She would not cave. She would not invent characters that had no life but that which she designed for them. In the end, Mrs. Altschuler struck a deal with her. Annamae could do the assignment as nonfiction instead of fiction. She still had to do all the parts—Character Building Worksheets, Paragraphs of Detailed Description, Vignettes With Action—but she would be allowed to describe real people, real events. She also still had to turn everything in by the end of the quarter, which meant she had to do in eleven days what everyone else had done in ten weeks.
“I hate this,” she informed her mother.
“Be that as it may.” Her mother was toasting spices in a little cast-iron skillet while Annamae sat at the table with her folder and worksheets and notebook and pen and colored pencils.
“Be that as it may, what?”
“Be that as it may, get it done.”
“What are you making?”
“Berbere.”
“It smells.”
“Annamae.”
“What? It smells good.”
It did smell good. It smelled like brown-and-gold plaid. Annamae tried to draw the smell in her notebook. She’d gotten out her colored pencils because one of the options on the worksheets was to draw your characters. She did not want to draw her characters any more than she wanted to write down their Physical Attributes and Traits. She had tried multiple times, and each drawing came out more of a travesty than the last.
That was a Felice word. Felice, standing in front of the mirror, taking a thousand years to arrange and rearrange the same two barrettes, was fond of declaring, “My hair is a travesty.”
The kitchen garbage, as well as the slanting floor all around it, was currently littered with Annamae’s crumpled travesties.
“Kill some trees, why don’t you?” said Danny, coming into the kitchen. “What’re you drawing?” He bent over her shoulder, trying to see.
Annamae rounded her body over the notebook. “Ugh, Danny. Your breath.”
Danny went over to the garbage, plucked out the topmost reject, smoothed it, and studied the drawing. “What’s this supposed to be?” Merrily: “Is this supposed to be Dante?” Then even more merrily: “Is this supposed to be me?”
“You’re such an ass, Danny. I know that one’s no good. That’s why it’s in the trash. For your info.”
“Danny, let her work.”
“What?” Little disbelieving laugh sounds from Danny. He sounded like a cat trying to cough up a fur ball. “What am I even doing?”
“Danny.”
“Fine.” He recrumpled her drawing and chucked it back in the garbage.
“Mom!” Annamae shrieked.
“What did he do?”
“What did I do?”
“He threw away my paper!”
“I put it back where I found it!” Danny swatted the side of Annamae’s head. She leapt from the bench and flung herself at him, and then they were on the floor, the two of them, far too old, at twelve and fourteen, for such behavior. When they stopped—breaking off awkwardly after less than a minute of pounding and shoving, as if they themselves were appalled to have wound up in pitched battle—their mother was in tears, and the coriander, fenugreek, and cardamom seeds were scorched.