She hurried to the hall, and when Lizzie reached the bottom step, Sheila was kneeling, just at Lizzie’s height, waiting for her. Lizzie didn’t cry at the sight of a strange woman and she didn’t ask where her parents were. She just stared intently at Sheila, who said, “Hello, Lizzie, I’m Sheila, your new babysitter. I’m going to live in your house, so we’ll have lots of time to play. We’ll have a lot of fun together.” She held out her hand to Lizzie. “Let’s go eat breakfast. How do pancakes sound to you?” Lizzie smiled and took Sheila’s hand and they walked to the kitchen.
Lizzie loved Sheila from that moment on. She could climb onto Sheila’s lap to listen to a story (Sheila was big on reading stories to her) and not be afraid that she’d be poked by a sharp hipbone or misplaced elbow. Sheila’s body was like the coziest couch in the world; it was comforting and welcoming and homey. Even when Sheila had an exam she should be studying for, she’d put Lizzie first.
Every day after she picked Lizzie up from day care (later from elementary school) they’d do something special together. Sometimes they’d go to the park and Sheila would teach Lizzie how to weave flowers together into bracelets or tiaras. A tiara made of Queen Anne’s lace! Who even knew it was possible? Sometimes they’d look for four-leaf clovers. Throughout her entire life, Lizzie never met anyone else who could find four-leaf clovers like Sheila could. Any patch of wild clover would yield one up the minute Sheila started looking. Sometimes they’d go to the library and Sheila would check out the books that she’d loved when she was Lizzie’s age. Sometimes they’d go to Sheila’s house and watch her father’s model trains make their way over a complicated layout, and Sheila’s mother always had cookies and milk waiting for them.
Or they’d stop at a crafts store and Sheila would buy yarn and big knitting needles and teach Lizzie to knit. She bought jars of finger paint in every color available and big sheets of paper so they could smear the colors together to their hearts’ content. At Christmastime, Lizzie, with Sheila’s help, wove potholders as presents for her teachers and Sheila’s mother. It was no use giving one to Lydia. She didn’t ever cook.
When they did go straight home it usually meant that Sheila had some idea that involved food. Sometimes they’d spread crackers with peanut butter and pile one on top of another to make a tower. Then they’d see how many peanut-buttery crackers they could eat at one time. Lizzie’s record at age eight was eleven, which Sheila told her surely set a new record for her age group. Saltines were the best for this purpose, and Sheila made sure that the Bultmann pantry always had an almost full box of them. Sheila taught Lizzie how to make brownies in a mug using the microwave and how to pop popcorn from scratch.
Sheila brought her portable sewing machine over to the Bultmanns’ and showed Lizzie how to use it. Sheila made most of her own clothes and she let Lizzie help with the easy seams. Once Lizzie got to put the zipper in. It’s true that Sheila then had to carefully unstitch the zipper so that she could put it in again, correctly, but still she was very complimentary about Lizzie’s first attempt at doing something that was really hard. (It should be noted that after Sheila went on to live the rest of her life, without Lizzie, Lizzie never touched a sewing machine again.)
For a very long time, the best day of Lizzie’s life was the day that Sheila and her boyfriend, Lucas Apple, took Lizzie to the Michigan State Fair. They drove to Detroit early in the morning and spent the whole day there. Not only did they wander through the barns to see all the animals—and Lizzie got to pet a goat and a horse and a pig—but she also rode on the merry-go-round (three times), the Ferris wheel (twice), and an exciting ride called the Tilt-A-Whirl, which she only went on once because it was a little too scary. They had cotton candy and hot dogs and fried Jell-O and elephant ears. Lizzie was a little nervous when Lucas ordered the elephant ears, but when she saw they weren’t really the ears of an elephant, and especially after she tasted one, she didn’t want to eat anything else, ever. When Lizzie’s legs got tired, Lucas put her up on his shoulders so she could see everything that was happening. They didn’t leave for home until after it got dark, and they stopped for dinner on the way home at Bill Knapp’s because Sheila wanted Lizzie to have the fried chicken and biscuits and then have the chocolate cake for dessert.
Sheila moved out when Lizzie was nine. Because Lydia and Mendel were both at home when she said good-bye to Lizzie, it was a sadly formal occasion. Neither wanted to cry in front of Lizzie’s parents. All they could do was hug each other for a long time.
That was Sheila.
*?Mysteries of Kindergarten?*
Lizzie and Andrea both went to Hally School for kindergarten, but were in different classes. Lizzie’s teacher, Miss Beadle, was tall and stern and often cranky. It was unclear if she really liked kids or not. Andrea’s teacher was short, plump, and jolly. Could her name have actually been Mrs. Jolly? That’s what Lizzie remembers. “You have to be jolly when you’re short and plump,” Sheila told her once, darkly. “Otherwise it’s intolerable.”
Andrea’s classroom was large—really the length and width of two classrooms. It had lots of windows. There were murals of nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale characters on the walls: Hansel and Gretel walking through the woods on their way to the witch’s house, holding hands; Humpty-Dumpty on his wall, surveying the scenery; Sleeping Beauty at her christening; the Three Little Pigs whistling happily as they built their houses. You knew, when you looked at the pictures, that bad stuff was going to happen to them all, but not quite yet. There were trunks of clothes to use for dress-up, almost anything you could think of to be: pirate, princess, carpenter, bride, goblin, hobo, and spaceman.
At one of the long ends of the room there was a kitchen, with a miniature stove, sink, and refrigerator. The refrigerator door opened and water came out of the sink’s faucet. The stove had four painted-on burners and an oven with a door you could open and pretend to bake your pies and cakes. There were pots and pans in the cupboard under the sink, and plastic dishes and silverware. At the other end of the room was a workshop, with a variety of pretend (but very realistic-looking) tools: saws and hammers, screws, nails, and pliers.
There was a grid painted on the floor, so that on rainy or cold days you could still play hopscotch. There was even a space large enough for a pretty good game of freeze tag inside Mrs. Jolly’s room. There were shelves and shelves of dolls and doll clothes and puppets. Piles of games like Uncle Wiggly, Parcheesi, and Candy Land. A little library of books. Lizzie’s whole class went there for an hour two mornings every week.