ALL THE WAY home Chesler talked about his Christmas list. “Man, when I get my new skates, I can cut figure eights on Granny Grace’s pond just like you, Daddy. But what if Santa thinks I shouldn’t have the train track and the rod and reel? I don’t know how he’s going to pick which one to bring.” Chesler was so wound up I wondered when he was going to stop to breathe. “I like them both, but if he can only bring one, let me think. I hope it’s the rod and reel, then when the pond thaws out, we can go fishing with my new fishing rod. And . . .” He sat in the backseat yapping like he thought someone was listening to him. When he quit talking, he started singing Christmas songs.
It had snowed most of the day, but finally it was slowing a bit. The streets were quiet, because most folks were home on Sunday night at nine o’clock. We had been gone all day, Daddy at work, and me and Chesler at church with Granny, so I knew the house would be cold.
When Daddy turned onto Creek Meadow, he said, “Nothing warms up a cold house like a fire. Let’s build us one, roast some marshmallows, and watch a movie.”
“But, Daddy, it’s bedtime,” I reminded him.
“Hey, did you forget? You’re out for the holidays, and I don’t have to go in so early tomorrow. Maybe we could just forget about bedtime tonight and sleep in tomorrow morning and have waffles for breakfast.”
That meant cold waffles . . . or cold eggs. Daddy hadn’t figured out how to cook yet so we never got both of them hot at the same time.
Daddy pulled up the driveway and pressed the button for our garage door. “I’m making chili tomorrow night because Uncle Luke’s coming home from medical school for the holidays, and he loves chili.” Daddy was always happy when his brother was around. Uncle Luke was the only close family Daddy had left, since his parents died before I was born and his aunts and uncles had moved away from the area. Two whole weeks with Uncle Luke. Maybe Miss Applegate would be coming over a lot. She could help me with my drawing.
We climbed out of the car, and Daddy let us in through the kitchen. “Go put on your pajamas, and I’ll get the fire started. Then we’ll have a family meeting and vote on what movie to watch.”
That meant it’d be a Western tonight. Daddy said we would take a vote, but he took turns voting with Chesler and then with me. So it wasn’t really voting. It was Chesler’s turn tonight. Most of the time I picked something Daddy and Chesler liked to watch anyway. Getting them to watch a movie kept them busy so I had time to think or draw.
We were running up the stairs when Daddy hollered, “Hey, you want popcorn or marshmallows?”
I yelled, “Popcorn!” I grabbed Chesler’s arm and gave him the eye.
Chesler yelled, “Marshmallows!”
That way we got both. When we got to the top of the stairs, we made our thumbs-up sign, curling our fingers and shaking hands and doing a thumbs-up and touching thumbs. Uncle Luke taught us that sign. He said that he and Daddy learned to do it when they were boys as a sign they were brothers and they stuck together.
Chesler could be annoying, but as his big sister I had to look out for him. That was on one of the lists Mama made for me. One list was about helping Daddy because Daddy wasn’t so good at remembering things, like taking out the trash before it smelled, and making the grocery list before we went shopping, and remembering everybody’s birthdays. Another list was about helping Chesler. I was five years older than Chesler, so I already knew things he didn’t know yet. Mama wanted me to help him learn to read, and to make sure he brushed his teeth and his hair, and to remind him about being kind so he could put smiley faces on his calendar.
And Mama wanted me to wake Chesler up and start the day happy. That was the hardest thing on my list.
As I put on my fuzzy slippers, I heard Chesler running down the stairs, and I could already smell popcorn. I headed for the den. I was right about the movie. Cowboys and Indians again. Chesler was the only kid I knew who didn’t like movies with cartoon characters. We grabbed the blankets Granny made for each of us and wrapped up. Then we sat lined up on the sofa like blackbirds on a fence and passed the popcorn basket back and forth ’til it was all gone. When Daddy reached for the bag of marshmallows, I told him I was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. He said okay but not to get up too early. I took my blanket and started up the stairs.
I wasn’t really sleepy, but I was tired of horses and shotguns and men spitting in the campfire, and I wanted to work on my gifts for Granny Grace and Aunt Susannah Hope. Daddy wasn’t big on shopping, and Mama always said a homemade gift was the best kind anyway.
Before I got to the top of the stairs, I stopped. “Daddy, make sure Chesler brushes his teeth before he goes to bed. You know what Mama said about sticky marshmallows hugging teeth. They need a good brushing.”
“Yes, Kate, I’ll make sure of it.”
I had done what Mama put on my list, so I headed to my room. I turned the covers back on my bed and pulled my sketchbook out of my desk drawer. The second I heard the television go off, I planned to close my sketchbook, turn out my desk light, and jump into bed just like I’d been there all the time. Even if my light was out, Daddy would still come in to check on me.
Before I started drawing, I got my page of stickers out of the drawer. They were just little yellow round stickers about the size of a nickel. I asked Mama one time why we couldn’t just buy some smiley-face stickers. She drew two dots and a half a circle on one of those yellow dots and said, “Why, if we bought smiley faces then we wouldn’t get to make our own! And that’s half the fun!” So I put big dots with glasses on them to look like Pastor Simmons, and I peeled it off the paper and stuck it on my calendar for today. I had made Pastor smile this afternoon when I talked to him about my favorite book.
I could have put two stickers on December 18 because I made Granny smile when I told her I’d invite Laramie over to play. Putting that smiley face on the calendar before I went to sleep was as important to Mama as brushing my teeth or saying my prayers. We always talked about the kindnesses we’d seen or done that day, and then we said our good-night prayers.
The wind was blowing, and it kept knocking that elm limb against the window. I pulled out my sketchbook. Without Mama, I didn’t know how to make much, but I could draw. I had the idea to draw a picture of Mama as a Christmas present for Granny Grace and Aunt Susannah Hope. So on Saturday I had gone through all ten Books of My Life. That’s what Mama called the picture albums she made for Chesler and me. She made one every year and said it told all about our lives in pictures. My birthday was in April, and it looked like if I wanted a Book Eleven, I’d have to make it myself. But there wasn’t much I wanted to remember about this year except Mama being alive.
I had looked at all the pictures with Mama in them for a long time. I took the ones I wanted out of the book, but I was careful to label them because I wanted to put them right back where Mama had them.
I opened up my sketchbook and picked up the photos I had chosen. I looked at them a long time, and then I chose one and began to draw. I made lots of lines, and sometimes my hand accidentally smeared them so the picture got all smudged and blurry, kind of the way I saw Mama in my mind now. I didn’t want to forget how Mama looked. My pencil could put the lines back on the paper, but nothing could make me remember Mama any better. I just had to close my eyes and try real hard to see her. And I’d draw her over and over again so I wouldn’t forget.
I was making the long strokes of Mama’s curly hair when I noticed the silence. I looked at the clock. Ten after eleven and the movie had ended. I crammed my pencils in the cup and shuffled the pictures together and closed the sketchbook. After I turned out the light, I jumped into bed, blanket, housecoat, slippers, and all. I lay quiet, pretending to be asleep. Soon I heard Daddy’s footsteps coming up the stairs, slower than usual. Chesler had done it again, fallen asleep, even after eating marshmallows. Daddy knew better than to wake him up, so he was carrying him up the stairs. That meant no teeth-brushing. Sometimes I thought Chesler’s goal for the day was to get out of brushing his teeth.
It wasn’t long before my door opened and Daddy came in. He bent over the bed, brushed my hair off my cheek, and kissed me. “Good night, little peep,” he whispered like he always did. Then the door closed behind him, and he went to his room. I just kept my eyes closed, and I was looking in my mind, remembering Mama’s face, when I went to sleep.
Sometime later I heard the phone ring. Nobody in the Harding house liked it when the phone rang late at night. Then I heard Daddy talking. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but before long before lights came on and doors opened and closed.
Daddy came into my room first. He sat on the side of the bed and put his hand on my cheek. When I opened my eyes, Daddy said, “Little peep, you have to get up. I have to go to work.”
I knew that meant something bad had happened. “Don’t worry about getting dressed or taking anything with you, but just hurry. You can go to back to bed when we get to Aunt Susannah Hope’s.” Then he went to wake Chesler.
“Don’t wake Chesler up, Daddy. You know how he is.” I looked at the clock. It was a little after two. I still had on my slippers and housecoat so I just went downstairs wrapped in my blanket. I got Chesler’s blanket off the sofa and met Daddy at the door to the garage. I knew he wouldn’t think to wrap Chesler up, and I knew better than to ask Daddy what was going on. He didn’t like to talk about bad stuff.
When we got down the street to my aunt’s house, the front porch light was already on, and I could see her and Uncle Don through the glass door, standing there waiting on us. But before we got out of the car, Daddy said, “Katherine Joy, you’re a big girl now, and I want you to pray before you go back to sleep. Pray that it’ll stop snowing.” He squeezed my hand and said, “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”