She would play in the mornings while her mother vacuumed and did the breakfast dishes. Small cleaning jobs, like dusting the end tables, were given to Kristi. She also had to pick up her own toys and clean the playroom so there was room to walk through it. The house had to be cleaned before her father came home because if it wasn’t clean, he would yell at her mother for not doing anything the whole day.
Kristi’s mother usually quit cleaning around 11 a.m. before her favorite soap opera. Kristi sometimes watched the show with her. At noon, Kristi’s father would come home for dinner.
In the afternoon, Kristi played in her house while her mother cleaned up after dinner and watched the soap opera that came on at 12:30 p.m. Some days Kristi’s father took a nap after dinner especially if he had worked late the night before watering the grass on the golf course. On really hot days during the summer, her father would stay up all night just moving the sprinklers on the course. The golf course didn’t have automatic sprinklers everywhere, only on the greens, and often they didn’t work. He spent the mornings mowing the greens and moving the cups on the greens and the tee markers on the tee boxes. If he was tired, he would be grouchy after dinner, so Kristi stayed out of his way and played quietly inside the playhouse with the doors to the playroom closed. She didn’t want to wake up her daddy because he would be very angry. His face would turn dark red, darker than his normally red, sunburned face, and he would shout, shaking the pictures on the walls as it bounced off of them.
She went into the playroom to play quietly in her playhouse to play with her doll. The doll had blonde hair and was the size of a six-month-old baby. Kristi had clothes for the doll that she wore when she was that size.
“Susie, Now you sit in the chair and be quiet while I get something to drink,” Kristi said quietly to the doll. The doll’s legs straightened out, and she slid out of the chair.
“I told you to stay in the chair,” Kristi said louder than before. She moved the doll’s legs and tried to keep the doll in the chair.
The playhouse was too dark to see inside since it had gotten cloudy outside. Kristi went to get a flashlight from the kitchen so she could see better.
She often used a flashlight when she played in the house at night.
When she returned, she placed the flashlight on its end in the center of the table. She began to pour the Kool-Aid, which she brought in a glass when she got the flashlight, into the small coffee pot. She set out two plates in the center of the placemats and set the fork to the left of the plate and the knife and spoon on the right just like her mother set the table. She set the cups and saucers on the table to the right of the knife and spoon. Being careful not to spill, she carefully poured the cherry Kool-Aid into the small cups. As she sat in her green wooden chair, she heard the door slam. She knew her father had left to go back to work.
As she stepped out of the playhouse, she heard her mother put the last pan on the rack to dry in the kitchen. Since her mother was finished with the dishes, Kristi knew she could use the sink. She went into the playhouse to pick up the dishes she had left and took them into the kitchen. She also took the flashlight back to the kitchen drawer. She poured out the Kool-Aid and washed the dishes. Then, she set them out to dry.
It was the middle of the afternoon, so “Electric Company” was on television. Kristi sat in a chair in the living room to watch her favorite show. After the show was over, her mother began to make supper. Kristi’s father would be home soon. Until supper, Kristi played with her Play-Doh set in the playroom. She made a cherry pie with little red Play-Doh balls for cherries, but she didn’t let it dry, instead she took apart the pie and put the dough back in the containers. She heard the door open and heard her father’s footsteps. It sounded like and elephant was walking through the house.

…to be continued