Gee Whiz by Jane Smiley

Author:Jane Smiley [Smiley, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-98533-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

I WAS READY FOR THE WEEKEND TO BE ALL CHRISTMAS. AFTER Barbie left, I went upstairs to change clothes and wash up. When I came down, the cookie factory was set up. The dough was made. We buttered the pans, and then Mom’s job was to press out the little trees, the little snowflakes, the little stars, the little wreaths. My job was the sprinkles. When the sprinkles were on, we put them in the oven, and started on another set of pans—Mom had lots of pans. After not very long, the kitchen table was covered with baked cookies cooling, and Mom was getting out the cookie cutters for the gingerbread men. This dough was made also—it had been chilling all day, and once she got it out, she had to work fast to roll it and cut it. My job was to butter the pans, put red hots on the gingerbread men for eyes and a row of buttons down the front, and then take a spatula and very carefully put the little men onto the pans. While the gingerbread men were baking, we put the spritz cookies in boxes for the brothers and sisters, and then, after the gingerbread men had cooled, we set a few of them in each box as well.

Always on the twenty-third of December, Mom had us eat leftovers so that there would be plenty of room in the refrigerator once she started cooking, both for church on the twenty-fourth (turkey and stuffing) and for our own Christmas dinner on the twenty-fifth (Danny was coming, so she was planning pot roast and pecan pie). Some of the leftovers were from the back of the refrigerator—old meat loaf, a wrinkled baked potato, nine string beans, two pieces of fried chicken (a wing and a leg), six Brussels sprouts, stuff like that, but we did get to finish the apple pie, because she needed the pie plate. After dinner, we washed all the dishes and set out the pots and pans she would need to start cooking, and Dad even defrosted the freezer, which he hadn’t done in six months. I brought my stereo down from my room and set it on a table in the living room, right outside the kitchen doorway, and we put on an album of Christmas carols. Mom and Dad sang along, and I did, too, once in a while. In the meantime, Dad was breaking ice out of the freezer, the water was running in the sink, dishes were clattering, and the teakettle on the stove was whistling, because Dad was using hot water to help his defrosting. The only thing we could hear was ourselves, until the record came to an end and Mom realized that Rusty was barking.

As a rule, Rusty was a quiet dog. She had her business keeping an eye on things, and she had her other business, following Mom around, hoping for a scratch around the ears or a stray scrap. She had done

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