. . . But Then I Love Her Tiny Hands and Feet

The family quote for Sarah is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” Sal (one of her nicknames) is the smallest and fiercest of the Three Weird Sisters. It is not a good idea to cross Sarah, and an even worse idea to wound anyone she cares about. To give you an idea: Sal, her sisters, and I were watching Disney’s Cinderella when it came to the part where the evil stepsisters, in a fit of jealousy, rip up the ball dress that the mice and birds sewed for her. When Cinderella collapsed in tears, Haley, Sam and I joined in with sniffs and throat-clearings and murmurs of sympathy.

From across the room, Sal’s voice, low and measured and full of deadliest intent:

“I’d go to the ball. Oh, yes.”

We could instantly picture the scene: a small exquisite girl in a pale blue satin dress, standing at the head of the ballroom’s stately staircase, with an Uzi in her elbow-length-gloved arms and bandoliers of bullets crossing her gown’s exquisite beaded bodice. And Sarah would do it, too. None of us doubted that.

A friend named Lisa once paid a visit to the girls’ elementary school and happened to walk by Sal’s kindergarten classroom. The teacher, Mrs. Jarvis, was reading to an attentive half-circle of little ones. Lisa looked for a bright red head but there was none. Then she spied Sal, outside the reading group, stretched out on the floor, her arms and legs splayed out wide, chin up, fast asleep. All that energy and sometimes she just burned out like a nova.

Mrs. Jarvis also taught Sarah in second grade and found her to be a never-ending source of delight. She asked the kids to write down their favorite foods and received lots of answers like speggety and peetza and hambrgerz. But Sarah had carefully lettered

S. Cargo

Mrs. J. loved that, but was pretty shaken when Sal turned in an assignment for which she had interviewed me. To the last question, “What is your mother’s most prized possession?” Sal had carefully written, in her new cursive script, “her boobs”. I was able to reassure Mrs. Jarvis that my answer had been “my books” and she looked mightily relieved.

Which reminds me of the time that Sal burst into my room, her face almost as red as her hair, to tell on her sister: “Mom! Sam’s speaking to me in cursive!”