My mind was racing, especially when Ursula concluded it was better for my father, my mother and the girl that way. My mother returned to evaluate my progress. I rushed back to Fool’s Stool and poked the quail with my fork.

“Mom, I’m really not hungry!” I complained so she would not suspect all I’d been lucky enough to learn.

My hand was trembling. My mother stared at me for some time.

“It’s a’kay,” she patted me on the head, “Go an’ play wit’ you sis’er.”

I ran to tell Cecilia everything.

CHAPTER 2

Cecilia and I were given dye-kits with which to colour eggs boiled in vinegar. My mother had been indifferent to my aesthetical pleas to purchase white eggs. She claimed brown eggs more “natur’l”. In reality, they were five cents less.

Cecilia proceeded in a spontaneous manner, dipping the brown shell in traditional Easter colours, yellow, pink, sky-blue. I wanted to give each of our guests a more unique egg. A tricoloured German flag egg seemed suitable for Ursula. I dipped the thinner end in orange, then discovered to my dismay that there was no black in the kit.

“Black is not a colour,” smirked Cecilia.

I kept the upper part orange and gave the lower part blue eyes and orange freckles, for Tommy Tatta’s egg. Cecilia said this wasn’t nice. Taking her advice, I dipped it in blue, and the whole egg turned a dreary smoky purple, more suitable for Hallowe’en.

“It looks like a sparrow’s egg now,” Cecilia consoled with a forged smile and a somewhat humid pat on my shoulder.

It was out of the question that our mother would let us have extra eggs for the flops. Those cracked from overboiling, with outgrowths of egg white, we had to put in our own baskets. I thought the whole ceremony futile. Even the fanciest Easter egg was nothing but a hard-boiled egg when you came down to it.

Lucy and Rosa Minsky sat on the grass in the backyard, their knees opening and closing in their dresses like butterfly wings. Tommy Tatta and Timmy Tatta, Ursula must have been inspired by the Little Drummer Boy when choosing their first names, amused themselves by throwing our pebbles into the canal to make them skip. As soon as the adults proudly emerged with their camera, the children ran towards the boat davits where Easter baskets were conspicuously hung. My feet shovelled the gravel as I walked. The hiding places were an insult to human intelligence.

I chuckled inside. It was their first Easter at my mother’s. My mother wasn’t about to allow us to have chocolate bunnies, although she almost hesitated at white chocolate this year, claiming white more natural than brown. Unlike egg shells. She nevertheless abandoned the stiffly standing bunnies on the health food shelf. My mother refused to “throw hardworkin’ money out de window for dat junk”. “Hardworkin’ money”, meant money that accumulated interest.

The boys emptied their baskets on the dock. I watched their faces. Besides a boiled egg, each basket contained a pound of dates, unshelled walnuts and dried figs. Easter bunny must have turned into a health freak. Tommy picked up his handsomest walnut and threw it at the canal. It skipped five times, which was his record.