Buffy Andrews - The Moment Keeper

“Almost,” Elizabeth says.

Each week, the five-year-olds have a play date and this week it’s at Olivia’s house. The doorbell rings and Olivia races to the front door. The girls hug and Emma and Olivia run to the playroom where they’ll spend most of the afternoon. The room is packed with every toy a little girl could want – from a play kitchen to an immense dollhouse to a puppet theater complete with a red velvet curtain.

Elizabeth walks in with a plate filled with grapes, carrot sticks, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into quarters, diagonally. She places a quarter on each girl’s plate.

“Don’t forget Sadie and Nellie,” Olivia says. “They’re hungry.”

Elizabeth puts a quarter on their plates, too, and sets the rest in the middle of the table.

The girls dig in Olivia’s sparkly pink dress-up trunk for hats and boas to wear. Olivia wears her Cinderella gown and Emma chooses the Snow White dress. Olivia picks the tea-party hat with the pink chandelle feathers and matching boa and short-sleeve gloves. Emma picks the tea-party hat with the ruffle trim and matching boa and long-sleeve gloves. They pull out the pink and purple chairs with heart-shaped cushions and place their dolls across the table from one another. Then they pull out the other two chairs and sit.

“What’s that, Sadie? You think this is good? Me, too,” Olivia says.

“Nellie thinks it’s good, too,” Emma says.

The girls’ giggles draw a curious Elizabeth, who peeks in the room and finds them changing their dolls’ diapers.

“You have a real baby sister to change,” Olivia says. “I wish I did.”

“Maybe you could ask Santa for one?”

Ever since Emma got a baby sister, Olivia’s been asking her parents for one. They’ve told her that she’s special, picked just for them and that even if she never has a baby sister, or brother, she can always have friends over to play. Olivia doesn’t quite understand the why behind it, but having Emma over always helps.

“You’re my bestest friend,” Rachel said, hugging me.

It was the first — and only — time Rachel was allowed to play at my house. We spread the blanket out on the living-room floor and pretended to have a picnic on the beach. The tan vinyl hassock was a sand dune and the sofa was our sailboat. We had so much fun pretending – until Matt came home.

It was in the middle of the afternoon and Grandma was in the kitchen baking chocolate-chip cookies. Matt opened the door and stumbled in with a woman whose top was cut so low that I thought her double-Ds would pop out. He knocked over the black tole-painted TV tray inside the front door where Grandma kept her keys. Grandma heard the noise and rushed into the hallway.

“Matt,” Grandma said. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Sarah has a friend over.”

Matt took a couple of steps toward Grandma, almost knocking her over. “I have a friend over, too.” His speech was slurred. “This here’s Candy.”

“Matt,” Grandma said. “Not now.”

“Get out of my way, old woman,” he said, swatting her with the back of his arm.

He looked at me. “What are you lookin’ at, kid?”

I swallowed hard and stepped in front of Rachel to protect her. “Go. Don’t hit Grandma.”

Rachel was holding onto the back of my shirt so tightly that I thought it was going to rip.

“Oh, Mattie,” the woman said. “Let’s just go to my place.”

Matt looked at Grandma, then at me.

They stumbled out the same door they came in and Grandma ran to the kitchen to take the burning cookies out of the oven. The kitchen filled with smoke and the fire alarm made a shrill sound, the kind that no matter how well you cover your ears, you still hear it.

“Want to play grown-ups?” Olivia asks.

Emma nods.

“I’m a dancer. What do you want to be?”

“A teacher.”

The girls divide the room, each taking a half for her “apartment”.

Olivia pretends to call Emma. “Were the kids good today in school?”

“There was one little boy who was bad. He pulled a girl’s hair.”

“What did you do?” Olivia asks.

“Gave him a timeout.”

“Want to come over for dinner?” Olivia asks.

“What are you having?”

“Macaroni and cheese.”

“The SpongeBob-shaped ones?” Emma asks.

“Yes,” Olivia says.

“Be right over.”

Elizabeth stands outside the room and smiles. I think she loves listening to the girls play. I know these moments are some of my favorite to record. Olivia and Emma act out what they see in real life.

One night, I was playing with my Barbie dolls in my bedroom. I was around five. I didn’t know that Grandma could hear me.

“What are you doing here?” Barbie asked. “You can barely stand.”

I made Ken wobble. “Come to get me some money.”

“But I gave you money yesterday,” Barbie said.

“And I need more today, woman.”

“You know better than to come here like this,” Barbie said.

“Are you going to give me the money or am I going to take it?”

Grandma walked in. Her hands shook. “No, no, no. That’s not how we play.”

She sat on the floor and picked up the Ken doll.

“Would you like to go out for dinner?” Grandma said in her best male voice.

“Ken doesn’t like to go out to dinner. He likes to drink,” I said. “He likes that bar around the corner.”

Grandma shook her head. “He stopped drinking.” Again, Grandma pretended to be Ken. “Would you like to go out to dinner?”

“That’s too expensive. Why don’t you pick up a roasted chicken at the grocery store and we can pretend that it came from a fancy restaurant?”

Grandma put the Ken doll down. “I can’t play anymore,” she said, and went to her room. I heard her crying.

Olivia bites into an apple and her eyebrows jump to the top of her forehead. She pulls the apple away to look at it.

“Mom,” she yells. “My tooth’s in the apple.”

Elizabeth sets down the basket of laundry. “So it’s finally come out. That tooth has been dangling for days.”

Olivia grabs some tissue and dabs the blood. She hands her mom the apple.

“Emma got a dollar for her tooth last week,” Olivia says. “Wonder what the tooth fairy will bring me.”

Elizabeth pulls the tiny tooth out of the apple. “Guess you’ll have to put your tooth under your pillow tonight and see.”

Olivia jumps up and down. “I have that special pillow Daddy bought me. It has a pocket for the tooth.”

Elizabeth smiles. “I forgot about that. You’ll have to show Daddy when he gets home.”

By the time I lost my first tooth, Matt wasn’t living with us anymore. Despite Grandma’s efforts to get him help, he sank deeper and deeper into a drunken abyss.

Sometimes, I’d catch Grandma looking through old photos of Matt when he was a baby. She even showed me a lock of hair from his first haircut and a baby-food jar filled with his baby teeth. Grandma did the same for me. She kept a curl from my first haircut in a plastic baggie and she covered a baby-food jar with pink construction paper and wrote “Sarah’s teeth” with a black marker on the side. I lost my first tooth at school.

“Look, Rachel,” I said, pinching one of my bottom teeth with my thumb and index finger and wiggling it. “Grandma said it will come out soon.”

“Want me to pull it?” Rachel asked. “My dad pulled mine and got it out.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t brave enough.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Rachel said. “I’ll do it quick. Promise.”

For a second or two, I considered Rachel’s offer but the bell rang and we had to go back to our classroom. Recess was over.