Write About Your Life

MARIAH BURTON NELSON

I can pull my foot up to my nose and smell it. I can do it with the other foot, too. My feet smell like the inside of my Keds.
Mommy frowned. “Young ladies don’t do that.” 
Aunt Ollie said, “How do they smell, Mollie? May I please smell?” I lifted my foot. She took a big sniff.” Oooh, very sweet feet. They smell like lilacs.
“Or gardenias?” 
We laughed and did our special wink with the right eye, then the left eye. She likes peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches too. Also our names rhyme: Mollie and Aunt Ollie.
P.J. and Cricket and I played Sea Hunt in Mommy and Daddy’s room. You dive under the covers until you get to the end of the bed, then you fall into the Deep Blue Sea, where the covers are tucked in. The other Sea Divers are not allowed to kick you. 
Daddy said, “Can’t you play outside? I’m sleeping.” 
Mommy uses perfume, powder, hairspray, and lipstick. We can borrow her brush with the silver mirror if we put it back where it belongs.
My job is to set the table. The fork goes on top of the napkin. You can fold napkins two ways: rectangles or triangles. You’re not allowed to eat with your fingers except fried chicken and watermelon. 
You’re not supposed to cook dinner when everyone else is sleeping but sometimes Aunt Ollie does. In the morning, there’s dinner on the table. Aunt Ollie tells Mommy she was just trying to help. She wasn’t being bad. 
We set up blocks in P.J.’s room. The first hamster to get to the Velveeta wins. I wanted Cleopatra to win, because she’s mine, but Confucius won. He’s P.J.’s. 
P.J. wins everything. He says, “I am a born winner.” 

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