How I Saved Hanukkah Read Online Free PDF Page A

Eva? Actually she would have been your great-aunt. Oh. You were too young. In fact, you weren’t born . . . .”
    My mom stared at nothing some more and Ned got fidgety.
    “Mom!” I said after a while. “Are you going to tell us or not?”
    My mom looked at me and Lucy and Ned as if she didn’t know who we were, and then she laughed.
    “Right. Hanukkah when I was little. It was wild. There were, let me see, Auntie Eva had four kids,Selma had three . . . Rusty and Bernice each had two. How many cousins is that? And a bunch of uncles, and . . . ”
    “You all had horses?” Ned asked.
    “No, baby,” my mom said, “Fords and Chevys. It was Detroit, after all.”
    I was afraid Mom would fade out again so I said, “And . . . ”
    “And . . . ” my mom continued, “we’d all cram into Auntie Eva’s apartment. A two-bedroom walk-up. And there was always the big debate about whose latkes were better. I liked them thin and crisp, but my cousin Andrea liked the fat, fall-apart kind.
    “All the aunts brought their latkes on trays to heat up in the oven, except for Auntie Eva, who was frying them fresh in her teeny kitchen, with all four burners going.
    “Cousins Robert and Alan would chase each other around, slugging it out, knocking over lamps. And Auntie Eva’s mean little yippy dog would be frantic . . . . The uncles would smoke cigars. Cousins Laurie and Susie would poke through the grab-bag gifts calling dibs . . . . Babies were put down to sleep onthe pile of coats on the bed . . . and their mothers would try to hush us . . . .”
    My mom’s voice drifted away again. She sat hooking a hank of her hair behind her ear, only for it to unhook immediately and need hooking again. I bet she doesn’t even know she does that a million times a day.
    By this time Ned had wandered off to play with his trucks. Lucy and I got up and started clearing the table and loading the dishwasher.
    “My mom never finishes her stories about back then,” I told Lucy. “She either starts crying, remembering dead people, or she just zones out into space like that.”
    *    *    *
    When Dad called, I let Ned shriek into the phone awhile. Then I grabbed it away from him and said, “Dad, you won’t believe this, but Mom made latkes tonight!”
    There was a big noise. Then my dad said, “That sound was me falling off my chair!”
    “We saved you some of the latke stuff. You can have it when you get home tomorrow,” I told him.
    “I’m sorry, sweetpea,” he said. “I’d give anything to see Mommy making latkes, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to make it tomorrow. Marla? Marla, are you there?”
    I gave the phone to my mom.

CHAPTER
6
    T he last day of school! And only a half a day! Lucy and I agreed that no matter what dumb “fun” Mrs. Guyer came up with, we could get through a half a day. And we did.
    When we got home, Ned was acting weird, the way he does when my dad has been gone too long. I mean, he acts plenty weird always, but he gets even worse. He was half weepy and clingy, and half mean and violent. A truly annoying combination.
    My mom told us that Ned was driving her nuts and she had a ton of work to do, so Lucy said we’d be
glad
to take him out for a while.
    “I can’t believe you said that!” I hissed.
    “We promised your mom that we’d help . . . ” Lucy said.
    When I made a face at her, she said, “It’ll be fun!”
    “Fun?” I scowled at Lucy, thinking, Sure, as “fun”as making blue-and-white decorations. Baby-sitting Ned was precisely how I did not want to begin my vacation.
    My mom raised her eyebrows and looked from me to Lucy and back again. I feared a helpful lecture, so I said, “Fine. We’ll take him, but Lucy is watching him. Not me!”
    “It will be my pleasure,” Lucy told my mom in her goody-goody voice.
    About the only place close enough to walk with Ned is the library two blocks away. I did not want to go to the library. But