Ruby Folds Up the Day
Everything Ruby folded came out as a triangle. Tea towels, birthday cards, pillowcases, Dad’s good shirt: they went in square and came out lumpy and pointed, with a bit sticking out at one end. Ruby was very proud of this. She held up each triangle the way some people hold up a cake that has risen.
“That’s a good one,” she would say.
“It is certainly a triangle,” Mom would say. Mom folded everything into squares so flat and so neat they could have gone in the post.
Ruby lived with Mom and Dad and her little brother Sam in a narrow house at the end of a lane. In that house, the day went out on the washing line. Nobody pegged it up. It was simply there by evening, the whole day, hung in long warm lengths of cloth from the apple tree to the back door, one length for every hour. And every evening, when the sky over the lane went the blue of a good jug, somebody had to take it in, fold it and put it away.
Tonight it was Ruby and Mom. Sam was asleep already. Ruby had a spoon in her cardigan pocket, for reasons we will come to, and she had a plan.
The plan was about breakfast. At breakfast that morning, Sam had put a pancake on his head and said, “Good morning, I am the King,” and Dad had laughed so hard that milk came out of his nose. Ruby had never seen anything so funny in her whole life. She had laughed until she slid off her chair. She wanted that hour. She did not want it folded away in a drawer with all the rest. She wanted to keep it out and sleep with it under her pillow, so that if she woke in the night she could look at it and laugh all over again.
They went out into the garden with the basket. Mom unpegged the hours one by one, and Ruby held the far ends so they would not trail on the grass. Each hour was warm, the way sheets are warm when they have hung in the sun all day, and each one had a picture on it, like the picture on a tea towel. If you looked closely, the pictures were still moving, just a little.
The eight o’clock hour came off the line, and there was the kitchen, and the pancakes, and Sam in his pancake crown. There was Dad, bent over the table with milk coming out of his nose. He was still laughing.
Ruby looked at Mom. Mom looked at the hour.
“Could I,” said Ruby, and stopped.
Mom put the hour into Ruby’s arms. Then she turned around to the washing line and said, quite loudly, “My goodness, what a lot of pegs.”
Now, you might think a person who folded everything into perfect squares would count every hour going into the drawer. She did not. She had been seven herself, once.
Ruby folded the eight o’clock hour into a triangle, very lumpy, with a bit of pancake sticking out of one corner. She tucked it up the front of her cardigan, where it made her look as if she had eaten a great many pancakes.
They carried the basket up to the landing, where the airing cupboard was, and knelt on the carpet to fold the rest. They folded quietly, because Sam’s door was just across the way. The airing cupboard had a deep drawer at the bottom, warm from the pipes, and the drawer had one rule. It would not shut on anything that was not folded. One sleeve hanging out, one corner flapping, and it simply stuck.
Mom shook out seven o’clock. There was Ruby in her pajamas, hunting under the bed for her other striped sock.
“Corner to corner,” said Mom, folding it into a square, “and in it goes.”
Nine o’clock and ten o’clock went in after it. Mom’s squares lay flat in the drawer, and Ruby’s triangles sat next to them, leaning.
Then came the drive to Auntie’s. It was the dullest part of the whole day, and it took up twice as much cloth as anything else. It came out of the basket and went on and on across the landing. The picture on it was the back of Dad’s head and a field, and then the back of Dad’s head and another field.
“That’s not fair,” said Ruby. “It was the most boring bit, and it’s the biggest.”
“Boring hours always are,” said Mom. “That’s what makes them boring.”
They smoothed it out between them and folded it, and folded it again, and it made the thickest square of all. It went in at the bottom of the drawer and made a good soft floor for everything else, which is about the most useful thing a long car ride has ever done.
The three o’clock hour was the puddle. It was the biggest puddle in the lane. The picture showed Ruby in the very middle of her jump, with the splash going up. Just behind her was Mom, with a great wet patch all down her front. Ruby laughed so much she had to put her face in the basket. Mom laughed too, with her hand over her mouth, because of Sam.
“Your face,” said Ruby.
“Never mind my face,” said Mom. “Corner to corner, and in it goes.”
The four o’clock hour had something stuck to it, about halfway along. It was Ruby’s other striped sock. The day’s missing sock always turned up in the folding, and it was always stuck to half past four. Nobody knew why. Ruby peeled it off and put it with its partner, and that was the socks sorted.
Then there was only one hour left in the basket. It was teatime.
Ruby knew what was on it before Mom shook it out. There was the table, and the peas, and Sam holding Ruby’s favorite spoon, the one with the little silver rabbit on the handle. There was Ruby, red in the face, saying something very loud. And there was Sam’s lip, wobbling.
Mom tried to fold it. The cloth was stiff and scratchy, like a wool sock left out in the rain, and as soon as she let go of the corners it sprang open again.
“Let me,” said Ruby. She did her best triangle. It sprang open.
Mom tried rolling it instead, like a towel for the swimming pool. It unrolled itself across the carpet and lay there, scratchy, with Sam’s lip still wobbling.
Mom sat back on her heels. “Hm,” she said, and that was all she said.
Ruby looked at the teatime hour for a long time. Then she got up and went across the landing to Sam’s room.
Sam was asleep on his front with his knees tucked under him, so that his bottom made a little hill in the covers. The nightlight made a round moon on the wall. Ruby took the rabbit spoon out of her pocket. She had carried it about all evening, so that nobody could take it again.
She put it on the pillow next to Sam’s face.
“Sorry I shouted,” she said, very quietly. “You can have it. It’s a good spoon.”
Sam did not wake up. But his hand came out from under the covers, found the spoon and held on to it.
When Ruby came back, the teatime hour was lying on the landing as soft as a warm towel. She picked it up, and it folded flat, corner to corner, into the lumpiest triangle she had ever made.
“That’s a good one,” said Ruby.
“It certainly is,” said Mom. “And in it goes.”
The drawer slid shut with a soft bump. The whole day was inside it, except for one lumpy triangle up the front of a cardigan, and the drawer did not mind about that. The drawer never counted. It only checked the folding.
Mom tucked Ruby into bed with the eight o’clock hour under her pillow, said goodnight and went to the door.
Ruby lifted the corner of her pillow, just a little, and looked. There was Sam in his pancake crown. There was Dad, with milk coming out of his nose, still laughing.
Ruby snorted.
“Go to sleep,” said Mom from the door.
“I am,” said Ruby, and snorted again.
Across the landing, Sam slept with the rabbit spoon in his fist. In the airing cupboard, the rest of the day lay folded in the warm, squares and triangles together. Ruby fell asleep giggling. And under her pillow, all night long, in a lumpy triangle with a bit of pancake sticking out of one corner, Dad went on laughing at the pancake king.