Yarn and Plastic

“Marlon!” Kiki cried. “I need you to chop those onions faster!”

Kiki craned her neck around from washing her assortment of vegetables to see her older brother adjusting the strap on his chef’s hat. He flashed a thumbs-up without looking up from his task.

“Yes, ma’am!” He began rapidly hacking at the white orbs with a knife only he and Kiki could see with their imaginations. Even though he was old enough to handle a real knife, Kiki knew he wouldn’t destroy her little plastic ingredients that could cook an infinite amount of whatever yummy meals she invented.

Kiki gave a curt nod of approval. “That’s more like it!” she praised, dipping a piece of hard lettuce in a bowl of real water. “No time for slacking when there’s a rush! Those folks are hungry!”

Kiki glanced up from the window of her toy kitchen where her family sat patiently on the carpet of their basement floor. They smiled politely as they eagerly awaited their lunches, made hot and fresh from Kiki’s Diner. Kiki took a cloth rag and dabbed the invisible sweat from her forehead.

“Whew!” she huffed. “There sure are a lot of customers today!”

Kiki had been both surprised and delighted by the sudden visit of the bulk of her family. She’d nearly jumped out of her apron with excitement when her mother suggested the family head down to her diner for some lunch. Normally when she wanted to run Kiki’s Diner, she only had Marlon, her parents, and maybe a few cousins if she were lucky. But today, everyone was here. Aunts, uncles, great-grandparents, cousins, family friends, and even family members she had never met before. Usually, Kiki didn’t see this much of the family except for holidays and the occasional barbeque.

That was, except for her Grandpa Tony and Grandma Josie, who would come over daily after school to babysit her while her parents worked. Strangely, they were the only two members absent from the diner. And they were regulars, at that too. They’d been there since the beginning, with Grandpa Tony being the one to have bought her the kitchen set for Christmas last year. He was her first and best customer. He would always order the Everything Casserole, which was the most expensive item on her menu. It included every ingredient in the kitchen and had the most prep time. Kiki would make it and he made sure to pay her seventy dollars in Monopoly money to cover the bill, followed by a tip of one real dollar.

But Kiki didn’t have time to think about the whereabouts of her two most faithful customers. Uncle Vic had ordered a twelve-patty cheeseburger with cookie buns and the chef had to get to flipping the patties.

***

“Here ya go, Hannah!” Kiki nearly tripped over the strings of her apron handing her cousin her Rainbow Jelly Bean Spaghetti. The teenager gingerly took the paper plate loaded up with yarn and buttons with a polite smile.

“Oh, thank you!” she said, using her hand to guide the scent of it to her nose. “Mmm! Smells just like candy.”

Kiki smiled and excitedly clenched her fists. Her grin started to sag as she watched Hannah shovel imaginary noodles into her mouth.

“Delicious!” Hannah complimented. “But I don’t expect any less from Head Chef Kiki!”

Kiki nodded and bounded back to the kitchen.

“Marlon?” she whispered to her brother, who was texting on his phone.

“Oh, sorry Chef!” he apologized, stuffing his phone into his hoodie. “I’m not slacking, I promise!”

While Kiki normally got on her sous chef’s case about screen time in the kitchen, she had bigger concerns.

“What’s wrong with Hannah?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Uh,” Marlon stammered. “She’s just tired, probably.”

“She always plays Diner the best,” Kiki explained. “She always sends it back. There’s too much salt! There’s not enough sauce! It’s burned! There’s a hair in it!” Kiki glanced back over at Hannah, who had buried her face into her knees. “But today, she just ate it without whining.”

She looked out into the crowd of customers murmuring quietly amongst themselves. People were rubbing their eyes and their expressions had begun to sink.

“Everybody seems so sleepy,” Kiki commented. “Why are they here? They’re usually happy and talking for the whole day when there’s a family gathering.”

Marlon was silent. Kiki tugged at her brother’s sleeve.

“It’s just…” he trailed off. “One of those days, Ki.”

Kiki did not like his answer. It made her belly feel twisted and wiggly.

Just as she opened her mouth to ask him what he meant by that, more customers walked down the stairs into the Diner.

“Jojo!” Kiki charged her Grandma Josie and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs. “You’re just in time, there’s a rush going on and everyone’s starting to get full so I’ll have plenty of time to make…”

Kiki’s mile-a-minute greeting fizzled out as she felt a drop fall onto her forehead. She glanced up to see tears melting Jojo’s withered face into a mess of runny makeup and wrinkles.

“Oh, baby…” she whispered, crouching down and pulling Kiki into a bearhug. “Oh, my baby…my baby…”

Jojo wept into Kiki’s scrawny shoulder.

“Jojo, what’s wrong?” Kiki asked through a tightening throat. “I can make you your favorite dish…Mangos stuffed with cotton candy ice cream!”

Jojo continued to relentlessly wail into her granddaughter’s apron.

“It’ll be the best batch ever!” Kiki asserted. The little chef suddenly grew aware of the continued absence of her grandfather. “I can even make extras for Pop Pop!” Kiki tacked on. “And I can make the Everything Casserole if he can give me time to get all the stuff.”

Jojo finally sat up, her mascara had wiped off all over the pink fabric of Kiki’s apron. Its first stains.

“Kiki, baby,” she whimpered. “You won’t need to cook for Pop Pop anymore.”

***

The week following the rush at the diner at been a blur. People came and went through the house. Jojo slept on the family’s couch. Marlon spent a lot of time at his friends’ houses. Kiki’s parents bought lots of fast food to feed the family. There was lots of talking. Lots of arguing. Lots of crying. 

Nobody wanted to come to Kiki’s Diner.

On the day of her grandfather’s funeral, Kiki scribbled the word “CLOSED” on a piece of printer paper and taped it to the basement door. She may have been able to run it by herself, but without customers to serve, there would be nothing to cook. Tears squeezed from her eyes as she wondered if it would be closed forever.

***

Kiki sat alone down in the diner, running her hands along the smooth plastic of a celery stick. She was still dressed in her black dress shirt and red skirt from the funeral. She eyed her crumpled pink apron in the corner of the fake kitchen. The mascara stains were still seared into the pink fabric, despite Jojo’s attempts to get them out. Kiki chucked the celery toy across the room.

The basement door cracked open, allowing some light and noise from the family upstairs to drift into the empty diner.

“Ki?” Marlon called out. “Are we reopening the diner today?”

“No,” she stated with a pout. “I don’t want to run the diner anymore.”

“What?” Marlon replied, throwing his hands to his head. “But you’re Chef Kiki! The world needs you to reinvent the world of food!” 

“It’s not real,” Kiki declared plainly. “It was just play. And I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Aw, Ki…” Marlon sat down on the floor next to his little sister. “Just because it’s make-believe doesn’t mean it’s all not real.”

Kiki picked up a nearby paper plate and started ripping small tears in it.

“All of your dishes and recipes are ideas, which are very real!”  

“They won’t taste as good in real life.” 

“Well, that may be true.” Marlon gave her back a rough pat. “But I know for a fact whatever you can make will taste better than yarn and plastic.”

Kiki cracked a brief-lived smile.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Marlon said, jostling his sister to her feet. “How about we upgrade this little shack of a diner to the first floor?”

***

Kiki sat at the head of the kitchen table while her brother began prepping the countertops with their usual prep tools. Only this time, real knives, bowls, pots, pans, and ingredients were sprawled all over the granite surfaces. She had to give Marlon credit; she had trained him well in the art of kitchen preparations. His technique was impeccable, aside from the occasional distraction from his buzzing phone.

Some stray family members that had congealed at Kiki’s house after the funeral wandered in to investigate the racket.

“What’s with all the noise?” Uncle Vic demanded. 

“Aht!” Marlon hissed. “Kiki’s Diner is closed. Come back in a few minutes for our grand reopening!”

The trail of dry tears cracked apart against the corners of Uncle Vic’s mouth as a warm grin flashed to Kiki.

“Oh, my apologies!” he chuckled. “I didn’t realize the place was being renovated!”

As the visiting relatives dipped out of the kitchen, Marlon pulled his child-sized chef’s hat out of his suit pocket and strapped it on.

“So, Chef!” he said clasping his hands together. “What’s first on the buffet table?”

“Uhm…” Kiki stammered. “I don’t know.” She kept her eyes down on her fidgeting hands. “I don’t actually know how to make anything.”

“Sure you do!” Marlon asserted. “How do you make Rainbow Jelly Bean Spaghetti?”

“You dye some noodles rainbow colors and season them with powdered sugar and jelly beans.”

“See?” Marlon laid a hand on her shoulder. “There ya go! And Uncle Vic’s Mega Cookie Burger?”

“Grill twelve patties and smoosh them between two chocolate chip cookies.”

“Well, chef.” Marlon handed Kiki a ball of wrinkled pink cloth from his pants pocket. “Sounds like we should quit our slacking. There’s a rush coming, and those folks are hungry!”

***

In less than ten minutes, the kitchen at the new and improved Kiki’s Diner was bustling as Chef Kiki and her Sous Chef Marlon hurried the meals together for the incoming rush. Kiki would shout orders;

“Chop those onions!”

“More jelly in those noodles!”

“Get off that phone!”

All to which Marlon would obey with an obedient “Yes, Chef!”

Before they knew it, the table had been decorated in a colorful spread no restaurant had ever seen before. Hannah’s Rainbow Spaghetti, which had been made with strings of fried dough at Marlon’s suggestion. Uncle Vic’s Cookie Burger, which only had two patties since that was all the meat that was available. Jojo’s Mango, which had vanilla ice cream tucked away inside since Marlon suggested cotton candy ice cream might be too sweet.

What had only once been a game of pretend had turned into a game of real-life cooking for Kiki. They’d even discovered an old cookbook hidden in the cup cabinet to take inspiration from. Through the process, Kiki learned about spices and fancy ingredients she’d never heard of before. Soon enough, her culinary brain was firing off all sorts of new ideas using her newly acquired mental toolbox of cooking skills. And with the guidance of her assistant chef, Kiki’s Diner had come to life in a way she’d thought could only be confined to her imagination.

“You ready to open for business, Ki?” Marlon asked, wiping a real bead of sweat from his forehead. “I think we’ve just about-”

“Hold on,” Kiki interrupted. “I need to do something first.”

***

Kiki rushed to the basement, swiftly tearing down the CLOSED sign on her way to the former diner kitchen. She plopped herself down in front of the colorful walls of the playset, making sure to wash her hands in the plumbing-less sink. She gathered up all of the plastic food and tossed them into a mesh basket that had always been her trusty casserole pan. She carefully laid strings of yarn horizontally across the dish and gently seasoned it with glitter and faux Easter grass. Before popping it in the creaky little oven, she made sure to add a dash of twigs she’d gathered from the yard every morning as her “secret spice.”

And then she sat and waited.

An audible “ting!” emitted from the little chef's internal timer and she knew her masterpiece was finished. Using her winter mittens, she carefully pulled the Everything Casserole out of the oven and held it to her face for a whiff.

Content with the result, she set the tray down and folded up the little kitchen, and pushed it up against the wall.

She once more scooped up her fresh-cooked meal and set it down beside the torn-down shop.

“This is for you, Pop Pop,” she muttered aloud to the toy heap. “I know it’s made of yarn and plastic, but it was your favorite.”

Kiki removed her pink apron and draped it over the set. “It’s not as good as the stuff at the new diner…” she leaned down in a whisper.

“But it will last forever.”