“And how long is that?”
“More than three months!” said Bernadette proudly.
“Well,” Bubbe replied, “do you want to know a secret?”
“Sure, Bubbe. And don’t worry about me telling anyone. I’m famous for keeping secrets!”
“I have been friends with the same lady since we were eleven years old. That’s more than fifty years of friendship. We went to school together, and we lived together during university, and we went to each other’s weddings, and we saw each other’s children grow up.”
“You’ve been friends for fifty years? Wow! That’s almost forever! But you know what, Bubbe? I’ll bet the Lunch Bunch is going to be friends forever too. You just wait and see.”
When they arrived at Bernadette’s house, each of the girls in the Lunch Bunch was given a little candle. Bubbe lit Bernadette’s, which was red like her hair, and then Bernadette used it to light the others. Megan’s candle was blue because she had blue eyes. Keisha’s candle was bright yellow because yellow was her favorite color. And Annie’s candle was forest green to match the jacket she wore for her gymnastics team. Bernadette had chosen them specially. The girls placed their candles in the menorah, a shiny silver candleholder, and then Bernadette’s family sang a song in Hebrew.
“What does that song mean?” asked Keisha.
“It means that we are grateful for the gift of light, and for having special times to celebrate together,” said Bernadette’s father.
“In other words, Lights! Camera! Latkes!” cried Bernadette.
Bubbe brought in a platter of crispy golden latkes. The girls loved them, especially Annie, who gobbled six whole pancakes before Bernadette had finished eating two. She also drank three glasses of juice and ate a big bowl of salad.
“You must have a hollow leg, young lady,” said Bernadette’s grandfather, Zaide. “I’ve never seen such a small person eat so much food!”
“Annie does gymnastics,” Bernadette explained. “She’s getting ready for a big competition and has to practice three times a week. It takes a lot of energy to do gymnastics, so that’s why she’s always hungry.”
“I knew we could count on you for a scientific explanation, Bernadette,” said Zaide. “Do you still like to do experiments?”
“Yes, she does. Bernadette is famous for science at our school,” said Megan.
“Just like Megan is famous for art,” added Annie.
“And Keisha is famous for acting,” said Bernadette. “You should have seen her in the play on Sunday, Bubbe. She was amazing!”
“I loved that play so much,” said Megan. “And I especially loved that a puppy got to be the hero!”
“There are lots of dog heroes,” said Annie. “Some rescue their owners by barking when their house catches fire, or by dragging them out of the water to keep them from drowning.”
“Dogs are pretty smart,” said Keisha. “They can be trained to help blind people and deaf people. They can tell you when the light is green so you can cross the road safely. They can tell you that your phone is ringing. They can bring you your slippers. Plus, they’re cuddly.”
“Which is why I keep asking for a dog,” said Bernadette, in a loud voice. “Maybe this is the Chanukah I’ll get lucky, and a puppy will magically appear with a bow around its neck and a gift tag saying For Bernadette.”
“Who wants more latkes?” said Bernadette’s mother, changing the subject.
“You’re changing the subject, Mom,” said Bernadette. “That is definitely not a good sign.”
“But Bubbe’s latkes are always good, so come and get them while they’re hot,” said Bernadette’s father.
When everyone had eaten as much as they possibly could, they sat on the floor and played the dreidel game, spinning a top to win chocolate coins.
“Chanukah is fun, Bernadette,” said Annie.
“Christmas is fun too,” said Megan.
“All holidays are fun,” said Keisha. “Especially because there’s no school!”
“But I like school,” Bernadette protested.
“Some school is OK,” said Megan. “There’s just too much of it. Why do we have five boring days of school and then only two days of the weekend when we can do whatever we want? I think it should be the other way around.”
“But if you children weren’t at school, who would take care of you while your parents were working?” asked Zaide.
“Well, maybe our parents shouldn’t work so much either,” said Keisha.
“You’ve got a point, Keisha,” said Bernadette’s father, laughing. “Life would certainly be easier if we didn’t have to work so hard.”
“But if we didn’t work so hard, we couldn’t afford to buy you Christmas and Chanukah presents,” said Bernadette’s mother. “So if you had the choice, which would you rather have? More time off school, or presents?”
“Unless the present is a PUPPY, I’m not interested,” said Bernadette.
“Oh dear!” said Bernadette’s mother. “I’m really in the doghouse now!”
“What does that mean?” asked Bernadette.
“It means that I’m in trouble.”
“But what does that have to do with doghouses?” asked Keisha.
“Well, doghouses are usually outside, so sending a dog there means ignoring him when he behaves badly.”
“It’s OK, Mom. You can stay indoors,” said Bernadette. “After all, I’m going to need you here to help me—when I finally get my puppy.”
“Woof!” said Keisha, wagging her invisible tail.
3
Ice is Nice
Bernadette’s grandparents stayed at her house for a whole week. Bubbe taught Bernadette how to knit and she made her first scarf. Zaide helped her do a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, and they all played a bazillion games of Scrabble. One afternoon they went with Bernadette to have tea at Mrs. Marsh and Lady’s house. They even took Bernadette, Megan, and Keisha to see a movie. Bernadette had so much fun with her grandparents that she almost forgot that Jasmine would be coming for a visit too. She almost forgot—but not quite.
Since Jasmine had moved away, she and Bernadette had become penpals. They wrote real letters with ink on paper and mailed them with pretty stamps—because everyone knows it is way more fun to open up an envelope with your name on it than to get an e-mail on the computer. Their letters to each other sometimes included surprises like lip balm or temporary tattoos or hair clips. For Hallowe’en, Jasmine had sent Bernadette a giant lollipop with a jack-o’-lantern face. And Bernadette once sent Jasmine a pair of socks with frog cartoons on them, because frogs were Jasmine’s favorite animals.
But even getting a letter full of loot wasn’t as good as being in the same room together talking. So the night before Jasmine’s visit, Bernadette couldn’t sit still! She tried every trick she could think of to make herself calm down. First she had a bubble bath. After that she put on her coziest pajamas and let her mother comb all the tangles out of her long red hair. Then she drank some hot cocoa, brushed her teeth, and climbed into bed. She put two pillows behind her back, adjusted her lamp, and started reading her favorite book, The Phantom Tollbooth. She figured if she tried to read a whole book, her eyes would get so tired they’d close by themselves and poof, when she woke up Jasmine would be there, just as if she’d never gone away.
But nothing happened. Bernadette just lay there, watching the glow-in-the-dark hands of her alarm clock go round and round. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Half an hour passed. She tried the yoga breathing exercises her mom had taught her but they didn’t help either. She simply couldn’t sleep.
“I simply can’t sleep!” Bernadette called out to her parents.
First her mother came in and gave her a cuddle. Then her father came in and sang her a song.
Nothing
was working.
“Nothing’s working,” Bernadette sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to stay awake all night.”
“Do you know what your Zaide used to do when I was a little boy and couldn’t sleep?” asked her father.
“No,” said Bernadette. “But I bet you’re going to tell me.”
“He used to take me outside to look at the moon and stars. He always said that the fresh air would make me tired.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes, it really did.”
“But I’m already in my pajamas, Dad,” said Bernadette.
“Nobody will know that you’re wearing pajamas if you put your snowsuit and boots on top of them,” said her father.
“But it’s so cold outside! And I’m afraid I’ll slip on the ice in the dark.”
“Don’t worry, Bernadette. I won’t let you fall.”
So Bernadette and her father got all bundled up and went for a nighttime walk. Outside, a deep blanket of snow muffled all the sounds. Snow weighed down the branches of the evergreen trees and sat like a hat on every chimney. Over the white rooftops the sky was a deep endless black. More stars than they could count sparkled in the sky like tiny chips of ice floating on a big dark lake. The moon was so big and bright it seemed closer to the earth than usual.
“Take a deep breath, Bernadette,” said her father.
“The air feels prickly!”
“That’s because it’s freezing the drops of moisture in your breath. How far do you want to walk?”
“Just around the block, Dad. You were right. I’m already starting to feel sleepy.”
They walked around the block hand in hand, listening to the snow squeak under their boots. Bernadette’s father stopped to pick a few lacy green needles off a cedar tree and rubbed them between his fingers for Bernadette to smell.
“In the summer we always forget to smell cedar trees because most flowers have stronger perfume,” he said. “But in the winter, nothing smells better than this.”
They met Sammy, the dog who lived next door, going for his bedtime walk. Sammy was wearing a funny little sweater with a Christmas tree on it and bells that really jingled, and he was so happy to see them that he jumped up to give Bernadette a kiss. Jingle jingle went his bells! Then they said hello to another neighbor who was shoveling his driveway. They stopped to admire all the shining decorations on his house. And before they knew it, they were back home again.
“Thanks for the walk, Dad,” she said. “It’s super cool outside at night. Cool. Get it? As in winter?”
“Very funny, Bernadette. But the important thing is, are you ready to go to bed now?” her father asked.
“I can’t wait!” Bernadette said, as she peeled off her snowsuit. “Zaide was right. Fresh air really does make you feel tired. And you know what else I’ve learned? Sometimes, ice is nice.”
And she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
When Bernadette woke up the next morning she remembered right away what a special day it was.
“Jasmine is coming, Jasmine is coming!” she sang as she ran down the stairs.
“She won’t be here for at least two hours,” her mother said. “So why don’t you eat your breakfast while you’re waiting?”
“I’m too excited to eat, Mom.”
“Last night you were too excited to sleep, and now you’re too excited to eat. Since you have so much energy, Bernadette, you might as well use it to clean up your room.”
“On second thought, maybe I could eat just a little teeny tiny bowl of oatmeal with seven or eight raisins and a spoonful of brown sugar and maybe half a sliced banana on top,” said Bernadette, slipping into her chair at the kitchen table.
“I knew that would work!” her mother laughed.
“Well, I knew that you knew that would work,” said Bernadette. “I just wanted to make you happy by pretending I didn’t.”
“Bernadette Inez O’Brian Schwartz! Don’t think you can get out of cleaning your room. There will still be plenty of time to do it after breakfast.”
“Rats,” said Bernadette. “Why are mothers always so bossy?”
After breakfast she went upstairs to clean her room. Jasmine was going to sleep on a spare mattress on the floor beside her bed, so Bernadette wanted everything to be nice and tidy. She pulled up her duvet and folded her pajamas neatly under her pillow. Then she put all her books back on the bookshelves. First she filed them in alphabetical order by topic, so that all her animal books were together, and all her fairytale books were together, and all her plant books were together. Then, within each topic, she filed the books in alphabetical order by their authors’ last names. Finally, she dusted her rock collection and arranged the specimens neatly.
Looking at the rocks reminded her of all the times she and Jasmine had gone fossil hunting, and of the geology camp they went to at the museum. They used to do everything together! How could two or three days of holiday make up for all the precious time they’d lost since Jasmine moved away?
Bernadette decided to find a really good experiment for them to do. She was so busy looking through her science books that she didn’t even hear Jasmine tiptoe into the room behind her. But suddenly someone’s hands covered her eyes, and a familiar voice yelled out, “Surprise!”
“Jasmine! You’re here!”
Bernadette dropped the book she was reading, turned around, and gave her friend a big hug.
“No fair, Jasmine, you big cheater!” she said. “You grew another inch since last summer. My nose only comes up to your shoulder now.”
“My mom says that because I’m having my growth spurt so young, I’ll probably stop growing early too.”
“I hope she’s right, or I’ll never get a chance to catch up.”
Both girls giggled.
“I missed you so much, Jazzy!”
“I missed you too, Bernie. But at least you got to stay in your old house and keep going to your old school. I had to start everything over again.”
“That must have been difficult at first,” said Bernadette’s mother, coming into the room. “But how is it now?”
“It’s good in some ways, and it’s bad in others,” Jasmine answered slowly.
“What do you mean?” asked Bernadette.
“It’s good that we live near my mom’s sister and I get to see my cousins all the time. But it’s bad that I live so far away from my old friends—especially you, Bernadette. It’s good that our new house is bigger than our old one, but it’s bad that there’s so much traffic that I’m not allowed to cross the road by myself. It’s good that my new school has a real laboratory, but it’s bad that I don’t know French so I have to go to a tutor.”
“I see,” said Bernadette’s mother. “But isn’t that how life always is? A mixture of good and bad?”
“Well, there’s nothing bad about you being here, Jasmine; it’s totally perfect,” said Bernadette. “And guess what? I just found an amazing experiment for us to do together.”
“Yippee!”
“I know you are going to love it. Mom, do we have all these ingredients?” asked Bernadette, picking up the book that had fallen on the floor and flipping through it to find the right page.
“Let me see. Cream? Yes. Vanilla? Yes. Sugar? Of course. And I think we still have some rock salt in the garage; we used it to melt the snow on the sidewalk before we found something better for the environment. So if you girls go outside to get some clean snow, I’ll collect everything else you need.”
Bernadette and Jasmine put on their coats and boots and mittens and went outside with a big plastic container. It was a sunny day and not too cold, so the snow was sticky.
“Do you want to play in the snow first?” Jasmine asked. “It’s perfect for building stuff.”
�
�But I’m tired of making snowmen, Jasmine.”
“Well, what about if we make a snow cat?”
“I’d rather make a snow DOG, since I think that’s the ONLY kind of dog I’ll ever get around here!” She shouted this, just in case her mother could still hear them through the closed doors and windows.
“OK, Bernadette. I’ll make a cat, and you can make a dog, and then there will be two animals running around your yard.”
“If we also make a snow mouse, we can have the cat chasing the mouse and the dog chasing the cat.”
“And the mouse should chase the dog, so they can run in a circle,” said Jasmine.
Building three separate sculptures out of snow took them a long time, but it was worth it.
“Great job, girls,” said Bernadette’s mother when they finally went back into the house. “Those animals look fantastic. In fact, I’m going to take a photograph to send you, Jasmine, so you can have a nice memory of this day.”
Bernadette’s mother got her camera and took some pictures of the snow sculptures, and then she placed two steaming cups of cocoa in front of the two girls.
“Yummy, Mummy,” said Bernadette.
“This warms up my tummy!” said Jasmine.
“Do you still want to do that experiment?” asked Bernadette’s mother, laughing. “Because it will make you cold all over again. And besides, Bernadette, Keisha called while you were outside, and I told her you’d call her right back.”
“I’ll call her later, because I still want to do the experiment,” said Bernadette.
“Me too!” said Jasmine.
Once they had finished their cocoa, Jasmine brought in a container full of nice clean snow. Bernadette added six tablespoons of rock salt to it and then shook the container for five minutes. It was really cold, so she put oven mitts on her hands to protect them.
“Why don’t you wear your real mittens, silly?” Jasmine asked.
“They’re soaking wet,” Bernadette answered. “Can you keep shaking this thing while I start mixing the other ingredients?”
Bernadette in the Doghouse Page 2