Read Online Free Verse by Sarah Dooley - Free Book Online Page B

“I don’t know you,” he says. But he doesn’t sound quite as fierce as before.
    â€œI’m Sasha,” I explain, although I’m sure he knows at least that. “Your father’s father and my father’s father were brothers. That makes us . . . something. Some sort of cousins. First cousins twice removed.”
    â€œSecond cousins,” Hubert corrects. “You and I are first cousins once removed. You and Mikey are second cousins.”
    â€œSee? I’m your cousin. Hubert says.”
    Mikey studies me for a long moment. Then he nods.
    â€œGuess I’ll stay, then.” Like he’s doing me a favor.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Phyllis is trying to teach us to cook.
    â€œYou could stand to eat something more solid than egg salad and oatmeal,” she tells me.
    â€œBut why can’t you just cook it?”
    â€œBecause.” She points to the sink. I wash my hands, with a lot of soap because I know she’s watching. Mikey shuffles in behind me. He’s taken off the tie and the jacket. Now he’s only wearing an undershirt. It looks weird with his black slacks and bare feet. Mikey has black road dirt tattooed on his feet the way Hubert’s hands wear permanent coal dust. I wonder how long it took Hubert to get shoes on him.
    â€œ
Because
is not an answer,” I say, echoing my English teacher. Phyllis flips the dish towel at me. The first timeshe did this, I wasn’t sure what she meant by it. Ben and Judy weren’t the dish-towel-flipping type. I wasn’t sure if having a dish towel flipped at me was a good thing or a bad thing. Since then, I’ve figured out that it’s one of the ways Phyllis teases me, like when she tugs my braid or when she calls me “Sasha Serious.” Phyllis doesn’t tease the way Anthony does. With Phyllis, it’s all right.
    â€œAre you sure this is a good idea?” I ask when it looks like Phyllis is getting down to business about this cooking thing. When I was little, my parents worked so much that we mostly ate dinners Judy brought home from the Burger Bargain. Then when I got older, and it was just me and Ben and Michael, Michael did all the cooking, and he didn’t always have the patience to teach me. Later, when me and Michael were alone in the first little house we shared, we didn’t have a good working kitchen. And by the time we moved to the apartment, I’d done enough stupid things just with the microwave and hot plate that Michael didn’t really want me anywhere near an actual stove. Not with him seeing the things he saw from the fire truck on a weekly basis.
    Phyllis says we’re going to cook muffins with anything we want in them. “Not
anything
,” she stops herself. “Y’all two, who knows what you’d throw in there. You can have walnuts, chocolate chips, or strawberries. That’s all I’ve got that would make sense in muffins.”
    â€œYes, please,” I say. Mikey nods his approval.
    â€œAll three, then.” She sets them one by one on the counter, then begins whipping around the kitchen so quickly I’m sure I’m going to be knocked on the head by a cabinet door.
    â€œWhere’s the recipe?” I ask, retreating to safety near the sink. I pull Mikey with me so he won’t be killed. He is mostly bone and empty space and he pulls easily. He looks taller today than usual with his dark hair standing stiff. His face is all cheekbone and freckle. He actually looks a lot like me.
    â€œPffsh,” Phyllis says. She whips out a mixing bowl and a measuring cup. “Preheat the oven to three fifty.”
    â€œI don’t know how to do that.”
    With a twitch of her eyebrow, Phyllis shows me how to spin the dial. At the last minute, she remembers to pull the pizza pans out of the oven, where they’ve been stored.
    â€œWash your hands again,” Phyllis instructs.