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| Daniel & Jesse |
Last night a friend and I took five of the children (Helen, Yosef, Jesse, Daniel & Fisseha) to the neighborhood Ethiopian restaurant, Moya.
The waiter, besieged by excited voices, lost in the un-ending order, finally asked me, “Are you ordering the entire menu?”
“I think we are,” I said.
Helen and Fisseha surfaced from behind their menus to say, “And take-home, too."
And everything should be served with the maximum quantity of flaming red-hot pepper heat, the children specified.
Platters arrived, and arrived, and arrived. There was Doro Key Wat (chicken stewed in berbere (red pepper) paste and served with hard-boiled eggs), Sik Sik Wat (beef stewed in berbere), Yemiser Selatta (lentils with jalapeno peppers) Timatim Fitfit (diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalapeno peppers) , Tibs Wat (cubed beef simmered in berbere), Gomen (fresh collard greens simmered in spices) Miser Wat (hot spicy lentils), Shiro (spicy pureed split peas), and – above all – three orders of Kitfo (beer tartar, served raw.)
I could barely SIT near the steaming platters; I hid behind my glass of pineapple juice, occasionally nibbling humbly on a dry roll of injera. Even the cold diced tomatoes had been mixed with chili peppers and brought tears to my eyes. “Mom, try this!” the children offered. “Not hot, Mom.”
They weren’t trying to trick me. I tasted, then wept, as I have the pepper-processing ability of an infant.
Children ate until they could eat no more.
Then they ate more.
Then they pushed back from the table with their hands over their stomachs and groaned with happiness.
Then they pulled back to the table and ate more. They ate it all.
Exuberant, fueled by injera, super-charged by jalapenos, the five children, ages 10 to 13, excused themselves, thanked the owner, and hurried out the door. In the parking lot, they carried each other piggy-back and began playing chase. Then they ran piggy-back races. Then they ran walking races. Then they ran backward races. Then they ran bend-over-like-this-with-your-arms-hanging-down-like-a-monkey races. Then they ran let’s-slam-full-tilt-into-Mom’s-parked-car races. Then they ran stick-out-your-butt-and-waddle-like-this races. I waited at our table on the patio for the bill and for the carry-out order, thinking, “Worse case scenario? Anyone who objects to the behavior of four Ethiopian children and one brown-skinned Bulgarian Roma child in the parking lot will NEVER link them to ME.”
I was wrong. “Your children are very excited,” said entering customers.
On the car ride home, it began.
First a gigantic long drawn-out belch from Jesse in the far back seat. It sounded like the roar of a lion. The others laughed appreciatively and felt inspired. My calling, “Jesse! Say ‘Excuse me,’” did not inspire. Yosef followed with a high-pitched yelp of a burp. Daniel and Fisseha shared enormous guttural noises like yawning hippos and Jesse roared back from so deep in his gut it sounded like he was about to throw up. “Stop!” I cried. “This is gross!” I cried. “Enough already!” I cried. Helen—petite and graceful Helen—then out-did them all with a belch that seemed to emerge from the center of the earth. I kept my eyes on the road. The belches and burps were constant now, overlapping, obscene, high-pitched and low. It was a thunderstorm of laryngeal gas. I lowered all four windows and opened the sun roof. I dared not look at the friend in the passenger seat beside me as I was completely helpless to stop the chorus. Cool air blew in from the dark streets, a needed counterpoint to the windiness inside the car.
The non-stop yawp and yurk and urrrp, and the fetid air, began to remind me of a still pond I once visited in Vermont. After sunset, the Spring Peepers (Yosef) and the Wood Frogs, Green Frogs, and American Toads (Fisseha, Daniel, Jesse) launched into song; and, most thrilling, the American Bullfrog (Helen) sounded bass notes so powerful they seemed to ripple the surface of the pond. Blat. Skirrr-up. RRRRRups. Unable to silence the children, who grew more delighted with each ear-splitting digestive pronouncement, I tried to appreciate the rough song and gassiness of the belches as a natural phenomenon. As I held onto the steering wheel with both hands, I told myself: “Vermont. Think of Vermont.”
At home, I ordered all the children to stay in the front yard to finish.
“We’ll stop, we’ll stop!” they cried, eager to come inside.
“No, I’m sure if you were capable of stopping, you’d have stopped in the car when I asked you 20 times.”
“No, we can stop!” they said with big smiles.
By which I gleaned that the orchestral concert of burp music had been staged, in large part, for my benefit.
There were small lapses and peeps all through the evening, but I never could catch the transgressors, as they somehow managed to stay both out of sight and within earshot of me.
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| Helen |
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| Fisseha & Yosef |
