overnight

Now Playing: Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, fourth movement.

Yesterday was fairly uneventful until the afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. S, Princess's parents, had decided to go down to Oklahoma City for the evening, and they had asked me to come over in the afternoon to look after the girls while they were gone.

As I pulled into the Ss' driveway, a medium-sized dog bounded out of the ditch across the road and jogged alongside the car, tail lolling happily. I watched with some amusement as the dog bounced up to one of the Ss' cats, which was sleeping on their porch. The dog nudged and nosed the cat until the cat woke up and swatted the dog. Having collected my things from the back seat, I sauntered up to the front door and knocked. The dog stood beside me, its tail waving.

Rebekah, Sis, and Hannah, the youngest three, opened the door. Mrs. S was close behind. Sis stayed close to the house for fear that the dog would jump on her. The dog was quite happy to see everyone. It only pranced on its hind legs when Sis came near, but for the rest of us, it just stood placidly, waving its tail amiably. The dog allowed Mrs. S to inspect its muzzle, half-flopped ears, and glossy flanks. It was orange with black stripes--not so much stripes as a marbled pattern, like marbled paper. When we went inside, we had to push the dog away because it was eager to follow us indoors.

Inside, I found the house dark and cool. Rebekah and Hannah were in the midst of cleaning the room they share with Sis. Sis, however, was not in the mood for housework. While Princess and I sprawled on the sofas in the living room, Sis galloped around us, pretending to practice her Irish dance steps and chattering as cheerfully as a mockingbird. She brought out a notebook and made us take turns drawing in it. Princess and I chatted idly about our small doings. Marigold, curled up in an armchair with her geometry textbook, graphing calculator, and notebook, begged us to be quiet.

After Mr. and Mrs. S left, we held a pow-wow in the living room to try to decide what to do for supper. Technically, it was Hannah's night to cook a meal, but she, of course, had no inclination to do so since Mrs. S had left us with eighty dollars for food. In the end, Princess and I decided to drive out and buy pizza: cheese and pepperoni.

Back at the Ss' house, Sis fed the dogs and the cats, and we all sat down to our supper around the table. I was surprised at how quickly we polished off the pizza. Princess brought out baby carrots, canned apricots, and a fruit cocktail (grapes, peaches, pears, cherries) to supplement the pizza. It was quite a jolly meal.

After supper, I declared that we should all go outside and play hide-and-go-seek, to the delight of the smaller girls. Princess persuaded Marigold to join us. Rebekah chose to be the first to count. She stationed herself on the front porch and began to count while the rest of us scattered. I sprinted toward the orchard, and the dog which had been hanging around earlier bounded after me. It leaped alongside me through the tall grass. I dodged between a pear tree and an apple tree, and finally ducked down behind a young oak tree in the farthest corner of the orchard. The grey stump of one of the old lombardy poplars poked raggedly through the green and silver grass. The dog nosed through the virginia creeper twining up the oak tree. Long threads of grass tickled my arms. From where I knelt, I could see the sweep of the pasture falling downhill, misty grey in the evening dim, the pond caught in the crook of its dam near the foot of the hill. Two vultures veered lazily down the wind, and I watched with delight as a pair of Mississippi kites fluttered and danced overhead, their silver wings nearly matching the silver sky. The dog butted my knees with its head, and I rubbed the warm, silky hollows behind its ears. Occasionally, I could hear Rebekah's or Sis's shrill voices behind the band of oak trees that borders the orchard, but they never came close to my hiding place. Finally, I heard Princess shouting, "We give up!" So I bounded out of the tall grass with the dog leaping beside me.

While we paused to regroup before we started the next round, we noticed that the woman who lives across the street was standing on her porch, shouting a name. "Is she calling the dog?" Rebekah asked. The dog had pranced up to Midnight, who was proudly fending off the happy-go-lucky intruder with bared fangs, arched back, and extended claws. Princess sent Sis racing for a leash, while Marigold gathered up the cat and bundled it away to the safety of the back porch. Princess snapped the leash on the dog, and all of us except Marigold trooped down to the road. Princess and I raced across the street with the dog. Our feet clomped on the porch of the house, and as we knocked on the door, three dogs inside began to yap and bark clamorously. A woman shoved them back and opened the door. "Oh, thank you! We've been searching for her all day!" she cried when she saw the dog. She knelt down and fondled the dog's ears. "My son and my husband are out right now looking for her in the car. I'll have to tell them you found her. Where was she?" We explained that she'd been playing with us all afternoon. The woman didn't seem to mind too much.

Princess and I dashed back across the street, and the game started again. Sis and I hid behind the barn, but Marigold, climbing over the old cow paddock, spotted us.

When it was Hannah's turn, Sis and I hid behind the metal building. Sis stood in the corner of the garage door, and you could hardly see her, except for her round little stomach in its peach shirt, and the tips of her wispy, mouse-brown ponytails. Frogs creaked in the trees along the road. My shirt stuck to my sweaty arms. Sis shifted and whispered impatiently. Finally, poking my head around the corner of the building, I spotted Hannah. Sis and I had to peep around the building several times before Hannah glimpsed us.

Since everyone had taken a turn, we decided to go inside and fix dessert. Though it was Hannah's night to cook, she couldn't think of anything to make. Sis begged to be allowed to watch the end of "The Great Muppet Caper", so she curled up in the living room with an army of stuffed animals and Marigold and Rebekah. Princess and Hannah helped me collect the ingredients for baking chocolate chip cookies, and Princess stood in the kitchen, chatting with Mrs. S on the phone about winter coats and munching chocolate chips.

The cookies took a long time to bake. Sis finished her movie, then watched the end of "The Black Stallion". Just before she had to parade off to bed, I declared the cookies to be done. Princess produced a stack of plates, and she helped me serve the cookies out to everyone. We sat in the living room and watched the beginning of "Zathura". I sipped milk from a plastic cup between bites of hot, gooey cookie. We had to scrape the cookies off the plates with spoons because the chocolate was melted.

When Hannah and Rebekah went to bed, Princess, Marigold, and I put on our pajamas, too. Marigold decided to go to bed early. She went back to her parents' bedroom to sleep on their bed so that Princess and I could have the double bed in Princess's room to ourselves.

Princess turned out all the lights, and we curled up together on the living room sofa to finish "Zathura". A whip-or-will sang throatily outside, its call haunting in the dark, humid night. The movie was just fun to watch.

After the movie ended, Princess and I played tag down the hall, turning on one light, then off the next, until we reached the purple room and jumped into bed. Princess soon fell asleep. I slept fitfully, watching the glowing crack in the door where the nightlight in the hall shone through. The house creaked wearily. Once during the night I woke to hear the sound of wind galloping outside the window at the head of the bed. The house groaned, and the wind rode by, galloping and galloping.

At six-thirty in the morning, Marigold came in and called Princess to wake up. We lay still for fifteen or twenty minutes before actually crawling out of bed. Mrs. S was already back: Mr. S's flight had left at five o'clock, so she'd left the City fairly early.

All of us girls gathered around the dining room table. Mrs. S brought out the things she'd bought: two winter coats, one for Hannah and one for Rebekah, and a stack of books. The girls eyed the books excitedly while Mrs. S turned the pages of the cookbooks, to show them glossy pictures of gingersnaps and raspberry fools.

We sat down with Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. Marigold, ever the mathematician, carefully dissected the specialty donuts in one of the boxes, splitting them into four or six pieces, so that everyone could sample a bite. There was a cheesecake donut with crumbly brown sugar on top, an apple-filled donut with cinnamon, two donuts that oozed strawberry and raspberry, and a donut topped with chocolate icing which, when cut into, burst with white cream. There were also the plain, glazed, melt-in-your-mouth donuts.

Right after breakfast, Princess, in butterfly scrubs, had to dash off to MTC with Meri, who pulled up in the driveway with a mug of coffee. I prowled back to the bedroom to change into proper clothes. Marigold disappeared into the metal building to work on chemistry, but the younger girls and Mrs. S stayed behind, and we sat around and chatted happily. Mrs. S proposed that I prepare a short course for Hannah and Rebekah on poetry for the summer, an idea which sounds quite fun to me. I laughed and joked with the younger girls, then said good-bye to them all. They waved me off from the front porch.