Nothing to Fear by Jackie French Koller

flowers at me. I woke up in a cold sweat, sure it must be some kind of bad omen or something.
So I got down on my knees and started in, only I was so tired that I kept falling face forward into the sheets. The next thing I knew, Ma was waking me up. I still didn't know if I was done or not, so I said the rosary to myself the whole time I was getting dressed and all during breakfast and all the way to church, just to be safe.
    We saw the Rileys at Mass. Maggie and her mother both had on those kind of hats with the little veils that come down over your face. Ma invited them all over for Sunday dinner and Mrs. Riley nodded. After Mass, Ma gave me a quarter and sent me to the bakery to buy buns for supper.
    "Spend the whole quarter," she said.
    I stared at her. "The whole quarter, on buns?"
    "Aye," she said. "The Rileys will be stayin' the afternoon, I'm sure."
    "But ... the whole quarter?"
    "Aye," Mama repeated. "I'm thinkin' we all deserve a bit of a treat. Go along with you now."
    "Okay, Ma."
    The bakery was crowded, but I didn't mind the wait. Standing there, surrounded by all those good things to eat, breathing in that sweet, buttery air was about as close as you could get to heaven without dying. When my turn came I looked over the buns. There were cheese, raspberry, apple, lemon, cinnamon ... ten kinds in all. "I'll have two of each," I said, feeling very rich as I pushed the quarter across the counter.
    It started to rain on the way home and I tucked
the buns under my jacket to keep them dry. Their warmth felt good against my chest. Mama was bustling around the kitchen when I came in. A huge pot of chicken soup boiled on the stove.
    "Run up and tell poor old Mrs. Mahoney to join us," Mama said. She always calls Mrs. Mahoney "poor old Mrs. Mahoney." I'm not really sure why. She doesn't seem that poor or that old. I think it's got something to do with her wooden leg or her being a widow or maybe both.
    "No sense in her spending the day alone up there," Mama went on, "when one more or less down here won't make a bit o' difference."
    Mrs. Mahoney was delighted. She asked me to carry her box of beadwork down for her, and she followed with a pot of "tea" tucked under her arm. Mrs. Mahoney supports herself by doing piecework, making beaded pocketbooks at home. I don't know how much she makes, but she pays us kids two cents a pocketbook to help out, and we're always glad to get it. Whenever we have some free time we go up and sit in her kitchen and string beads, and she tells us tales of when she was young and her husband was alive. Her husband was a merchant marine, and when they were first married Mrs. Mahoney used to sail all around the world with him. She says that's how she lost her leg. It was bitten off by a shark one time when she was washed overboard in a gale. Mama winks and says Mrs. Mahoney is just giving us a bit of the blarney.
    When we came down, the Rileys were marching
across the hall like a little line of ducks, all carrying chairs and dishes and glasses and such. Maggie and Kitty brought up the rear, struggling with their extra table. I put the beadwork down and gave them a hand. We pushed their table and ours together and soon the meal was set—steaming bowls of chicken soup, thick with vegetables; loaves of good, chewy bread; butter; and fresh milk—a real feast.
    I've always loved Sunday afternoons. Sunday is the one day of the week that we have all we can eat. Even if there's nothing but oatmeal for the rest of the week, Ma always manages to put together a big meal for Sunday dinner, followed later in the evening by a supper of sweet buns and hot chocolate. It's a day for resting and visiting, too. One or more of the neighbor families always drop by, and the women sit in the front room knitting or doing piecework, talking and sipping "tea," while the men sit in the kitchen playing cards and drinking homemade beer. The smaller kids roll and tumble in the bedrooms, and us older ones drift from front