Day of the Dough Head

By R.M. Hamilton

I closed the book and let out a sigh. Life, I decided, not for the first time, was terribly boring.

 I was already thirteen and if that last book was anything to go by, I hadn’t got much to show for it.

Gloomily, I made an inventory of all the things I hadn’t done.

I’d never spent the night in a castle.

I’d never accidentally found a hidden staircase by leaning up against an oak panel in a grand Elizabethan manor.

I’d never had to deal with an oil painting that climbed out of its frame each night and rampaged around in a palace, terrorizing the residents until a brave child (me, naturally), realized it was all a cunning plot by a gang of jewel thieves.

I sighed, rolled over on the grass, and absently chewed the stalk of a sour weed. I had been advised not to chew this particular weed by a variety of adults in my life, and that made its sourness all the more delicious.

I studied my dull life with increasing irritation. We lived in a beautiful bungalow with a panelled entrance. I had hoped that if vigorously hit with a fist, one of the panelled walls would fly open and reveal a secret staircase to a vault. With any luck the vault would be full of gold, and I’d be allowed to keep it.

I had applied this theory with a burst of work ethic that Mum ought to have encouraged.

Instead, my smallest brother woke up from his nap and started howling. I had forgotten that his bedroom was on the other side of the panelling. Unfortunately for me, Mum had also been snatching a nap. She emerged from her room wearing a hateful expression.

“WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?” she snarled. “I had just got him to sleep!”

“I was looking for a secret passage,” I told her loftily. That, I thought, ought to shut her up. It didn’t and I had to endure a long and nasty lecture about the impossibility of a four-inch wall concealing a staircase and the folly of little girls who believed that it could.

“In any case,” snapped Mum, bouncing my brother on her hip, “this is New Zealand. Not England. None of our houses are old enough to have secret passages! Now go outside until I call for you. You know better than to go around in the house hitting walls!”

This had led to my banishment to the back garden. I kicked the side of the swimming pool to express my disgust with life in general. I wished we lived in England. Life would not be so boring in England.

The swimming pool was a glorified paddling pool that consisted of a wide ring of corrugated metal that held up a plastic lining. We filled it with the garden hose each summer and used it, until invariably, we forgot to chlorinate it and the water turned green. It had only been up for a few days, so it was still nice and clear. I liked the sound that my foot made, bashing into the side of it.

I kicked it again.

“RUTH!”

Good grief, what was Mum going on about now?

I gave the pool one more hearty kick.

“RUTH, STOP KICKING THE POOL AND COME HERE!”

Regretfully, I slouched across the garden to where Mum stood on the porch. She gave me a tight smile. I was surprised that she was giving me any kind of smile at all actually, and I returned it cautiously.

“Ruth, Aunty Rocky has sent you a present in the post,” said Mum kindly. “Isn’t that exciting? In fact, (here a faint gleam of hope came into her eyes), I think it is a book. Isn’t that nice? A book for you to read. And after you’ve read it, you can write her a thank you note. It’s been a while since you did any schoolwork.”

She handed me the package and went back inside. She did not invite me in, and, despite the fact she had smiled at me, I felt that the quick way she slapped the door shut was something of a signal.

I began to open my package. I wasn’t too excited. Aunty Rocky was a schoolteacher and there was a high chance that the book was educational. I did not like educational books. I certainly didn’t want to have to write a letter expressing gratitude for a book on the life cycle of the blowfly.

The book fell out. I picked it up and gasped with delight. I quickly revised my opinion on the useless nature of educational books.

I stared at the book with my mouth hanging open. How had Aunty Rocky known?

This was the best book EVER!

I drew my fingers reverently across the title.

THE KID’S BIG BOOK OF DISGUISES! HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR SELF INTO ANYONE! BECOME A GREAT DETECTIVE!

I turned it over and devoured the back cover. “Do YOU want to be a famous detective?”

Oh yes. Absolutely. Most definitely!

“Disguises are an essential part of any detective’s tool kit! With THE KID’S BIG BOOK OF DISGUISES, you will be able to transform yourself into ANYONE you wish! Then you will be able to MINGLE discreetly with the MASSES until you CATCH the criminal!”

I threw the book open. It landed on a page called HOW TO LOOK OLD! “Sometimes you may want to alter your age, because it will make people perceive you differently! Follow these tricks to transform yourself into a dear old granny. No one will ever suspect you of being a big, powerful detective if you look like a dear old granny!”

My eyes glazed over. This was perfect. I saw myself, downtown, disguised as a dear old granny. I was passing the Michael Hill’s Jewellers. An alarm was going off. People were screaming and running in all directions. A man, a dreadful huge monster of a man, wearing a balaclava on his head and a chaotic Hawaiian shirt with shorts was running towards the Rose Gardens. Eighteen policemen ran after him, but he whacked them away like they were mosquitos. A sack bounced over his enormous shoulders. From it, the occasional diamond ring and pearl necklace flew out.

Beyond this point, my fantasy became a bit vague. I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to deal with a situation that had flummoxed eighteen policemen.

Maybe I could pop out from behind the wishing-well and preach him a heartwarming sermon about the wrongness of stealing jewellery.   

Yes. That was a good idea. I would preach it to him in my best ‘dear old granny’ voice and he would repent. It would be hugely moving. He would give back all the stolen things and I would be offered some large and impressive reward by the police.

I would also be on the front page of the newspaper and that would make some people treat me with a bit more respect. Even old Mrs Barb from Youth Music would have to drop the hostile glares she had been shooting at me ever since that unfortunate occurrence at the last concert.

I studied the instructions. “Take a make-up pencil and draw some little lines onto your face for wrinkles,” said the book.

That was unhelpful. I didn’t have any makeup and I seriously doubted Mum was going to hand over any of hers to help launch my forensic career as a ‘dear old granny’.   

I decided to risk entering the house, but I drew the line at purloining Mum’s makeup. I had nicked a smidge of lipstick a couple of weeks ago and she had been horrible about it.

 Dad had been horrible too. He had showed a shameful lack of trust in his own offspring and listened in stoney silence to my long and elaborate explanation of how I had been voluntarily weeding his garden when I had discovered a variety of soil that closely resembled lipstick. The only thing more disagreeable than his cold silence had been his following fiery commentary on the wrongness of deceit.  

The memory was fresh.

It had been an excellent lie, and I still couldn’t fathom how he’d seen through it.

No, much better leave Mum’s makeup alone. A ballpoint pen would do just as well. Quietly, I let myself into the house and found a pen in the top draw of the hutch dresser in the kitchen. Blue was not an ideal colour for facial lines, but it was better than incurring the wrath of my scientist father. It had been a nasty shock to find out he was so intelligent.

In front of the big round bathroom mirror, I drew blue lines all over my face. The result was not entirely satisfactory. Even I realized I did not look like a ‘dear old granny’. I returned to my book. “In order to be a convincing dear old granny, you will need to turn your hair grey! Use talcum powder to turn your hair grey! This is the best way!”

We did not have talcum powder.

Mum hated the stuff. I leaned up against the wooden cabinet in the bathroom and studied my problem. From the tongue and groove wall, a vintage pears soap print grinned down at me derisively. I stuck my tongue out at it, and returned to my problem. I had to have grey hair! I just had to have it. It would make all the difference to my career!

Then the idea hit me.

Or rather, THE IDEA.

After all, what was talcum powder? Just a bit of white powder! And I knew where to get a bit of white powder.

I crept into the kitchen and opened the pantry cupboard doors. Sitting on the bottom shelf, just where I knew it would be, was a large sack of flour. Hastily, I stuck my hand into the sack and brought up a fistful. Deciding that it might not be enough, I thrust my second hand into the sack and came up with another fistful. Then I rushed back into the bathroom with my loot.

Five minutes later, I beamed at my reflection. I had done it! Grey hair made all the difference. And that book was so wrong about talcum powder being the best way to do it. Flour was every bit as good, and far more obtainable.

No one would ever recognize me now!

I began to hobble dramatically down the hall. My lips moved soundlessly as I practiced my ‘sermon’ for the jewel thief. I smiled proudly. It was a jolly good sermon. No criminal would be able to resist its soul cleansing power. I would be famous in no time.

One of the bedroom doors opened and Rachel came out. She was wearing her swimming togs and holding a towel. She smiled at me. “Want to go for a swim, Ruth?”

My face fell. “How did you know it was me?”

Rachel assessed the situation. “Well, you’re in our house and I don’t think a strange old lady would be in our house, so I sort of guessed it was you.”

I beamed at her. What a wonderful sister. I would share all my reward with her. Or at least some of it.

No, that was rash.

But I would buy her a budget fifty cents ice cream (with no wafer) from McDonalds.

“Do you want to go swimming?” asked Rachel again.

“Alright. I’ll just go change.”

It was a lovely swim. We were soaking from head to toe when Mum emerged from the house. “Dry off and get dressed girls, we’re going to Big Fresh.”

Rachel and I gaped at each other in delight. Big Fresh was our favourite supermarket. It was full of giant smiling fruit in the produce section. It had beautiful farm murals painted all over the walls and there was a giant cow head that stuck out of the wall in the dairy section. If you pushed a big white button, the cow would shake its head and moo.

It was while I was drying off my hair that I realized something was wrong.

Something was very wrong with my hair.

It had turned into a horrible texture and what were these long white strings coming out of it? I looked at myself in the mirror.

A sort of thick grey gunk covered my head. I rubbed my head hard with the towel.

It didn’t help.

A few blobs of the mysterious substance fell to the floor, but mostly, it stayed where it was, lodged in my hair.

“Hurry up, Ruth! I want to miss rush hour,” called Mum.

Oh no! What was I to do?

A hat. Yes, a hat was what was needed. I would need to get past Mum to my room and get my pretty straw hat with the big polka dot bow. I liked that hat anyway. I would sort out my weird head problem when I got home.

I began to sneak down the hallway towards my room.

“Is that you, Ruth?” called Mum, impatiently, jiggling her keys from the kitchen. “Get in the van please.”

I would never get to my hat on time! Even now I could hear her coming to hurry me up! Frantically my eyes swept around the hall. A big chest of dress up clothes caught my eye. Hastily I opened the lid and, O happy day, pulled out a hat.

It was too bad that it was a huge old Englishman’s bowler hat. I slapped on the hat. Just in time too.

Above me towered Mum. “Why are you taking so long?” Her eyes narrowed on my bowler hat. “Why are you wearing that?”

“I like it Mum,” I told her earnestly. “I think it looks good.”

“Ruth, I don’t really think,” began Mum.

“I’m trying to be tidier in my appearance!” I told her unctuously. “Remember how you said I should try and be less grubby and not chew the ends of my hair? Well, I’m trying to be tidier, and I thought the hat would help me not chew my hair.”

I smiled angelically. That had been pretty good, I thought. Almost as good as the soul cleansing sermon I had hoped to unload on a jewel thief. I opened my mouth to say some more truly impressive things.

A harassed expression flitted across Mum’s face. “Oh whatever! Get in the van. No, stop talking Ruth. Ruth, can’t you walk and talk at the same time? Ruth, you can keep the hat on, just, (she made a strange grinding sound with her teeth), be quiet please!”

❤❤❤

We were following Mum around Big Fresh. As we passed the bakery, I caught a glimpse of a baker kneading dough in the kitchen. Something about the large, springy blob of dough was familiar.

I thought about my disguise.

I thought about my swim.

My head itched.

The penny dropped. I would have to tell Mum about this.

She would help me, but she would also say things.

 I scowled.

Then I brightened. In the middle of the bakery section was a large barrel full of buns. It bore the legend, “A Free Bun for a Good Child.”

I took an inventory of my day. I had hit the walls of the house. I had woken up my baby brother. I had kicked the swimming pool. I had stolen flour and now, beneath my bowler hat, my hair was full of dough.

I was most definitely not a good child.

But no avenging cherubim with a drawn sword was guarding the bun barrel.

I took two.

 Stuffing one into my mouth and the other into my pocket, I padded after my unfortunate parent.

“Mum!” I yelled through my full mouth, “I have something to tell you!”

The writing belongs to R.M. Hamilton and may not be reproduced without permission from the author. The picture of the dough and rolling pin was generously provided by Pixabay.