Hattie

by Frida Nilsson

  “Goodbye, Hattie!” Irene calls, but Hattie doesn’t answer. She flies out to the blue car where her mother is sitting waiting.

  “It was boring,” she says as she hops in. She’s not going to say anything about Irene and the toilet.

  Her mother starts the car and soon they’re humming over the hills.

  When they get home her father is happy that Hattie wants to stop going to the Church Children’s Hour. “I told you it would be ridiculous,” he says.

  “Mmm,” Hattie agrees. She pushes the green note from the Church Children’s Hour to the bottom of the wastepaper basket.

  THE CLOWN

  Hattie doesn’t have long to be upset about Irene because the next day at school she hears something wonderful. The whole class will be going to the swimming pool in town to learn how to swim!

  But the day before they go, the teacher says that at the swimming pool anyone with warts on their feet must wear swimming bootees so they don’t give them to others.

  Swimming bootees are ugly little shoes made of nylon and rubber. Hattie has never seen anyone swim with bootees…

  Hattie has at least ten warts on her right foot. When she hears about the bootees she’d rather forget about swimming and stay home. But she’s not allowed. Everyone must swim, the teacher says.

  That evening Mama finds her swimming bag. She puts in the green bathing suit, a towel with Garfield the cat on it and one swimming bootee. Hattie will only wear one in the pool because she only has warts on one foot. One swimming bootee is almost worse than two. Only clowns go around with one shoe on.

  At the pool she runs out and quickly jumps into the water so no one will see the bootee.

  A swimming coach stands on the side giving the class instructions. She hops onto the stand and pedals her legs. The children are supposed to copy. It’s much slower jumping around in water than it is up on the side, and soon everyone has tired muscles. Then the coach explains that they should go for a swimming badge.

  She shows them a poster with pictures of all the badges. Hattie looks carefully at each one. Then she decides. She’ll try for the Silver Frog.

  To get the Silver Frog you have to swim to the first mark, tread water, and float for a while. The swimming coach walks alongside, checking.

  So far, it’s all going well. The last test is to collect a little plastic thing from the bottom of the pool. Hattie has to put her head under water and dive down, taking her body, the bootee and the whole shebang.

  The coach claps her hands. “Off you go!” she calls.

  Hattie takes a deep breath and puts her head under, expecting to sink down.

  It doesn’t happen. She presses her whole body but she gets nowhere. She just lies floundering.

  She lifts her head up again to breathe. The coach shakes her head. “You have to go down,” she says.

  “But how?” calls Hattie, rubbing the chlorine water from her eyes. “I just stop!”

  “Just dive down,” the coach urges, holding her arms out like a diver.

  Hattie tries again. But it’s like throwing yourself against a wall. She bobs like a cork on the surface, getting nowhere near the bottom. The plastic thing wobbles at her feet.

  “You’ll have to practice a little,” says the coach. “Next time you might be able to try again.”

  Next time! Hattie sees stretching ahead a lifetime in swimming bootees. That can’t happen! She has to get the Silver Frog now so swimming lessons will be over and done with.

  The teacher bounds over and the swimming coach starts to explain that unfortunately Hattie hasn’t succeeded with the diving for plastic test.

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” says the teacher.

  They’re so busy with their conversation that they don’t look at Hattie in the swimming pool. She gropes about with her foot, then she feels the plastic thing beneath her rubber sole. But she can’t get a grip with the swimming bootee. She tries with her left foot instead. At last! Her toes pinch the plastic thing. Agile as an orangutan she lifts her foot. “I got it! I got it!” she shouts.

  The teacher and the swimming coach look. They don’t seem impressed. “I think you cheated.” The coach looks almost sad. The teacher tugs his beard thoughtfully.

  Hattie doesn’t get the Silver Frog. The swimming bootee goes claff-claff as she heads to the shower. Now she’s a cheat again, just like in Matt’s Wood. But this time it’s almost worse. This time she’s a cheat in a clown shoe.

  Soon Hattie goes with her mother and father to the hospital in town. The warts are going to be removed because Hattie has decided she’ll never splash around again with a bootee on in the swimming pool. She sits in the back seat in despair.

  Outside the snow is finally gone. Daisies stick up through the old faded grass and the ditches are full of yellow. The sun finds its way into the car where it’s lovely and warm.

  At the hospital she has to take off her sock and lie on a plastic sheet. The doctor takes out a sharp needle with the medicine that will numb her foot. Hattie tenses up…

  And then comes the first prick. She wails like a police siren and tears pour from her eyes. Her parents look despairingly at her. “We’ll buy you treats,” her mother squeaks, patting her hand.

  The doctor pricks again. Hattie kicks and flails.

  “There, there,” her mother comforts her. “Only a few to go.”

  The doctor pricks and pricks. Hattie yells and yells. And at last all feeling disappears. Her whole foot feels like a smooth custard.

  The doctor wipes the sweat from his forehead. He’s never had to deal with such a wild patient. “Now then,” he says, and rolls up his sleeves. It’s just as well Hattie has such a lot of painkiller in her foot, because something worse is about to happen. The warts will be burnt off with a red-hot iron!

  Hattie doesn’t feel a thing. It just smells a little burnt, like when Mama’s stew boils over on the stove.

  But when it’s over and Hattie thinks everything is a-okay again, the worst happens. The foot has to be bound up in a long bandage so Hattie can’t put on her normal sneaker. The bandage means there’s a thick white lump at the end of her leg. Mama is prepared for this. She’s been to see Hattie’s cousin, who’s bigger than Hattie, and borrowed a pair of loafers!

  A loafer is the worst. It’s like a little prince’s shoe in leather with a flat sole and tassles that sit and flap on the tongue. Hattie wants to die. A loafer is a million times worse than a clown shoe. When they go out to the car, Hattie’s feet go slap, clack, slap, clack, slap, clack. One foot in a sneaker and the other in the ugly loafer.

  On the way home they stop to buy treats. Nothing tastes good. All Hattie can think about is her ugly clump-foot and the terrible little prince shoe.

  But after a few days the bandage comes off and Hattie’s cousin gets his shoe back. Soon it’s time to go to the swimming pool again.

  Hattie sits on the bus into town, enjoying it. In the swimming bag are only her bathing suit and the Garfield towel, no clown shoe.

  After warming up, everyone is going to try for their badge again. Hattie swims to the first mark, treads water and floats.

  Then it’s time. The swimming coach throws in the plastic thing. “Off you go!” she calls. “Dive!”

  Hattie dives. She flips her legs like an otter and sweeps with her arms. She reaches for the bottom… And she feels the thing in her hand! She bursts up, spraying water.

  “I got it!”

  The swimming coach claps her hands. “Ha ha!” she laughs. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Hattie jumps and jumps and jumps. She is the Silver Frog!

  HAPPY EASTER

  Once spring has started to show itself, everything happens fast. Soon there are blue anemones among the old leaves beneath the lilac hedge. The earth starts to crawl and tingle with newly woken life. Poof! Her mother’s gardens turn yellow. The daffodils have appeared. Easter is here.

  Hattie has been making paintings for several days now. She’s done roosters
, hens, hares, chickens and patterned eggs. Now it’s Maundy Thursday, when everyone dresses up as witches.

  Hattie finds some fun clothes in her mother’s wardrobe. There’s a skirt with one pocket and an old knitted cardigan. She takes a coffee pot from the kitchen. She folds up all her drawings into Easter letters. When she has painted her cheeks red, off she goes. She’s on the lookout for treats!

  Out on the road sits Havana the cat, blinking at the sun-shiny puddles. Havana would make a perfect witch’s cat. She could sit on Hattie’s shoulder and hiss.

  “Come!” calls Hattie.

  Havana runs off to the stable to hiss at the sheep instead. She doesn’t like sugar. But Hattie’s looking forward to something sweet.

  All her letters are in the skirt pocket. Twenty. She peers over at the little cottage where Alf lives. His digger is parked outside the door. That means he’s home. Hattie goes over as fast as her boots will take her. She’s soon there.

  Alf has brown hair and a big nose. When he sees Hattie holding out an Easter letter, he’s surprised. “Well, well, what a lovely little woman.” He opens the letter and admires it. “And such a good drawing!”

  Hattie smiles and waits. Alf tries to smile back. “Think,” he mumbles and scratches his neck. “I’d completely forgotten that it’s Maundy Thursday today. And I don’t have any treats here…” He glances regretfully at Hattie.

  Hattie feels how the corners of her mouth want to go down to her ankles, but she tightens her cheeks and keeps smiling.

  Alf lights up. “Perhaps you’d like a cracker?” he says. Off he goes into the cottage. Soon he’s back with a dry little cracker in his hand.

  Hattie thanks him and accepts it. She says “Happy Easter” to Alf and leaves.

  Alf is the only one who lives nearby. To reach any other houses she has to go quite far. But Hattie still has many lovely letters in her pocket and she longs to have just a few treats in her coffee pot. So she decides to carry on.

  The boots clump and the sun warms her neck. Just before the road turns a big corner, there’s a run-down old house with a tin roof. Hattie stops to look. She knows who lives in it. A drug addict. He has a cat that sits and caterwauls in the tree at night. She swallows a few times and straightens her back. The house looks dark. She takes a couple of steps onto the unkempt lawn, but then changes her mind and runs quickly out to the road again. When she thinks about it, Hattie doesn’t think a drug addict is the sort of person to sit at home with a bucket of treats on Maundy Thursday, waiting for Easter witches.

  She goes on walking in the mild spring breeze. The trees are budding and green. On every branch are small birds who are happy that the cold is over. They chatter and chirp so much that the forest sounds like a jungle.

  Hattie plans to go to the summer houses. They’re along the road past the big hill. But before Hattie gets there, she has to pass a brown house. In it lives a man who Papa says has a different kind of brain. Papa usually talks to him when they happen to meet. Not Hattie. She finds the man a bit strange. Sometimes she sees him standing and digging up the road with a spade. He makes a little hole and then he fills it in again. Hattie goes past without knocking.

  The long hill is steep and it’s hard to keep going. Hattie is out of breath when she reaches the top. Now she can see the little collection of summer houses. She runs the last bit.

  When she arrives everything feels spooky. In the tangled flowerbeds are brown, dry plants left from summer. There are rotten apples on the grass.

  Slowly, slowly she creeps into one of the gardens. She knocks carefully at a door. No one comes to open it. Through the window she can see dead flies lying with their legs in the air. The summer visitors haven’t come yet.

  With heavy steps she goes back to the road. She still has nineteen letters left and zero houses to go to. A single cracker rattles in the coffee pot. Her bottom lip trembles. Stupid people. Stupid road, with no one living on it. Stupid summer visitors! It’s fine to come flying in in June, but when it’s Easter they’re all sitting inside in town. Probably filling their stomachs with sugar as well.

  With wet eyes, Hattie runs down the long hill the whole way home. They’ll get it, she thinks. They sure will get it. Her head is boiling with ideas of revenge.

  She takes the felt pens and closes the door to her room. Then she chooses her pens. It’s always hard to find one that’s the right shade for skin. In the end she chooses the pink one and she unfolds all the letters again.

  Then Hattie starts to write down every bad word she’s ever heard, sometimes with different spellings because she’s not sure. All around the roosters, the hens, the chickens and the hares, she adds words in capital letters and with exclamation marks.

  She puts her letters back in her pocket and off she goes again. The sun is lower in the sky. Soon it will disappear behind the fir trees, far away on the horizon.

  At the summer houses she puts an Easter letter in every mailbox. Sometimes she even puts in two because otherwise she won’t get rid of them all. When her pocket is empty, she quickly runs home. Laughter bubbles in her stomach. Oh, how she’d love to see the faces of all the summer guests when they open their mailboxes in June.

  But when she comes inside and empties the coffee pot onto the kitchen table, she feels her heart grow heavy again. Out rolls the little cracker and it lies there tired and pathetic on the table. It’s two whole days until Easter, when Hattie can look for Easter eggs. Tears prick her eyelids and her throat hurts from the hard lump in it.

  Her mother rushes down from upstairs. “How did it go?” she chirps.

  Hattie cries. “A cracker.”

  Her mother looks forlornly at the cracker. She puts her head to one side. “Poor little witch,” she comforts her.

  Then she goes to the kitchen cupboard and reaches up high. She pulls down a thick paper bag with red stripes. “It can’t hurt to have a little something in advance,” she says, and she puts a fistful of chocolate buttons, jelly snakes and sour balls in a bowl. Hattie takes the bowl, her eyes enormous. “You’ve deserved it,” says Mama. “You made so many fine Easter letters.”

  Hattie lights up like the spring sun. “Thank you, Mama!”

  NEW PET

  The weather has warmed up properly. Hattie’s mother finds the outdoor furniture and Hattie borrows a few things from the kitchen to use for mudpies. The hens, who have been sitting and sighing in the henhouse all winter, go out and forage all day long.

  Papa builds a green seesaw for Hattie. It’s lovely. The only trouble is that Hattie doesn’t have anyone to seesaw with, because she still lives next door to no one. And Linda lives a whole mile away. Her parents never have time to drive her there.

  The seesaw stays on the lawn, its paint flaking. It’s so tempting for Papa’s turkey that he can’t help sneaking out of the woodshed to sit on it. And along comes the fox and eats him up! Hattie has escaped with her life. How terrifying if she’d been the one sitting on the seesaw!

  Papa sweeps up the few feathers left from the turkey. “Poor old bird,” he says, looking at the ground. He’s always sad when animals get hurt.

  In school one day Karin has something bulging in her pocket. Several times in class she peeps secretively down at it. By break time Hattie and Linda are so curious they’re almost bursting.

  “What have you got in there?” asks Hattie out in the school yard.

  Karin smiles. “I’ll show you.” She pulls a pointy shell from her pocket. And from the pointy shell, a bony little crab crawls out.

  “A crab!” Hattie cries.

  “A hermit crab,” Karin corrects her. “It’s mine. I was given it.”

  Hattie is almost dizzy with love. For the whole day she can’t think of anything apart from how badly she wants a crab.

  When she comes home in the afternoon, she tells about Karin’s pet.

  Papa looks crestfallen. “She had it in her pocket?” He looks as if he might cry.

  “Yes,” Hattie squeaks.

&nb
sp; Papa shakes his head and leaves the room.

  Hattie follows. “Can I have a crab too?” she asks in her nicest voice.

  Papa sits on the steps and bites his lip. “You can’t keep animals like that in captivity,” he says.

  But then Hattie crosses her arms. “You do!” she says. “Sheep and ducks and everything!”

  He looks at her in surprise. Then he puts his chin in his hands to think.

  “Pleeeease,” Hattie nags him.

  Papa sits for a moment longer. Then he gets up. “I know what you can have,” he says.

  In the kitchen he takes out the biggest mixing bowl. Then he puts on his boots and opens the door. Hattie jumps into her boots too.

  Soon they’re tramping over the fields. In the distance Hattie can see the stream wiggling around a couple of corners and disappearing into the forest. She dances about and hops up and down. “A crab,” she yelps. “Are we going to fish for one in the stream?”

  Her father strides on, not giving anything away. At the stream they skid down the steep bank. “It will be cold if you fall in,” Papa warns her.

  Hattie is very curious. “Will we pull up the crab in a bucket? Yes? Papa? Will we?”

  Papa shakes his head. “There are none here,” he says. “But I’ll show you something else.” He leans into a bunch of reeds and puts his hand in the water. Soon he has a big lump of jelly with black dots in it. He puts that in the bowl and fills it with water.

  “What’s that stuff?” Hattie asks.

  “Spawn,” he says. “Soon it’ll hatch into tadpoles. You can have them until they turn into frogs.”

  Hattie is radiantly happy about her new pets. After a couple of days the spawn hatches. The bowl is full of tiny baby tadpoles that swim around and splash as they play. She sits on the bench watching them.

  “Can’t we keep them when they become frogs?” she begs, but her father says no. Frogs don’t want to live in a mixing bowl, he is sure. When the tadpoles are fully grown they have to be taken back to the stream. Hattie hopes that will take a long, long time.