My Big Family. A Day of Tots

«He's big already!» Kate was indignant.

«He's a skeleton!» Grandma Masha disputed. «A child should eat such that he can't eat anymore! I always eat that way, and look how strong I am!»

She picked up a heavy stool by the leg and lifted it over her head. The stool began to lean over dangerously to the side, and Vicky and Alena hastily ran off. Grandma put the stool back in place.

«Is it true that when our mama was little, she was so fat that not a single pair of her pants could be fastened together?» Alena asked. She still did not understand that you do not need to blurt out everything you know – some things you should keep to yourself.

«From whom did you hear this?» Grandma asked suspiciously, turning so as to see Papa's reflection in the glass of the kitchen cabinet.

«From Mama,» Kate came to Alena's aid.

Grandma Masha relaxed. «Ah! Well, we ate on schedule. Cottage cheese, kefir, sour cream. When she was a teenager, she got out of hand and slimmed down! Then the kids began to appear, and she lost even more weight! In fact, I wanted her to have only two kids! A boy and a girl! With an interval of four years. That's all. Period.»

Soon the whole kitchen table was crammed with plates and bowls. And in each lay some mushrooms, sausage, and salads. It was unclear where they came from. Perhaps they appeared by magic, because earlier, before the grandmas' arrival, they were clearly not in the Gavrilovs' home.

Grandma Masha was moving decisively around the kitchen, delivering short orders, «Alena, don't touch your brother! Peter, don't get distracted! Rita, you're already grown-up to put your hands into the soup! Annie, don't hunch! Nick, don't eat fish with sandwiches! I see everything!»

Costa and Alex opened their eyes wide. «Annie» and «Nick» were Mama and Papa, whom Grandma very dashingly included in the general rank of kids. Papa and Mama secretly exchanged glances, suffering the collapse of their authority, but, knowing Grandma, did not protest.

«Chew worms!» Papa said in a whisper. Mama kicked him under the table. It was their shared secret.

When Mama and Papa had just gotten married and were living at Grandma Masha's, they hid from her a starling chick, which they had found on the street. It was very difficult to hide the little chick because it also cheeped. One time, Papa hid it in an old teapot suspended on a rope among the old skis on the balcony. The nestling was very weak. It could not eat whole worms and it was necessary to grind them up, turning them into mush. It was from that time that the joke «Chew worms!» remained in the family. Grandma guessed that there was a chick at home and searched for it everywhere to throw it out, because when she was young she read in Health magazine that tuberculosis comes from birds.

Exactly at nine in the evening Grandma's alarm went off and a new life began for the children.

«That's it!» Grandma Masha said. «Get ready for bed! Bedtime! That's all! Period!»

«We already slept during the day! You made us!» Alex groaned in horror.

«During the day it wasn't bedtime, but admiral's hour!»[1 - Admiral's hour is Russian naval jargon for an after-lunch nap.] Grandma said.

«What time is it now? Field marshal's?» Peter quipped.

«Now is night rest!» Grandma cut him off and went upstairs. Costa, Rita, and Alex trudged after her obediently, like sheep.

«Wow! They are obeying!» Alena whispered.

«But you aren't! She has an inner strength and a willingness to go all the way!» Peter assessed.

«By the way, this also applies to the older kids! Lights out at twenty-one thirty,» reached them from the stairs.

Exactly at 21.30, after finishing what Grandma called «wash-up routines,» the older children were driven off to bed. Only Peter alone escaped. He huddled in his room and sat there quiet as a mouse, covering the crack under the door with a blanket so that light would not show through.

Around midnight, reckoning that everyone was asleep, Peter got out of his room and snuck into the kitchen to eat raw eggs. He was standing in an island of light pouring from an open fridge and holding an egg in his hands. He cracked it slightly and brought it to his mouth, but then someone stirred next to him in the dark. Peter gave a start in fright. An apparition in a long nightgown was sitting on the bench and rocking quietly.

It was Great-Grandma Zina. She could not get up to the second floor and had settled on the couch in Papa's office. Except that she could not sleep and was sitting in the dark: she was conserving electricity. «One guy came from the army. He bought an egg at the market, did not wash it and ate it. The egg had salmonella. He died. That's all,» Great-Grandma said.

Dropping the egg on his foot, Peter leaped back into his room.

Chapter Three

Great-Grandma's Deception

«You need to have twenty pairs of socks of the same colour! And ten pairs of pants of the same colour!»

«Well, socks – it's understandable. That's so they do not get mixed up in the wash. But why pants?»

Grandma pondered.

«I don't know why! But once you're advised, then there must be logic!»

    Household Scene

The next morning was Saturday. Costa and Rita were sitting on Grandma Masha and swinging their legs. Kate stood at the sink and looked at the mountain of dishes from the evening.

«I have a proposal!» she said. «Papa's forty-one years old. He'll wash forty-one plates. Peter's sixteen. He'll wash sixteen plates. Vicky's fourteen. She'll wash fourteen. Alena's ten – well, you understand…»

«And you?» Mama shouted from the room, the sewing machine chirping.

She liked this plan. She had already figured out that, though they had a lot of dishes, it was clearly not more than forty-one. Hence, Papa would be washing all the dishes.

«And I'll carry out general coordination and check if there is grease on the plates!» Kate said and, waving her hands, brushed something standing on the edge of the sink. «Oh! Dang!»

«What was that sound?» Mama was startled.

«I smashed the blue plate,» Kate explained.

«My favourite?»

«Yes.»

There was a poignant pause in the room.

«But was it clean or dirty?»

«Dirty.»

«Well, that's alright then!» Mama said.

Distressed by the loss of the favourite plate, the girls huddled around the sink and washed all the dishes in ten minutes. In the meantime, Mama and Grandma Masha compiled a list of foods that Papa should buy at the market. This list was so long that its tail passed to the second side of the sheet. Papa was not too enthusiastic about this.

«Write me a 'lost list' as the last item. Then I'll start quickly from the end,» he said and set off to start the minivan. The minivan started pretty well, but the battery was poor. Therefore it was necessary that it must start on the first try.

While Papa was gone, Grandma Masha and Great-Grandma Zina conjured up breakfast. Grandma Masha complained that there was nothing to prepare, but all the same, the whole table was soon covered with plates. The children were running around impatiently, trying to steal something.

«Rita, did you wash your hands? Well, at least sometime in your life?» Grandma asked, looking closely at Rita's hand, blue from a marker, clutching a piece of halva. The kid's hands were quickly hidden behind her back. This did not go unnoticed. «With soap, sponge, and brush! March!»

Rita, whining plaintively, went to wash her hands, closed the bathroom door behind herself, and almost instantly everyone heard a racket and a splash.