All-of-a-Kind Family

by Sydney Taylor

  “Hey, one at a time! If you’ll give me a chance to say something, I’ll try to answer all those questions.” The little girls quieted down and listened.

  “A peddler brought them in. Some rich man uptown was moving and after going through his collection of books, he picked out this lot that he no longer wanted. He called in a peddler and sold them to him. And that’s how I got them. I haven’t had a chance to look them over, but if you want any, you’d better get in there and go through them. I expect to resell the whole lot this afternoon.”

  The children needed no urging. They rushed pell-mell into the paper section with Charlie at their heels. There on the floor in a tumbled mass lay the precious books. Charlie stood by and watched as they began to hunt eagerly through the piles.

  Gertie did not yet know how to read. When she found there were no picture books, she picked up a magazine instead. She made her small self comfortable on a heap of old newspapers and turned the pages slowly. Book hunting was over for her.

  Lucky Charlotte discovered a book of fairy tales almost immediately. A brand new book it was, still in its bright paper cover. It was written in simple language and printed in large black letters. She stood up, hugging the book to her and began at once to read. In no time at all, she was completely lost to the world about her. For her book hunting was over too.

  As for Henny, she didn’t even bother to hunt. She was having much more fun tossing the books back and forth to Charlie as if they were baseballs. “Hey,” Ella called out, “aren’t you going to help us look through these?”

  “What for? You’re good pickers. I’ll be satisfied with whatever you pick out for me.”

  Ella and Sarah were the only systematic ones. They picked the books up one by one and looked through them carefully.

  “Found anything yet?” Charlie asked.

  “No,” answered Sarah, “not yet. Most of these books look like studying books, not reading books.”

  “Look over here,” Ella suddenly cried. “There are some reading books. See, there’s a whole set of Dickens. There are even some here that I’ve never heard of before. ‘Sketches by Boz.’ ‘More Sketches by Boz.’ ” She looked up at Charlie with a shining face. “Oh, Charlie, do you think Papa will let us keep the whole set?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Charlie, pleased with her good choice and her delight in it. “Better ask him yourself.”

  “Oh, but Ella,” Sarah wailed, “they look like grown-up books. I won’t be able to read them.”

  “Well,” her sister replied, “if you can’t read them now, you’ll be able to when you’re as old as I am.”

  “But that’s so far off. I want something for now.”

  “Let’s keep looking. Maybe we’ll find something else.”

  They kept on looking and just when they were about ready to give up, they found the most wonderful “something for now” book imaginable. Ella and Sarah pounced on it and as soon as they turned the first page, they called out in excitement, “Charlotte, Gertie, Henny! Come quick! Just look at what we’ve found!”

  Everybody gathered around. It was wonderful! Enchanting! It seemed like a bit of Fairyland come to life. They might have dreamed about such a book but they had not known that one like it even existed.

  “Why, it’s more than just a reading book!” Ella cried.

  The book was called The Dolls That You Love, and on one side of each page was printed the story about the day’s happenings, while on the other side were cutouts of the dolls and the clothes they wore.

  “Aren’t they sweet?” cried Charlotte, pointing to an adorable blue dress and bonnet that matched.

  “See how many dresses they have to change into!” exclaimed Sarah. “Oh, how I wish we could start dressing them right now!”

  “Why you could spend hours with them!”

  “Ooh, look at this page! They show winter clothes and see, the story is about their going sleighing.”

  “Just the thing for a rainy day, isn’t it?” Charlie said, happy in their happiness.

  With the volumes of Dickens, the book of fairy tales, and The Dolls That You Love parceled out among them, they trooped back to the front of the shop to show Papa their finds.

  “May we keep them all?” Ella asked.

  When he said “Yes,” they could hardly believe their ears. They never thought to own even one book and now they had twelve. It was too wonderful!

  “Keep them for good? We don’t have to give them back?” they asked again, just to hear Papa say, “Yes, they’re yours,” once more.

  “All right now,” Papa added. “Run along home and let me get some work done.”

  The children scurried up the basement stairs.

  “I’ve got a wonderful idea,” Sarah exclaimed. “You know what! Let’s play library when we get home! I’ll be the library lady and you must all come and get your books stamped by me.”

  Henny said, “Why should you be the library lady? I want to be the library lady.”

  “Me, too,” added Charlotte.

  “But it was my idea first,” replied Sarah.

  “Yes,” agreed Ella, “it was Sarah’s idea, and besides she’d make a good library lady.” She laughed. “It’ll be fun dressing you up. I’ll comb your hair with a pompadour like hers.”

  “I can ask Mama to let me wear her old black skirt,” Sarah said, “and when I walk, it’ll swish and swirl all around the floor just like Miss Allen’s.”

  “And I must come and ask you if you have a good book for me and you must smile and say, ‘Yes, of course.’ ” Charlotte was already busy with her make believe.

  “And I’ll be noisy and you’ll have to tell me, ‘Shush!’ ” Henny’s eyes lit up.

  “And can I look at the dolly book?” asked Gertie.

  “Yes, you can look at it,” Ella told her, “but you mustn’t start dressing the dolls. We want to do that all together tonight.”

  “You know,” Sarah said, “I never thought a rainy day could be such fun.”

  MAMA’S YOUNGEST BROTHER Hyman had neither wife nor children of his own, so he came frequently to Mama’s house to share in the life of the family.

  Winter or summer, his favorite place would be before the kitchen stove. With his hands locked behind his back, and toes turned out, he would sway his short, stocky body from side to side. His jolly red face was shaped like the moon and shone just as brightly. Once Gertie had asked him “if he scrubbed it awful hard to make it so shiny.” He had roared with good-natured laughter and then assured her that he never washed his face at all, that he had just been born that way.

  Tonight, as usual, Uncle Hyman stayed for supper. He ate his favorite meal of six hard-boiled eggs and half a loaf of sour rye bread spread thickly with butter.

  Supper over, Hyman loosened his belt and gave his stomach several contented pats. Knowing that money was not too plentiful in the household, he not only insisted upon paying for his meal but distributed pennies to the delighted children as well.

  “Now I’ll have an extra penny to give the library lady on Friday,” said Sarah.

  The next day Gertie and Charlotte went to Mrs. Blumberg’s candy store to spend Uncle Hyman’s pennies.

  “You still have the pennies, Charlotte?”

  “Oh, you silly! You’ve asked me about a million times. Of course I have them!” Charlotte uncurled the fingers of her right hand and showed Gertie two pennies lying warm and moist in her palm.

  When they reached the candy store, the two little girls stood before the glass cases so full of chewy and sucking delights and could not make up their minds. It was most important that they get something exactly right for tonight’s fun in bed. It was hard to choose when everything looked so tempting.

  From where she sat on a high stool in a corner of her shop, Mrs. Blumberg looked at them over the top of her glasses. Ach, she thought to herself, they’ll take their time. Well, let them enjoy themselves. She bent her head once again to the paper she was reading.

 
Gertie pointed to the chocolate-covered peanut bars. “Oh, look — Indian bars!”

  “No,” Charlotte replied at once. “You get too little. We’d finish in no time.”

  “Licorice drops take a long time to eat. Look how big they are!”

  “Maybe,” Charlotte hesitated for a moment and then shook her head. “No, they won’t do. The pieces will all be the same.”

  They looked at the red cherry hearts, the yellow and orange “chicken-corn” candy, and the different-colored jelly beans.

  “Charlotte, half a penny jelly beans and half a penny chicken-corn! That would be a whole lot of candy!”

  “But we like the black jelly beans best and we can’t ask Mrs. Blumberg to pick out only black ones for us. You know we hate the white ones and we always seem to get mostly white ones whenever we buy them. No, let’s not take jelly beans.”

  Gertie’s suggestion had given Charlotte an idea. “Mrs. Blumberg,” she called out, “could we buy a quarter of a cent’s worth of candy?”

  “Woe is me! Haven’t I got trouble enough giving you half a penny dis and half a penny dat? No, darling, for less than half a penny, I can’t sell.”

  Charlotte sighed as she turned back to the cases. It would have been so nice to have four different kinds of candy all for one penny. She and Gertie continued their examinations. One by one, they talked over each kind only to reject it. Lemon drops you could only suck. Caramels had to be chewed so hard and so long. Chocolate pennies melted too quickly in your mouth. The children considered and considered.

  Suddenly Charlotte saw the little people made out of chewy chocolate colored candy. “Gertie,” she cried happily, “why didn’t we notice them before? Chocolate babies!”

  “Goody!” Gertie was equally pleased.

  Now that this troublesome problem was solved, they were ready to get on with the spending of the second penny. With the bag of precious chocolate babies held tightly in Charlotte’s hand, they walked to Mr. Basch’s grocery store. Mr. Basch’s store was right under Mama’s front room. When the children practiced on their piano, the sounds came through the ceiling. At such times Mr. Basch often wished they would take themselves and their piano somewhere else. But he liked the children well enough when they were not practicing and came forward to greet them smilingly. He wore a little black skull cap on top of his white hair and all the time he talked, he smoothed and smoothed his silky white beard.

  “Hello,” he said in Yiddish. Mr. Basch spoke no English. “What does Mama want today?”

  “Oh, we’ve come to buy something for ourselves,” Charlotte told him, and she held up her penny.

  “And what are you going to buy for that penny?”

  “We thought we’d like some crackers — the broken kind.”

  The open cracker barrel held a most amazing jumble of broken crackers. No need to worry here about making a choice. A scoop from the barrel and into a paper bag went a tantalizing assortment. The children turned over their penny to Mr. Basch and prepared to depart with their bagful.

  “Wait a minute, children,” Mr. Basch called. He walked over to the back of the store where he kept slabs of smoked salmon (he called it lox) and cut off two pieces of moist, salty skin. This was a rare treat.

  The children sat down on the stoop in front of their house and sucked away at the bits of smoked salmon which still clung to the skin. Afterward they would be very thirsty, but right now they were enjoying themselves greatly.

  “Good, isn’t it?” Gertie said between noisy sucks.

  When they had chewed up every scrap of fat and fish, they threw the skins away and remembered once more their bags of goodies. Charlotte tumbled the whole lot into her lap and both children looked at the pile with deep satisfaction.

  “My, it’s such a lot!” Gertie breathed. “Oh, couldn’t we have a taste now, just a little, teeny taste?”

  Charlotte was equally tempted. So they shared a broken cracker between them. And then it only seemed right that they should taste the chocolate babies too. They ate one of them. One taste led to another and pretty soon a second piece of cracker plus a second chocolate baby had disappeared.

  “We’d better put everything away, or we’ll be eating it all up,” Charlotte decided. Everything went back into the bags.

  “Will Mama let us take the bags to bed, Charlotte?”

  “Of course not! I’m going to hide them.”

  “Where?”

  “Under the pillows on our bed. Nobody would ever think of looking there.”

  They trotted upstairs. Mama was busy over the kitchen stove so she never noticed Charlotte slipping into the bedroom. The goodies were tied into one of Papa’s large red handkerchiefs (paper bags rattled so) and the handkerchief was tucked under the large feather pillows on their bed. Now they had only to wait until bedtime.

  Bedtime came early for Mama’s girls. The children were sent to bed at the same time regardless of age. Mama had found that to be much the best way for all. In the first place, the children had no feeling of separation from each other as they would have had if they went to bed at different times. And it meant that Mama could have a few quiet hours for reading or knitting or even just chatting with Papa without being disturbed by her little ones.

  As for the children, bedtime was something to which they looked forward. Bedtime was when Ella and Sarah, who slept together, built their imaginary house and decorated the beautifully rich and colorful make-believe rooms. Bedtime was when Charlotte made up fanciful stories to tell or thought up games to play with her bedfellow, Gertie. Bedtime was when Henny planned some special mischief she could carry on the next day in school or at home. Planned all by herself, because she did not like sharing a bed with anyone.

  They slept, all five of them, in the one room and that made for plenty of company in the dark. And what was the best of all, Mama never minded their talking to each other. “It’s early enough and they’re resting their bodies anyway,” she said. “They’ll fall asleep when they get tired.”

  “Come on. Let’s get under the covers quickly. It’s freezing in here tonight,” Charlotte said as she and Gertie ran towards their bed.

  “Where’s the candy?” Gertie asked, when they were settled.

  “Here,” Charlotte said. “Before Mama came in here to fold up the bedspreads, I sneaked in and put the stuff on the floor.” She leaned over her side of the bed, poked about for a bit and came up with the red handkerchief bundle.

  She laid the bundle between them. Mama was coming in now with the heated flatirons. They slapped their hands over the handkerchief and lay still, quivering with mischief and excitement. It would be awful if Mama were to remove that heap of goodies. Gertie started to giggle but a nudge from Charlotte soon stopped her. Mama went about putting the irons first into Ella’s and Sarah’s bed, next in Henny’s and now she was coming over to them.

  The room was in darkness save for the gas light which shone from the kitchen through the opened bedroom door. Lucky for them! One look at their guilty faces, and Mama would have known that something was up. But Mama suspected nothing. She put the iron wrapped in its towel at their feet and their toes stretched out deliciously to meet the warmth. Tucking in the featherbed, Mama said good night to all and went out, shutting the bedroom door behind her.

  The fun could begin at last! Charlotte directed because the game was hers.

  “First we take a chocolate baby, and we eat only the head.” They bit off the heads and chewed away contentedly.

  “Now the feet.” That was hard. The tiny feet were very close to the legs but they did the best they could.

  “Let’s gobble the rest up altogether.” That was a good order. They gobbled away.

  Charlotte continued. “A cracker now.” They fished about in the dark. “We’ll take a small bite just to find out what kind it is.”

  They each took a small bite. “Mine is a lemon snap, I think,” Gertie said. “What’s yours?”

  “Mine’s a ginger. We have to nibble a
long the side of this piece of cracker as if we were mice and we have to do it until I say stop.” So they nibbled and nibbled and pretty soon Gertie exclaimed, “My piece is all gone.”

  “So’s mine,” Charlotte told her. She had enjoyed nibbling so much she had forgotten to change the order.

  “That means we’ll have to take another cracker.” So they took another cracker. The tasting bite showed to their delight that they had each chosen the same kind, chocolate snaps.

  “First we’re to count up to ten before we begin eating.” They counted slowly. “Now,” continued Charlotte, “we must each take a teensy, weensy bite and chew five times.” That was done. “The rest of the cracker has to be chewed for twenty-five counts.” They bit and chewed while Charlotte counted very fast because crackers become nothing in your mouth quickly and it would never do if the eating was over before the counting. Gertie felt anxious. Her piece of cracker was small, but luckily, it came out all right.

  Charlotte had lots of ideas. With the next cracker they had to make a circling movement ten times around in front of their open mouths and then pop the cracker in. But they were not to bite into it. Oh no, that cracker had to be taken out of their mouths again and the circle repeated ten times. After that they could eat the cracker as they pleased.

  And so the game was played till there wasn’t a single thing left. They had not been interrupted even once throughout the whole time because their sisters were busy too. Ella and Sarah were decorating the Pink Room in the make-believe house. They had been having a good deal of trouble deciding about the placing of the furniture.

  Henny was fretting over a new trouble. She had not done her homework for several days. Teacher had given her a note that Mama was to sign because teacher wanted to make sure that Mama knew about this. Henny was trying to figure out some way of getting Mama to sign the note without having to take a spanking too.

  Suddenly Gertie said, “I’m thirsty.”