Happy Holidays, Jessi Read online

  Marcus dropped his latest airplane. “Let’s see!”

  Ta-ta-ta-taaaaaa! Mary Anne shifted into Super-Sitter mode. She glanced at the materials list on the toe puppet page. “Do you have glitter?” she asked Omar.

  He nodded. “I’ll get it.”

  “Ebon!” Mary Anne called out. “Wherever you are, we’re going to need even more paper tubes.”

  “Okay!” Ebon replied from another room.

  Mary Anne looked through the kitchen drawers and found some tinfoil for the cups. Bob grabbed it and ran to the table.

  “Here’s some glitter,” Omar called out. Out of the corner of her eye, Mary Anne saw him throw two tubes on the table and run for the fridge.

  Sharelle and Sara were taking off their shoes.

  “Why are you doing that?” Mary Anne asked.

  “For the toe puppets,” Sara explained.

  Splat!

  Mary Anne felt some drops on her ankle. She looked down to see a raw egg splattered on the floor between her and the refrigerator.

  A cry of “EWWWWWW!” went up.

  The refrigerator door was ajar. Omar was standing by it, holding an open carton of eggs. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

  “Where are the paper towels?” Mary Anne asked.

  “Under the sink,” Omar replied.

  Mary Anne yanked open the sink cupboard, but the rack of towels was empty.

  “I’ll get another roll.” Omar raced out of the kitchen.

  Mary Anne grabbed a sponge. “Never mind.”

  Too late. She heard Omar’s voice shouting out, “Ooooh, Ebon, you’re going to get in trouble!”

  Mary Anne did not like the sound of that. She dropped the sponge and ran toward the bathroom.

  Omar was standing just inside the doorway. Toilet paper billowed around his ankles. Sheets of paper towel lay on the floor in huge piles.

  Ebon was sitting on the closed toilet. A short and a long cardboard tube were perched on the sink. In his hands was a half-unraveled roll of paper towels.

  “You wanted paper tubes,” he said.

  “I meant tubes that were already unrolled,” Mary Anne exclaimed.

  Giggles rang out from the kitchen. “Yuck!” Bob’s voice called. “Marcus stepped in the egg!”

  Mary Anne grabbed a handful of paper towels from the floor. As she bolted toward the kitchen, she called over her shoulder, “Please try to clean up. I’ll be right back.”

  Back in the kitchen, a long sheet of tinfoil was now draped over the kitchen chandelier. The floor around the table was littered with cut-up, gluey construction paper. Marcus was doing a twisty dance in the egg. Bob was throwing glitter in the air like confetti.

  Sara and Sharelle had taken their shoes off and were giggling.

  “Phhewwwww!” Sharelle cried. “You can’t put toe puppets on those stinky feet.”

  Poor Mary Anne.

  She made Marcus take off his shoes. She wiped them off, then cleaned the floor. She asked all the kids to pick up the junk they’d dropped, and she carefully unwound the tinfoil.

  Finally the kids started settling down. “Okay,” Mary Anne said. “Let’s see if we can try this again, calmly.”

  “No, Ebon!” Omar shouted from the bathroom. “You’re not supposed to flush paper towels down the —”

  FOOOOOOOOOSSSSSH!

  Hoo boy.

  It was one of those days.

  * * *

  Well, guess who ended up finishing all the mats, putting the faces on the toe puppets, unclogging the toilet, and cleaning up?

  Mary Anne, of course. In the middle of their projects, the kids had suddenly started whispering and giggling, then disappeared into the family room.

  Mary Anne welcomed the quiet, but she became suspicious.

  “Guys?” she said, leaning against the door. “What’s up?”

  The door opened a crack and Ebon’s eyes shone through. “A project,” he said.

  “What kind of project?” Mary Anne asked.

  “It’s a surprise for Jessi,” Ebon replied. “Because she’s running the festival. We can’t tell you what it is, or you might tell her.”

  Mary Anne was able to see into the room over his shoulder. It looked intact.

  “No mess?” Mary Anne asked.

  Omar shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  Mary Anne went back to the kitchen and sank into the chair. A spray of glitter fell from her hair and onto her shirt.

  I wouldn’t have blamed Mary Anne if, at that moment, she wished Kwanzaa never existed.

  But she got over it.

  Mary Anne is a good sport.

  “Siiiilent niiiiight …” sang the Washington Mall speaker system.

  “Keep in line, please!” yelled an elf. “Santa’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’m hungry!” yelled Becca.

  “Doooss,” demanded Squirt.

  “Just a minute, please,” said Aunt Cecelia.

  “Excuse me!” a mom yelled. “Uh, hello, elf? How many Santas are on duty today?”

  Welcome to the magical world of North Pole Village.

  The music was way wrong for the occasion. It wasn’t nighttime, and it sure wasn’t silent. Washington Mall was jumping with holiday activity.

  Actually, I adore the NPV. It appears like magic every holiday season inside Lear’s department store at the far end of the mall. You step through the Wonderland Gate and onto a narrow path that twists through a snow-covered fantasy land. Little wooden huts line the path. Some of them are make-believe factories, where mechanical elves busily make toys. One hut is a reindeer stable and another is a post office stuffed with letters (a postal elf’s eyes and head emerge from the pile and then sink back in).

  I’ve always wondered what exactly is in that area of Lear’s during the rest of the year. No one seems to know. Personally, I think it becomes a pocket of antimatter, invisible to the human eye. But later for that.

  On Sunday morning, Aunt Cecelia, Becca, Squirt, and I were standing before the Wonderland Gate, waiting to see Santa.

  Squirt was too young to know who Santa is. And Becca still insisted she didn’t believe in him. So why were we there?

  “Just in case,” as Becca would say.

  Besides, it’s so cool.

  Aunt Cecelia reached into the diaper bag that hung from the handles of the stroller. She pulled out a bottle full of apple juice and a small box of crackers.

  “Here you go, sweethearts,” she said, handing the box to Becca and the bottle to Squirt. “Would you like something, Jessica?”

  “No, thanks, I’m still full from breakfast,” I replied.

  “Well, we have plenty of snack food,” Aunt Cecelia said, “if you change your mind.”

  No, you are not mistaken. That was the voice of my aunt. Hard to believe, huh?

  I know how you feel. I was still numb from the shock. Aunt Cecelia had been nice to us all day. She hadn’t even yelled at us in the car.

  At first I thought she was just tired. Then I thought she was sick.

  Finally the real reason dawned on me. Daddy’s lecture. Aunt Cecelia was taking him seriously. She was turning over a new leaf.

  Good-bye, grouch. So long, sourpuss.

  Hello, the New Aunt Cecelia.

  I guess I should have been thrilled. But to be honest, I felt worried and nervous. I needed to be home by twelve o’clock for my very first Kwanzaa festival meeting. Mallory and I planned to begin rehearsing our script of Malindy, which we had written the day before.

  The trip to Washington Mall was supposed to have been short and sweet. But it took us forever to leave the house. Now it was 10:20, and the line was already humongous.

  “Maybe we can come back another day?” I suggested.

  “No way!” Becca said. “Christmas is in ten days. We have to put in our order to Santa now!”

  “Ahem.” I raised an eyebrow. “Our order?”

  “Well, you know,” Becca mumbled, looking away. “I mean, just for fun.” />
  Aunt Cecelia chuckled. Squirt slurped away at his bottle. The loudspeakers were telling us to sleep in heavenly peace.

  Our line inched forward every few minutes, then stopped. Talk about slow. It made a drive with Aunt Cecelia feel like the Indy 500. All the little huts kind of lost their cuteness after awhile.

  I had the urge to do something really, really bad. Like climb onto one of the reindeer or open some of the letters in the post office. Just to test Aunt Cecelia.

  But I didn’t. I remained well behaved.

  I also grew very, very bored. By the time we reached Santa, Squirt was fast asleep. I took his bottle and packed it in his diaper bag.

  “Ho ho ho!” Santa said. “Excited to see me, isn’t he?”

  “Hi,” Becca said nonchalantly, “I want a new bike with chrome wheels and tassels and one of those horns that goes oooo-gah, and also a board game called Guess It and a new cotton sweater like the one my sister has …”

  I was beginning to fidget. I knew Becca’s list. I’d heard it several times. Well, most of it. It seemed to grow by the hour. If she were going to recite the whole thing, we’d be holding up the line until January.

  Up until then I’d been pretty confident about making the Kwanzaa festival meeting. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  Click, went the photographer’s camera.

  (You should see the picture. Becca’s blabbering away, I’m looking down at my watch, and Squirt is slumped in the stroller, face all scrunched and mouth hanging open.)

  We managed to tear Becca away eventually, but it was already after eleven.

  “I’m hungry!” Becca said.

  Aunt Cecelia began reaching into the diaper bag. “Would you like —”

  “Not those yucky crackers,” Becca whined. “I want lunch at Friendly’s!”

  “Becca,” I said patiently, “the meeting starts soon.”

  “A short lunch!”

  “We can’t!”

  “We can!”

  “We can’t!”

  “WAAAAHHHHHH!” (Guess who woke up?)

  “Friendly’s will have to wait until the next time,” Aunt Cecelia said, rummaging around in the diaper bag for Squirt’s bottle. “Your sister needs to return home and your brother needs a proper nap.”

  “No fair!” cried Becca over Squirt’s wailing.

  Me? I was booking.

  We bustled into the parking garage. Aunt Cecelia had not parked in a handicapped spot, so we had to walk a long way.

  It was 11:15 when the car puttered onto the street. Squirt took the bottle out of his mouth. “Nomo!” (Translation: No more left.)

  “When we go home —” Aunt Cecelia began.

  “Mo! Mo!” Squirt insisted. (Translation: I want more.)

  Uh-oh. He was early for his noon hunger crisis. Which gave us only one option until we reached home: distract him.

  Becca began tickling him. “Squirty wirty-wirty-wirt!”

  He kind of whined and giggled at the same time.

  I turned around, adjusting the shoulder strap of my seat belt. Then I hid behind the headrest for a moment and popped out. “Boo!”

  Squirt giggled a little more. But he was still squirming in his car seat, pushing against the harness.

  We kept trying to make him laugh. No dice. Squirt cried louder and louder.

  As for Aunt Cecelia, she was driving at turtle speed, her jaw clenched tight.

  “We’re almost there, Squirt,” I said.

  “Aaaagh … aaaaaaagh!” Squirt pushed and pushed, grunting with the effort.

  “He wants to undo the harness,” Becca said.

  “He won’t have to be in it much longer,” I reassured her.

  “But it’s hurting him!” Becca insisted.

  “Becca, we can’t take it off,” I said. “It’s not safe.”

  “EEEEEEEEEEEE!” Squirt shrieked.

  Aunt Cecelia let out a big sigh. “Jessica,” she said, “you may go ahead and take the belt off. We’re close to home.”

  Poor Squirt. I knew he was supposed to be belted at all times, but Aunt Cecelia was driving about as fast as a walk, and he looked so miserable.

  I reached back and snapped loose the buckle on his belt.

  Squirt pushed it aside as if he were battling off a dreaded beast.

  “Feel better?” Becca asked.

  Squirt took a deep breath. A smile crept across his face. “Beh … tah.”

  “He said my name!” Becca squealed.

  Ahead of us, the light turned yellow. Aunt Cecelia was close to the intersection. If she were Daddy or Mama, she’d have sailed right through.

  But the New Aunt Cecelia is the same kind of driver as the old one. She stepped on the brake.

  The car came to a slow stop.

  HONNNNNNNNK!!

  At first I thought the horn was Aunt Cecelia’s. I couldn’t see any other car on the road.

  But the sound was too loud. Too deep.

  And right behind us.

  I heard the crash a split second before I felt it. It was a dull crack. Not like the loud kaboom you hear on TV.

  I shot forward. Aunt Cecelia did, too. As if we were doing some strange precision dance. It felt as if someone had sneaked up and smacked my back with an iron bat.

  And then I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew, the road had turned.

  At least it seemed that way. The light was no longer in front of us. It was to my right. We were in the middle of the intersection. Stopped.

  Accident.

  The word flashed across my thoughts. The reality rushed in like a wave.

  Aunt Cecelia’s right hand was across my chest, as if she were trying to stop my forward movement. As if the crash hadn’t yet happened. She was panting, her eyes buggy.

  Becca. Squirt.

  I spun around.

  My sister was clutching her stomach in the backseat. Her face had an expression I’d never seen before. Pain, fear, shock, and confusion were all racing like shadows across her face.

  Beside her, the car seat was empty.

  “Squirt!” I screamed.

  I couldn’t see him. The window beside his seat was cracked but not enough for him to have passed through.

  I tried to rise to my knees, but my seat belt held me down. Quickly I unbuckled it and turned around.

  Squirt was on the floor. Lying on his side. I could only see his back and his feet. His face was in the shadow of the front seat.

  He was not moving.

  “SQUIIIIIIRT!” The shriek seemed to come from all around me, but I knew it was mine.

  I pushed open the door. I jumped out of the car and threw the front seat forward.

  Becca was crying hysterically, yelling something over and over that I couldn’t understand. Aunt Cecelia was outside the car now, too, on the other side, looking in.

  Now I could see all of my brother. His hands were over his face, as if he were trying to hide.

  “Is he dead is he dead is he dead?” Becca was shrieking.

  He wasn’t. That was the first thing I noticed. His little chest was moving steadily.

  “No,” I said. “But don’t touch him. If his spine is hurt, you could make him worse.”

  In a tiny, fragile voice, Aunt Cecelia was singing the song she uses to comfort Squirt at night: “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word; Auntie’s gonna buy you a mockingbird …”

  Outside, a crowd of people was forming around us. Behind us, a man was emerging from a large red car.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Get an ambulance!” I yelled.

  A woman in a down coat stepped forward. “I called one from my cell phone,” she said. “Is someone badly hurt?”

  “My baby brother!” I felt as if all my organs — my heart, my lungs, everything inside me — were made out of glass that was cracking.

  I ducked back into the car. I ran my fingers through Squirt’s hair. He felt warm, as if he were napping.

  AWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR.

&nb
sp; The ambulance screeched to a stop beside us. Before I knew it a medic was in the car, yelling, “Baby!” over his shoulder. With quick but gentle motions he felt Squirt’s pulse and lifted him slowly out of the car.

  Another medic ran to the car with a small stretcher. As Squirt was set down onto it, his eyes seemed to focus.

  He looked blankly at the medic. Then he looked at me. Aunt Cecelia raced to my side and said, “Oh, great glory,” under her breath.

  “WaaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” Squirt’s cry started low and quickly became a siren. He looked absolutely petrified.

  For the first time I began to cry.

  “Will he be all right?” Aunt Cecelia asked.

  “I don’t think anything’s broken,” the medic replied. “But he did black out, so we need to have him examined. How about the rest of you?”

  “We all —” Aunt Cecelia’s voice caught in her throat. “We all had our belts on.”

  “Well, I think you had better come in anyway.”

  By now, two police cars had pulled up. An officer walked over to Aunt Cecelia and said, “The keys are in the car, ma’am. We’ll take it to the station. Now, if you’d like us to contact family …”

  Aunt Cecelia talked to the police as I helped Becca out of the car. She was shaking uncontrollably.

  I practically had to carry her into the back of the ambulance. Aunt Cecelia sat next to Squirt and held his hand.

  I hugged Becca tight as the ambulance sped to the hospital. Over the muffled noise of the siren, I could hear Aunt Cecelia singing to Squirt.

  Slowly his cries softened into whimpers. Then his eyes closed, and he fell into a peaceful sleep.

  I took one of his hands and said, “Squirt, you’re going to be all right.”

  I prayed it was the truth.

  “My baby!”

  Those were Mama’s first words when she and Daddy burst into the examining room.

  Even though the doctor was taking my blood pressure, Mama threw her arms around me.

  I was a little embarrassed. But boy, was I happy to see them. Tears started running down my cheeks.

  “How are you feeling, Jessi?” Daddy asked.

  “Fi—” Sniff. “Fine,” I replied. “Where’s Squirt?”

  “In another room,” Mama said. “Asleep. The doctors want to give him some tests. We’re supposed to stay in the waiting room.”