A Place at the Table

After Sara leaves the room, Elizabeth steps forward and tells Mrs. Hameed she used the machine and made Sara help her with the spare key. Mrs. Hameed thanks Elizabeth for speaking up but wishes she had spoken up immediately. Elizabeth feels guilty for not thinking about how her actions could affect Sara and Mrs. Hameed, and the three depart to find Mrs. Kluckowski so the girls can apologize.

Mrs. Kluckowski accepts their apology, expresses her disappointment about how the girls took advantage of the club, and offers an apology of her own. She admits to making unfair assumptions based on experiences with the previous cooking club teacher who stole from her; this made her assume Mrs. Hameed was doing the same. Mrs. Hameed sends the girls into the hallway so she can talk to Mrs. Kluckowski privately.

Sara expresses anger with Elizabeth for risking Mrs. Hameed’s job and getting her in trouble. The girls part ways, and Elizabeth feels even guiltier. When she arrives home, she goes to her room immediately.

Justin pulls her out of her room one hour later to celebrate Hannukah’s final night. Her mom pulls out gifts for Elizabeth, Justin, and David. She makes each of them lap blankets from their deceased grandmother’s unused yarn so each can have something of their own while Aunt Louise manages the affairs in England. Elizabeth spends the next few days at home pretending to be sick. She does not want to face Sara and her peers’ anger. Before Bubbe leaves, she assures Elizabeth that they’re making an appointment for Elizabeth’s mother to see a doctor. Elizabeth stays home, sorting books, watching Doctor Who, and regretting her choices.

While Elizabeth avoids school, Sara must face her peers. She wants to become invisible again to prevent students like Stephanie from looking at her with pity. When Stephanie offers a free sample and consolation during lunch, Sara leaves and hides in the art room. Mrs. Newman allows Sara to spend her lunch period in the art room and to use her lunch periods to work on the poster for the international festival. Sara accepts and starts working immediately.

Dinner is a quiet affair for the Hameed family. Sara’s brothers resist eating vegetables until Sara challenges them to a clean plate race where the winner gets ice cream. She allows the twins to win, gets them their ice cream, and goes to her room for her nightly prayers while her mother says nothing. Her father enters her room while she sits on her prayer mat, asking to see her poster when she tells him about it. He expresses delight at her artistic skill and hearing how she will represent the whole school. He assures her they are not mad at her and that Mrs. Hameed is simply worried. Sara wants to help and asks her father to let her. He does not reply but explains how he felt the same when he was a kid.

Elizabeth stays home again. On Thursday, her mom enters her bedroom and talks to her, saying she must return to school. Elizabeth argues that her mom wallowed for so long, and it is unfair that Elizabeth must face the world and Sara again soon. She also learns that her mom starts seeing a doctor the following week, her dad is applying for jobs with less travel, her grandmother will visit more often, and her mother has no plans to travel to London and never return.

Elizabeth feels better and makes tomato soup from scratch. While she cooks, Maddy visits and apologizes for her comments about Sara at the mall. Elizabeth calls out her racism again, and Maddy acknowledges it this time. She wants to do better but gets jealous that Elizabeth wants to spend time with Sara. She is working with Stephanie and the cooking club to organize a cook-in at the Hameed residence to show Mrs. Hameed how much they have learned from her. Elizabeth loves the idea, and Elizabeth’s mother offers to help because Mrs. Hameed is also her friend.

Sara enters the kitchen to find her mother studying for the citizenship exam while cooking curry. She asks Mrs. Hameed one of the questions and learns that her family once went on vacation to the Louisiana French Quarter. Mrs. Hameed is wearing lipstick and appears ready for company. Sara does not understand why until the doorbell rings, and everyone from the cooking class and Rabia arrives to celebrate their successes. Sara and Elizabeth resolve their argument, and Elizabeth explains how Maddy apologized to her but not to Sara.

Everyone workshops their recipes together and provides feedback and suggestions for improvement—rather than competing, they learn from each other. After most of the class leaves, Maddy and Elizabeth stand outside in the cold. They reminisce about their past friendship, and Maddy wishes Elizabeth luck when she leaves.

Sara and Elizabeth spend the following day working on their Halwa Cuppa Tea recipe at Elizabeth’s house. Their biggest challenge is figuring out how to make ice cream without an ice cream machine. David and Justin grab a pretzel jar and disappear into the garage to create a new project. When Sara and Elizabeth have the cream ready, David and Justin announce that their invention has been prepared. Justin attaches the spokes and the pretzel jar over the bike’s front wheel so that when the front tire turns, the pretzel jar does as well—Justin makes an at-home ice cream machine. Once the ice cream is ready, everyone tests it and agrees the Halwa Cuppa Tea is the winning recipe.

The International Festival arrives. The Hameed family brings prepared food for the Pakistani table, while Elizabeth’s family brings the Halwa Cuppa Tea ice cream. As they enter the school, Sara shows off the poster she made, which her family says looks impressive. Maddy and Stephanie make raspberry scones; many students and faculty love both dishes. Mrs. Kluckowski compliments the ice cream, saying it is delicious. While people come to their table, Sara and Elizabeth hand out flyers with Sara’s logo for Hameed’s Kitchen, Mrs. Hameed’s catering service, in the header. Sara also wears the logo on a shirt, which she shows to her mother. Mrs. Hameed loves the logo and thanks Sara.

Soon, the festival judges sample all the dishes and judge each one. They announce the contest winners—Maddy and Stephanie, with Sara and Elizabeth getting honorable mentions. Maddy congratulates Sara and Elizabeth, and Maddy apologizes to Sara. She explains how she reprimanded her father for his racist comments about the international festival. She also asks Sara if they can be friends, which Sara agrees to.

Mrs. Hameed and Elizabeth’s mother become citizens. Sara and Elizabeth plan a celebration for their families, which includes a variety of foods from all their cultures—American, English, and Pakistani. Elizabeth will take family and consumer sciences next semester; Sara got special permission to take an additional semester of art to construct a portfolio. She plans to apply to a summer art program. Sara and Elizabeth momentarily recognize how they helped each other by becoming friends before they take dishes out of the kitchen to join the citizenship celebrations.