Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family Page 2

  Were the portieres moving? Or was it just her imagination? Was someone hiding behind them? Who would dare? There was someone! Two little pink feet were plainly visible below.

  Sliding out of Jules’s arm, Ella crept stealthily toward the feet. She yanked the portieres apart. A startled Charlie, in his nightshirt, stood blinking up at her!

  “Charlie, is this a way to behave?” Ella scolded.

  Chuckling, Jules put his hand into his pocket. “Don’t you dare, Jules!” Ella cried. “Don’t you dare give him anything! I’m going right in to tell Mama!”

  “Oh, don’t be too hard on him, Ella,” Jules replied, putting a nickel into Charlie’s hand. “It’s a time-honored custom, you know.”

  “Ooh, thanks!” Charlie whooped joyfully. “I’m going right into my bed, I promise.” As he scooted off, he turned and whispered back. “And don’t tell Mama.”

  Jules looked at Ella. “Well, who’s next? I feel as if I were courting the whole family. Now, before anyone else comes in—” His strong arms lifted her off the floor as he planted a resounding kiss on her cheek. Swinging her around the room, he sang into her ear: “There’s no place like home sweet home, there’s no place like home.”

  By the time he set her down, they were both helpless with laughter. “Come on,” Jules cried, “let’s get out of here. We’ll walk and talk. I want to hear about everything that went on this past year. You’ll tell me about your singing lessons, and your job—everything! And when we get too cold, we can drop into Ziggy’s Ice-cream Parlor for some hot chocolate and cookies.”

  2

  A Bang-up Time

  “Charlotte,” Mama said, “Aunt Fanny would like you to mind Ruthie tonight. She and Uncle Joe have to go somewhere.”

  Lost in the enchanted world of a storybook, Charlotte heard nothing.

  Mama raised her voice. “Charlotte! I’m talking to you!”

  Charlotte’s blue eyes fluttered upward. “Huh?”

  “Aunt Fanny wants you to mind Ruthie tonight.”

  Charlotte came to life. “Ooh yes!”

  “You’re lucky,” Sarah commented. “Aunt Fanny always asks you.”

  “It’s really Ruthie who wants her,” Mama explained. “She says Charlotte thinks up such interesting things to do and tells such good stories.”

  “I wouldn’t mind earning the money myself once in a while,” Sarah said.

  “What for?” scoffed Henny. “You’d only put the dime in your savings account. Now if it were me …”

  “If it were you,” interrupted Mama, “the dime would be spent even before you earned it.”

  “Want to come along?” Charlotte asked Gertie.

  Gertie hesitated.

  “Aunt Fanny’s very generous,” Charlotte urged. “She always leaves such good things around for me, like candy and cookies. I’ll give you half the money.”

  Gertie brightened. “Okay.”

  So that evening, the two sisters walked arm in arm to Aunt Fanny’s house.

  “Oh, the two of you! How nice!” Aunt Fanny cried as she opened the door. “Ruthie, look who’s here,” she called out to her daughter, who came running. “Your two cousins. They’re going to stay with you while Daddy and I go out. Isn’t that nice?”

  Little Ruthie hopped up and down gleefully. “Gertie, you going to play with Charlotte and me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  After instructing Charlotte what to do and when, Aunt Fanny donned her hat and coat. “Good night, Ruthie darling,” she said, embracing her. “Be a good girl and listen to what Charlotte and Gertie tell you and maybe Mommy and Daddy will bring you back something special.”

  “What’ll you bring?”

  “You’ll see. Good night, girls.” And Aunt Fanny shepherded her husband out the door.

  “Have a good time,” the children yelled after them.

  No sooner had the door closed, when Ruthie asked, “What’ll we do first, Charlotte?”

  Charlotte’s brow wrinkled. “Well now, let’s see.… I know! We’ll make paper patterns.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come on. We’ll get the scissors and some paper napkins and I’ll show you.”

  Soon all three were seated around the kitchen table. Charlotte picked up a napkin, folded it in half, and then again in quarters. “Now watch,” she said.

  Carefully spiraling the folded paper, she snipped this way and that. The cut-off pieces fell away, the paper unfolded, and there, spread out before Ruthie’s astonished eyes, was a lovely lace doily.

  “It’s beautiful!” Ruthie exclaimed. “Now you make one, Gertie.”

  Gertie cut away cautiously and turned out a pretty pattern of her own.

  “Now lemme try,” Ruthie said.

  “All right, but you’ll have to be careful with the scissors,” warned Charlotte.

  “Oh I will! I’ll be very careful,” Ruthie promised.

  Charlotte tried to guide her little hand, but Ruthie would have none of it. “No!” she yelled, shaking her head vehemently. “I wanna do it all by myself.”

  She worked away stubbornly, her lower lip sucked in, her straight brown hair straggling across her face. Repeatedly she pushed the locks back only to have them tumble forward again.

  “How can she see anything with that hair in her eyes all the time?” Gertie cried. “Couldn’t we pin it back?”

  “It wouldn’t stay. Her hair’s too soft. Say!” Charlotte’s face lit up with sudden inspiration. “Why don’t we cut bangs for her?”

  Gertie looked dubious. “Gee, do you think we ought to? Aunt Fanny might not like it.”

  “Nonsense,” pooh-poohed Charlotte. “She’d love it! Why with Ruthie’s little round face, she’d look cute as a bug with bangs. Ruthie, wouldn’t you rather have pretty bangs on your forehead instead of that long messy hair?”

  “You mean like Buster Brown in the funnies?”

  “Uh-huh. It’ll be so much more comfortable. Prettier too.”

  “Ooh yes,” Ruthie agreed, charmed by the idea of a new hairdo.

  Gertie still had her doubts. “But will you be able to do it all right, Charlotte?”

  “There’s nothing to it. It’s simple.” Charlotte exuded supreme confidence. “You just take the scissors and cut across the forehead. Miss Ruth,” she bowed ceremoniously, “when you have finished what you’re doing, will you kindly step into our barbershop?”

  Ruthie was quite ready to abandon the napkins for this new game. “I’m finished already,” she chirped.

  Charlotte pulled a chair into the center of the room.

  “Upsa daisy!” she cried, sweeping Ruthie off her feet and onto the seat.

  “Now with your permission, madam.” Briskly she flip-flapped a towel and with a grand flourish tied it under Ruthie’s chin. Picking up the scissors, she held them aloft, clicking them open and shut.

  The click, click sound seemed a bit menacing to Ruthie. Warily her big brown eyes followed Charlotte’s every move.

  Now Charlotte was bending over her, scissors poised. Ruthie’s shoulders hunched. The metal felt cold against her temple. She squeezed her eyes shut so tight her face screwed up like a small monkey’s.

  Snip—scrunch—snip! Wisps of hair started floating down into Ruthie’s lap. Scrunch-snip-scrunch! It wasn’t scary anymore. Ruthie relaxed.

  “There you are!” Charlotte announced with satisfaction, stepping back to survey the effect.

  “Do I look nice?” Ruthie asked.

  “Very nice,” admitted Gertie. “Only … Charlotte, don’t you think it ought to be straightened out a bit? The bangs look sort of uneven.”

  “Hold up your head, Ruthie,” directed Charlotte.

  “Hmm. You’re right, Gertie. It is a little bit shorter on the right. Well, we can fix that easily enough. Just a bit here—a tiny snip there—a little more—just a bit.…”

  Another look and both sisters agreed that now the bangs were shorter on the left. Charlotte frowned. “I can’t understand
why it doesn’t come out even.”

  “I think you ought to put something with a straight edge up against her forehead and follow the line,” advised Gertie. “Like a ruler. That way you’d be sure to come out straight.”

  Charlotte’s face lit up. “I have a much better idea.” She opened the door of the dish closet.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “This!” Charlotte held up a mixing bowl. “Turn it upside down and presto! You have a beautiful china hat with a perfect edge for cutting bangs.”

  Ruthie sat very still as Charlotte put the mixing bowl on her head.

  “Oh madam,” Charlotte gushed, “such a becoming hat! You look just gorgeous—simply gorgeous!”

  “Lemme see. I wanna see,” Ruthie cried.

  Gertie held up a shiny tin cookie jar. Ruthie giggled at her reflection. “I look so funny.”

  The bowl slipped down over her eyes.

  “Oops!” yelled Charlotte, rushing to the rescue. “Hey, where are you?” she asked laughingly as she maneuvered the bowl back into place. It slipped again, this time over one eye, giving Ruthie a rakish look.

  “You hang on to it, Gertie,” Charlotte commanded, “or we’ll never get this done. Hold the bowl so that only the tip ends of the bangs show. There—that’s fine! Close your eyes, Ruthie. I don’t want to get any hairs in them.”

  Ruthie sat stiffly while the scissors clipped away.

  “Now, off with the bowl, Gertie. I’m all through.”

  “Gosh, Charlotte!” Gertie sounded dismayed. “It’s so short!”

  “The shorter the better,” Charlotte said, trying to sound convincing. “What do you want bangs to do? Hang down so far over her eyes, she’ll need a Seeing Eye dog? I think they’re exactly the right length, and it makes Ruthie look very pretty.”

  But Ruthie was a bit doubtful. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “It feels so short.”

  “How can we tell what she looks like the way she’s messing her hair up?” Charlotte said. “Let’s comb it out. Then we’ll see.”

  They brushed and combed but some long strands of hair were still visible among shorter ones.

  “How’d you happen to miss those, Charlotte?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe her hair wasn’t parted exactly in the middle. I should have straightened it out first before I began cutting. Oh well,” Charlotte made light of the whole business, “it doesn’t really matter. All I have to do is snip off those few extra hairs and it’ll be fine.” She picked up the scissors. A snip here, a snip there, a snip everywhere. “There! That does it!”

  Gertie gulped. “Gosh, I never saw bangs zigzag all the way up to the ears before. It looks peculiar.”

  “What’s pe-culiar?” Ruthie asked.

  “Oh nothing!” snapped Charlotte. She turned on Gertie. “I like it this way. It gives her face a sort of”—she fished about for the right words—“a clean, open look,” she ended triumphantly.

  Anxious to have it over with, Gertie allowed herself to be persuaded. “Well, maybe, but you ought at least try to even it out. The right side is a good half inch longer than the left.”

  “Can you fix it, Charlotte?” Ruthie quavered anxiously.

  Charlotte sheared away.

  Gertie clapped her hands to her head. “Just look at what you’re doing! Now the left side’s longer!”

  The scissors slid over to the left. Snip—snip! By now the towel was overflowing with hair.

  “You’re only making it worse all the time!” wailed Gertie.

  “I am not!” Charlotte retorted, but not too confidently. She chewed on a fingernail. “Say!” she exclaimed, her eyes alight with renewed enthusiasm. “You know what would be really attractive? If I sort of graduate it around, starting very short in the front like this, and gradually leaving the hair longer as you work around toward the back.”

  “Sounds crazy to me.”

  “That’s because you have no imagination. Once you actually see it, you’ll feel different about it. It’ll give a lovely sweep to the hair.”

  “Please, Charlotte,” Gertie begged, unconvinced, “don’t cut any more.”

  But there was no staying Charlotte’s vision. Already clumps of hair were falling onto the towel as well as on the floor.

  By now the barber game was getting too much for Ruthie. “No more,” she yelled shaking her cropped head. “I don’t want you to cut my hair no more!”

  “Please, Ruthie,” Charlotte pleaded, “just a teeny bit more and I’ll be all finished.”

  Charlotte kept cutting away as best she could in between Ruthie’s wriggling protests and Gertie’s alarums. At last she gave up. “Well, that’s it,” she said, removing the towel. “I can’t do any more.”

  “I should say not,” Gertie whispered. “There’s more hair on the floor than on her head.” She groaned. “Aunt Fanny’ll have a fit. And I wouldn’t blame her one bit. Who ever saw a haircut like this?”

  “Some people have no appreciation for originality,” Charlotte countered. “Why must everybody look exactly like everybody else? I think it’s so much more interesting this way—different somehow.”

  “It’s different all right,” agreed Gertie. “All ziggity-zaggity!”

  Ruthie, who had dashed into the bedroom meanwhile for a view of herself in the dresser mirror, came running back. She planted herself before Charlotte, her face all crumpled up. “What did you do? You mur-der-er you!” she screamed, bursting into tears.

  Taken aback, Charlotte began biting her nails, not knowing what else to do. After a while, she knelt down and tried to gather the sobbing little girl to her. “Look Ruthie, I’m awfully sorry you don’t like it, but honest, it’s not bad at all.”

  Ruthie pulled away and sought the comfort of Gertie’s shoulder. Tears streamed down her face. “You’re just saying that,” she cried. “You know yourself, it’s horrible—horrible. Even Gertie thinks so.”

  Gertie didn’t respond. She could only look reproachfully at Charlotte as she patted the weeping Ruthie.

  “A sweet little girl like you could never look horrible,” Charlotte said.

  But Ruthie was inconsolable. She wept and wept.

  “It’ll grow back. It’s not going to stay that way forever,” Charlotte went on. “So what’s the use making such a fuss about it?”

  Ruthie only sobbed the harder.

  “If I’d had any idea you were going to carry on this way, I never would have bothered in the first place.” Charlotte tried to sound miffed. “Believe me, it was no cinch cutting your hair. With all that straggly stuff hanging down your face, you looked like a witch. I did you a big favor cutting it off.”

  “S-some favor!” sobbed Ruthie.

  “It certainly was! Why, snip-snip, and I changed that dreadful witch into a darling little elf!”

  Ruthie stopped right in the middle of a great big sob. One eye peeked through her fingers. “A little elf?” she repeated.

  “Of course!” Charlotte said as heartily as she could manage. She was beginning to have her own misgivings. “Oh yes,” she went on, “that’s what you are, Ruthie—a darling little elf. Of course, if later on, you’d rather not be an elf, why then in a few weeks your hair will grow in anyway, and you can change into something else—a fairy maybe. Come on, little elf, let’s get ready for bed and I’ll tell you a wonderful story about a little elf named Ruthie.”

  Sniffing back her tears, Ruthie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Soon the sobs subsided into small hiccups. “First—tell me—the story,” she demanded.

  So Charlotte took her on her lap and began a tale of Ruthie, the elf. In a little while, it seemed as if the whole hair-cutting episode was a thing of the past. Ruthie went off to bed without a murmur.

  Gertie surveyed the kitchen barbershop. “This floor is one grand mess!”

  “We’d better get busy and clean it up right away!” Charlotte exclaimed, dashing for the broom and dustpan.

  Hardly had everything been put to rig
hts and the last wisp of hair dumped into the garbage pail when they heard the key being turned in the hall-door lock.

  Gertie wrung her hands. “Oh, Charlotte! Here they come. What’ll we do?”

  “Oh what are you getting so nervous about?” Charlotte cried in a huff. “It’s not as bad as you make it out. I’m sure Aunt Fanny will appreciate what we’ve done. Ruthie’s hair will be so easy to manage. No tangles—no snarls—quick washing.”

  Nonetheless, she lost no time bundling herself up in her hat and coat.

  “Hurry up, Gertie! Get your things on. It’s pretty late, you know. We gotta get home. We don’t want to waste time standing around gabbing.”

  Gertie needed no urging. They were both ready for instant flight when Aunt Fanny and Uncle Joe came into the kitchen.

  “Well, was Ruthie a good girl?” Aunt Fanny greeted. “No trouble?”

  “No trouble at all,” Charlotte replied. “Well, we’d better go. It’s kind of late. Good night, Aunt Fanny, Uncle Joe.” Charlotte pushed Gertie toward the door.

  “Hey, just a minute!” Uncle Joe shouted after them.

  The girls stopped dead in their tracks.

  “What—is—it?” Gertie’s voice quavered.

  Uncle Joe smiled. “Don’t you want to get paid?”

  “Oh—that’s right … thank you,” Charlotte said, taking the dime.

  “Want me to walk you home?” Uncle Joe asked.

  “You don’t have to. It’s not that late,” Charlotte answered quickly. Pulling open the door, she yanked Gertie out after her.

  “Good night!” they yelled back and bolted down the stairs.

  At breakfast there was a phone call for Mama. Gertie and Charlotte stopped eating. They sat very still.

  In a few minutes, Mama came striding back into the kitchen.

  “That was Aunt Fanny on the phone. Was she upset! She was almost crying. Well, Charlotte. Well, Gertie?” Mama looked sternly from one to the other.

  The rest of the family stared at the two lowered heads.

  “What’s this all about?” Ella asked.

  “Search me,” Henny replied. “Whatever it is, I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  “I don’t know why Aunt Fanny’s so upset,” Charlotte declared defensively. “Ruthie looks very cute. In my opinion, it’s very attractive, and very original. Some people just have no idea what real beauty is.”