Kristin E. Andersen's Word Studio

If only Momma hadn’t answered the bell.

The tiny old thing was standing on our doorstep with a face like a dried out plum. Dressed all in purple she was – from her purple hat down to her little purple shoes.

“Why Aunt Something Something I’m so glad you’re here,” cried Momma, throwing her arms around the old prune as if she were a long lost friend.

My brother and I weren’t half so pleased. Nor did we catch her name, which as far as I could tell had as many syllables as “unpronounceable” and was just as hard to spell.

Strange news to us this lady was, but even stranger was the treasure that she cradled in her arms. Not a box of jewels or a bolt of finest silk or even a sack of cash but a cook pot, a common household thing, cast of iron and seasoned well, some cauldron’s lesser cousin.

Momma beamed to see it.

The lady hugged it close.

“Is everything prepared?” she said.

“We’re set,” said Momma and whisked her and her kettle inside without another word.

“What’s she going to do with that?” my brother asked as we wrestled with the lady’s only other cargo, a steamer trunk, as short and squat as she was.

“Beats me,” said I.

Oh, if I’d only known then what I know now.

The two of them – or three, if you’re counting cookware which surely was as much our honored guest – vanished behind the kitchen door. We didn’t see Momma next for hours.

She emerged just once and only briefly, a wild gleam in her eye, rosy circles on her cheeks and a sifting of flour on her nose.

“Just who is this Aunt Something Something and where’d she come from?” my brother asked.

“And what’s she doing in there?” I asked.

“And why can’t we go in the kitchen?” he asked.

“It’s a surprise,” said Momma and that’s all she’d say.

“Animal, vegetable or mineral?” my brother asked.

“Is it bigger than a bread box?” I asked.

“A what?” said my brother.

“Never mind,” Momma said. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. You’ll find out then.”

“But we can’t wait that long,” said my brother and for once I agreed.

“Oh, yes you can,” said Momma. “You’re going to love it, I guarantee.”

With that, she disappeared.

There was nothing else to do. We hunkered side by side at the kitchen door, our ears pressed against the wood.

While we listened, Aunt Something Something spoke what seemed to us so like a spell or other strange incantation we soon believed she was a witch.

“Did she say `eye of newt’?” I asked my brother.

“No,” he said. “It sounded more like nutmeg.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“No,” he said. “What’s cardamom?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” I said, “but it can’t be good.”

“No worse than hair of dog,” he said.

“You’ve got a point,” I said.

We listened on. Soon I was all but out of patience.

I said, “Why doesn’t Momma just tell us what it is?”

“Well, duh,” my brother said. “It wouldn’t be a surprise, then, would it?”

My brother, the realist.

The day wore on. By nightfall, I was done. “I’m going to watch TV,” I said.

“I’m going in,” said he.

Maybe it was the smells wafting under the kitchen door going to his head. Or long hours bent at the keyhole, peering in at shadows. Whatever it was, he snapped.

“No, wait!” I cried.

Too late.

He put his hand upon the door and pushed. It happened fast, so fast that out he came again before an instant passed.

“I told you two to stay out, didn’t I?” said Momma, my brother in tow. “I won’t have you spoiling the surprise.”

“But, Momma – ”

“No,” she said and sent us off to bed.

“Did you see anything?” I asked him as we climbed the stairs.

Just Aunt Something Something standing on a stool, he told me.

“She gazed into the pot,” he said. Her big black kettle sat upon the stove. “And she had something in her hand.”

“Like what?” I said. “A magic wand or an enchanted bone or maybe some crystal ball to concentrate the light?”

“No,” he said. “It looked more like a spoon to me.”

A big wooden spoon, a fact mysterious to us both, since Momma never owned the like, just store-bought plastic was all we’d ever seen.

“What’s she going to do with that?” I asked, aghast.

“Stir something,” he said.

“Stir what?” I said.

“Whatever’s in that pot, you bean-brain.”

“Oh right,” I said.

My brother, the comedian.

“So, what do you think is in there, if you’re so smart,” I said.

“Who knows,” he said. “But I’m not waiting till tomorrow to find out.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Momma, appearing at our door just then.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said. “Okay, kids, time for bed.”

And she tucked us in.

“Now, listen,” she said in her serious voice. “You go to sleep like good little children and get your rest. There’ll be time for fun and games tomorrow.”

“Surprises, too?” I asked.

“Surprises, too,” she said and kissed us both. “Sweet dreams,” she added, turning out the lights and just like that we heard her foot upon the stair, followed by this haunting admonition:

“Don’t either of you go anywhere near that kitchen.”

I drifted off. Sometime after that, I think, clouds tiptoed through the sky above our town. Past midnight here came the moon.

With visions of sugarplums gooey in my slumbering brain I snoozed, while my brother plotted. At some deep hour, he sprang.

“Wake up,” he whispered. “Now’s our time.”

My head in cobwebs I followed him, I don’t know why, downstairs. We crept across the floor boards creakless and inside the kitchen went unseen.

My brother made straight for the cook pot high upon the stove and climbed on Aunt Something Something’s stool for a peek.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I said, a little shiver traveling up my spine. For as my eyes grew accustomed to the eerie light flickering beneath the pot, such a sight swam into view I can hardly give it words!

The kitchen was a fright. Sink awash in mixing bowls. Counters strewn. Floor a mess. And then I spied one more telltale, hideous sign.

“Raisins! Ew,” I cried and shuddered.

But my brother would not be stopped. Hot pad in hand he grasped the kettle’s lid and lifted. What greeted him there he still can’t say without his neck hairs pricking.

He stared down into the pot’s steaming cloud and when it cleared, he cried, “It’s winking!”

He dropped the lid, I know not where, and scrammed. I followed. We flew upstairs and dove beneath the covers. We dared not move.

I thought I heard a sound.

“Wh-wh-what was that?” I asked.

“It’s nothing,” said he.

But there it was again – a menacing gurgle, followed by a bubble, then a burble.

“It’s coming for us,” I cried.

“Shh. It’ll pass.”

But I’m sure of what I heard and it was something worse than gas!

What transpired next is hard to tell. It started with an indefinable smell – a hint of cinnamon, a dash of clove, a whiff of vanilla and the faintest trace of –

“Is that orange or lemon?” I said.

“Not now,” my brother said. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

He was right.

The instant he spoke there loomed before my eyes a shimmering, ghostly figure.

But it was only Momma in her robe.

“What’s all this racket?” she asked.

“He did it,” I said.

“Did not,” said he.

“Sleep, you two,” said Momma firmly. But as she turned to leave the windows rattled and through the night there tolled a bone-chilling toll, not unlike a bell.

“That was a bell,” said my brother.

Too true and somewhere outside a clock struck one, two, three. Downstairs we heard a tremendous crash, followed by a rush of wind.

“You two stay here,” said Momma, going to investigate.

As soon as she was gone – don’t call me wrong – the house began to pitch.

“Never mind,” my brother said. “But do you feel that twitch?”

“It’s me,” I said. I was the nervous type.

Then suddenly there came a thud, then a thump of something bumping down the hall in our direction.

We hugged each other as the door handle turned and …

“Why, Momma,” said my brother, “what big eyes you have.”

“What big feet you have,” said I.

Note to self: when Momma’s upset, don’t mention feet.

“Have you two been somewhere I told you not to go?” she asked.

We, of course, said no.

“Then what’s that mess?”

Much ado she made of lids gone missing and a certain something in a certain pot that used to be but now was not.

“Kitchen!” she charged and off we went.

But from the landing of the stairs we glimpsed a frightful sight: bubble, bubble from off the stove, the boiling, sticky mass went steaming. From the kitchen first, then room to room, no lid to foil it. Now no toil could put it back.

“Thar she blows!” my brother cried.

No truer words have ever passed his lips for upon that tide there went our desk and lamp and coffee table, as noble as a fleet of sailing ships.

I swooned, my brother quailed, our Momma gasped to see that weird procession –

our furniture afloat, our Christmas tree and gifts all bobbing by!

“That’s my couch, you fiend!” Momma cried, incensed.

She seized a mop and gave the ooze a stunning blow. But the mop stuck fast.

She had to let it go or risk the fate of couch and chair and potted Ficus plant, now sliding out the door without a backward glance.

The ooze kept oozing – molasses tide, it kept on rising towards our toes.

“We’re outta here,” said Momma.

“What about Aunt Something Something?” I asked.

No chance to look. No time to tell. With gooey foe in hot pursuit, we fled fast as feet would go and slammed the attic door behind us tight.

To the window, round as a porthole, we hastened next. In the sky high above, the moon painted a mysterious, mayonnaise glow.

But down below –

“Yikes,” I cried. “Is that –?”

“Uh-oh,” said my brother.

“Oh, my goodness,” Momma said.

Where stoop and yard and street once stood something wicked, even wily undulated.

Oozing out in all directions, it glommed our neighbor’s house. It gathered cars and sucked up street lights and plastic Santa Clauses.

Whole blocks went next and fences and at least a dozen benches from the park, the swings, the teeter-totter.

“And that little dog, too!” cried Momma.

Nor did it pause to look both ways when it reached the intersection. It kept on rolling, like a runaway train, a terrible train of goo.

Defiant, relentless, that sticky tide rolled on, through the night, on toward dawn and beyond. Under moonlight, past sun rise and clear after noon and pretty soon our whole town was floating in a monstrous, sticky stew.

“Aunt Something Something warned me,” Momma said. “If only she were here.”

Where she was or what befell her no one knew. It all seemed hopeless, then

“Look,” said my brother.

I saw it, too.

“Is that –?” I said in wonder.

“I think so,” Momma said.

“Of course it is,” my brother said. “Who else?”

It was her all right. Just when the nick of time was at its nickest, Aunt Something Something came to save us from a situation at its thickest.

And in her hand she bore a tiny purple broom.

“Aha, I told you she was a witch,” my brother declared.

“She is not,” said Momma.

“Then what’s she going to do with that?” he said.

“You watch and see.”

Oh, what bravery! What skill we witnessed then! What sweeping craftsmanship! Was she a knight? A Zorro? No. More like a curler.

“A curler?” said my brother.

“You know, that sport Canadians play?”

“Are you off your rocker?” he said.

My brother, the psychologist.

With broom in hand our little lady swept down upon our foe. No dragon was ever laid so low by Saintly George or Siegfried handsome. No cleaner victory ever won, by at least a mile and then some.

Upon the field that day she battled batter. She beat that beastly brew. And in the end she trimmed that trifle down to size. In short, she whipped that ghastly goo and saved our town. Our hero, our mighty pudding tamer – purple, petit, yet proud.

We dined that night al fresco beneath the Christmas moon. We ate our fill, our bowls piled high, our feast was just desserts.

“I told you you’d be surprised,” said Momma.

“I’ll say,” said I.

“More pudding, please,” my brother said.

My brother, the bottomless pit.

Next time you’re in our town, go see the statue and the plaque that tells the story of Aunt Something Something and how she won the day.

And if you’re wise, you’ll follow her advice.

“If you want your Christmas pudding nice, cover it and don’t you peek until it’s time to eat.”