Free The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery Page B

supervision, the workers knocked down the Nedbals’ walls and ceiling and then moved up to the roof, cutting the rafters with their chain saws and throwing the terra-cotta tiles onto the ground, making a tremendous racket and filling the house with clouds of red dust.
    It was obviously not a safe environment for a little girl, so my parents asked Oma if she would mind taking care of me at her apartment. Two months of babysitting had taken its toll on both of us, but she graciously agreed. Every morning she would collect me at eight and we would walk to the opposite side of the hill, where she lived in the basement of a small art deco villa. We would climb down a steep flight of steps from the road to her garden, and Oma would unlock her front door with one of the many keys she carried on a big safety pin. Her apartment was dark and cold, and the plaster on the ceiling kept peeling off and falling onto the carpet. She also lived right next to the cellar, so everything smelled like old potatoes and coal. We weren’t allowed to sit in the garden, because it was her landlord’s private property, so Oma would switch on an electric heater and position me in front of the TV. Her television set was broken, so she would spend a lot of time fiddling with the aerial and sticking it out of the window to catch what little signal there was, but the screen was always grainy and it was always the same boring arts-and-crafts shows. Every day, I would carry my big book of fairy tales to her apartment, but the basement was so quiet and grim it made the scary parts of the stories even more scary than usual, and I was always too frightened to ask her to read to me.
    After lunch, which would usually consist of Kartoffeln and some kind of meat, Oma would ask me to help with her knitting. Lately, this was all we did in the afternoons. We were having the most beautiful weather outside, and I grew more and more frustrated in Oma’s damp apartment. Every morning I would walk to her house as slowly as I could, savoring the sunshine and the smell of fresh lawn clippings, and I would say hello to the old ladies and wish that they were my grandmothers instead of Oma. It didn’t seem fair that there were so many nice ladies and lovely gardens in our street while I had to be babysat by someone who wanted to spend all her time indoors.
    The summer holidays passed incredibly slowly, and after two weeks, I was bored to the point of tears. It was a crucial week on the construction site. They were at the point of dismantling the truss, and my father was paying six roofers twenty crowns an hour each (a lot of money in those days). He needed them to work quickly, because the weather forecast had predicted rain in a week, and it was important to have the roof up by then. My mother and sister were exhausted, and my dad was tense and short-tempered, and even though I didn’t understand what was going on, I was in a sulky mood as well. I didn’t want to go to Oma’s apartment, so I started to behave badly the moment she came to pick me up.
    â€œCan’t we go to the forest? Just for a little while?” I wheedled as she helped me into my jacket.
    â€œNot today,” she said distractedly. “I need to buy a few eggs so I can cook you your breakfast.”
    â€œI don’t want eggs for breakfast!” I cried. “I want to go to the forest! You always say ‘not today,’ and we never end up going. Why can’t we eat here and then go to the forest?”
    â€œYou know very well why we can’t,” Oma told me. “Your kitchen is full of dust. Now come along, put your jacket on and I’ll make you a nice breakfast at my place.”
    â€œI don’t like your place!” I said angrily. “It’s cold and dark and it smells funny.”
    â€œLittle dwarf, you are trying my patience,” Oma snapped. “Get ready, or I’ll tell your mother you’re being