A Big Year for Lily

by Mary Ann Kinsinger

  During supper the next day, Mama took a bite of brownie and yelped. “Ouch!” She held her cheek with her hand.

  “What’s wrong, Rachel?” Papa asked.

  “It’s that tooth that’s been bothering me,” Mama said. “But it’s much worse today. I should have known better than trying to eat a brownie with nuts.”

  “I’m going to make an appointment with a dentist for you before I start work in the shop this afternoon,” Papa said. “I don’t want you having to suffer from a painful tooth.”

  Lily felt sorry that Mama had to go to the dentist. Nobody wanted to go to the dentist. But then she realized this was the opportunity she’d been looking for! She could bake Mama’s birthday cake while she was at the dentist.

  Papa came back from the phone shanty. “You have an appointment for tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock,” he said. “Mr. Tanner will be here to pick you up after three thirty.”

  The next day, Lily hurried home from school, hoping Mr. Tanner wouldn’t be late. She kept glancing out the window to see if she could spot Mr. Tanner’s car coming down the road. By the time he arrived, Mama looked around the kitchen. “Lily, put the casserole in the oven at five thirty. I’m going to drop the boys at Grandma Miller’s until I get back.”

  That was wonderful news! Lily wasn’t sure how she would get the cake baked if she had to watch Dannie and Paul. She waited until she saw Mr. Tanner’s car turn onto the road, then ran upstairs to get the cookbook.

  She read the instructions for the cake recipe: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lily opened the door at the bottom of the kerosene stove and pulled the tray with the burners out to light them. She tipped the chimneys back and turned the wicks up. She took a match, struck it, and held the flame against the wick. As it traveled slowly around the wick she tried to lower the chimney gently. It got stuck and Lily jiggled it like she saw Mama do often. All of a sudden it went down fast and snuffed the flames. Lily tried again. The same thing happened. After several more tries she gave up and ran down the basement stairs and into the shop.

  Papa was working at the drill press, drilling holes in the back of a chair seat. Lily explained that she was trying to bake a birthday cake for Mama and that she couldn’t light the burners for the kerosene stove. Could he please help?

  Papa went upstairs and lit the burners. Lily adjusted the flames until they were burning a nice blue flame. Now she could finally make the cake. She showed the picture of the cake she wanted to bake to Papa. “It looks good,” he said, patting Lily’s shoulder. “If you need any more help, just let me know.”

  Papa went back to his shop as Lily gathered the ingredients. She measured flour and sugar into the mixing bowl. She glanced at the clock and was bothered to see how much time she had wasted in trying to light the burners. She was afraid she wouldn’t have enough time before Mama came home.

  She finished stirring the batter. It was time to add the chocolate swirl into the batter to make it seem like a marble. She read the instructions and decided it would take too long to melt all the chocolate. She decided to pour the chocolate chips into the batter without melting them first. They could melt while they were baking. She thought this might be a brilliant idea. Every chocolate chip would melt into its own pretty little swirl. The cake would be filled with dainty swirls. It would be even prettier than the one in the cookbook.

  Lily could just see Mama cutting the cake, oohing and aahing at how pretty the swirls were and asking Lily how she did it. She was sure Mama would be pleased with her swirl invention. For good measure, Lily added an extra cup full of chocolate chips to the cake batter and mixed it well.

  She slid the cake pan into the stove and set the timer to make sure she would remember to take the cake out of the oven in time. It would never do to burn Mama’s special chocolate swirl birthday cake.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry! Lily glanced at the clock. She quickly washed the baking dishes while the cake was in the oven. She didn’t want to leave a trace of her surprise. Then she paged through the cookbook again. In the back she found all kinds of frosting recipes. Lily read the different recipes and one caught her eye: Lemon Icing. Lily read through the instructions and thought it sounded even easier than plain old butter cream frosting. She measured powdered sugar into a bowl, added lemon juice and stirred. Instead of getting fluffy like frosting was supposed to, it looked thin and watery. She was trying to figure out how to fix it when the timer rang.

  Lily quickly removed the cake from the oven and put it into the refrigerator to cool before Mama came home. She read through the icing recipe again to see what she had done wrong but she had done exactly what the recipe had told her to do. She sprinkled more powdered sugar into the bowl and stirred. The frosting was still too thin.

  So Lily decided to add food coloring. If the frosting wasn’t going to be fluffy, at least it could be pretty. She dug through the pantry until she found the box with the food coloring. On the back of the box she found instructions on how to make different colors. It looked easy! You just added different food colorings together. Lily decided on a beautiful purple frosting. It would be the prettiest frosting ever.

  Lily measured in red food coloring to the lemon icing, then added blue. Instead of turning purple, it turned into a sickly orange-brown color. Lily felt like crying. All her wonderful plans weren’t working out the way she had hoped.

  Then she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel in the driveway. Mama was home! She grabbed the cake from the refrigerator and the bowl of frosting and ran upstairs with them. She sat on the floor in her room and poured the frosting on top of the cake. She tried to spread it out nicely but it turned into an orange-brown puddle in the middle of the sunken cake. Finally, Lily gave up. She put the cake into her bottom desk drawer and hid the dirty mixing bowl in her closet.

  “Lily,” Mama called up the stairs. “Did you remember to put the casserole in the oven?”

  Oops.

  Supper would be very late tonight.

  Three days later was Mama’s birthday. At the supper table Papa gave Mama a big box. Lily watched eagerly as Mama opened it because Papa always gave good gifts. Mama drew out a pretty towel set. She stroked it happily. “Thank you, Daniel,” she said. “It’s just what we needed. It will look so pretty in the bathroom.”

  When it was time for dessert, Papa said, “I think Lily has something for Mama’s birthday now.”

  Lily ran upstairs and got the cake out of her desk drawer. The sickly orange frosting looked even worse than it had when Lily had put it on the cake. She carried it downstairs and gave it to Mama. “Happy birthday, Mama,” she said, a little uncertainly.

  But Mama looked so pleased! She cut a piece for everyone. Joseph and Dannie, who normally ate everything, picked at it with odd expressions on their faces. Papa tried one bite and froze. “Lemon icing? On top of a chocolate chip cake?” he said, as if that might be a strange combination.

  Lily was disappointed to discover the chocolate chips hadn’t melted at all. They still looked like chocolate chips instead of pretty little swirls. And because she had added so many in the batter, the cake was crumbly.

  Mama didn’t seem to notice all the mistakes, not even the disgusting color of the icing. “It’s so nice to have a daughter big enough to bake a cake by herself,” she said. She finished her piece of cake and then said, “I think I need a second helping,” and cut another piece.

  Mama never had second helpings of dessert. Not ever. She must have really loved that cake recipe. Lily thought she might make it for her every year.

  34

  Teacher Rhoda’s Horrible News

  Today was the last day of school. Teacher Rhoda stood by her desk, giving her end-of-the-term speech. This time, she added a shocker: “I have enjoyed all the years I spent being your teacher, but when school starts again in the fall you will be getting a new teacher.”

  The classroom went bone silent. Then someone—maybe Lily—began to cry, and soon all of the girls were sniffing loudly and
quietly crying.

  “Why aren’t you coming back in the fall?” Effie asked.

  Effie always asked the questions everyone was thinking. Usually, it was annoying. Not today, though. Lily was glad to hear Effie pipe up.

  An embarrassed little smile spread across Teacher Rhoda’s face. “I’ll be very busy with some other plans. But I’m sure you will learn to like your new teacher and enjoy school just as much as you do now.”

  Lily and Cousin Hannah exchanged a knowing look. She had been afraid of this moment—ever since that first Sunday evening singing when she and Hannah had spied on the youth at Uncle Elmer’s house and saw Teacher Rhoda get into Samuel Yoder’s buggy.

  The tears were coming faster now, too fast for Lily to wipe away. Teacher Rhoda might not be telling them but she was sure those other plans included marrying Aaron Yoder’s older brother. How sad!

  In the kitchen, Lily was helping Mama fold sun-dried laundry from the clothesline. “Mama, how old were you when you decided you wanted to court Papa?”

  Mama tucked a sheet under her chin and folded up the sides. “Around Teacher Rhoda’s age, I suppose.”

  Lily’s head swam. “How did you know you wanted to court Papa?”

  “Well, you know about how I threw the dishwater at Papa.”

  Lily grinned. “I remember.”

  Mama plucked a towel, stiff from the sun, out of the laundry basket and folded it in half. “But we didn’t talk that night, other than when I apologized to him for dousing him with dirty dishwater.” She smiled. “I had cousins who lived in Papa’s community, so I knew a little bit about him. Papa was awfully shy. We saw each other now and then, but he never spoke to me.”

  “Never?”

  “Not until a certain weekend. My cousins were having church at their house. It was an in-between Sunday for our church, so my friends and I decided to walk over to my cousins’ and stay the night. We would be able to go to church the next day.”

  “And you could see Papa.”

  Mama smiled. “Then I could see Papa.”

  “So what happened?”

  Mama put down the socks she had been folding. “We left in the morning, right after breakfast, bright as buttons. Very cheerful and excited. We started walking. And walking. And walking. My sister, your aunt Mary, got a blister on her heel. I slowed down to stay with her and soon we had fallen way behind the other girls. What we hadn’t realized was how far fifteen miles of walking could actually be!”

  “Did you turn around?”

  “We discussed it. By now, we couldn’t even see my friends. They were that far ahead of us. I wasn’t even sure we were heading in the right direction anymore. But next thing we knew, a horse and buggy pulled up beside us.”

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, it was Papa. He offered us a ride. He drove us right to my cousins’ house and took us all the way home again the next day. It was the first time we talked to each other.”

  “And we haven’t stopped talking yet,” Papa said as he walked into the kitchen. He had been listening the whole time. He gave Mama his special smile that made Lily feel as if they had forgotten she was in the room. Mama returned the smile.

  “I think we’ll have to pick strawberries tomorrow,” Mama said. “I want you to take a note to Aunt Mary. She said she would help us pick them when they’re ripe.”

  Lily had been eyeing the strawberry patch for days, watching the berries get plump and red. She loved to eat strawberries and she didn’t even mind picking a few. But Mama and Papa had planted an entire acre with thousands of strawberry plants. The very sight of that strawberry field exhausted her! But having her relatives come to help would make it fun.

  Lily ran all the way to Aunt Mary’s house and found her in the garden, pulling weeds with Hannah. Aunt Mary read the note Lily handed to her. She smiled at Lily. “Tell your mother that I’ll come over tomorrow to help pick strawberries.”

  On the way home, Lily was struck with a brilliant idea. Even with Aunt Mary’s help, it would take days, weeks maybe, to get all those strawberries picked. She was sure Grandpa and Grandma Miller would come help if they knew that Mama needed them. She was almost walking by Grandma’s mailbox, and before she could think twice, she turned into their driveway, walked up to the porch, and knocked on the door.

  Grandma opened the door and looked surprised to see Lily.

  “We need help picking strawberries tomorrow,” Lily said.

  “Aunt Susie and I will be there bright and early tomorrow morning,” Grandma said.

  Lily was pleased. On the way back to the house, she decided not to tell Mama. Grandma’s appearance tomorrow would be a nice surprise for her.

  The sun was peeping in the eastern horizon the next morning when Aunt Mary arrived. Lily was still clearing breakfast dishes away. Aunt Mary had brought along Levi, Hannah, and Davy.

  “The dishes can wait today,” Mama told her. She handed out baskets and everyone headed out to the strawberry patch. By the time Grandma and Aunt Susie arrived, Lily had filled her basket.

  Mama was surprised to see Grandma. Even more surprised when she heard that Lily had asked them to come. She raised her eyebrows at Lily, as if to say, “We’ll talk later about asking others for help without permission.” She turned to Grandma and told her that she would help her get started sorting and selling the berries in the little roadside stand that Papa had built.

  Grandma sat behind the counter sorting strawberries. Only the biggest, juiciest, nicest ones were put into little baskets to be sold. Mama gave Grandma a bowl for the smaller berries. They would be used to make jam and pie filling. In between customers, Grandma could sort berries.

  It took only two days for Lily to be sick and tired of strawberries. Even thinking about Mama’s strawberry shortcake or strawberry jam didn’t help. New strawberries kept ripening and the work was endless, even with Aunt Mary, Hannah, and Levi’s help. As soon as they had finished picking the last row, it was time to start on the first row again.

  Mama and Aunt Mary liked to sing while they worked. The first few days, Lily and Hannah had sung along. Singing wasn’t fun any longer. The only interesting part of picking strawberries was eavesdropping on Mama and Aunt Mary’s conversations, in between songs.

  Hannah was just as weary of picking strawberries as Lily. The girls picked slower and slower. To help pass the time, they made plans for things to do after strawberry season was over.

  “I’m going to take long walks in the woods,” Hannah said. “Maybe I’ll walk past Aaron Yoder’s house.”

  Lily ignored that. She wanted to sit and read one of her books for a whole day without having to do anything else.

  Mama and Aunt Mary had stopped singing and were talking. Lily sidled closer to the row they were working on. Eavesdropping on them was better than nothing.

  “How is the mini barn business?” Mama said.

  “It’s doing well,” Aunt Mary said. “Elmer has built the barns in between his fieldwork. He’s been busy. But we’ve already sold a few.” She stood and put her hands on her hips, stretching her back. “That reminds me! Last evening, Elmer and I thought it might be a nice treat for the children to camp overnight in a mini barn after strawberry season is over. They’ve all been working so hard.”

  “That sounds like a fun idea,” Mama said. “I’ll talk it over with Daniel, but I don’t see why they couldn’t enjoy a little campout.”

  Lily and Hannah looked at each other, mouths open to a big O. A campout sounded like fun! They both began picking strawberries faster and faster. The sooner the last strawberry was picked, the sooner they could have their overnight.

  35

  Late Night Visiting

  Strawberry season finally came to an end. On a beautiful, warm Sunday evening, Lily and Joseph were packing up to spend a night camping with their cousins. Dannie was in a bad mood because he was told he was too young to join them, but other than that, it was an exciting event.

  Papa and Mama sat on the front
porch swing. Papa held Paul in his lap and Dannie sat between Mama and Papa, sad and sorry for himself. Lily and Joseph waved goodbye and started down the road. They carried their overnight things in shopping bags. Lily had packed her prettiest nightgown. Joseph had stuffed into his bag the first pair of pajamas he could find in his room.

  Cousins Levi and Hannah were waiting outside for them, eager to get the campout under way. They had already spread blankets and pillows in two mini barns. Aunt Mary had popped popcorn. The children sat on the front porch, eating popcorn, talking, and laughing, until it was time for bed.

  Levi, Davy, and Joseph went into the boys’ mini barn and Lily and Hannah went into the other one. The girls took turns changing into their nightgowns. Lily stood outside the mini barn while she waited for Hannah to change. She noticed a lot of fireflies fluttering around. Their little lights blinked on and off. It would be fun to try to catch some before they settled down to sleep. “Hurry, Hannah!”

  Hannah opened the door. “All ready,” she said.

  “Let’s catch some fireflies!” Lily said.

  “That would be fun,” Hannah said. She and Lily ran to the basement to get jars to hold the fireflies they caught. As they came out of the basement, they saw three white ghosts tiptoe toward the girls’ mini barn.

  Lily and Hannah stopped abruptly, hearts pounding.

  “The boys are hiding under sheets,” Hannah whispered. “They think we’re inside the mini barn. They think they’re scaring us.”

  They waited to see what the boys were going to do next. They had to cover their mouths to keep from laughing out loud when they saw them pick up sticks and scratch the side of the mini barn, making funny groaning noises.

  “Let’s fill up plastic bottles with water,” Hannah said. “We can sneak up behind them and squirt them.”