She passed a dress over my head and yanked the zipper but it wouldn’t go.
“Psst,” Ivy said. “Oi psst. You look like a yard fowl with two skinny foot an’ a small head an’ a stuffy middle,” she whispered so that Mam, who had gone off to bring more dresses, couldn’t hear.
I sucked my teeth.
“Is you’s a yard fowl,” I said, looking to make a dash for the torchlight again.
“Nope. You.”
“You.”
“You.”
I made a beeline for the kitchen sink, grabbed the torch, ran to the veranda and drew my lighted smiley face on the wall. Then Suzie lit up her window again with another smiley face. Then I drew another. Then she again. Then I.
“Stop wastin’ yuh father torch light batteries and come try on dis dress girl,” Mam shouted into the veranda.
She tugged the pink polka-dotted dressy church frocks down our shoulders.
“Oh thank the good Lord,” she said when she saw that they fit just barely. “Thanks thee good Lord.”
We stood shoulder to shoulder, Ivy and me, looking into the floor-length mirror on the living room wall. The pink polka dots transformed us from the heavy umber of our school uniforms. The polka dots looked like the polished ladies in our story book called Little Sally Hallie Goes to High Tea.
I lifted my chin, wondering if Mam or Ganee Gwenny had pink pearl necklaces like Sally Hallie’s to lend us. Ivy went nearer to the mirror and held out the wide A-lined skirt and twirled.
“Stop twirling before you tear dat dress,” Mam said, then she yanked the dresses off and went to set up the ironing board.
I followed her.
“Mam, you got any pink pearls?”
“For what?”
“Like a necklace.”
“And where I gon get dat from?”
She jabbed the iron at a stubborn collar.
“Your jewel box,” I said.
Mam rolled her eyes and smashed some pleats flat.
But still, I wanted Suzie to see me in a pretty necklace. She had several. Like the silver one with the red heart pendant which she wore just to stand by her gate. In her necklaces she reigned like the head of fairy security, guarding the entrance to her universe across the purpleheart bridge.
So before I went to bed, I sneaked up to Mam’s vanity and lifted the large lid of her precious wooden jewellery box that Pap had made for her with his own hands. It was empty except for a little pale green butterfly pendant, a tiny emerald green turtle brooch and a pair of love knot gold earrings. No pink pearls. No other anything.
I crawled into bed and thought about how I could get some kind of a necklace.
And then, an idea floated to me through the window.
I would string ixora flowers together with a needle and thread just like Mam showed us one time, and I’d make Ivy and me a pair of floral necklaces.
For the next few days I strung flowers in different patterns until the garlands came together at the right arrangement.
And finally, when our birthday’s eve rolled in, Pap hustled about.
He raked grass.
He followed Mam’s instructions on how to set the jello but he almost did it wrong, so Mam clenched her jaw and set it herself.
He arranged the mismatched chairs and stools.
He livened up the streamers.
“Look here,” he said, holding one end of a red streamer and one end of a yellow streamer and gluing them perpendicular to each other. “Looka dis.”
He folded the red strip down, then the yellow across. Then he folded the red up and the yellow across again, but the opposite way this time. Several times he repeated the criss-crossings. Down, across, then up, and across the other way.
“Keep folding like so,” he said, carefully handing over the finished bit to me.
When I came to the ends of the strips, he glued them together. Then he gripped that glued end and gave me the beginning end of the entire folded strip.
“Now hold it and walk backwards,” he said.
As I stepped back, the two streamers, now interlocking, expanded like an accordion stretching several feet between us.
“Whoa looka dat!” Ivy shrieked behind me where she was supposed to be helping Ganee Gwenny press down the ends of cheese rolls with a fork but where she was running her mouth off like a motor.
Every day she gabbered about the people she’d invited. Every single day, round and round like a rotating windmill. She jibber-jabbered about Anahita and Kathi and Lotte and Imani and Adalia and Basmati and Jia. And No-Jo too. But he was coming only because he was bringing his new bat and ball so we could have cricket. And because he, No-Jo, whose real name was Tainojo, was Junior’s cousin and Junior had asked for No-Jo to come.
Every, single, day, and night, like a windmill, the whole house obliged to hear about Anahita this, Kathi that, Lotte so and so, Imani’s clever dog that was good enough for a circus, Adalia’s kitten that bit strangers like a dog, Basmati’s magnificent inherited bangles and Jia’s unstoppable tricycle with the bell that rang like half a dozen bangles clink-a-dinking together.
“Ohh looka dat!” Ivy said again, tugging at Ganee and pointing at the streamer accordion.
Pap grinned and handed me several rolls of crepe paper.
“Try then, accordionise these,” he said.
By afternoon, my fingers were crampy and gluey. When the streamers were ready, Pap tacked them in bellied curves around the veranda’s ceiling.
“Now blow these.”
He handed me and Ivy some balloons and showed us how.
It was not as easy as it looked. I had to thoroughly empty my lungs just for one balloon to live a lifespan. Sometimes I got lightheaded.
Still, I forged ahead, for tomorrow would come and I would tell Suzie everything.
How I had perfected the judgement in giving balloons the right amount of air. Too much would make the balloon either explode and sting your face, or prevent you from knotting it so that it flew out of your hand, kazooing and deflating. Too little would make it smaller than the one before, then they’d be mismatched and ruin the symmetry of things.
I was evaluating my most recent balloon when Suzie appeared at her glass window.
“Suzie!” I shouted across, “Look here.”
I waved one red and one yellow balloon.
She burst into grin and waved with both arms, and cupping her palms to her mouth, she shouted, “Yaay-hey,” into the air.
“Yaay-hey Sue-zaay,” I shouted back.
My feet tingled to skip across the street onto her purpleheart bridge so I could gift her a balloon and explain the important principles I’d discovered. But no, I thought, trying to shush the drumming in my chest. I’ll save everything up for tomorrow and she could have two balloons then — one that I’d already blown and one to blow herself, so she could understand the technicality of the thing.
“Tomorrow?” I shouted across.
“Tomorrow,” she sang into the universe.
That night Suzie’s house went to bed early. All the lights went out and her flashlight faces failed to flicker. Maybe Suzie was sleeping early for my party. Mam had told us too to bed early if we wanted to have enough energy for tomorrow.
So on the night that I was six years and three hundred and sixty-four days old, Pap helped me roll down the mosquito net and waited for me to finish saying my prayers before he turned out the light.
“Nighto Ixie Pixie,” he said.
“Nighto Pap-Pap.”
I pulled the sheet to my chin and waited to turn seven.
In the kitchen, while Mam iced the cake, Madam Ivy’s mouth was still windmilling.
