The Popcorn Balls on Elm Street

The labels

Then I did the thing I had been thinking about all week, ever since I put the phone face down on the table Monday morning.

I typed up a little label on my computer. It said: “Popcorn, corn syrup, sugar, butter. No nuts. Made in a nut-free kitchen. Joanne Pruitt, 412 Elm Street.” And under that, my home phone number.

I printed three hundred of them at the library, because my printer at home jams if you look at it wrong. Becky at the desk ran them off on the good cardstock and would not take my quarter a page. “Put your money away,” she said.

I cut them out with my good sewing scissors. Then I slid every popcorn ball into a clear cellophane bag, tied the top with orange ribbon, and hung a label off every bow like a little price tag.

I did not do it to win an argument. I did it because Kayla was not wrong that a mother has a right to know what her child is eating.

That is the first thing they teach you at the front desk of an elementary school. I just wanted every mother on Elm Street to know.

When I was done, three hundred popcorn balls sat in rows on my dining room table, on the counters, on the washer and dryer, and on two cookie sheets balanced across the bathtub. I counted them twice. Three hundred.

I did not post a thing on Facebook. I did not comment on Kayla’s post. I did not call anyone.

I went to bed at nine o’clock with my hands wrapped in a dish towel soaked in cold water.

Halloween

Halloween was a Saturday. Town trick-or-treat in Harlow runs six to eight, and the sun went down that night at about a quarter after six, the sky going orange and then purple over the grain elevator.

At a quarter to six I carried my white folding table down to the end of the driveway, the one from the church rummage sale with one leg that needs a matchbook under it. I wiped the leaves off the top with my sleeve.

I set out the popcorn balls on my biggest trays and kept the rest in laundry baskets under the table.

I put on my long oatmeal cardigan and the knit hat my granddaughter Lily picked out for me last Christmas, the cream one with the pom-pom, because it was already forty-four degrees and dropping.

Up and down Elm Street the porch lights were coming on. The Andersons across the road had six jack-o’-lanterns on their steps.

The maples were bare now, and the leaves rattled along the curb in little bunches when the wind came.

The first ones were the little Garcia boys from down the street in their superhero capes, with their dad behind them holding a flashlight. The older one read the label out loud, slowly, the way second graders read. “Pop. Corn. Corn. Sir. Up.”

His dad laughed and said, “Syrup, buddy.” Then he looked at me and said, “We figured we’d come early, Mrs. Pruitt, before it got busy.” I did not understand what he meant by busy. I would in about twenty minutes.