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assembly at school. Fifty-seven words per minute.
    India also got rave reviews for her spotless dishes and thorough dusting. In Dad’s office she dusted each of the little knickknacks that he’d collected from around the world: Buddha, Venetian blown glass, Mardi Gras beads.
    When it was time for my evaluation, I requested that everyone sit on the couch with the coffee table in front of it. They had already seen the arrangement that I made for the dining-room table—willow sticks and lavender lilacsfrom the backyard. India had hovered over it like a butterfly, smelling the lilacs.
    Now it was time to show them my masterpiece. I had spent half an hour looking through our library and choosing which books to place stacked on the coffee table. I had chosen seven books.
    I began to explain.
    “The books on a family’s coffee table say a lot about who they are and what they think. This was a very stressful job for me because I needed to represent every member of the family and not just myself.”
    Lulu rolled her eyes and breathed too loudly, like a scuba diver on the Discovery Channel.
    I picked up the first book.
    I went on, “The book that represents me is
A Feng Shui Life.
”
    Mom had taken a feng shui class last summer at the community art center. Her teacher wore too many necklaces and smelled like an Indian restaurant. Mom explained to me that the way a room is arranged and decorated affects the energy fields of the people who live in the room. Every night when she returned from class, she would move our furniture around.
    Our beds away from windows. Candles in every room. Mirrors everywhere.
    Lulu loved the mirrors.
    I told Mom that I could feel the energy opening up in the room, but I’m not sure if that’s what I really felt. Earlier that morning I had used Q-tips to clean my ears and pulled out the biggest piece of wax I’d ever seen. I think that I could just hear better.
    I kept the earwax in a jar under my bed for two days. I had trouble sleeping when it was under my bed. I think it closed my feng shui energy fields. I ended up throwing it out.
    “I chose this coffee table book about Oscar de la Renta to represent India. He has great style and taste and knows how to dress women.”
    I had read that quote from a lady named Diana Vreeland on page 43 of the book. I don’t know who Diana Vreeland is, but in her picture she is sitting in a room where everything is “the perfect red.” India smiled and adjusted her blue-and-yellow sarong that she was wearing. Mom and Dad had brought it to her from Bali.
    Lulu leaned forward and said, “Which book represents me?”
    I picked up a book called
Your Moody Preteen
and began to smile when I saw the horrified look on Lulu’s face.
    “I’m just kidding,” I said.
    Everyone, except for Lulu, began to laugh.
    “The real book that I chose for you is this one. It’s called
Great Pianists of Our Time.
”
    “Am I in it?” asked Lulu.
    I showed them all of the books that I had carefully chosen.
The New Yorker Book of Dog Cartoons
for Dad.
Moroccan Gardens
for Mom.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
for Belly I couldn’t find a book about headless dolls.
    “Who is the last book for?” asked India, pointing to a tattered old children’s book that was lying next to the six glossy tabletop books that I had just presented.
    I reached for the last book on the table and said, “This book represents the manny.”
    I held it up.
    Mary Poppins.

7
Please Don’t Have Any More Children! J/K
     
    We spent the rest of the afternoon making welcome-home signs for Mom and Dad. Lulu made a banner that was twelve feet long to hang in the front hallway so that it would be the first thing they saw when they walked into the house. She used a paintbrush to paint the words THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE HOME across the long white butcher paper. She isn’t very subtle. I learned the word
subtle
from Ms. Grant. She told me to be more subtle at the beginning of the school year when I grabbed the