Happy Holidays, Jessi

  It didn’t help that he kept saying, “Home? Home?” whenever one of us stood up to leave.

  On that day, Friday, I had skipped the BSC meeting (with Kristy’s permission). Daddy had picked me up straight from school and taken me to the hospital. After awhile we’d started talking about holiday shopping. We’d hardly done any, and now Christmas was only five days away. Mama declared we’d do it all that night.

  Which is why Daddy and I were driving home. We were going to pick up Aunt Cecelia and Becca, then return to the hospital around Squirt’s bedtime to pick up Mama. Then we would go shopping.

  (Complicated, huh? Our whole week had been like this.)

  Daddy pulled to a stop in front of the house. As we trudged inside, Becca greeted us in the front hallway.

  “Doe bore pedcils, doe bore books,” she sang. “Doe bore teachers’ dirty looks!”

  “Rebecca, you get away from that open door!” Aunt Cecelia called from the kitchen. “You are coming down with something.”

  “I lo-o-o-ove vacatiod!” Becca screamed, skipping back inside.

  Vacation.

  Today had been the last day of school before the holidays. I’d almost forgotten.

  I always adore the first day of a vacation. It feels so free and exhilarating.

  Not this year. Part of me was worrying about Squirt. Part was thinking about Christmas gifts. Part was worrying how on earth I was going to pull together the festival.

  Aunt Cecelia bustled in, looking at her watch. “Your sister-in-law is on the phone, John. Where were you? I expected you home half an hour ago.”

  “Sorry, sergeant,” Daddy grumbled. “Next time I’ll just race out when my son is clinging to me and begging to go home. ‘I have to meet Cecelia’s schedule,’ I’ll say.”

  As he stomped away toward the kitchen phone, Aunt Cecelia said, “No need to be sarcastic.”

  “He’s tired,” I explained to Aunt Cecelia.

  “Well, that’s no excuse,” Aunt Cecelia replied. “We all are!”

  “Hi, Yvonne,” Daddy was saying into the phone. “Hanging in…. He’ll be back to normal soon…. I don’t know how many…. Mm-hm, listen, we have to leave again and I have to go find a shopping list…. Not now, all right? Listen, I’m sure Jessi would love to speak to Keisha …”

  I ran inside. I’d spoken to Keisha only once since the accident, and I was dying to hear her voice.

  Daddy handed me the receiver and headed upstairs toward his room. “Hi!” I said.

  “Hi,” Keisha answered softly. “Mom told me about Squirt. Too bad he’s not home yet, huh?”

  “Yeah, but he’ll be here when you guys come to town.”

  Keisha was silent for a moment. “Yeah … well, the thing is … I mean, maybe we can see you all in February. Mom says we’re going to stay home for Kwanzaa.”

  I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face. “Stay home? But why? You said you were coming.”

  “I know. But Mom and Dad say you have too much to think about, with Squirt in the hospital.”

  Click.

  Daddy had picked up the phone extension in his room. “Hello, Keisha?” he said. “Excuse me, sweetheart, I hate to cut your conversation short, but we have to leave in a minute. Could you put your mom or dad on the phone, please?”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Daddy was trying to be polite, but I could tell he was mad about something.

  “Sure,” Keisha said. “ ’Bye, Uncle John. ’Bye, Jessi.”

  “ ’Bye.” I hung up and went to the bottom of the stairs to listen.

  “Yes, hello, Yvonne, it’s John again,” Daddy’s voice said. “What’s this I hear about you not coming for Kwanzaa? … Uh-huh … No, we’re fine…. Not at all, Yvonne…. Of course you’re coming! I won’t hear another word! … All right, good-bye.”

  Whew. Sometimes I like Daddy’s bossiness. It can come in handy.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. Daddy came downstairs, calling out, “Let’s go to the hospital! Put your coats on!”

  “Go?” Aunt Cecelia walked into the kitchen, hands on hips. “What about dinner?”

  “We’ll eat out,” Daddy replied.

  “But I just defrosted a chicken!”

  “It’ll have to wait, Cecelia. Or you can stay home and eat it yourself. But the rest of us need to do some shopping.”

  Aunt Cecelia sucked her teeth with exasperation. “You barge in here late. You change all our evening plans without even calling to tell me. I have a sick child here on my hands —”

  “I’b dot sick!” Becca insisted. “It’s just a sdiffle.”

  “Fine.” Aunt Cecelia clomped over to the counter. She grabbed a platter on which a frozen chicken sat in its plastic wrapping. “Just fine. Who needs to tell old, sick Aunt Cecelia about anything in advance? Who cares how she feels?”

  As Daddy and I headed for the front door, we could hear the tinny thump of the platter as Aunt Cecelia shoved it into the fridge. Becca followed close behind us, zipping up her down jacket.

  We waited about five minutes in the car. Finally Aunt Cecelia emerged from the house, a sullen expression on her face. She walked slowly down the front path toward us.

  “Cecelia, come along!” Daddy called out the window. “We don’t have all night.”

  Aunt Cecelia didn’t change her pace one bit. The moment she sat in the passenger seat and closed the door, Daddy drove off like a shot.

  “John, you haven’t changed since you were a child,” Aunt Cecelia said. “You never could plan a thing —”

  “Plan?” Daddy thundered. “My son is in the hospital, I’m trying to provide for this family, working at night, with the holidays around the corner — and you’re talking about a plan? It’s all I can do just to shepherd this family from day to day. If you had used your brains in the car last week, none of this would have happened in the first place.”

  “I was acting under your threat! If you hadn’t insisted I spoil the children —”

  “AUUUGGGH!” Daddy pounded the steering wheel.

  I nearly jumped out of my seat. I thought Daddy was going to slug his own sister.

  “I forgot my list of gifts!” Daddy exclaimed.

  “Well, then, let’s go back,” Aunt Cecelia said.

  Daddy shook his head. “No, we’re late as it is. We won’t have enough time to shop. I’ll just piece the list together from memory.”

  “Do as you like. You always do. But don’t complain to me if you forget something.”

  The car fell silent. Aunt Cecelia and Daddy were like two stone statues.

  Becca and I just sank further and further into our seats.

  “RRAAAAAAAGGGH!” roared Ebon Harris.

  “Yikes!” Mary Anne jumped back from her front door, holding her heart dramatically.

  Ebon ripped off his African mask. “It’s just me!”

  “Whew,” Mary Anne replied.

  Mary Anne’s dad emerged from the kitchen to greet the Harrises. “Welcome. I’m Richard Spier.”

  The parents shook hands. Omar held up a big plastic bag. “We brought black-eyed peas for the Hoppin’ John!”

  “Hopping who?” Richard asked.

  Omar and Ebon cackled with laughter. “It’s a kind of food.”

  “Aha. Of course.” Richard slunk into the kitchen, red-faced.

  Abby, Kristy, Stacey, and I were already in there, supervising. Tomika and Ronnie were mashing bananas (which go into Liberian rice bread). Bob and Duane were taking turns crushing peanuts with a mortar and pestle (for Ashanti peanut soup), then comparing biceps.

  Have you ever eaten Hoppin’ John? If you haven’t, you should. It’s basically black-eyed peas and rice. Simple, but you can’t stop eating it.

  Mary Anne was in charge of making the Hoppin’ John, but she was busy greeting the Harrises. So I put a huge pot on the stove for her.

  Everyone seemed so psyched. Me? I had almost called the festival off.

  Squirt was still in the hospital, Aun
t Cecelia was squabbling with my parents all the time, and now Becca was sick in bed.

  Guess what? Her cold wasn’t a cold. It was the flu.

  Becca had cried when I left home to go to Mary Anne’s.

  I sighed and looked at the menu I’d written out: five scrumptious African-American dishes we could make and freeze for the festival. Along with the Hoppin’ John and the Ashanti peanut soup, we were going to have okra with corn, Liberian rice bread, and Senegalese cookies.

  Yum. My mood was beginning to lift.

  With a pencil, I assigned one baby-sitter and three or four kids to each dish.

  “Is everybody here?” Kristy asked.

  Abby groaned. “You’re not going to call us to order, are you?”

  “Shout ‘Here’ when I call your name!” Kristy said, then read from a list: “Omar?”

  “Here!”

  “Ebon?”

  “Me!”

  “Jake Kuhn!”

  “Present!”

  “Patsy Kuhn!”

  “President!”

  Yes, the Kwanzaa festival had grown. Now we were seventeen kids strong. Our six newcomers were kids who’d heard about the group at school — the Kuhn kids, three of Mallory’s siblings (nine-year-old Nicky, eight-year-old Vanessa, and seven-year-old Margo), and Rosie Wilder (seven), who agreed to play the fiddle for Malindy and Little Devil.

  When Kristy finished taking attendance, she yelled: “And now I give you the brains behind the Kwanzaa festival, Miiiis Jessiiiii Ramsey!”

  Everyone started hooting and clapping, even the parents who were still hanging out. I was so embarrassed.

  “Um, hi,” I said. (I know, duh, what a beginning.) “The most important rule today is, we have to save some food for Becca. She’s home with the flu.”

  “Be-cca! Be-cca!” Marcus began chanting.

  “The next thing,” I went on, “is to remember we still have nine days to the festival, so don’t feel that we have to do everything today.”

  “In other words,” Abby cut in, “if you drop boogers in the soup, we can always chuck it and make some more next week.”

  “Ewwwww!” the kids yelled.

  Some of the grown-ups looked a little queasy.

  “Okay, each baby-sitter will take a group,” I went on. “Five sitters, five different dishes to prepare …”

  I read the list of foods, assigned sitters, and kids.

  It went in seventeen ears and out seventeen others.

  About ten kids shouted, “I want to work on cookies!”

  “Why did I get peanut soup?” Sara pouted. “No fair.”

  “I’m switching to Hoppin’ John!” Marcus announced.

  “What’s okra?” Jake asked.

  “A vegetable,” Duane and Ronnie answered.

  “That grows only in Okrahoma!” Tomika shouted, cracking up.

  Sharelle raised her hand. “Can we make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches?”

  PHWEEEEEET!

  Leave it to Kristy. She had brought along her referee’s whistle.

  Total silence.

  “Guys,” Kristy said, “the groups are for making food. As far as tasting the food, we can all share.”

  “Yaaaaaaay!”

  “As long as we leave enough for the festival!” Stacey added.

  I don’t think anyone heard her. The kids were all racing for the kitchen.

  I was in charge of the okra with corn. The recipe: Chop up some okra, onions, and tomatoes, put them in a saucepan with frozen corn and some water, and cook it all up. Easy.

  Or so I thought.

  I hadn’t imagined all the interesting uses for okra my group would discover. Marcus demonstrated that a piece of okra is just the right size to fit in a nostril. Sharelle cut off the ends of five pieces and capped her fingers with them.

  I helped Vanessa chop up onions. When we started crying from the fumes, everyone thought it was hilarious. They crowded into the kitchen to stare.

  “Go away!” Vanessa cried, sniffling.

  “Crybaby!” Nicky shouted.

  That was when a hunk of mashed banana flew into my hair.

  “Oops,” said Ronnie. He was standing at the counter, looking sheepish. “I was only trying to shake it off my fingers.”

  The kids were screaming with laughter. Nicky smeared his chin with rice cereal, which he was preparing for the bread, and started shouting, “Ho ho ho!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see some parents peeking from the living room. Kristy was reaching for her whistle.

  Before she could blow it, I shouted, “Hey! I can cancel this festival, you know!”

  The kids went back to work. Kristy gave me a thumbs-up sign. I smiled and wiped the onion tears from my eyes.

  Somehow we managed to make all the dishes. The cookies, which are basically sugar cookies with peanut butter and chopped peanuts, all disappeared. But we had enough of the other stuff to freeze.

  The kids were proud of themselves. As they were preparing to leave, I could hear them laughing and bragging to their parents.

  I stayed in the kitchen, cleaning up. The happiness was not rubbing off on me. I was still thinking about Squirt and Becca. And what they were missing.

  It seemed so unfair. Squirt was in some boring hospital, not old enough to understand why. Becca, who wanted so much to enjoy the holiday, was sick in bed.

  We hadn’t even had a chance to buy a tree or decorate the house. By the time our family returned to normal, the season would be over.

  The accident replayed in my mind. Then I imagined myself refusing to undo the buckle. Following my conscience. I imagined how the holiday would have been, happy and carefree, everybody safe and sound.

  “Jessi?”

  I turned at the sound of Omar’s voice.

  Standing in the kitchen doorway was the entire Kwanzaa gang. Some of the kids were dressed to go outside. All of them were smiling broadly.

  Omar stepped forward. He held out a box wrapped in hand-decorated wrapping paper. “This is for your brother,” he said. “We made it ourselves.”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise for you,” Ebon added.

  Sara rolled her eyes. “Ebon …”

  “Don’t open it,” Tomika warned me. “Give it to Squirt in the hospital.”

  “With a kiss from us,” Sharelle added.

  I remembered Mary Anne talking about their secret gift. So this was it. I was glad they’d decided to give it to Squirt.

  Tears began rolling down my cheeks. “Thanks,” I squeaked.

  Mary Anne stepped into the kitchen and put her arms around me.

  “You ought to do something about those onions,” Marcus said.

  * * *

  Daddy was grinning when he drove me home from the meeting. And he started whistling Christmas carols.

  I had no idea why he was in such a good mood. But I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t want to risk spoiling it.

  When we arrived home, I saw lights twinkling through the living room window.

  “You bought a tree!” I exclaimed.

  He smiled. “I didn’t.”

  I left the car and ran inside. The pine aroma hit me the moment I opened the door.

  The tree was gorgeous — thick and perfectly shaped, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Mama and Aunt Cecelia sang hellos to me as they hung decorations.

  “Jessi! Jessi!” Becca came running in from the kitchen, still in her pajamas. “Mallory brought a tree for us!”

  Mallory and her dad followed Becca into the room, with trays of hot chocolate and cookies.

  “You did this?” I asked.

  Mallory smiled bashfully. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it!” I exclaimed.

  “Well, I knew you guys didn’t have time to buy one. So I told Dad, and we just stopped off at the nursery.”

  “That’s so … so …” I could barely speak for the lump in my throat. “Sweet!”

  “It’s the holiday spirit,” Mallory
said. “Christmas giving, Kwanzaa togetherness.”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say. My feelings were beyond words.

  Mallory put her arms around me, and the tiny lights of the Christmas tree became a blur of colors.

  “Jessica!” Daddy called from the checkout line.

  There. I found what I wanted and ran.

  Daddy was already loading some bananas and a box of cereal onto the conveyor belt.

  I added three jars of baby food — creamed turkey, creamed sweet potatoes, and creamed green beans.

  “Turkey dinner mush, huh?” Daddy said. “Too bad they didn’t have creamed stuffing.”

  We paid quickly and ran out to the parking lot.

  The supermarket was one of the only stores open on Christmas Day in the Essex Street minimall. Another was Baby and Company, two stores down. Aunt Cecelia was trundling through the exit, clutching a paper bag.

  We climbed into the car, and Mama turned the key in the ignition.

  “Mercy, I forgot to have them wrap the baby slippers!” Aunt Cecelia reached for the door handle. “I’ll be right back.”

  “No!” Mama and Daddy shouted at the same time.

  Mama stepped on the gas and away we went.

  We were late for the hospital, where we were going to celebrate Christmas, Part Two.

  During Christmas, Part One, we’d had breakfast at home and opened presents with Becca, who was still sick. Then Daddy drove to the hospital with presents for Squirt and played Santa for the kids there.

  At eleven o’clock, Mallory had come over to baby-sit for Becca. (Yes, baby-sit. On Christmas Day. Can you believe it? We hadn’t even asked her. She’d just volunteered on the day that she brought over the tree.) That allowed the rest of us to visit Squirt together.

  How did Becca feel about being left out? Not great. But Dr. Bradley had advised against our taking her to the hospital.

  The moment Daddy arrived home we took off. I carried the present that the Kwanzaa group had made for Squirt.

  We pulled into the hospital parking lot and went inside. The receptionist, who was wearing a red elf cap, waved us right in.