Hattie and the Moon in a Jar

Hattie was nine years old, and tonight, for the first time ever, she was in charge of bedtime. She had written a timetable so that nothing could go wrong.

It was on squared paper in her best pen, and it went like this. 7:00, bath, not too long. 7:15, pajamas and teeth. 7:25, one story. 7:35, lights out. 7:36, Sam asleep. And at the very bottom, underlined twice: 9:30, Mom and Dad home, everything perfect.

She had watched Mom do bedtime a thousand times. Mom did it the way she folded sheets: corners, corners, done. Hattie meant to do it just as well, and to the minute.

Officially, Grandpa was in charge. Mom said so at the door with her coat on, and Dad said so on the step, and they waved and went off down the path to the town concert. By the time they reached the gate, Grandpa was asleep in the big armchair with the newspaper over his face. He had one slipper on, and it was on the wrong foot.

“Well,” Hattie said to the newspaper. “That’s that, then.”

Sam was four. He was very good at baths and fairly good at teeth, and he could not go to sleep without his moon jar.

The moon jar lived on Sam’s windowsill. It was an old pickled-onion jar with half the label torn off, so that all it said now, in big red letters, was ICKLED ONIONS. Inside it was real moonlight. Grandpa had scooped it off the top of the hill one autumn night, when the moon was full and low and near enough to reach. It glowed silver, and when anybody carried it, it sloshed.

But moonlight does not keep forever, not even with the lid screwed tight. It runs low. On a clear night Mom would stand the jar on the open sill with the lid off, and by morning the moon had topped it up to the brim. This week there had not been one clear night. Every evening the jar was a little dimmer, and tonight there was only a spoonful of silver left at the bottom, about enough to read a stamp by.

Bath went to plan. Teeth went to plan. At 7:25 exactly Hattie read one story, and at 7:35 exactly she turned off the big light.

Sam looked at the jar. Then he looked at Hattie.

“It’s gone dark,” he said.

“It’s gone a bit dark,” Hattie said. “It’s still there.”

“Just one more question,” Sam said. “Where does the moon go when it’s cloudy?”

“Nowhere. It’s right where it always is. It’s just behind the clouds.”

Sam sat up to think about that. The clock said 7:36, and he was not asleep at all.

* * *

So Hattie went down to the kitchen drawer for the torch. As she crept past the armchair, Grandpa lifted one corner of the newspaper.

“All under control?” he said.

“Yes, Grandpa,” Hattie said, because it was her night, and everything was nearly under control.

“Splendid,” Grandpa said, and the newspaper came down again.

Upstairs, she stood the torch on the windowsill, pointing at the ceiling. It was very white and very bright. Sam screwed up his whole face.

“It looks like a dentist,” he said.

Hattie switched it off.

“Just one more question,” Sam said. “Why do dentists need such big lights?”

“So they can see your teeth.”

“Are my teeth very small?”

It was 7:44. Hattie crossed out 7:36 and wrote 7:50 in the margin.

Next she fetched the nightlight from the bathroom. It was shaped like a little boat and glowed a mild green, and it had lived beside the sink for as long as anyone could remember. She plugged it in by Sam’s bed. Sam leaned over and sniffed it.

“It smells of toothpaste,” he said.

It did, a bit.

“Just one more question. Does the moon have teeth?”

“No.”

“Then how does it eat?”

“It doesn’t eat.”

“Not even pickled onions?”

It was 7:58. Hattie crossed out 7:50 and wrote 8:05, smaller.

So she read him stories. If one story was not enough, she thought, three would do it. She read him three good long ones, one after the other, in the slow, low voice Mom used. Sam stayed awake for all three. At the end of the third he was sitting up against his pillow with his eyes wide open, like a person waiting politely for the fourth.

If you have ever put a four-year-old to bed, you will not be surprised. Hattie was.

It was half past eight. The timetable had so many crossings-out that it looked like knitting.

Hattie looked at the timetable. She looked at Sam, and at the jar with its spoonful of light. Then she folded the timetable up small and put it in her pocket.

She went to her own room and dragged back the big quilt, the one that was too heavy for summer. She pushed up Sam’s window. The air came in cool, the lamps were on all down the street, and across the road somebody’s kitchen window was yellow. Hattie climbed into the window seat and held the quilt open, and Sam climbed in beside her without a word. She unscrewed the lid of the jar and stood it on the sill between them.

“We’re going to wait for the moon,” she said.

“How long for?”

“As long as it takes. And you can ask as many questions as you like.”

Sam leaned on her shoulder. He asked whether the moon knew they were waiting, and Hattie said she expected so. He asked what Grandpa had scooped it with, and Hattie said a soup ladle, which might even have been true. Then he asked for a story, and not one out of a book.

Mom read stories out of books, because there were two children and one Mom and only so much evening. Hattie had never made up a story for anybody. But it turned out she had plenty. She told Sam about a bus that would only go uphill, so that everybody who rode it ended up at the top of the town and had to walk home. She told him about a cat who ran the post office and stamped everything, including the postman. And she told him how the moon had got into a pickled-onion jar in the first place. It had come down low one autumn night to see what Grandpa was eating, and leaned in for a closer look, and that was that.

“Does the moon like pickled onions?” Sam said.

“Nobody likes pickled onions,” Hattie said. “Except Grandpa.”

While Hattie was telling the part about the moon, the clouds over the hill grew thin. Neither of them was looking. But it may be that the moon had heard its name, and wanted to hear how the story ended. Then a gap opened, round and clean, and there was the moon in the middle of it, full and white and very close.

The moonlight came straight down into the jar. It poured the way milk pours when someone is being very careful not to spill a drop. It covered the bottom. It reached the middle. It rose up behind the red letters until ICKLED ONIONS shone silver right across the room. Sam put both hands on the glass, and the light inside sloshed against his fingers.

“It’s full,” he said.

“It’s full,” Hattie said.

Sam yawned so wide that his ears moved. “Hattie,” he said. “Just one more.” And he was asleep before he got to the question.

Hattie meant to screw on the lid and put him into bed. She meant to, in a minute.

* * *

The concert finished at nine. At half past nine exactly, which was the time at the bottom of the timetable, Mom and Dad let themselves in at the front door.

Grandpa lifted a corner of the newspaper. At some point in the evening he had found his other slipper, and he had put that one on the wrong foot too.

“All under control?” he said.

“You tell us,” Dad said. But Grandpa was asleep again.

Upstairs, Sam’s bed was empty. The big light was off and the window was wide open. Both children were asleep in the window seat under the big quilt. Between them was the jar of moonlight, full to the brim and shining.

Dad lifted Sam out and carried him to bed. Mom screwed the lid back on the jar and closed the window. Then she found the timetable poking out of Hattie’s pocket, and she unfolded it and read it by the light of the jar. It had crossings-out all down one side and little new times squeezed into the margin, smaller and smaller. The only line nobody had touched was the last one.

Mom did not move Hattie to her own bed. She tucked the big quilt round her, right where she was, and bent down close.

“You got the moon to come,” Mom said, very quietly.

Hattie was fast asleep. But she heard it all the same, and she smiled in her sleep.

So the last line on the timetable came true after all, and right on time: Mom and Dad home, everything perfect.