“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
―
―
Tea for Two
My sequined purple satin princess costume remained in its tissue paper wrappings on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, as I perched in my pink rosebud flannel pajamas on the window seat, peering out the bay window at the neighborhood witches, ghosts, and cowboys scurrying by.
On October 31, 1944,
we didn't expect any knocks at our front door, festooned not with the Jack
O'Lantern cutout I had made in my first grade classroom the week before, but
with a stark black and white quarantine sign that shouted “Contagious Disease,
Chicken Pox.”
Daddy had taken my unaffected older sister and little
brother to Grandma's house for a party earlier that evening, leaving Mama and
me home alone. I had finished reading
all the stories in the newest edition of Children's Activities, tired of cutting
out paper dolls from the old Sears catalog, and longed to be outside. Mama had promised me a special treat, but I
couldn't imagine what could replace the thrill of joining the troops of
children wandering door to door in the autumn twilight with their rapidly
filling pillow slips. No Hershey bars,
candied apples or popcorn balls for me this year, I knew. I didn't care, I told myself, because though
the itching had ceased, I had yet to regain my appetite anyway.
Mama had turned on the Philco radio in the kitchen, and I
heard the Andrews sisters warning “Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone
else but me.” My sister was probably
bobbing for apples right now at Grandma's house, I thought. “O.K.,” Mama called, “Time to get dressed!”
Glancing down at my pajamas, I wondered what she could mean,
but scooted off my seat and trudged to the kitchen. On the back of one of the chrome dinette
chairs hung Mama's fur chubby, a kind of short jacket that represented the
essence of elegance to me those days. I
used to love to watch Mama get dressed for special evenings, in her chiffon
dresses always topped by the chubby.
“Put it on,” she said, pointing to the jacket. “We are going to play tea party, and I am
going to be the hostess, while you will be my guest.” She draped a string of pearls around my neck,
as I shrugged into the jacket. I noticed
that the table had been set with her best Blue Willow cups and saucers, and
that an empty platter had been placed next to the toaster.
Though I could not venture all the way outdoors, Mama opened
it a crack so I could at least knock on the outside, right below the Quarantine
sign. “Oh, Miss Terri, it's so good of
you to call this evening.It's tea
time,” she announced. “And even though
you are my guest, I'm going to ask you to make the meal, since you have such a
special touch with cinnamon toast.”
I'd seen the bakery truck make its delivery earlier, and had
wondered what had been left on our doorstep.
Now Mama opened the bread box and pulled out a loaf of sliced raisin
bread. She placed the sugar bowl, the
butter dish and the red tin of cinnamon on the counter, and lifted the chubby
from my shoulders. Then she opened her
Searchlight Recipe Book to page 44, handed me the yellow plastic measuring
spoon set, and said, “Let's see how you do reading that recipe.”
I was the best reader in my class, so I stumbled only on
“substitute” and “proportion” as I read aloud the instructions.
“Cinnamon Toast:
Spread freshly toasted bread with butter or butter substitute. Spread generously with sugar and cinnamon
which have been blended in the proportion of 1 teaspoon cinnamon to ½ cup
sugar. -- The Household Searchlight”
While I watched the raisin bread brown in our two-sided
toaster, Mama put her tea kettle on to boil, and told me a story about the
birds on the Blue Willow china. She said
that an angry Chinese father had been trying to catch his daughter who was
running away with a boyfriend. Before he
could catch them, they had been transformed into birds and flew away
together. I rubbed my finger across the
birds on the saucer. “When you grow up,
your father won't chase away your boyfriends,” she said with a little
laugh. “And now that you're learning to
cook, it won't be too much longer before you are grown up for every day, not
just for Halloween.” I smiled. It was true.
I was learning to cook.
Though I hadn't been hungry all day long, the smell of the
cinnamon sugar seemed to reawaken my appetite, and I ate my entire slice and
half of Mama's, and even managed a swallow or two of my milk tea. When my sister returned later that evening
with the candied apples that Grandma had sent, I accepted one, but insisted I
wasn't really hungry, since I had cooked and eaten a meal earlier.
Mama's prediction came true, too, as I became engaged just a
dozen years later. And at my wedding
shower in 1955 she presented me with a black leatherette bound Searchlight
Recipe Book. I turn the yellowed pages
today to Page 44, and again recall the
delicious aroma of cinnamon toast as I remember the year that trick or treat
became tea for two.
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