My present

PATTY CAKE

 

'Ma, Ma, please let me do it!' My mother's attention leaves what she is doing and drops her mother's rolling pin on the kitchen floor. How she howls, how she scowls at me. 'Look what you made me do, Patty.' The rolling pin takes a ride and stops under the kitchen table. 'Get it, Child. Give it to me. Now I have to scrub the dough and dirt off. It's ruined and I have to do a new crust. I hand her the icky pin and she swipes my tush hard.

 

'Here, Child. Do you think you can sift the flour into the big yellow bowl without knocking anything over? Most of it goes in the bowl but some drifts to the floor. Ma Ma steps in it and leaves footprints across the room to our ice box. 'Go play with your dolls, Patty. Get out from under my feet. Daddy wants hot apple pie for tonight and if you want a piece, you had better leave me alone.'

 

"Ma, Ma, just let me sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on the sliced apples and have some with lunch.' She hands me a small saucer and walks away. I put it on the kitchen sink, lay my favorite silver baby fork next to it, and wait. As soon as Ma Ma gets busy re-rolling another crust I sneak a graham cracker out of the cookie jar, go down the cellar to cut paper dolls out of old Saturday Evening Post magazines. Ma Ma keeps after Daddy to throw them out but he won't as they are great for starting the furnace. When he does that, he makes me stay far away where I can watch the little pieces of fire fly in the air.

 

It's time to get my cinnamon/sugar apple slices. The wonderful smell of them baking wraps itself around my nose and pulls me to the kitchen. Ma Ma is sitting at the kitchen table. I hear her crying. 'Ma Ma, are you sick? Want me to bring you the castor oil?' She doesn't answer, just shakes her finger at me. 'It's all your fault, Patty. You ruined my pie.' I know the best thing for me to do is keep quiet. When looks at me, I ask her what I did. 'Did? You annoyed me, Child, made me drop my mother's rolling pin. The dough I was making was perfect. Then I had to scrub the pin, get off all the dough and start over. And the wood had a crack in it. Waste, waste. Patty, Child,  my mother in heaven will be so mad at me for ruining her mother's rolling pin. Here, you can have it. I don't want it any more.' 'Ooh, ooh, thanks, Ma Ma. I can use it to make clay cookies for my dolly if Daddy buys me a box of clay. Can I have my cinnamon and sugar apples now?' No answer.

 

She turns her back on me, brings me the saucer with the heathy apples, hands me my silver fork and kisses the top of my head. Then her face grows mean.  When you finish your treat, rinse your plate and  fork, dry them and put them away. Then go upstairs and brush all the sugar off your teeth. In the pantry is the lace cover for the rolling pin. Get it and put it on. I do everything Ma Ma tells me to do and then hide my present under my bed.

 

If a Boogey Man ever comes to get me, I will be ready and bop him on his head. Ma Ma and Grand Ma will be glad Ma gave me the not so smooth anymore rolling pin.