Just Me. Morley, page 6
part #1 of The Morley Stories Series
“Change?”
“You know, like dimes and quarters and paper money.”
Oh yeah, I think. Most of the people selling stuff can only take cash. Mrs. Green calls cash “real money.”
We did a unit on it last month. About how if you buy, say, a used video game for $15.95 and you give the store person $20, that means a $20 bill which is paper money, then they have to give you back your change. Figuring out how much change you get back is a math problem: $20 minus $15.95. The answer is $4.05, which means you would get back four dollars and five cents.
“You can help me with the selling and making change,” Mom says. “It will be good practice for you and maybe help with your math grades.”
I groan.
When I’m a grown-up and finished with school, the one thing I never ever want to do again is any math problems. Mom says that’s being ridiculous, because everybody needs to be good at math. You have to use it every day of your life, she says. So, I might as well learn now.
She says learning is easier when you’re still a kid.
She says I should be grateful I have the chance to go to school and learn things to make my life easier when I’m a grown-up.
She says a lot of kids don’t have that chance. Millions of kids, around the world.
But I’ve stopped listening, because I’m still trying to think about this crazy cookie idea.
So now we’re heading home, but mom can’t resist stopping at some yard sales.
At the first one I find a floppy hat, kind of like my rain hat that I lost. It looks pretty clean, so I put it on and check out how I look in an old stand-up mirror.
“Why would you want that old thing?” Mom says, but she laughs when she says it. “Doesn’t look much like a sunhat!”
I don’t care because I like it. It feels good on and I wonder if wearing it would also be lucky, like my wish bracelets. So I get it, for three quarters. That’s 75 cents.
Mom spots two beaten-up-looking folding chairs with faded pink fabric, the kind you might get for the beach. She buys them for $1 each with a $5 bill ($3 change).
“It’s an omen, Morley!” she says happily. “We’ve got our market chairs. A sign our luck is changing!”
At the next place, she buys some old picture frames for us to fix up to frame more of my drawings. And she buys some cookie sheets and baking tools. I buy a box of beading stuff with some pretty glass beads and wire. The lady selling it says her daughter was into beading, but that was last year. Now, it’s knitting. She’s happy to see another young girl getting the jewellery-making supplies.
Me, too.
I find a party princess craft kit that Daisy might like, so I buy it for 50 cents. It looks like it’s never even been opened! It’s amazing what people pay good money for but never use, Mom says. “But good for us, because then we can have it!” she adds, in her happy voice.
We get home and unload everything and then, all afternoon long, we’re tasting the bought cookies while I make bracelets.
Some of them are wish bracelets, in all the colours people have asked for. But I also try some fancier ones, using the directions in the friendship bracelet kit Sam gave me. Plus all the new beads and cord and jewellery wire in the box I got at the garage sale.
It’s fun to try out different ideas and just play with the beads and think up new designs. Even though they’re harder to make and take longer.
“That was a lucky find. And a lucky day for us!” Mom says, handing me another cookie to taste. I’m going to be so stuffed I won’t even want any dinner!
Those cookies we bought at the market are pretty good. But not nearly as good as mom’s.
She’s all excited like she hasn’t been about anything since, well, I don’t remember when.
She’s looking at her recipes…
…and making lists of stuff she needs more of like flour and un-salted butter and eggs and raisins and spices…
…and talking about the prices of those cookies we bought, like this: “Imagine, Morley! The nerve of them, charging that much for such tiny little cookies there’s only two bites to them!”
And thinking about where she’s going to get a table we can fit in our car.
But that turns out to be another lucky omen, because the people who don’t want their market space any more leave their two tables behind. And we already have those beat-up beach chairs, out in the garage. Mom cleans them up and I help paint them, ready to use on our first day at the market.
I have to admit it’s fun helping mom start the cookie business. We call it mom’s Yummy Cookies. That’s my idea. I love how excited she is about it.
Mom says cookies are the best plan we’ve had in a long time.
It reminds me of my own plan, and I smile.
nine
That week, we bake mountains of cookies.
Daisy roars around, acting as crazy as ever.
The renters seem to be shouting and fighting all the time…
So it’s pretty much an average week. Including…
…Julia the Jerk being nasty and calling me names like Fish Face and punching me some more when no one else is close enough to notice and I’m not quick enough to get away.
…Sam and Jayden being the best friends I could ever imagine having. All week they help me with the Get Morley’s Pet project. And they help think up ways to get the Get Danny To Come Home project started.
…My wrist and ribs are healing at a speed that would make a turtle race look fast. But I’m starting to feel more like myself.
Or trying to.
Mom helps me push all the Daisy junk over to her side of our room and we paint a line down the middle. And arrange the furniture so we each have our own space.
Now, my side looks the way I want it to. Her side is still a mess, but it’s easier to ignore it.
Daisy doesn’t apologize, exactly, for what happened when she jumped out of the apple tree. She still thinks I should have caught her. But she does say sorry for your sore arm and sorry for your sore chest and I hear myself telling her that she’s forgiven. She is so easy-going all the time, it’s hard to stay mad at her. Even when I want to.
There’s a bad moment when mom gets an e-mail from Danny. She reads parts of it to us:
Doing fine, though I’ve been moving around a lot. No address…
Like the new job…
Tell Morley to be a good girl and kiss my little sweetheart Daisy and tell her I’ll visit soon and want her to…
Be good, I’m thinking. Aren’t I always? And doesn’t he even care that I got hurt?
“Oh,” my mother says suddenly, her hand going to her mouth and sort of bending, as if she has a bad stomach pain. “Oh, no…”
Without another word, she goes to her bedroom and closes the door.
Daisy says she’s hungry, so I get out bread and make her a peanut butter banana sandwich with the crusts cut off. I make myself a smoothie. We eat at the kitchen table, waiting for mom to come back.
Daisy wants to colour in her book that teaches letters and numbers and she wants me to help her. So I do. It’s just easier to do what she wants than put up with her interrupting me all the time.
When Mum comes back to the kitchen, her face is red and puffy, like she’s sick. Or she’s been crying.
Daisy is watching Toy Story for like the ten-thousandth time and doesn’t even notice.
I know better than to ask what’s wrong and just keep trying to sketch, using my left hand to help my right hand. It’s awkward, but at least I can draw again. Sort of.
“It’s nothing, Morley…” Mom says at last. I can see that she’s stirring more dough to make something.
I’d like to know more. But instead she asks about school (OK, I tell her), about Sam’s party (going to be a surprise) and what I think I might get Sam for a gift (don’t know yet), about Grandpa coming to visit soon, maybe for Thanksgiving, she says. Thanksgiving seems like a really long time away. It isn’t even summer yet.
Mom talks and talks about everything except the things I really want to know.
Is Danny coming home? When? Why isn’t he already here?
Or has he left because they’re getting a divorce? This is the thing I’m worried about. I know about what divorce is, because Sam’s parents are divorced. Her mom has a new boyfriend. Her dad has a new wife and they have three kids. Sam is an only child, but with half-brothers and a half-sister.
Sam has two bedrooms of her own, one at each of her homes. She has different clothes, different books and even different pets at each of her two homes.
I think this must get so confusing. Wouldn’t you always be leaving the exact thing you want at the other house? And wouldn’t you just be used to living at one place when you have to change to the other? But Sam says it’s not so bad, once you get used to it.
I guess she didn’t have a choice, but I wouldn’t want that to happen to our family. Which is another reason I want Danny to come home.
That week mom – or mom and I – do lots of baking. She shows me more about how and lets me do more than she ever has before. She isn’t happy, like she was at the farmer’s market, but she isn’t crabby, either.
I try to ask about Danny and where he is. And if he found his job there. But she just changes the subject.
After lots of looking at her recipes, she has decided to make just six different things to sell on our first market day. They’re all going to be from the recipes she learned from her grandmother, she says, just like I’m learning now.
“People like good home cooking. Much better than what you can buy in a box from the store,” she says. I hope other people think so, too.
We make mint chocolate chip cookies with big chunks of chocolate. And maple syrup squares, apple carrot cake, sweet scones, chewie butterscotch brownies and my favourite, strawberry jam-jams.
We find little paper plates at the dollar store, the kind you have at parties. We buy all the ones in our favorite colors.
We arrange the cookies on the plates, covering each with plastic wrap and add a sticky label telling what kind of cookie it is and the price.
Friday evening, mom loads up the car with the two folding chairs, the sign I made to go in a little standing picture frame that tells what types of cookies and bars we’ve got and what they cost and then all the wrapped little plates. There’s 60 of them, 10 of each kind.
“Everything’s going to be $4,” Mom explains. “So, making change is going to be really simple!”
The market doesn’t open until 8 a.m. Long before that, we’re up, mom’s had coffee, the car is packed up and we’re on the way to drop off Daisy for a play-date at her friend Rachel’s house.
Then it’s on to the market. We’re directed to a place almost at the middle of the main market building, which looks like a really big barn, except it’s clean and made out of cement, not barnwood.
When we find our space, there’s a beat-up kitchen table and a picnic table and nothing else.
“This is great,” Mom says, covering the tables with two pretty table cloths she found at a garage sale. We set up the chairs, arrange the plates of cookies, put up the sign and mom hands me an apron with pockets like hers. She also has an old fishing tackle box that must have come from a yard sale, but I don’t remember ever seeing it before. That’s for our money, mom says. “Just like the bank, when we’re playing Monopoly. Only with real money!” she says, grinning like it’s a great joke.
There’s still 15 minutes until the doors open for customers. “Remember what I told you,” Mom says.
I do remember. Smile at people. Tell them it’s fun to make these cookies, the same kinds Gran makes. This isn’t true, because our Gran died a long time ago. Before I was born. But we are using her recipes, so mom says that’s OK.
If they buy something, count out their change carefully, so you are sure it’s right.
Be sure to always say, “Thank you.”
Mom goes off to get another coffee and a juice drink for me. I sit there, looking around, wondering what else to do. Our booth might be almost the smallest one there, but I think it looks nice. The scones, cookies and bars all look yummy. We’ve cut up some and put them on a plate for people to try free samples.
There are butterflies in my stomach, but mom says this is going to work. “We can do this, Morley,” she says. I want to believe her. I look up and the teenage girl at the next booth smiles at me and I think she’s not that much older than me, maybe 13 or 14.
Suddenly mom is back and people are starting to come in and someone is asking mom if she uses real chocolate in her brownies and someone else takes two packages of squares and hands me a $10 bill. I say thank you and give him his change ($2) and he walks away, not saying one single word.
But it doesn’t matter because there’s a woman right behind him who wants to know if we’re sure there are absolutely no peanuts in these cookies? How do I know there aren’t? I tell her it’s because I helped make them. She just sniffs and walks away, but mom says never mind, some people are just funny.
A lady asks if we sell bracelets like the ones I’m wearing on my left arm. I’m not sure what to say, but mom says, “Not with us today, but we’re happy to take your order and deliver, if you live in town? Or we’ll be here next Saturday, if you want to get them then?”
The lady describes what she wants and it sounds really easy – four wish bracelets in gold, green, orange and royal blue. I tell her they’ll be $2 each. mom writes down the order and the lady’s name and phone number.
Then we get super busy. It seems like everyone in our town is here at the market. All the chocolate mint chip cookies are sold, and most of the brownies and a lot of everything else when things kind of slow down.
“Can you hold the fort for 10 minutes?” Mom wants to know.
I say ok. Mom refills the free samples plate and goes to offer a taste to the neighbour vendors. I hear her saying that she’s Eefa, from over in Seabright, and nice to meet you. She asks what their favourite kind of cookie is. I wonder if this is more cookie research. Or maybe she’s just making friends.
She comes back with hot dogs and drinks and we eat at our booth, in between talking to people.
We’re just about finished eating when a man comes up to our tables. “Eefa!” he says, as if he’s knows my mum and he’s surprised to see her.
She smiles. “Morley,” she says, “This is our new principal, Mr. Maclean.” I remember that the principal is my mom’s boss. He puts out his hand, as if to take some cookies, just when I’m offering him a free sample, holding the plate with my left hand.
Mr. Maclean’s hand and the sample plate collide and the little pieces of cookie spill all over the place.
Everything freezes. I can feel my face getting hot.
“Er, so sorry,” Mr. Maclean says, exactly when mom is saying, “Not a problem, really.”
And I’m trying to pick up all the little pieces and put them back on the plate, feeling my face flaming hot.
“Here, let me pay for …” Mr. Maclean says.
“Don’t even think of it,” Mom says, as if she’s not the least bit bothered.
But he insists, so in the end Mr. Maclean hands me $12 and takes three plates of scones (no change) and I do the smile-thank-you like I’ve been told to, remembering to look our customer right in the eyes. That’s when I notice he has nice eyes. They’re very deep brown and they look like they’re interested in what you’re saying.
I can tell my mom likes him.
“Good to meet you, Morley – and good luck with your new venture, Eefa. See you Monday!” he says, moving off.
“He’s nice,” I say to mom, noticing her watching him walk away.
“Most people are,” is all she says.
At noon, Caitlin, who is the market manager, comes around to collect our booth rent. Mom takes three $10 bills and a $5 bill (total, $35) from our fishing tackle cash box, hands them to Caitlin and asks for a receipt. Caitlin says she’ll email it and she hopes she’ll be seeing us next week. Mom says, “Absolutely!”
Then it’s 1 p.m., closing time. I can’t believe it’s been five hours that we’ve been here, the time went by so quickly. We have only four plates of cookies left. Mom trades them to other vendors for a bag of tomatoes and a cyclamen plant that is just about to bloom.
It takes almost no time for us to pack up. Mom counts up the money in the cash box while I fold the tablecloths, the picture frame sign and our two chairs, ready to carry back to the car.
“Congratulations, Morley! We made some money today, and it was fun, wasn’t it? I’m really pleased at how this worked. Are you?”
I wonder if this might be a good time to talk about getting a pet and why I want one so badly.
Or ask about what Danny meant about visiting soon. And I want to write to him, but I don’t know his address.
Or what else he said in his e-mail that she didn’t tell us, but it makes her so upset.
But she’s still going on about the market and everyone she met…
…and what sold really well so we should make more for next time…
…and what she’d like to do differently. Maybe the prices weren’t right? Or she should have done some cakes? Or put up a sign saying she could take orders for different kinds of cookies?
I just say “Um, yeah,” and “Uh-huh” and she keeps talking.
She tells me about the woman who owns a café over in Porter’s Bay who wants someone to make cakes for her, if mom is interested, which she is…
And someone else asked about if we offer cupcakes, and mom said yes, we sure do, so they ordered two dozen (this means 24) for next market day, for a birthday party…
And how nice that vendor woman was who she traded with to get the tomatoes…
