Tea Time

I was sick. I was coughing, hacking, sniffing, blowing and whining. I felt so bad, even my hair hurt. I was curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and reading my novel. Rumble and Gram were in their customary chairs. They were reading as well.

I glanced at the clock, realized it was almost time for the Eleven o’clock news, and that it was my turn to fix the tea. I started to get up. Rumble rumbled at me to stay. He said that since I was sick, he’d fix the tea.

Ooooh! It was so incredibly kind, I couldn’t help but smile at him. I said, “Thank you. You are so sweet.”

Then he rumbled that he didn’t want my germs anywhere near his tea. Jerk.

Our tea drinking during the news had come to be a ritual. Rumble and I took turns brewing and serving. Sometimes one or the other of us would add a special treat. Then we carried everything to the living-room on an old, battered wooden tray that had wall paper cabbage roses decoupaged to it. We usually sat the tray on the footstool within easy reach of all of us.

Despite it not being his night to make tea, Rumble still provided a special treat. Alongside the teapot, cups, spoons and sugar bowl, was a little crystal bowl full of Creme d’Mint after dinner chocolates. “Oh! My favorite!” I said, and promptly popped one into my mouth.

I told Rumble how wonderful he was and proclaimed the chocolate sweet and delicious. I also mentioned that I wished my nose wasn’t so plugged, so I could enjoy it more.

Rumble passed me a steaming hot cup of tea. “Here, drink this. Maybe it will clear your nose, then you can have another.” How sweet.

I thanked him, took the mug in both my hands and raised it to my lips. The steamy liquid fogged my glasses as I took a huge swallow — and froze.

Vinegar! Rumble had served me a steaming hot mug of cider vinegar! After the sweetness of the chocolate mint, it was a double assault to my tongue. I couldn’t swallow, and spitting was against every manner I had ever been taught. I lurched from the couch, all tangled in my blanket, still holding the cup of “tea” in my left hand. Since I couldn’t swallow or spit, I also couldn’t shriek or cuss. Nor — thanks to my stuffy nose — breathe!

Had I not been very well trained, I probably would have spit that tea on Rumble. Only the thought of Gram’s reaction stopped me. I struggled to the bathroom, finally kicking out of my blanket in the hall. As I wretched over the sink, I could hear Rumble in the living-room laughing himself silly.

Gram admonished, “Now, Rumble, that wasn’t very nice.”

Rumble, gasping for breath said, “I know, but did you see her face?” Then he roared even louder.

As I listened to him laugh, I doused his toothbrush in Gram’s perfume and began contemplating ways to get even.

Shiny, Bright Red

Every evening before dinner, Rumble would stretch out on the living-room floor and take a nap. Often, to use as little floor space as possible, he put his feet next to me on my chair. A couple of nights after the peanut butter and jelly incident, Rumble stretched out on his back, put his feet near my thigh, and went out like a light.

I finished painting my fingernails a lovely pearl pink, then I capped the polish bottle and put it away. As soon as my nails were dry I reached back into my cosmetic case, and took out a bottle of fire engine red fingernail polish. This I uncapped. Then I carefully painted each of Rumble’s toenails on both of his feet.

Gram was sitting in her chair right across from me. Softly she said, “That’s bound to make him mad you know.” I grinned at her and whispered back, “I’m counting on it.” One side-effect of living in a house no bigger than a postage stamp, is that you get used to people being around all the time. You lose that inner sense of “being watched”. That’s likely why Rumble slept through what I did next.

I eased out of my chair, taking care not to jostle his feet, and knelt besiode him on the floor. He lay with one hand on his stomach, and the other flung out beside him on the floor. I carefully painted each of his fingernails bright, shiny red.

Again Gram whispered at me, “He’s not going to like that!” I nodded my head and smiled.

About 20 minutes after I put the polish bottle away, Gram called us to the kitchen for dinner. We bowed our heads, Gram asked Rumble to say grace, then we all reached for our utensils. Rumble froze with a forkful of mashed potatoes half way to his mouth. He sat there, staring at his hand.

Slowly he raised his eyes to mine. “You have fingernail polish remover, right?”

Smirking at him, I shrugged.

He said, “I have a date with Kay tonight. I can’t go out with Kay wearing red fingernail polish.”

I said, “Why? Will she be jealous?”

Rumble started to get out of his seat, and Gram assured him I had fingernail polish remover. Spoil sport.

It was Rumble’s turn to do the dishes. He told me that I’d best have the fingernail polish remover ready for him as soon as he was finished.

I did have it ready. I’d gone in my bedroom, poured most of the bottle’s contents in a water glass, and diluted the bit I left in the bottle with rubbing alcohol. I presented it and a package of cotton balls to Rumble. He spent half an hour and all the polish remover scrubbing at his nails. Most of the polish came off, but his nails remained decidedly pink.

He tossed the empty bottle in my direction, gathered up the used cotton balls, and said he’d scrub the rest off in the shower with the Lava soap. He disappeared downstairs.

About 40 minutes later he came back upstairs, clean, shaved, combed and looking sharp. He carried his shoes and socks in his hand. “It came off,” he said, and showed me his au natural fingernails. I smiled at him.

He rolled up his sock, propped his left foot on his knee — and froze. I guess he didn’t wash his feet in the shower, because he was just noticing the toenail polish. His head snapped up and he demanded, “Polish remover!”

I tossed him the empty bottle. It landed in his lap. “It’s empty!” He shrieked.

“Hmm.” I said. “Most girls can clean a whole hand with just one soaked cotton ball, but you had to go and use it all.”

“The polish wouldn’t come off!” He shook the bottle at me. “Get me more!”

“That was it,” I said. “I don’t have another bottle.”

Rumble was sitting in the easy chair on the west side of the living-room. I was sitting on the curved sectional sofa across from him. Gram sat, also on the curved sectional, on the South side of the living room, following our conversation like a ping pong match. She studied each of us as we spoke, but she didn’t say a word.

Rumble stared at his red toenails. “I have a date with Kay,” he repeated. “I can’t go out with Kay wearing red toenail polish.”

“Where are you two going?” I asked.

Rumble shrugged. “The movies. Pizza Hut. The usual.”

“Oh,” I said, then sweetly asked, “And why is it you would need to take off your shoes at either of those places?”

Gram made the faintest little choking noise. Rumble turned bright red. He bent down, snatched up his shoes and socks and stalked from the house. I looked at Gram grinning and asked, “Was it something I said?”

She told me I ought to be ashamed of myself. Then she cracked up laughing.

The P.B. & J. Sandwich

After we graduated from high school, when it came time to start college, my cousin Rumble joined Gram and I her in little white house.   I adore Rumble.  I always have and I always will.  Even so, I say: He started it!

The college was so close to Gram’s house, that sometimes Rumble and I would come home for lunch.  Occasionally one of our friends would join us.  One day a friend and I were in Gram’s kitchen heating a can of chicken noodle soup, when Rumble walked in with a friend of his.  I poured another can of soup in the pot. Rumble suggested I make four P.B.& J. sandwiches.  We all sat at the table joking and laughing and eating together.  When we were finished, one P.B.& J. sandwich remained.  I got up to get a sandwich bag.  There weren’t any.

I went back to the table and offered the sandwich to my friend, and then to Rumble’s friend.  They both declined.  I tipped the sandwich from the platter onto Rumble’s plate.  “You eat it.”  I said.

He tipped it back onto my plate.  “You eat it.  You made it.”

I tipped it back onto his plate.  “You eat it.  You ordered it.”

He picked the sandwich up, slapped it onto my plate and said, “You eat it!”  Then he went into the bathroom.

I gathered up the dishes and quickly washed them.  My friend wiped the table.  Rumble’s friend moved the table back against the wall (It had to be pulled out to make room for 4 people). He also put the extra chair back in Gram’s bedroom.

Rumble came out of the bathroom, I slapped the P.B.& J. sandwich against the front of his shirt and said, “You eat it.”

He shoved the thing back into my hands and said, “You eat it!”  Then he yelled, “Come on,” to his friend and they took off out the door.  I was right behind them.  As Rumble started his car I put the P.B.& J. sandwich under his windshield wiper.  I yelled, “You eat it!”  Then I ran for my car.

I had to fumble the keys from my pocket and get the thing unlocked.  I was too slow.  Just as I got into the car, Rumble appeared at my side and stuck the sandwich under my windshiled wiper.  As he ran for his moving car — which his friend was driving — he yelled back over his shoulder, “You eat it!”   He dove through the open passenger door and they were gone.

I took the well and truly mangled sandwich from my windshield and told my friend I’d be right back.  I went into the house, down to the basement, and tucked the sandwich neatly beneath Rumble’s bed pillow.

That night over dinner, Rumble smirked at me and asked how I liked the sandwich.  I told him it was delightful.  Since I refused to be baited, the conversation moved on to other things.

After dinner it was customary for us to all retire to the living room and watch a little TV and/or read.  When the eleven o’clock news came on, Rumble or I — we took turns — would make cups of hot tea for everybody, we would sip while watching the news, then retreat to our own respective rooms.   The south wall of my bedroom was the north wall of the basement staircase.  As Rumble went downstairs he always knocked twice on the wall.  I always knocked twice in answer.  That was good night.

After the knock, I settled into bed wearing my customary night gown — one of my dad’s old t-shirts — and opened my psych book for a little studying.  Gram was still in the living-room.  She only had a few pages left of her novel, and wanted to finish it.  We heard thunder on the stairs.  I smirked, certain Rumble had found his sandwich.  I wasn’t worried.  There was no way Gram would let him into my bedroom.  I was safe.

The basement door banged open.  I head Gram say, “Rumble!” She sounded shocked.  And then I heard, “You can’t go in –.”  My bedroom door slammed open.  Rumble stood at the foot of my bed wearing nothing but his briefs and a huge smear of P.B.& J. from his right wrist to his elbow.  He advanced on me.

I tried climbing the head board, but it was only a couple of feet high and a half-inch thick.  Rumble caught me by my left wrist and pulled me foreword.  He grabbed my hair, long and thick,  and used it to wipe the P.B.& J. from his arm.  Then he let me go — completely unharmed, though extremely sticky — and went to take a shower, making certain to use every drop of hot water.

While I took my cold shower, I hatched a plot to get even ….

Be sure to check back next week. 

Gift Etiquette

My friend Charlotte’s dog had puppies. They were the cutest little Beagle babies ever born. I wanted one. Gram said, “No!” It was her firm, under no uncertain terms, no. The one there is really no point in arguing with — so I didn’t. Instead, I went into my room to pout.

Once in my room I was sorely reminded that I had a great deal more than no puppy to pout about. The ugliest dress ever fashioned hung from my closet door. It was red with huge white polka dots, and had ruffles and flounces and buttons and ribbons adorning it. A relative had sent it to me as my high school graduation present.

Of course, upon being presented the dress I smiled and said thank you as a properly raised child was properly raised to do — then the moment the relative was gone I begged to exchange the dress for something more age appropriate. No go. Gram not only said I couldn’t exchange the dress, she said I had to wear it out to dinner with said relative.

“In public?” I shrieked. I may have even thrown a wee temper-tantrum. What I got in exchange was Gram’s Gift Etiquette speech. “She went to a lot of trouble to pick out that dress for you.”

Yeah. It probably took her six months to find something that ugly.

“When you are given a gift,” Gram couldn’t hear my thoughts, but I imagine they were written all over my face. “You say thank you -”

“I did say thank you!”

“And you demonstrate your thankfulness by keeping the gift –”

Fine. I’ll keep it in the back of my closet.

“And using it — in this case wearing it — in their company.”

I jerked the dress out of the box to make certain Gram got a really good look at it. “I’ll die if I have to wear this dress!”

“You won’t die!” Gram admonished, but she was eying the dress. “You only have to wear it once,” she said.

Once. In public. Where the whole world would see.

Still, I might have believed she sympathized with my plight had she not added, “Who knows? It might grow on you.”

Like a fungus.

So I sat on my bed, staring at the ugliest dress in the history of forever and fuming over being denied the cutest puppy in the universe. And suddenly the dress did began to grow on me. I actually grabbed it, kissed it and danced around the room with it. That dress was about to guarantee me a puppy.

Sunday night I wore the dress out to dinner, as had been commanded. I didn’t scream or yell or gag or make any snide remarks at all. I acted like a proper young lady, all sugar and only the sweetest spices.

The next afternoon I came home from school alone. That was highly unusual. My friends and I generally traveled in a large crowd. When I came in, Gram noted the absence of my friends and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I told her that I had something very serious to talk to her about. Then I blurted out, “Charlotte has given me a present and I don’t want to keep it.”

“Why?” Gram asked sharply. “Is it too expensive or something her parents wouldn’t approve of?”

I frowned, like I was thinking about it, then shook my head. “Her parents wouldn’t mind. And, I don’t think it cost her anything at all.”

I didn’t plan that answer, but it was perfect. Gram thought I didn’t want the gift because it wasn’t good enough. She launched into her Gift Etiquette speech with extra verve and gusto. “The value of a gift isn’t in what it costs …” I waited patiently with my hands folded until she ran down, although, for appearances sake, I did try to insert a couple of, “B-b-buts,” into her tirade.

Finally she finished. I sighed heavily, said, “Well, okay, if that’s your last word.” She assured me that it was, so I went out to the porch and picked up a little wicker basket adorned with a lavender ribbon and a Congratulations on Your Graduation gift card. Inside the basket was the cutest little Beagle baby ever born.

Gram saw the basket — and it’s contents — shook her head and said, “I’ve been had.” But she was smiling.

Let Me Steer

I was one of the first kids in the neighborhood to learn to ride my bike sans hands — well, one of the first in my age group. I had to learn how to ride my bike without hands because Sugar Jay’s big brother, Handsome, almost never touched his handlebars. It was just too cool.

Cheerleader was one of those girls that life blessed with perfect looks, perfect hair, perfect teeth and perfect coordination. I wasn’t. By rights, Cheerleader and I shouldn’t have been friends, but by some quirk of fate, she didn’t know she was perfect, so she was nice, too. We used to ride our bikes all over the neighborhood together — then we started ranging farther afield.

The old cemetery had the absolute best bike-riding trails. The roads were paved in swoops and curves and dips. If a kid got enough speed going in, she could coast around and around and around, rarely ever having to pedal again. Cheerleader and I loved to ride our bikes there.

One afternoon as we were heading home from the library, Cheerleader’s front bike tire picked up a nail. We dropped her bike off at a friend’s house, she climbed on my handlebars and we continued on our way. As we neared the cemetery we had a discussion about whether we should cut through it or not — it was starting to get dark. Cemeteries are all fun and games in the daylight, but at night there were actually graves about. Graves are full of dead people you know. And dead people don’t like children.

We decided we weren’t babies, and a bit of fading light wasn’t going to keep us from a quick spin down our favorite paths. I pedaled for all I was worth and despite Cheerleader sitting on my handlebars, picked up a good bit of speed. We made a full circuit of the dips and swoops and curves, though I did have to pedal a bit more than usual.

Cheerleader said riding on the handlebars was ten times more fun then pedaling the bike herself. She said she really felt like she was flying. After the first circuit, she begged for one more. I really didn’t want to go again. I was having to work a little harder than usual at keeping the bike straight, plus I was used to riding the circuit without ever touching the handlebars. My arms were aching from holding her weight.

Add to that the fact that the shadows were growing pretty close together. I said, “Let’s just go home,” but Cheerleader challenged my courage. Refusing to admit cowardice, I acquiesced.

I was peddling standing up as we approached the top of the highest hill. Cheerleader’s blonde hair was flapping in my face, stinging my eyes, and my arms were aching. I wanted nothing more then to sit down on my bike seat and rest.

“Let go!” Cheerleader called.

“Huh?”

“Let go of the handlebars. Let me steer.”

My brain said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” but my arms complied. I sat back on my seat and let go of the handlebars. We shot down that hill faster then ever before. Too fast. We weren’t going to make the corner at the bottom. We weren’t going to make it because Cheerleader wasn’t turning.

“Turn,” I screamed. “Turn! Turn!” I made a mad grab for the handlebars, but they weren’t there — the bike wasn’t there. I was flying though the air. Then I was sliding across the grass. I shot between two tomb stones and came to rest, grass stained, but surprisingly unharmed.

I sat up slowing, mentally checking my physical well-being, and realized I was sitting squarely on a grave. I transported off of it faster than I’d landed on it. I bolted to the road, turning in the direction I thought I’d find my bike. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see much of anything but wobbling dark shadows.

Dark Shadows. Why did I have to think of that? I was forbidden to watch the soap opera, but forbidding me did little good when I was left home alone with the TV set. I watched the show every day. And I knew what happened to people who wandered through cemeteries at night. Worse, I wasn’t alone. I could hear a terrible moaning. Something was coming to get me!

I bolted for the gate. At that point neither my bike, nor Cheerleader were of any concern to me. I wanted out — alive! A lurching apparition plunged out of the darkness and crashed into me. I screamed and ran faster, but it had already passed me by.

Cheerleader. The coward. I screamed — “Wait for me!” — and she did, once she was about half-way home.