PIECES OF LAUGHTER AND FUN (9 page)

"What do you think she'll say?"

"She's already said it," I told her. "I've made my bed and I have to lie in it."

Sarah Jane digested this information in silence. "That sounds like something my mother would say, too. Half the time I don't know what she's talking about. I never ask, because I probably don't want to know."

"I guess I won't go home," I decided.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," Sarah Jane protested. "You can't stay away until you grow up. Besides, where would you sleep tonight? I think you'd better go and get it over with. Have you ever tried crying real loud to get out of being punished?"

"That's a worse idea than not going home," I replied. "I'd get punished once for whatever I did, and once for trying to get out of being punished." I sighed. "Ma said that if I made a choice, it would be my own responsibility. I might as well tell her what happened."

"Maybe you wouldn't have to let her know right away," Sarah Jane suggested.

I shook my head. "That wouldn't do any good. She'll have to know sometime. The longer I wait, the worse I'll feel. I'll just go on in and get it over with."

"Well, good luck. I'm glad it's not me." Sarah Jane wasn't much comfort, but I knew what she meant.

Ma wasn't in the kitchen when I got home. I put my lunch box on the table and went to my room to change my clothes. When I heard her come in, I carried the dress and stockings to the kitchen.

"It was an accident, ma. Somebody bumped the desk and the ink tipped over. I couldn't help it."

"I'm sorry, Mabel. The accident might have happened, no matter what you had on. But it couldn't have ruined your best dress if you hadn't been wearing it. I guess you can see that you made the wrong decision."

I nodded dismally. "Are you going to punish me?"

"You've taken care of that yourself," ma replied. "We'll do the best we can to get the ink out, but I'm afraid the color will come with it."

"What will I wear for Sunday?"

116

"It looks as though you have two choices," ma answered. "You can wear a pinafore to cover these spots, or you can wear a school dress."

"Or I could stay home?"

Ma shook her head decisively. "That's not a choice," she said firmly. "We don't back out of problems."

"I thought you'd say that. I guess I won't make any more decisions."

"We want you to decide things for yourself, Mabel. But you need to stop and think of the possible results before you act. That's why you still need help from pa and me."

She hugged me. "Come on, let's see what we can do about your dress. It may be worth a few spots if you've learned something today."

GRANDMA AND I often memorized Scripture together, and on long trips we would take turns reciting passages to each other. Though I learned a number of chapters and verses, I was never able to get ahead of her.

"How can you learn all those verses so fast?" I demanded. "You always have yours memorized first."

"Maybe it's because I've read them so often." Grandma laughed. "When you've read the Bible as many years as I have, it won't behard for you to recall them, either."

"Do you remember the first Bible verses you ever learned?" I asked.

Grandma thought a moment. "I remember the first whole chapter. I'm sure there must have been a lot of single verses before that. But the chapter was Isaiah 55. I have good reason for not forgetting that!"

I was eager at any time to hear a good story, so I settled back to enjoy another of grandma's adventures....

Early in the fall of the year I was in the third reader, Miss Gibson announced there would be a prize for the child who learned a full chapter from the Bible and recited it the best at the Harvest Home Festival the day before Thanksgiving.

"You must choose the chapter you want to memorize before the end of the week," Miss Gibson said, "and let me know what it is. You will have eight weeks to learn it."

"Eight weeks sure is a long time," Sarah Jane said. "You could learn the whole Bible in that length of time. Well, maybe not the whole Bible," she reconsidered. "But a lot of it. What chapter are you going to take?"

"I like the one where the trees of the fields clap their hands," I said promptly.

Sarah Jane was suspicious. "Trees don't clap their hands. They don't even have hands. You made that up."

"I did not!" I replied indignantly. "Pa read it to us not very long ago. He'll know right where it is."

And, of course, he did.

"Isaiah, the fifty-fifth chapter," he said. "Is that the one you want to memorize?"

I replied that it was, and pa was pleased. "You couldn't find a better chapter in the Bible. Isaiah is one of my favorite books. I'll show you where it is."

We sat down at the kitchen table, and pa opened the big Bible to the right place.

"We'll put the marker here so you can come back to it. I hope you think about what it says as you learn it. This chapter contains a lot of good thought."

"Oh, I will, pa," I promised and closed the Bible carefully.

Pa was surprised. "Aren't you going to start working on it?"

"We have eight, whole weeks to learn it. I don't have to start yet."

"Well, don't put it off too long," pa warned. "You'll need a lot of practice to be able to say it well."

"I know, but thirteen verses won't take much time. Besides, I almost know one of them already. Miss Gibson didn't tell us to learn it this week. She just wants to know what it is."

Pa shook his head, but he didn't say anything more. He knew I had a dreadful habit of putting things off until the last minute.

Sarah Jane chose Psalm 136.

"No fair!" I protested. "Every single verse ends the same way! You just have to learn half a chapter!"

"Well, Miss Gibson didn't say every verse had to be different. She just told us to learn a chapter," Sarah Jane retorted.

"You'll get tired of saying it," I predicted. "It will start sounding like 'Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers' after a while."

Sarah Jane snorted that it didn't sound anything like that. But she finally decided to learn Psalm 24 instead.

"You still have four verses that are almost alike," I said. "But it's not as bad as the other one."

"You sure are fussy," Sarah Jane complained. "I didn't say anything about the one you picked."

"Only that I made it up," I reminded her. "Anyway, I just want you to do well. What you say is as important as how you say it."

Sarah Jane began at once to learn her chapter. Even though I took pa's Bible and read

Isaiah 55 a number of times, I didn't put much effort into memorizing it. The weeks went by quickly, and November was there before I realized it.

"Do you want me to listen to your chapter?" ma asked me. "Maybe I can help you get the expression right. I'd like you to do a really nice job of reciting it."

"I'm still working on it, ma," I replied. "I don't think I'm quite ready to recite it."

"You only have a little over a week," she warned me. "I guess there's no use telling you that you should have started a month ago. I certainly hope you don't disgrace yourself."

"Of course I won't, ma! You know it doesn't take me long to memorize something when I get right down to it."

"Yes, I know." Ma sighed. "It's the getting right down to it that takes the time. Someday maybe you'll learn to allow for unforeseen events."

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, I began to seriously work on my chapter. The Wednesday afternoon of the festival, I took it to ma.

"You can listen to it now," I said. "I know it perfectly."

And I did. Ma agreed that I hadn't left out a word, and that I had recited it very well. "I just wish you had been saying it longer," she said. "Sometimes you can have a sudden lapse of memory that can spoil the whole thing."

I was confident that could never happen. Ma washed my hair and brushed the curls around her finger.

"You'd better bathe first," she said. "Then the boys can get ready. The water's hot, and I'll have Reuben set up the tub here in front of the fire."

My clean clothes were brought into the kitchen and hung on the rack in front of the stove. We always bathed in here by the fire. Ma fixed my bathwater, and then she went to finish getting dressed herself. I was ready to climb into the tub when the thought occurred to me that perhaps ma was right. What if I did have a lapse of memory?

Maybe I ought to look at Isaiah 55 one more time—just to be sure. I hurried over to the cupboard and took down pa's Bible. To conserve time, I decided to start soaking in the tub as I read it over. Only when I was safely seated in the tub did I realize what I had gotten myself into.

How was I going to get up again without dropping the Bible? I would need both hands to get out of the tub without slipping. Frantically I looked about for some place to put pa's Bible.

I could not put it on the floor. That was unthinkable. The chair wasn't close enough to reach, the clothes rack wasn't wide enough to hold it, and the stove was too hot.

I couldn't have felt any more alone if I had been lost in the woods. I sat in the tub and clutched the Bible to me. I couldn't get up; neither could I finish my bath. Tears of frustration ran down my cheeks.

Someone banged on the kitchen door. "Hurry up, Mabel," Roy called. "We have to get ready, too, you know. What in the world are you doing in there?"

I didn't answer, because I was crying too hard.

Roy banged again. "All right, if you're going to be that stubborn, I'll just go and get ma."

Even though I didn't want ma to find out what I'd done, I knew that was the only solution. Tearfully I waited for her to appear.

Soon she bustled through the door, putting pins in her hair as she came.

"What is taking you so long?" she asked. Suddenly she stopped and stared at the scene before her.

"I suppose there's no point in asking why you are in the tub with the Bible," she said. When I didn't answer, she put pa's Bible on the table, and then turned back to me. "But why would you do a foolish thing like that?"

"I wanted to be sure I wouldn't forget my chapter," I sobbed. "I was going to read it through again."

Ma quickly helped me bathe and get dressed so we would get to the program on time. She was kind enough not to tell pa or the boys what I had done....

"Did you forget your chapter, grandma?" I asked.

"No. I remembered it all. But I was so rattled by what had happened that I didn't recite it very well. Sarah Jane won the prize."

"What was it, grandma? What was the prize?"

Grandma's eyes twinkled. She laughed as she thought about it. "It was a Bible!"

I ALWAYS LOVED birthday parties. Balloons. Games. Ice cream and cake. Attending them was such fun.

But before I could go, I had to buy the present with my own money. Somehow my allowance was always gone and I ended up explaining my problem to grandma and asking her, "Can you think of any way I can earn some money?"

She never failed me. There was always some job to be done. But sometimes it took a long time.

"I need all this wool rolled into balls," grandma replied one time I asked her to help me earn money. "Stretch the skein over the back of the chair, and I'll show you how to start."

"How many skeins are there?"

"Only about twelve." Grandma laughed. "Enough to keep you busy fora while."

"Can you tell me a story while I'm working?" I asked hopefully.

Grandma thought for a moment. "I guess I can tell you about a time I worked to earn some money. It wasn't as easy as rolling yarn, but it was for the same purpose."

"A birthday present? Whom was it for?"

"It was for pa," grandma replied. "The whole family went together to try to earn money for it.

"Pa's birthday was in May, but we started thinking about it right after Christmas. We had attended a service at the church on New Year's Eve, and ma remarked about the state of pa's good suit.

"Your work overalls look better than your Sunday suit," she said to him. "The seat of those pants is so thin I don't think you're going to be able to wear them much longer."

"I agree that they aren't in the best of shape," pa replied. "But I can't afford another suit this year. Maybe if the crops are good, I can get one next winter. In the meantime, I'll just sit easy."

Ma shook her head. "That one will never last. But I don't know what we can do about it.

Nothing further was said, but ma didn't forget about pa's worn suit. One morning in January she mentioned it again before we left for school.

"The new Sears catalog is here," she said. "We could get a good suit for your father for twenty-five dollars. The question is, where will we get twenty-five dollars?" .

"Twenty-five dollars!" I gasped. It might as well have been twenty-five thousand, as far as we were concerned.

"It would sure be nice to get that suit for his birthday," ma continued. "I'm going to start thinking about how I can earn some money."

"We will, too," Reuben offered. "Roy and I can go in with you and buy it."

"I want to help, too," I put in. "I can earn money if you can."

Ma looked at me kindly. "There's not much a little girl can do for pay. But it's nice of you to offer. We'll see what we can do."

On the way to school that morning, I took up the matter with Sarah Jane.

"What would you do to earn a whole lot of money if you needed it?" I asked her.

Sarah Jane looked startled. "Do you need a whole lot of money?"

"Yes, I need twenty-five dollars."

She stopped short in the middle of the road and stared at me. "Twenty-five dollars!" she exclaimed. "You couldn't earn that much in a million years. What do you need it for?"

"You're not much help," I sighed. "I need it fora new suit for pa. And I don't have a million years. I only have until May."

Sarah Jane counted on her fingers. "That's just five months away. You'll never make it. How come you have to buy your pa a suit, anyway?