Hattie Page 3

  Hattie explains that she got it all wrong. That she thought she wanted tuft because she thought that was what her mother had.

  With sorrow in his voice Ben explains that her mother’s fringe isn’t called tuft, it’s called textured spike. But now it’s too late. Hattie can’t go to school and be photographed with this donkey fur on her head.

  Ben tries to fix it by spraying the front so it stands up like a mountain peak. “Isn’t that better?” he twitters.

  Hattie doesn’t answer. She just wants to get out of the salon.

  Her mother pays at the counter. Now she’s had to pay twice, for two ugly haircuts.

  But then they run into the department store and buy a hairband for Hattie. And in school no one laughs at her because Hattie is clever and pretends that she’s happy to have tuft. Tuft is the latest thing. Only for the modern.

  She wears her hairband for the school photos. In the group photo she wants to stand with her arms crossed. The photographer calls out that she must put her arms down and let them hang at her sides like all the others. Hattie doesn’t want to look like a monkey with dangling arms. She puts them down for a moment or two, to keep the photographer happy, but when he looks in his camera, she’s quick to fold them again.

  And when the picture comes, she’s the coolest of all. With crossed arms and a supercool tuft cut.

  CANNON SHOES

  Hattie pins the school photo up on the wall with the trumpet-blowing angels. Linda is in the first row because she’s so small. The freckled nose points up as always.

  Now Hattie quickly jumps into her clothes. The school bus will be here in ten minutes, and today’s going to be fun. After school, Hattie’s going home with Linda.

  The whole class sings: “School is finished for todaaay! Thank you and goodbyyye!” Then they run out to the coat room and put on their outside clothes. Hattie has waterproof pants and thick gloves. Linda pulls on a second coat and lined boots. They have quite a way to walk and November is cold.

  Linda lives too close to Hardemo to be picked up by the bus.

  Every morning she has to start walking early through the forest to be in time for the first class. Hattie wishes she could walk to school. Linda would rather go on the bus. She sighs as they pass all the small red houses. “There’s still ages to go,” she says.

  But there isn’t really. Soon they crunch onto the gravel in Linda’s back yard. Her house is also red.

  “Momma!” calls Linda as they go inside. Linda’s mother comes out from the kitchen. She’s slim and wears a blue knitted cardigan. She sits all day sewing suspenders for a factory in town. Linda can take as many pairs of suspenders as she likes and Hattie is given a pair straight away.

  In the living room hang sad paintings of sorrowful children. Tears run down their fat cheeks.

  Hattie thinks these pictures are extraordinarily beautiful. At home they have only a few old paintings of stuffy old kings. All the kings have curled moustaches and shiny buttons. Papa has also done a painting, of a king called Oscar. It hangs in the hall and looks like all the others. But one thing is different. Papa has made Oscar a black man!

  “I’m going to town to the shoe shop,” says Linda’s mother. Linda and Hattie leap about in excitement and want to go too. They’re allowed!

  But first there’s time for Hattie to see someone she’s been longing to meet. Linda shows her the way to her room. And there on the floor in a shiny cage is the guinea pig, Roy. Now Hattie can see that Roy is a fuzzy ball, not only in the photo but also in reality. He sits in a pile of hay, trembling. When Hattie puts out her hand Roy is so scared that he runs and starts biting the edge of the cage.

  “You can give him a piece of cucumber,” says Linda, fishing a green stump out of the hay. Hattie waves and tempts Roy with the stump, but he won’t come any closer. He blinks his small black eyes and his nose twitches in fear. Just like Linda’s when she’s nervous!

  “We’re off,” says Linda’s mother. Hattie and Linda run to get their boots. Roy is glad to see them go.

  The shop is called Cannon Shoes. On a sign above the door is a picture of a boot flying out of a cannon with sparks and smoke. “It’s because they’ve blasted their prices to bits and sell the shoes cheap,” explains Linda’s mother.

  Then they’re inside a big room filled from top to bottom with elegant shoes. The air smells of new rubber. They go up a steep staircase with a long railing. Behind the counter, among inner soles and stray shoes, are two women wearing tight jeans and lots of makeup. They look bored.

  In less than a minute, Hattie and Linda have finished looking at all the shoes. Linda’s mother hasn’t. She wants to stay much, much longer.

  Hattie and Linda sigh. They’d forgotten how boring it is at a shoe shop. They go for another walk downstairs, through the rows of shelves.

  Suddenly they stop and look at a big red booth with an opening in one side. In front of the opening is a curtain. Hattie puts her head in.

  “A movie!” she cries.

  Imagine, they’ve found a mini cinema! It shows cartoons if you put in money. They race upstairs to Linda’s mother, who’s trying on a shiny pair of high heels. She gives them the money and they race away again.

  “Wait!” says Hattie when they’re halfway down the steep staircase with the railing. “Go and stand at the bottom,” she tells Linda. Hattie climbs up again with the coin in her hand. She’s noticed that the railing is hollow—like a long pipe. “Caatch!” she shrieks, and she puts the coin into it. The coin rattles for a few seconds inside the pipe, then falls into Linda’s hands.

  “Got it!” she calls.

  They send the coin several times through the pipe. It’s so much fun they almost forget the movie.

  But only almost. When the coin has become dizzy from all its travel, it’s time. They run over to the mini cinema and put the coin into the slot.

  The movie is short. It’s about a rooster and a wolf who run after each other. It’s over in a second. Hattie and Linda want to see more. They go and find Linda’s mother, who’s trying on running shoes.

  Linda’s mother doesn’t think she’s a bank and she doesn’t want to give them more coins. They’ll just have to have fun some other way, she says.

  But Hattie can’t have fun! Not without the money. She has to see the movie one more time! She thinks a minute, then she whispers to Linda: “It’ll work with a price tag too. The machine won’t notice what we put in it.”

  They grab a big price tag hanging from a boot and run back. They carefully pull the curtain so no one will see what they’re up to.

  The price tag is too thick for the slot. They push it in as best they can but the movie won’t start. Hattie hammers with her fist on the screen. Nothing happens.

  Then Linda thinks they should pull the price tag out again so that no one will notice anything. They fiddle, pull and pinch it with their nails. They even try to bite the tag out with their teeth, but it won’t come. The coin box is blocked. The machine is destroyed!

  Linda looks at Hattie. Her face is starting to look more and more like Roy’s. Her nose quivers and her eyes are shiny.

  Suddenly someone pulls back the curtain and stares at them. It’s one of the counter ladies. She has a crooked ponytail that sticks out from her head like a wimple. The corners of her lipsticked mouth point to the floor. “What are you doing?” she asks. “If you don’t want to see the movie you must come out so other people can have a turn.”

  She sees the coin box. “What have you done? Have you broken the cinema?” She reaches in a hand with its long red nails and pulls at the price tag. It sticks like glue. “What have you put in there?”

  Linda can’t say a word. She just shivers. But Hattie is quick to find words. “It’s a price tag from a boot,” she says. “But it wasn’t us. Some little kids were here before we came, and they’ve gone now.”

  The woman looks at her suspiciously. “Is that right?” she says, sucking in her cheeks. She sweeps the curtain closed and le
aves. Then she stands muttering to the other woman at the counter. Both stare hard at the cinema.

  Hattie and Linda run back up to Linda’s mother. Now they want to go home!

  But Linda’s mother isn’t ready yet. “Find something to play with,” she says.

  They sigh and look at one another. What should they do?

  Then Hattie remembers the railing. They can send something else down it!

  “Sure,” says Linda. “What shall we use?”

  Hattie thinks. Not a price tag anyway. But maybe a shoehorn? Hattie saw lots of them back at the counter.

  They go over and grab a shoehorn. Hattie hopes there aren’t any old bits of toe on it.

  “Stop!” cries the shop lady with the ponytail. “What are you doing with that?”

  Hattie’s quick. “Taking it to Linda’s mother. She’s trying on shoes.”

  Then they run to the steps. Linda stays at the bottom.

  “Here it comes!” Hattie feeds in the shoehorn. It goes a little way… It doesn’t rattle much at all… It’s stuck!

  She thumps the railing but the shoehorn is stuck. Like Santa in a skinny chimney. Linda looks terrified at Hattie. Now they’re in trouble. They’ll be told off; they might even have to pay a fine! Tears well up inside Hattie.

  But at last Linda’s mother comes. “Shall we go now?”

  Ye-es, they shall! They run. Hattie and Linda throw themselves down the stairs and out to the car. They look behind. Are they being followed by angry women waving a big fine? No, it’s just Linda’s mother with her shoe bags. They cheer as they leave Cannon Shoes behind them. Oh, how wonderful to be away from there!

  ADVENT

  Hattie has hugged Snoopy so often with grubby hands that one day her mother puts him in the washing machine. When he comes out, all the stuffing in his neck has gone down to his belly, and his head hangs like a wilted melon. Hattie is angry. Now Snoopy will be bent over for the rest of his life just because her mother wanted to put him in the washing machine. Her mother says she can open Snoopy up and put a stick in his neck.

  But Hattie doesn’t want that. She thinks he’d rather stay floppy. She takes Snoopy outside. They sit on the swing and grieve over what’s happened.

  “Look, Snoopy.” Hattie holds his head up so he can see. “It’s snowing.”

  Winter has arrived.

  But it will be a long wait before Hattie can pull the sled from the barn. These snowflakes are so small and fragile, they melt before they land. She longs so badly for snowmen, angels and candles that it makes her dizzy. But even more than that, she longs for Advent.

  And then it finally arrives, with lots of Advent calendars on the walls in the house. On other mornings when Hattie has to get out of bed, she takes forever. Her eyes won’t open, and her legs feel as if they’re stuck with cement to her mattress.

  But not now. She shoots up like a rocket and runs down the stairs. She opens the most boring calendar first, the one from the Swedish church. Jesus looks out from every window. He has a beard and is painted in blurry soft tints.

  Then she opens the one from the ICA shop, with happy people enjoying themselves at the supermarket. Hattie is happy too at the supermarket. She wants to work at the checkout at ICA when she grows up.

  Second to last, she opens the chocolate calendar, and that leaves only the best one—the calendar her mother made as a present. It’s as big as a window and has a green fir tree on it. Small packets tied with red string hang from all the branches.

  Her mother has been sitting at her desk for several days fixing and wrapping. Hattie hasn’t been allowed to go in for a sneak peep, even for a second! But when her mother went to make dinner, Hattie crept in and had a look anyway. It doesn’t matter. She’s just as happy when she opens them.

  She finds a perfumed eraser and a plastic monster. Everything is lovely. And her mother has decorated the house with Advent stars.

  The school cafeteria is also decorated. Beautiful angels, ugly elves and gaudy prayers embroidered by the women at Red Cross.

  Henrika is one of the lunch cooks. She’s crazy. Even when the children say “a tiny, tiny bit” she still gives them a huge spoonful, enough for a hungry sailor. And you have to eat cabbage salad and you’re not allowed to throw it away. Henrika stands guarding the bins like a mad panther.

  One day there’s blood pudding for lunch. Linda’s nose quivers all the way to the cafeteria. She can’t eat blood pudding. It’s as if a door closes in her throat when she has to swallow.

  “Say that you have a stomachache,” says Hattie when they’ve hung up their coats. The Advent candles shine in the window. “Then you only get one slice.”

  Linda blinks with her little blue eyes and nods.

  They wait their turn for lunch.

  “I only need one because I have a stomachache,” Linda whispers when she gets to Henrika.

  Henrika gives her two slices. “If you have a stomachache you need to eat,” she says. “Otherwise it won’t go away. Relish?”

  Linda swallows. “Yes,” comes from her mouth so quietly it almost can’t be heard.

  Linda sits shaking with Hattie beside her. The long table is full of children forcing down the pudding. But no one has as much trouble eating it as Linda. “It sticks in my throat,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t.”

  Hattie also hates blood pudding. She puts small pieces in her mouth and takes big gulps of milk.

  Soon the room is empty. Only Henrika is left. And, at one of the long tables, Linda and Hattie. Hattie’s plate is empty. Linda’s is full, so she’ll sit there till break is over.

  Quickly Hattie pinches one of Linda’s black slices and puts it on her own plate. Linda looks happy.

  But Henrika calls from the kitchen: “I saw that! You have to eat up your own food by yourself.”

  She comes over at speed and looks sternly at Hattie. “Put the blood pudding back!” she says. “With your fork! And then you can leave because you’ve finished!”

  Hattie looks at the table. She slowly pushes the slice of pudding over to Linda’s plate with her fork. “I’ll be waiting by the coats,” she whispers, and disappears.

  Hattie waits half an hour before Linda appears. She looks pale.

  “I ate it,” she says. “Henrika sat beside me and watched.” Linda has to sit on the bench to rest. Her hands are shaking as she wipes the tears from her cheeks.

  It’s so unfair, Hattie thinks. No one would ever force the cook to eat blood pudding till she was almost sick. “Henrika should be punished,” she says.

  Linda tightens her lips and nods earnestly.

  They sit for a long time and wonder what they can come up with.

  The triangular lights glimmer in the window. Linda sits up. “Did you know that you can get a shock if you put water on electrical things?” she asks.

  Hattie does. And all at once they have a plan!

  They can hear rattling in the kitchen. Henrika is busy washing dishes. Hattie and Linda pull out the wall plug to one of the Advent lights. Then they unscrew one of the small light bulbs and fetch water from the bathroom. They splash a little into the hole, then put back the lightbulb, loosely so that Henrika will have to screw it in herself.

  Then they run away. In the morning when Henrika comes along and plugs in the lights and screws in the lightbulb, she’ll get a shock. Ha ha! Serves her right! It might teach her to cook better food too.

  When school is over Linda walks home and Hattie takes the bus.

  After a few hours it’s nighttime. It’s amazing how much thinking you do in the night. Hattie lies in bed, ready to go to sleep. Then she realizes that it might be quite dangerous mixing water and electricity. Even quite deadly dangerous!

  Have they murdered Henrika? Hattie imagines her lying like a little charred skeleton in the playground, with a crooked finger pointing straight at Hattie.

  “Her. She’s the one who murdered the cook!”

  It’s a dreadful night. She dreams about Henrika
’s poor family and grandchildren, who are crying in sorrow. A dreadful night. And a dreadful morning. A dreadful, dreadful journey on the bus.

  Linda meets Hattie by the fence when she gets off. Her blonde slept-on hair is all over the place. Of course, she’s also had a terrible night.

  They run to the cafeteria and look in through the window. Is Henrika lying there gripping a light bulb and smoking? No, the floor is empty. The Advent lights aren’t shining. They bang on the door, shouting and calling. After an eternity Henrika comes out from the kitchen to open it.

  “What is it?” she growls.

  “We think we might have left our hats here yesterday,” says Hattie.

  “Hmm,” mutters Henrika, letting them in. Then she goes back to the kitchen.

  They rush in. Hattie unscrews the lightbulb and puts her finger in.

  “Was it wet?” asks Linda.

  Not especially. A little damp, perhaps. But they must stop Henrika from plugging it in. They can’t let on that they were trying to electrocute her on purpose.

  After a while Henrika in the kitchen hears an almighty noise.

  “Oh, oh!” shrieks Linda.

  “Oh, oh dear!” cries Hattie.

  Henrika comes rushing, angry, with flour in her puffy hairdo. Why are they oh-oh-ing? she wants to know.

  “Well…” Hattie explains: it happens that they got so hot and sweaty from looking everywhere for their hats that Hattie had to go and get a cup of water.

  “That’s right,” says Linda.

  “Yes,” continues Hattie. Then she was just going to sit in the window for a little rest, but she tripped over and spilled water—right onto the Advent lights.

  She points at the lightbulb. Henrika stares.

  “So, you should probably be careful when you plug them in,” says Hattie. “Be careful that you don’t get a shock.”

  “Yes,” says Linda.

  Henrika doesn’t understand a thing. “Is that right?” is all she says, raising an eyebrow.

  But Hattie and Linda run away, their hearts free again. It’s so great that Henrika is alive!