly not the one with my gravity levels.

I came to find out that egg adores any pan-like surface and will cling to it like a wad of gum on one of your favorite shoes. I talked to it, pleaded with it, bribed it, and finally threatened it. It would not let go. Apparently, I do not speak Egg.

We ended up with what I called Omelet Conglomerate. No one seemed to mind that it didn't look like the picture in the cookbook because the taste knocked our socks off. Now I know why the Grunch made all those goofy faces and sounds while eating it. Our whole table was full of them too. You couldn't help yourself. The mass of gooey cheese and tart tomatoes was unlike any of the stuff that had been coming from our freezer.