Emily Jenkins - Invisible Inkling

It works. People come. Starting around one o’clock each day, babies waking from their naps come in to see Teakettle, read some picture books, and eat dishes of vanilla ice cream. Starting at three, kids stop in after school to see him. They buy cones. Their parents buy espresso. Pretty often they take home pints—especially the holiday flavors.

A couple days after Teakettle comes to the shop, Big Round Pumpkin starts selling its first-ever Hanukkah ice cream: geshmack doughnut. It’s caramel-swirl ice cream with tiny spherical doughnuts, served with a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar across the top of every cone.

Inkling thought of the name. Geshmack means “tasty” in Yiddish.

Kim thought of doughnuts. Fried foods like latkes are traditional at Hanukkah, because of the oil. Kim told us not just latkes. Doughnuts, too.

I thought of adding the caramel swirl.

Chin thought of sprinkling the cinnamon-sugar across the top, which makes it seem more special than an ordinary ice-cream cone.

Dad found a local bakery that would make tiny organic doughnuts, and then he put it all together.

Patne helped eat several test batches and made suggestions.

Nadia wrote Geshmack Doughnut on the board in beautiful handwriting.

Mom didn’t really do anything. But that’s okay. The shop is full. It feels like a holiday in there.

On December 15, Betty-Ann and her whoopie pie truck disappear from our corner. Maybe she is defeated by the awesome power of a pygmy hedgehog and a Hanukkah ice-cream flavor. Or maybe it’s just too cold to eat whoopie pies out on the street. Maybe she always shuts down once winter comes around.

I’ll never know. But it doesn’t matter much.

What matters is, we are selling ice cream again.

I have a new job. In addition to being in charge of recycling, I have to feed and water Teakettle every day, plus go to the store to buy his food. (Nadia has to clean out the cage. Ha!)

This means I get paid more money each week, and it also means that I can actually use my money for paying off my Lego airport, for paying Nadia back money she’s loaned me, and for candy. Because you know what vegetable Teakettle gets served, but doesn’t actually eat much of?

Squash.

Raw squash.

I can now stock the ice-cream-shop fridge with acorn, butternut, and delicata, as well as carrots, cucumbers, and celery for Teakettle to munch on.

He likes cucumbers best.

Inkling eats almost all the squash.

One weekend morning, I wake up and Inkling is not in my laundry basket. I feel all around the bedroom in case he’s sleeping somewhere unusual. He’s not there.

I get up, eat some leftover Thai food, and put on clothes. Nadia’s still asleep. Mom left a note that she and Dad are down at Big Round Pumpkin, working early to fill special orders for holiday ice-cream cakes. I take my key and head to the shop. I call to my folks that I’m here, but we’re not open to the public yet, so they’re back in the kitchen, decorating cakes.

Sure enough, I find Inkling leaning against Teakettle’s cage. I’ve found him here a couple times lately, after school, usually next to a pile of squash rinds.

But today, there’s no squash.

Inkling pats my arm when I reach down to scratch his neck, and he accepts the waffle cone I give him—but he doesn’t climb on my shoulder or say anything to me. It seems like he’s busy.

Teakettle is on an upper level of his habitat, looking right at the place where Inkling is sitting. His nose is twitching. His ears are perky.

And suddenly, I get it.

Teakettle has been listening. To Inkling. Maybe he doesn’t understand English. Or Yiddish or Mandarin. Probably he understands Inkling in some animal language shared by bandapats and hedgies, some smell-touch-grunt mix.

Inkling is teaching Teakettle what he knows. Bandapat stuff. How to drop on enemies from high branches. How to eat pumpkin without getting strings in his teeth. How to backstroke and catch Oatie Puffs in midair.

Inkling breaks off a bit of waffle cone and pokes it through to Teakettle.

Teakettle sniffs it but doesn’t eat. Hedgies don’t like waffle cones, apparently.

“Look at him. Isn’t he a little cute one?” says Inkling, reaching in to take the bit of cone back.

As if to prove it, Teakettle rolls himself into a ball and falls over on one side.

“He really is,” I say.

“He climbed under my floppy bits yesterday when it was cold in here,” Inkling says. “I kept him warm!”

All that’s left to tell you is that for the next two weeks, when Mom drags me to swim class, I actually think about swimming.

I rotate my feet. I lift my elbows. I loosen my knees.

I remember that Chin and I built a Great Wall of China once. And now we’re building the Taj Mahal. I remember that Kim, Chin, Patne, and I invented an ice-cream flavor. Kim and I will probably never be more than halfway friends, but I remember that all four of us are supervillains scheming together to take over the food trucks of Manhattan and make them servants of our evil ice-cream empire.

I remember we can all fit on the tire swing together if we try.

When I’m swimming and my overbusy imagination wants to begin zooming around—picturing huge hammocks and drowning kittens and giant water lizards—I put it on hold. I make myself think about swimming, and all the things Inkling has been teaching me.

I didn’t used to be able to do that: make myself think about swimming.

But somehow, now I can.

I rotate my feet. I lift my elbows. I loosen my knees.

Before the eight nights of Hanukkah are over, I am a Cuttlefish.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Irealize not everyone has experienced the awesomeness that is a whoopie pie, so if you’ve turned back here to find out what one is, here ya go: it’s a cake-and-frosting sandwich. Or cake and ice cream, if it’s an ice-cream whoopie pie.

As in the other books about Wolowitz and Inkling, I am fictionalizing my favorite Brooklyn shops, parks, and restaurants. Some places I mention are real, but others are imaginary. I’m also rearranging space so my characters can get around on foot rather than by subway. The Wolowitz family lives in a combination of Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens.

Big Round Pumpkin is inspired by Blue Marble: www.bluemarbleicecream.com. Blue Marble serves pumpkin ice cream every fall, and it doesn’t taste like baby food at all. Betty-Ann is entirely made-up, but I got the idea for the drama in this book from eating the wonderful pumpkin ice-cream whoopie pies at One Girl Cookies: www.onegirlcookies.com.

I would like to make a few disclaimers here. First, Hank is not a reliable reporter. I doubt it’s really true about that black mamba eating a parrot, and other things Hank says about snakes are not exactly facts. Second, Inkling is a big liar, and nothing he says about geography or anything else should be taken as true. Third, there’s a heck of a lot to read if you want to safely rear hedgehogs. I did some research, but then I adapted what I learned about them to suit my fictional purposes.

Kim gets his name from a young friend of mine. His uncle won an auction for the chance to have his nephew’s name in my books, and HK was nice enough to say it was okay if his namesake was badly behaved.

Thanks always to Bob for support, and gratitude to Apte for the joke about creamed herring. A big debt and a large bowl of geshmack doughnut to Bray, Kaplan, Siniscalchi, Sun, Polster, Sarver, Gamarra, Mlynowski, Aukin & Aukin & Aukin, and Bliss.