Let me tell you: Iscootedup those stairs, and Keme was right behind me.
We set to work, and honestly, Keme and I made a pretty good team.We split up the tasks.We sprayed and wiped and swept and mopped.With the proper motivation, Keme was a surprisingly hard worker.And I’d cleaned my fair share of bathrooms as a delaying tactic when I didn’t want to write, so I had plenty of experience.
Before long, we were changing the towels.
And then Keme snapped me.
He got me right in the, er, bum.I wasn’t expecting it.I didn’t even see him snap the towel.One moment, I was minding my own business, and the next, I had a red-hot welt rising under my joggers.
I shouted.I jumped.I swore.(But only a little.)
When I spun around, Keme was grinning.
So, I grabbed a towel and snapped him back.
Hescreeched.
And then he came at me again.
It turned into all-out war.Keme drove me across the bathroom and into the bedroom.I got him when he was coming through the door, and then I was on the offensive.I didn’t even realize we were both giggling like maniacs until Bobby shouted, “What’s going on up there?”
That was the end of towel snapping.
The next chore was to restock the toilet paper.It was an annoying job, to say the least—we stored the toilet paper in the cellar, and that meant going all the way downstairs and then carrying it up.
I don’t know where the idea came from, but when I saw the wiffle bat in the kitchen, it just came to me.I sent Keme back up the stairs.And then I planted myself at the bottom of the steps, got into my batting stance (I had been an absolute darling at coach pitch), and went to work.I threw a roll of toilet paper in the air and then let fly with my all-American-grand-slam-Babe-Ruth-swing-for-the-stars patented move.I hit the toilet paper, and it made it halfway up the stairs before smacking into a wall.
Keme’s jaw dropped.
And then he ran downstairs for his turn.
It took a lot of tries—my patented swing hadn’t been designed for toilet paper, which I had to explain to Keme every time he laughed at one of my misses—but eventually, we got all the toilet paper upstairs.It was a little flattened and not quite, um, roll shaped.But it was up there.That was the important thing, right?
Keme didn’t miss a beat.He ran to the bathroom and came back with one of the hampers.He emptied the towels and set the hamper on the top step.In case I didn’t get the idea, he put one foot on the hamper and rocked it forward so that it slid down the first tread before he caught it again.
For a moment, I was speechless.
Sometimes, I thought this kid was a genius.
Then I shook my head, and the light on Keme’s face died.
“Don’t want to mess up the wood,” I said.
He gave a disappointed nod.
“We’re going to have to use the servants’ stairs,” I said.
It took half a second.Then a grin flashed on his face, and we sprinted to the back stairs.
We rock-paper-scissored for who would go first.(I won, of course, even if Keme said I was cheating.) I squeezed myself into the hamper, and I said, “Don’t push me.”
Keme pushed me.
The logical part of me knows that Nathaniel Blackwood, who built Hemlock House, hadn’t designed the servants’ staircase for a laundry-hamper luge.So, it was just a lucky coincidence that the stairs were pretty much perfect.I flew down the steps—screaming because I was going way too fast, because Keme had pushed me even though I had told him not to, and this was all his fault, and it was amazing—spun around the landing, and hurtled down the next flight.
Then I saw the door at the bottom of the stairs.
It was closed.
