The School of Essential Ingredients Read Free Page B

.”
    The fork finished the journey to Lillian’s mother’s mouth, where it entered, then exited, clean.
    “Hmmmm . . .” she said. And then all was quiet.
     
    “I’ve got her,” Lillian told Elizabeth as they sat eating toast with warm peanut butter at Elizabeth’s house after school.
    “Because you got her to stop talking?” Elizabeth looked skeptical.
    “You’ll see,” said Lillian.
    Although Lillian’s mother did seem calmer in the following days, the major difference was one that Lillian had not anticipated. Her mother continued to read, but now she was absolutely silent. And while Lillian, who had long ceased to see her mother’s reading aloud as any attempt at communication, was not sorry to no longer be the catch-pan of treasured phrases, this was not the effect she had been hoping for. She had been certain the potatoes would be magic.
     
    ON HER WAY home from school, Lillian took a shortcut down a narrow side street that led from the main arterial to the more rural road to her house. Halfway down the block was a small grocery store that Lillian had found when she was seven years old, on a summer afternoon when she had let go of her mother’s hand in frustration and set off in a previously untraveled direction, wondering if her mother would notice her absence.
    On that day years before, she had smelled the store before she saw it, hot and dusty scents tingling her nose and pulling her down the narrow street. The shop itself was tiny, perhaps the size of an apartment living room, its shelves filled with cans written in languages she didn’t recognize and tall candles enclosed in glass, painted with pictures of people with halos and sad faces. A glass display case next to the cash register was filled with pans of food in bright colors—yellows and reds and greens, their smells deep and smoky, sometimes sharp.
    The woman behind the counter saw Lillian standing close to the glass case, staring.
    “Would you like to try?” she asked.
    Not where is your mother, not how old are you, but would you like to try. Lillian looked up and smiled.
    The woman reached into the case and pulled out an oblong yellow shape.
    “Tamale,” she said, and handed it on a small paper plate to Lillian.
    The outside was soft and slightly crunchy, the inside a festival of meat, onions, tomatoes, and something that seemed vaguely like cinnamon.
    “You understand food,” the woman commented, nodding, as she watched Lillian eat.
    Lillian looked up again, and felt herself folded into the woman’s smile.
    “The children call me Abuelita,” she said. “I think I hear your mother coming.”
    Lillian listened, and heard the sound of her mother’s reading voice winding its way down the alley. She cast her eyes around the store once more, and noticed an odd wooden object hanging from a hook on one of the shelves.
    “What is that?” she asked, pointing.
    “What do you think?” Abuelita took it down and handed it to Lillian, who looked at its irregular shape—a six-inch-long stick with a rounded bulb on one end with ridges carved into it like furrows in a field.
    “I think it is a magic wand,” Lillian responded.
    “Perhaps,” said Abuelita. “Perhaps you should keep it, just in case.”
    Lillian took the wand and slid it into her coat pocket like a spy palming a secret missive.
    “Come back anytime, little cook,” Abuelita said.
    Lillian had returned to the store often over the years. Abuelita had taught her about spices and foods she never encountered in Elizabeth’s or Margaret’s houses. There was avocado, wrinkled and grumpy on the outside, green spring within, creamy as ice cream when smashed into guacamole. There were the smoky flavors of chipotle peppers and the sharp-sweet crunch of cilantro, which Lillian loved so much Abuelita would always give her a sprig to eat as she walked home. Abuelita didn’t talk a lot, but when she did, it was conversation.
     
    So When Lillian walked into the store, a week after