like the Magic Eye pictures in Olmoâs book where if you just stare at the page you donât see anything, but if you make yourself go cross-eyed you see a dinosaur.
âTrumpets! Truuumpettts!â
I shout until my mom appears, springing out from between the trees.
âWhere?â she says.
âKneel down,â I say. But she only crouches down. I point and it doesnât take long before she spots them too. Theyâre all over the place, the same color as the dirt. Black trumpets are the real queens of camuflash.
Pina and Ana turn up to pick my trumpets, and I want them to go away but I donât say anything because they are saying how good I am at this and how excellent my mask looks on me. Emma picks a few and smells them. She says weâre going to do spaghetti with black trumpets, garlic and white wine and, âdidnât I tell you five was a lucky number?â
âIâm a lucky peanut,â I say.
âYouâre my little truffle hog, thatâs what you are,â says Mama, and she rolls my sleeves back up.
I donât know what a truffle hog is, but I guess itâs a pig made out of fancy chocolate. I get up and my legs are totally brown, just like my hands and my face, and I guess thatâs why she said it. Iâm a chocolate-covered peanut.
âWanna go shower?â Grandma asks.
âNot now,â I tell her.
âOkey dokey,â she says.
Ana and Pi take the trumpets to the house because in the end weâve collected a ginormous paper bag of them. The rest of us go on walking because now Grandma wants us to find another mushroom, a chanterelle, which is yellow, but itâs not like any of the yellows that Mama has in her basket, or like my sweater, or even like the yellow of the banana slugs which she says only exist on the other coast.
âOf the lake?â I ask.
âOf the country,â Grandma says.
I want to find the chanterelle. Iâm going to find it. We walk. Iâve got so much mud on my knees itâs like there are two cow patties sitting on them. I like them. I like walking with the adults because they talk without whispering secrets to each other and donât make you do anything with straws. One time, Pina and Ana tried to put a straw up my front bottom because they said that all of us women have a little hole there to make children. But they couldnât find it, so they told me I donât have one and that Iâm never going to have children, which is fine by me because children can be so dumb and nasty with their little sisters, even when the little sisters are really nice and pretty.
My mom picks a mushroom for her already very full basket.
âThatâs a magic mushroom,â Emma tells her.
âReally?â I ask.
âShe just means it makes you sleepy,â says Mama.
âAnd giggly,â Grandma says.
âAnd it makes you see things,â says Mama.
I say it doesnât sound so bad, but it doesnât sound that magic either.
âWhich one is it?â I ask, and they point to one in Emmaâs hand, but they wonât let me touch it. Emma collects chestnuts and I see her putting them in her sweater pockets which are now all big and bulgy like the stockings she hangs by the chimney at Christmas when we come to see her, and which she fills with trick presents for us, like fruit and pencil sharpeners.
âAre you going to eat them?â I ask her.
âIâm going to paint them,â she says.
âWhat color?â I ask.
âIâm not going to paint on top of them. Iâm going to paint them in a still life.â
âEmmaâs Pickings: A Still Life ,â my mom says.
âA minimalist still life, this year,â Grandma says, and they both laugh, and I laugh too so they think I get what theyâre talking about, but also because itâs like a choir and if you donât laugh itâs like you arenât singing, and it you
âTrumpets! Truuumpettts!â
I shout until my mom appears, springing out from between the trees.
âWhere?â she says.
âKneel down,â I say. But she only crouches down. I point and it doesnât take long before she spots them too. Theyâre all over the place, the same color as the dirt. Black trumpets are the real queens of camuflash.
Pina and Ana turn up to pick my trumpets, and I want them to go away but I donât say anything because they are saying how good I am at this and how excellent my mask looks on me. Emma picks a few and smells them. She says weâre going to do spaghetti with black trumpets, garlic and white wine and, âdidnât I tell you five was a lucky number?â
âIâm a lucky peanut,â I say.
âYouâre my little truffle hog, thatâs what you are,â says Mama, and she rolls my sleeves back up.
I donât know what a truffle hog is, but I guess itâs a pig made out of fancy chocolate. I get up and my legs are totally brown, just like my hands and my face, and I guess thatâs why she said it. Iâm a chocolate-covered peanut.
âWanna go shower?â Grandma asks.
âNot now,â I tell her.
âOkey dokey,â she says.
Ana and Pi take the trumpets to the house because in the end weâve collected a ginormous paper bag of them. The rest of us go on walking because now Grandma wants us to find another mushroom, a chanterelle, which is yellow, but itâs not like any of the yellows that Mama has in her basket, or like my sweater, or even like the yellow of the banana slugs which she says only exist on the other coast.
âOf the lake?â I ask.
âOf the country,â Grandma says.
I want to find the chanterelle. Iâm going to find it. We walk. Iâve got so much mud on my knees itâs like there are two cow patties sitting on them. I like them. I like walking with the adults because they talk without whispering secrets to each other and donât make you do anything with straws. One time, Pina and Ana tried to put a straw up my front bottom because they said that all of us women have a little hole there to make children. But they couldnât find it, so they told me I donât have one and that Iâm never going to have children, which is fine by me because children can be so dumb and nasty with their little sisters, even when the little sisters are really nice and pretty.
My mom picks a mushroom for her already very full basket.
âThatâs a magic mushroom,â Emma tells her.
âReally?â I ask.
âShe just means it makes you sleepy,â says Mama.
âAnd giggly,â Grandma says.
âAnd it makes you see things,â says Mama.
I say it doesnât sound so bad, but it doesnât sound that magic either.
âWhich one is it?â I ask, and they point to one in Emmaâs hand, but they wonât let me touch it. Emma collects chestnuts and I see her putting them in her sweater pockets which are now all big and bulgy like the stockings she hangs by the chimney at Christmas when we come to see her, and which she fills with trick presents for us, like fruit and pencil sharpeners.
âAre you going to eat them?â I ask her.
âIâm going to paint them,â she says.
âWhat color?â I ask.
âIâm not going to paint on top of them. Iâm going to paint them in a still life.â
âEmmaâs Pickings: A Still Life ,â my mom says.
âA minimalist still life, this year,â Grandma says, and they both laugh, and I laugh too so they think I get what theyâre talking about, but also because itâs like a choir and if you donât laugh itâs like you arenât singing, and it you
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