Read Online KooKooLand by Gloria Norris - Free Book Online

well.
    Not unless Susan ran out of Hank’s and jumped in the Merrimack River to save me. Then I guessed it would be worth it.
    â€œHey you! Eat up! Kids are starving in Greece!”
    Papou’s voice made me jump. He was glaring down at me.
    I jammed the rest of my hamburger in my mouth and tried not to choke on it. The last thing I wanted was Papou force-feeding me the way he had done with Virginia when she was little and wouldn’t eat her scrambled eggs.
    YaYa leaned down and kissed my meat-stuffed cheek that looked like Squirmy the hamster’s. Then she hung up her apron and went home to fry some mackerel that Jimmy had brought for Papou’s supper.
    A new shift was coming in and the place was getting more crowded. Jimmy lit another Lucky Strike and Papou lit a cigar that was even bigger than Hank’s. I took a bite of watermelon and spit the seeds onto the floor, trying to hit the ones that I’d already spit with the ones I was spitting. Then I tried to see how far I could stick my tongue down the neck of the Orange Crush bottle without getting it stuck.
    Jimmy and Papou began talking about this horse and that horse and whether the horse Jimmy had bought oughta be hopped up or not.
    Shirley said Jimmy and Papou were two of a kind.
    Con artists. Operators. Flimflammers.
    They were always cooking up scams. In one scam, Papou would call Tarzan the bookie from a phone booth to place a bet on a horse. Jimmy would be in the next booth getting the early results of the same race Papou was betting on from a guy he knew who worked at the track. Past posting, they called it. Cheating and stealing is more like it, Shirley said.
    Nobody would’ve suspected Papou of pulling a fast one like that.
    Everybody looks up to the old man, Jimmy would say. Even the Greek priests in their goofy hats.
    The Greek priests in their goofy hats admired Papou ’cause even though he had become an American wheeler-dealer who rubbed shoulders with a heavyweight champ, he still respected the ways of the old country. Even though he’d taught himself to read, write, and speak English—with no banana-peddleraccent, Jimmy boasted—he still sent his sons to Greek school. And even though he’d changed his last name to something Yankees could pronounce, he’d kept every ounce of his Greek pride.
    Most of all, though, Jimmy said the priests loved Papou because he greased their wheels. I couldn’t picture Papou, who always dressed like a big shot, sprawled under a car greasing some priest’s car, but then Jimmy had explained that wheel greasing was when you paid somebody to do stuff for you.
    What did he pay the priests to do? I’d asked.
    Get him into heaven, dum-dum.
    Lucky for me, Papou had also done a little wheel greasing on my behalf. The year before, at the start of third grade, my new teacher, Miss Rogers, had stuck me in the back row and acted like she didn’t know I was alive. At first, I’d tried some wheel greasing on my own. I spent some of my tooth fairy dough on the biggest, reddest apple I could find at the Temple Market. I blew on it and polished it with my sleeve until it was bright and shiny.
    Miss Rogers took it from me like it was Snow White’s poison apple.
    I told myself maybe she wasn’t a fruit lover. Or maybe she would’ve preferred a slice of cool watermelon instead.
    But in my gut I knew it was because she had seen the name of the street I lived on. Ahern Street. One of the project streets.
    â€œThose snooty teachers treat all the project kids like they’re juvenile delinquents,” Virginia had informed me as she was forging Jimmy’s signature on an excuse note to cover the fact that she had played hooky.
    â€œNot me,” I argued. “I’m always the teacher’s pet.”
    â€œThat’s ’cause you’re a brownnoser and an egghead like Daddy says.”
    â€œAnd you’re a crook and a cheater like