Read The House Without a Christmas Tree for Free Online

irritating, and I thought it was just plain funny. The three of us seldom had the same reaction to anything. As I look back on it now, I see that our differences had a lot to do with enriching my life, but at the age of ten, I saw them only as the cause of all my troubles.
    A pancake hit the floor just then, and Grandma gave a little snort of a laugh and stomped her foot on the floor as though to punish herself for missing the target.
    â€œWhoopsie!” she said, and flung the fallen pancake halfway across the kitchen and into the sink. My dad always said she would have been a heck of a shortstop, but this morning he didn’t find her slapdash way of doing things very amusing.
    â€œIf you don’t hit my plate with one of those pretty soon,” he said, “I’ll have to leave for work without my breakfast.”
    â€œHere, Dad, you can have one of mine,” I said, and started to scrape one off my plate onto his.
    â€œNo!” said Dad, and quickly put his hand protectively over his plate. “I wouldn’t touch one of those with a shovel. The way you eat, Addie, you’ll be lucky if you live past ten.”
    That was his clever way of saying that he didn’t approve of what I put on my pancakes—peanut butter and jelly.
    â€œI’m the tallest person in the fifth grade, so I guess I’m eating OK,” I said. “And there’s really no reason why a person shouldn’t put peanut butter and jelly on pancakes. After all, they’re made of flour, just like bread, and you put peanut butter and jelly on bread, don’t you?”
    â€œI don’t! And I don’t want any lectures on what pancakes are made of either. I’ve been eating them all my life. When I can get ’em, that is,” he said, and looked meaningfully at Grandma.
    â€œComin’ up!” shouted Grandma, like a short order cook, and spun around and shot one in the direction of his plate. It landed half on his plate and half on the oilcloth, and she looked quite satisfied with that. Dad just shook his head silently and slid the pancake onto his plate, and I pressed my lips together hard to keep from laughing.
    After Dad left for work, Grandma managed to aim a couple of pancakes at her own plate and sat down at the table. I took my plate to the sink, and she noticed for the first time what I was wearing—my usual costume of jeans and red flannel cowboy shirt with green piping around the collar. I had put green rubber bands on my pigtails to match the green trim on my shirt, and I thought that was Christmasy enough for anybody the last day before Christmas vacation. Grandma didn’t agree.
    â€œYou’re not going to school like that the last day before vacation!” she said. “This is the day you open presents in your class. You ought to wear something good. Go put on your red plaid circle skirt and red sweater.”
    I knew from experience I would never win an argument about clothes with Grandma, so I groaned a lot and dragged myself into our bedroom and changed. I hated wearing skirts because I had to wear old-fashioned heavy cotton stockings that were held up by a horrid garter belt.
    In the wintertime, Grandma always made me wear “snuggies” and warm cotton undershirts, and when they were combined with garters and long stockings, I felt miserably uncomfortable and tied up. I was gangly and skinny, and I hated having my knobby knees sticking out from under my skirt. Besides, it was cold. I made a horrible face at myself in the mirror as I dressed.
    I finally got into the whole get-up, right down to my sturdy brown oxfords, which I wore every day. I was never allowed to wear tennis shoes or penny loafers or, what I wanted most of all, cowboy boots, because they would “ruin” my feet. The only other shoes I had besides my sturdy oxfords were my black patent leather Mary Janes, which I wore to church on Sunday. Then I had to take them off right away