I run up the front steps and throw back the storm door and pull open our red, front door. It’s 3:08 pm. My personal best time for getting out of the third-grade classroom and into our kitchen. I open the cubbyhole next to the front door, toss in my schoolbag with one hand, pull off my galoshes, and threw them in with my other hand.

My mother is standing slightly hunched over the ironing board. There’s a basket of clean clothes waiting to be ironed on the kitchen table. The front of her dark hair is still set in bobby pins. She’s wearing her everyday apron over her favorite blue housedress. Hanging down her apron is a line of safety pins that are attached to one another. They sway back and forth every time she leans over to pick up the next pair of my fathers’ pants or shirt. Anything that doesn’t get ironed today, she‘ll roll up and store in the refrigerator until tomorrow.
“Hi, Mom!”

“Susie, don’t forget to hang up your coat in the closet. How was your day, did you learn anything new today?”

“Well, I learn how to spell Mississippi and Arithmetic.”

“Would you like to have a snack?”

“Yeah, I’m starving, what are we having for dinner? I smell something good.”

“I made stew, your favorite, and I’m making the crust for the top.”

My mother walks across the room and takes out a glass and fills it with milk from the fridge. We have a milkman. His name is Ralph. He delivers milk and sometimes eggs to our side door early every morning. He takes away the empty bottles. He has bushy red hair and a mustache. There is always a big, stinky cigar sticking out of the side of his mouth that bobs up and down when he speaks.

My mother takes two homemade peanut butter cookies out of our Happy Face cookie jar. She puts them on the table near the front window and hands me the glass of cold milk. I dunk the cookies into the milk.

“Where’s Karen, Susie, how come she didn’t come home with you?”

“Oh, I forgot. She asked me to tell you that she was going to play over at Anne Marie’s house until dinnertime.”

“Well, she knows she’s supposed to come home first. Susie, when you finish your snack, will you pick up the newspapers off the floor, and throw them away.”

When my mother washes the linoleum floor, she always covers it with newspapers until it dries. So, if we walk on the floor when it’s wet, we won’t leave dirty footprints.

After my snack, I throw away the newspapers and run up the stairs to my room to change out of my school uniform. I cross the room and hang my uniform on a hanger in my closet. Well, it isn’t a closet. My room is on the second floor., It used to be the attic, and the “closet” is the eve of our house, which was never finished.

In the winter, it’s really cold in there, and in the summer it’s a furnace. So, either way, it isn’t a place you would want to spend a lot of time in. My older sisters’ have some of their old prom gowns stored in the closet, and sometimes I go through the boxes and try them on.

One day I decide that one of the dresses would make a beautiful dress for my doll, so I cut a big hole in the skirt which was made out of shiny blue satin with a crinoline on top. The next time my sister Jeanie visited us from New York, she noticed my dolls’ new dress and recognized the fabric. She was furious.

I decide to watch TV until dinnertime. I flop down on the floor about ten inches from the TV and put on my favorite show, Sally Starr and Chief Halftown. I love Popeye cartoons, especially when Popeye burst opens the spinach can, and gulps it down in one swallow, and his muscles immediately swell on his scrawny arms. But I still refuse to eat any vegetables except corn.

After the show, I turn off the TV. I overheard my father talking to my mother. He just woke up. He works for the bus company in Philadelphia from eleven PM at night until seven AM in the morning. So, he sleeps during the hours that I’m in school. He’s always a grouch when he wakes up, so I try to stay out of his way.

I want to hear what my Mom and Dad are talking about. So, I tiptoe over to the steps, which are next to the kitchen, and listen to what they were saying. I hear my father say,” Marie, did you look everywhere for them?”

“Yes, Harry, I did. The last time I saw them was when I put them in my apron pocket.”

“Well, I guess you’ll have to have new ones made, Marie. I don’t know where we will get the money!”

I don’t know what they were talking about, but my Dad sure sounds mad at my mother. I decided it would be better if I stay out of his way for a while.

Just then, Karen comes in the door and sees me crouched on the steps, and says, “What are you doing, snooping again?”

She walks into the kitchen and starts talking to my mother. I hope she isn’t telling them I was listening on the steps. If she does, I tell them that she always listens to them talking in the kitchen through the heating vent in her bedroom.

I decide to go outside, just in case. So, I put my boots on over my sneakers and my favorite coat. It‘s too small for me, but I love it. It’s fake white fur with big blue snowflakes on it. The hood is trimmed with fur. This is the first coat that was really mine and didn’t belong to one of my older sisters first. 

As I jumped down the front steps, I almost fall because there was a thin layer of ice. I decided to make snow angels in the back yard. I jump down the steps two at a time to the backyard. I notice the snow is beginning to melt.

I was hoping it will snow again soon, really deep so I can have some snow days off. I’ll build a snow fort. And have snowball fights with all the kids in the neighborhood.

I flop on my back and move my arms up and down. I’m disappointed because there isn’t enough snow for the angel’s wings to show up good. Maybe it will snow tonight. I decide to add that to my prayers tonight. Please God, please let it snow- two, no, three feet!

Then I hear my mother calling from the side door, “Susie, come in and get ready for dinner.” As I was going to the side step, I saw something on the ground. I walk over to it and push it with my foot. I realize it’s false teeth. What in the world are teeth doing out here?

And then it almost feels like a bell goes off in my head when I realize it’s my mother’s teeth. My mother and father wear false teeth. That’s what my parents were talking about in the kitchen. I stuff them in my pocket and run into the house. My sisters and parents are all sitting around the table. “Mom and Daddy guess what, guess what?”

“Susie take off your boots before you make the floor all dirty again!”
”But Mom I have a surprise.”

“Boots first, surprise later, Susie.”

I run into the hall and throw my wet coat on the floor, kick my boots onto the closet floor, and run back to the kitchen.

“Now, can I tell you?”

“OK Susie, what is the big surprise, maybe then we can eat in peace?”

I open my hand like I have a precious gem in my hand.

My father says, “Look, Marie, It’s your teeth!”

My mother comes over and gives me a big hug, and says, “but where did you find them, Susie; I looked everywhere?”

“I found them on the ground next to the garbage cans. Mom, they must have fallen out of your apron pocket when you leaned over to put the garbage in the can. I guess today is your lucky day.”

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