Hattie

by Frida Nilsson

  THE LAST DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS BREAK

  One evening the whole family is in the kitchen doing Christmas baking.

  “Shall we make a gingerbread house?” asks Papa.

  Hattie agrees straight away and the gingerbread dough comes out of the fridge. It’s been resting in there for several days.

  They knead and they roll. Hattie has planned a multi-level house with balconies and little gingerbread people in the windows. Papa thinks it would be just as much fun to do something a little less complicated. The duck house in the yard, for example. After they’ve squabbled a bit, they decide on a compromise. They’ll make the duck house but with small gingerbread pigs on the roof. Soon they’re under way, cutting out brown walls.

  It’s lovely in the little kitchen. It’s dark outside the window, and no cars pass by. After a couple of hours, they can stick the pieces together with burnt sugar. And when the pigs are baked, Hattie sticks them on the peaked roof. The house is perfect. They put it on the table in the big room and in a second Tacka the dog comes in to sniff. Then she sits at the table all evening and whines and pants, but she’s not given even a crumb.

  Hattie’s mother doesn’t like making gingerbread houses. She bakes Norwegian cakes instead, much taller than the little duck house. They’re almost as tall as Hattie!

  The cakes sway like fragile card houses on the floor and her mother runs around putting on the icing. Hattie’s grandmother is from Norway, which is why Hattie’s mother enjoys making Norwegian cakes.

  Although they’re so tall, Mama’s cakes never collapse and break. Whereas Hattie’s buns slump, even though they’re only small snails called saffron buns. But it doesn’t matter. Mama thinks a collapsed snail tastes just as good as one from a master chef.

  It’s not long before the teacher says one afternoon in school: “Don’t forget to bring afternoon tea tomorrow, for our party. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye!” shouts the class, running out. They’re all so happy that the holidays are near. Hattie struggles into her layers and Linda puts her arms into the two coats. Their hair is electric and stands out from their heads like tall grass on a prairie.

  “What will you bring for afternoon tea?” asks Hattie. “Have you made gingerbread?”

  Linda shakes her head. “No-oo.” She shrugs. “We haven’t had time.” Then she laughs. “Momma just sews and sews.”

  Their noses go red when they’re out in the cold. At last there’s snow on the ground. It crunches under their boots and glistens on the fields.

  Soon Hattie is sitting on the bus. Through the window she watches Linda’s little blue coat disappearing through the fir trees. And that gives her an idea!

  When the school bus collects Hattie the next day she has one of her saffron snails and two gingerbread hearts in an old glass box in her backpack. In her hand she carries a supermarket bag. All the way to school she sits completely still with the bag on her lap.

  In the classroom it’s pretty and festive. In the final art class, all the children cut out snowy stars from white paper, and now the stars are taped on the high window. Happy Holidays, the teacher has written on the blackboard, and red ribbons hang from the ceiling.

  Now they’re all sitting at their desks. The teacher lights the four candles in the candleholder on his desk. Then he turns off the lights.

  “Welcome to the last school day before Christmas,” he says quietly. Then he takes out small plastic mugs and four thermoses. “Everyone can come up for glogg.”

  Soon there’s a jostling crowd at the desk. The glogg might run out and there won’t be enough for the last person! Hattie hurries over.

  At last she has a plastic mug in her hand. It’s hot and she has to hurry back to her desk to put it down.

  Then everyone takes out their afternoon tea. Hattie places the snail and the two hearts on her desk. All the children around her do the same: saffron snails and gingerbread. Hattie looks over at Linda’s desk. There are two dry crackers beside her little mug of glogg.

  Then Hattie takes out her bag, puts in her hand and carefully pulls out what she’s brought with her. It’s the duck house. Hattie asked at home and Papa was happy for Linda to have it. People should have gingerbread for Christmas. She goes over to Linda’s desk.

  “Happy Christmas,” she says, setting down the house. “You can eat it.”

  Linda looks at the house with her mouth open. The crooked tooth shines white in the dark. But then the sides of her mouth go up and Linda’s eyes sparkle, blue and happy.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Happy Christmas!”

  But she won’t ever eat the house, she says. She’ll save it in the bookcase as a decoration!

  The teacher plays Christmas carols. Everyone in the class is quiet and solemn as if they’re at a funeral.

  But only for a short while. Soon the gingerbread and the saffron snails are eaten up and then it’s hard to keep still. Everyone feels their legs squirming for the holidays, and soon they’re so bubbly and chatty that the teacher has to put a stop to it. For a difficult half hour, they sit and listen to the end of the Christmas story. Then the teacher turns the lights back on. “Happy Christmas!” he calls.

  “Happy Chrisss-stmas!” everyone shrieks, and they all rush out. The sticky glogg mugs stay behind on the desks.

  “What have you wished, for a Christmas present?” Hattie asks by the coats.

  “The pony castle,” says Linda, pulling the supermarket bag over the gingerbread house.

  “Me too!” says Hattie. “Do you think you’ll get it?”

  Linda shrugs. “Nah,” she says and laughs as usual. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t think I’ll get it either,” says Hattie. Then she laughs too, even though she thinks life will end without the castle. But she doesn’t want to tell Linda that.

  They say goodbye to each other. Soon Hattie is on the bus watching Linda disappear through the fir trees. The bag is dangling from her hand. Hattie’s heart bolts inside her. Now it’s the holidays!

  CHRISTMAS

  At last it’s the twenty-fourth of December. Hattie rushes down to the living room and takes a deep breath. The day before they decorated the tree, and now her lungs are filled with pine tree scent and the smell of a scrubbed floor. When Hattie gets that floor cleaner smell in her nostrils, she’s so happy she could cry. It means Christmas.

  On a white sideboard stands a little plastic crib. The baby Jesus lies in it with a blue swaddling cloth on a pile of hay. Around it are the three wise men and Joseph and Mary, who are holding their hearts. A little further away is a tired donkey with his ears back. He probably wants food.

  Under the tree is a heap of presents. Hattie wants to throw herself on the floor and feel every single one. There are square ones and round ones, soft and hard. And maybe the pony castle is in there somewhere.

  Hattie and Linda aren’t the only ones who want a pony’s pink dream castle. The whole class wants one, except for the boys. It has three high towers with violet tops and a drawbridge you can wind up and down. Hattie knows that if she’s given the pony castle this evening she’ll never feel sad again about anything. But she’s worried…

  For a whole month she’s been asking Mama about the castle. Her mother just said: “Well, we’ll see about that on Christmas Eve.” And a few days ago something happened that can’t be explained.

  They were standing at the sink making pickled herrings. And suddenly Hattie’s mouth opened and out came the strangest words:

  “I don’t really want the castle. I won’t be sad if I’m given something else.”

  “Hmmm,” was all her mother said.

  And Hattie can’t understand why she said that. Because she knew all the time that it wasn’t true. The pony castle is the only thing that matters in the whole world. But now as she stands and stares at the presents under the tree, it looks more and more as if it isn’t there.

  She goes out to the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” her father chirp
s, cutting a piece of ham for his sandwich.

  “Morning,” mumbles Hattie. She sits on the sofa and takes a bite of her sandwich. It’s hard to chew. Every second that passes makes her more nervous. And it’s such a long time until presents.

  The last clip in Donald Duck’s Christmas Eve selection is about Chip and Dale going to Mickey Mouse’s house and getting into a fight with Pluto. Then Jiminy Cricket sings about wishing on a star. It’s a lovely moment. Papa is busy with food in the kitchen and Hattie sits close to Mama on the TV sofa. Her mother smells good and she looks nice in her skirt and blouse. Snoopy also looks nice. He’s wearing a little Christmas hat.

  Then they hear tooting on the gravel road. That means Grandma and Grandpa have arrived. At last they can eat! In the dining room everything is ready. There’s pate, sausages, cheese and herrings. The ham is round and rosy on a plate and in a clay pot there’s something terrible: pigs’ trotters. They have their hooves still on them and tufty hairs clinging to the rind. Hattie stands with her nose over the pot and sniffs. Brrr! She’d never want to put her teeth into anyone’s foot.

  Her mother doesn’t want to eat pigs’ trotters either. She and Hattie look out through the window while the others eat them.

  “Silly,” says Papa, sucking between the toes of one hoof. He thinks that you don’t know good food if you can’t find room for a pig’s trotter or two between herrings and ham. But Hattie and her mother take no notice. They’re proud of being proper bad fooders.

  Hattie eats her Christmas food quickly and wants everyone else to do the same. But that’s not how it is. As always the grown-ups sit at the table for hours. She knows they drag it out on purpose. She has to run into the living room to look at all the presents. What if the castle isn’t there!

  After an eternity Mama goes to make coffee. Then she puts out the Christmas chocolates in the living room and everyone sits on the sofas. Now Hattie can pass around the presents. She looks at the pile under the tree. If the castle is there somewhere, it will be a big package.

  She finds a large box wrapped in Christmas paper and reads the tag aloud: “To Hattie.” She quickly opens it.

  Inside are ski boots. “Thanks,” she says and flies on to the next one. It has To Hattie on it also. She’s about to pull on the ribbon.

  “Wait for that one,” says Mama.

  Papa agrees. “It’s no fun if you open all the big ones first. Try a few small ones now.”

  Hattie dives onto the other presents. She’s given a warm hat, hair ties, the Big Book of Ghosts and a whole salami. Salami is the best Hattie-food she knows!

  She leafs through the Big Book of Ghosts. The pages drip with blood and you can read about all the terrible creatures in the world—vampires, witches and the headless rider. At the back are instructions on how to get in touch with the ghost world. You can call the White Lady, speak to spirits and read your own spit. Hattie feels cold shivers run up and down her spine. But maybe she wouldn’t mind meeting the White Lady…

  Her mother, father, grandma and grandpa all get lots of presents. There are paintings and beaded mats and other artworks. Everyone is pleased.

  Soon Hattie has opened all the presents. There’s only one left, the big one that her mother and father wanted her to wait for. To Hattie. Her hands are shaking as she takes off the paper…

  And in a shimmer of pink the pony castle appears! She explodes with happiness. Now she’ll be happy till the earth stops turning!

  Hattie is also given silver cutlery and embroidered cloths from Grandma and Grandpa. They don’t count. She’s so pleased with the pony castle that she can’t be sad about a newly polished cheese cutter from 1942.

  Before Hattie goes to bed she calls Linda. Her mother answers. “Is Linda there?” asks Hattie.

  “Wait a minute,” she says.

  It is a minute before Linda’s voice squeaks in Hattie’s ear. “Hello?”

  “It’s Hattie,” says Hattie. “I got the castle.”

  She pauses a moment. If Linda didn’t get a castle it doesn’t feel so good. “Did you?” she asks carefully.

  Linda laughs a bit and says: “Yes. I did too.”

  And then Hattie laughs as well. They chat for a little while and count their presents. Linda has been given two T-shirts and a water dispenser for Roy.

  Soon Hattie yawns. “See you in school,” she says.

  “See you,” replies Linda and she puts the phone down. Hattie rushes like an arrow through the house and into the living room. There stands the castle, like pink marzipan. What a perfect Christmas Eve.

  THE WAFFLE

  In no time school starts again. When the children step into the classroom a surprise is waiting for them. A new teacher! But the old teacher is still here because the new one is only staying for a month. She’s training to be a teacher in town and has come to learn about real life in a school. Her hair is yellow and wavy, and her cheeks are pitted. She speaks as quietly as a mouse and almost never smiles.

  She stands at the blackboard to introduce herself: “I come from Trosa,” she tells the class.

  Then Hattie laughs so hard that the roof almost lifts because Trosa means underpants. Soon all the others are laughing with her and the teacher frowns.

  “Shh!” she hisses, glowering at Hattie. “Stop being so silly!”

  After that she’s cross for several days and whenever Hattie puts her hand up to ask for help the teacher says only a few words.

  One Wednesday the whole class is outside the classroom putting on their outside clothes. It’s morning break.

  “Who wants to call the White Lady?” Hattie asks. Everyone goes stone quiet. They look at each other with scared faces. “I’ve been reading about it in the Big Book of Ghosts,” says Hattie. “The White Lady is a free-floating spirit. She’ll come if you know how to call her.”

  It’s thrilling, though, and everyone wants to join in. Hattie explains how it works. You go into the bathroom and lock the door. You’re not allowed to turn on the light. Then you stand in front of the mirror, looking into it, and you say, “White Lady, White Lady, come hither,” three times in a row. Then you’ll see a sad figure—completely white—appear in the mirror. And after that the White Lady can appear at any time, when you least expect it!

  Everyone starts chattering. They’re going to call on the living dead! Someone from the Other Side!

  “Who wants to start?” Hattie asks. The chatter stops instantly. The girls shake their heads and the boys look at the floor. When it comes down to it, no one dares.

  “I’ll go then,” says Hattie. “If someone comes with me.”

  The boys scrape their feet and their eyes wander. They mumble that they might go skating instead, down on the rink.

  Hattie crosses her arms and stares at them. “Does no one dare?” she asks. “In that case it won’t happen.”

  Then there’s someone with blonde hair and a turned-up nose who steps out from the group. It’s Linda and she dares.

  They close the door behind them. The cowards stay behind, wide-eyed and certain this is the last they’ve seen of Hattie and Linda. Certain that the White Lady will kidnap them from inside the mirror!

  The door has a gap at the bottom so it’s not properly dark inside the bathroom. They stand side by side and look into the mirror. Linda begins in a shaky voice: “White Lady, White Lady, come hither.”

  Hattie continues: “White Lady, White Lady, come hither.”

  Linda concludes: “White Lady, White Lady… come hither?”

  Now she could come at any moment. Hattie’s heart beats hard. She peers into the mirror for traces of the poor pale woman.

  But the only little woman she sees is herself. And Linda. They stand there with winter-pale faces, blinking. The White Lady doesn’t dare either, when it comes down to it. They stare at the mirror until they’re tired of it and then they leave.

  “Nothing happened,” says Hattie. But the whole class looks spooked anyway and soon Hattie understands why. The new tea
cher has found them, and she’s angry. Her pitted cheeks are quivering.

  Hattie gets a long, long lecture for involving the class in such dangers. The new teacher happens to know lots of children who have become sick in the head from playing White Lady.

  Hattie says that she can’t help what happened to those other children. In her own head she feels as fresh as a cucumber.

  “That’s not the point,” the teacher replies, her voice reaching falsetto. “Things like this can scar the brain for life. And anyway, the White Lady doesn’t exist; it’s a joke. Don’t do it again!”

  She leaves.

  Hattie’s face is burning hot. She can’t understand what there is to yell about if the White Lady is only a joke. The whole class looks at her as if she’s fallen for a trick.

  “I knew the whole time that she didn’t exist,” says Karin. Ellen agrees.

  “Let’s go skating,” says Mathias.

  They all run away. Only Hattie and Linda are left.

  “Shall we go too?” asks Linda.

  Hattie’s not sure. What she really wants to do is hide under a snowdrift in the forest and never come out. Everyone suddenly got so cross. But the book said that the White Lady exists! It’s just a matter of doing everything properly in the bathroom.

  They head outside through the school’s high wooden doors. Everything feels unfair. Their skin tingles in the cold and from down at the skating rink come the shouts of their classmates. They’re just about to go down the path when it happens! Hattie freezes and stares over at the cafeteria.

  “Wait!” she whispers, holding a hand out to Linda. Linda stares with wide eyes in the same direction. And then they see her. For a short second, they glimpse the White Lady. She’s standing behind a downpipe and she gives them a mischievous little wave. Then she’s gone.

  They look at each other with their mouths wide open. Linda’s face is shining, and inside Hattie it feels as if a big balloon is being blown up. They’ve seen her! The White Lady!

  That evening it’s parent–teacher meetings. Hattie goes with her mother and father. They meet the teacher and the new teacher. There are coffee and buns on the teacher’s desk but Hattie’s parents are too nervous for that. Not Hattie. She’s already eaten three buns by the time the teacher starts talking.