Christmas After All Read online

  After school

  Snow is expected so we are rushing to leave early to get our tree before the roads get bad. Jackie says we’re going to have to kill the stupid hen. She is just too fat to walk on one leg and keeps falling over. Jackie says if you stew them up right they taste pretty good. So Mama nodded and said it was all right, and before you know it Jackie was out there in the garage wringing that hen’s neck. Willie Faye and I definitely have enough feathers now to finish our projects!

  Late, very late!

  Mama said Willie Faye and I could stay up as late as we want. So now it’s after midnight and Willie Faye is in Clem’s room working on presents. I’m sick of stitching feathers on hats, so I thought I would write about what has been the best day in a long time. It’s snowing now really hard. It started when we were out in Carmel — that’s this little, teensy town, not even a town really, north of the city. It’s really out in the country, not even in our county, but over in Hamilton County. There’s mostly trees and woods. And now I found out something really special about Carmel. Back in the olden days when the town was first started, it was called Bethlehem! We learned that in our Indiana history class. So it is kind of fitting that we went there to get a Christmas tree, although as Lady points out, in the real Bethlehem they didn’t exactly put up a Christmas tree and decorate it the night Jesus was born.

  Marlon said he knew this spot where the trees were lovely. He had brought a saw. My goodness, we couldn’t believe how handy Marlon was with that saw. One, two, three, he had that tree down. And we picked a real beauty. It is very tall and elegant. We have this argument every year. Ozzie and I favor fat bunchy trees, and Gwen and Lady like tall and elegant. Clem just likes pretty, which, she feels, can go either way. But this year I had to admit that I was like Clem, and that the prettiest tree was this slender one. It reminded me of a ballerina on tiptoe, and it wore its boughs as prettily and symmetrically as a ballerina’s tutu.

  I can’t say we were much help in chopping it down. We all just sat there on a log sipping cocoa from the thermos Jackie had sent with us and eating molasses crinkles while Marlon did the work. But it was so much fun and we sang Christmas carols and then Marlon surprised us all. He sang one in French!! We were dumbfounded. Marlon learned French because he worked one time in a lumber camp up in northern Minnesota on the Canadian border and most of the lumberjacks were French Canadians. That’s how he learned how to chop down trees so well. Lady says that Marlon sure is a good advertisement for learning without the benefit of school. I agree. Clem is just moony over him. You can tell.

  We brought the tree home and decorated it while we listened to Buck Rogers, and Papa did come down for the radio program but he seemed sort of distracted. He sat there as if he were in a trance with a mug of cocoa in his hand and never took a sip throughout the whole program. Then he went straight upstairs. I swear I think he practically sleeps up there. Except I don’t think he sleeps. His eyes look very red and his eyelids are puffy. I wonder what Marlon thinks of Papa. I want Marlon to think only good of our family but Papa is so strange lately. Not as bad as one father I read about in the paper, however. There was a story in the newspaper this morning about a man charged with disorderly conduct and the judge asked his wife what she wanted done with him, and she said that she wanted him kept in jail over the holidays so the children could have a happy Christmas. Gwen said that these times are the hardest on fathers. She says that so many are out of work and men don’t know what to do with time when they are out of work. That’s why you see so many tipsy downtown. Papa seems to know what to do with time. He goes upstairs but none of us knows what he’s doing up there. He has a “Please Knock” sign on the door. Now, that just isn’t like Papa at all.

  Oh, I forgot, we ate the guinea hen for dinner. It wasn’t bad. Not even a one on the vomitron. Many feathers now. We are all working like crazy on our Christmas presents.

  December 17, 1932

  Gwen is a little blue, I think because she is not going to the Christmas Tinsel Time Dance. She could go even without a date but she is afraid of running into Delbert Frink. Clem is going with Marlon and Lady is going with Homer Peet. The O’s are going without dates but Lady kind of shares Homer with them at dances like these. Gwen said she would take Ozzie and me and Willie Faye to the movies. There’s a double feature at the Circle — Tarzan the Ape Man and Horse Feathers with the Marx Brothers. This is the only show Ozzie would agree to see. He loves Tarzan comic books, and he also thinks the Marx Brothers are the cat’s whiskers.

  Lady is working on Clem’s outfit. She says Clem has to stick to that tailored tuxedo look. So now you can’t believe what she’s doing. Papa had an old tuxedo jacket that moths got to and it was generally falling apart. Well, Lady recut the whole thing to nip in at the waist and tailored it to fit Clem. Lots of the moth holes simply disappeared because they got tucked into seams. The ones that were left weren’t that bad. Then she found, in the bottom of the chest where she keeps fabric, a piece she’d bought three years before. It was a bright pink. She cut it on the bias and made a slim skirt that fell so gracefully. We were all kind of stunned. No one but Lady would ever have thought of putting pink and black together in this way. I mean, you think of pink as being a very soft, feminine color and black as being kind of mysterious and glamorous. There was just something a little shocking about it. Not in a bad way. But when Clem tried it on she looked absolutely sensational. Then Lady got the hair crimper out and heated it up on the stove. She made these soft waves in Clem’s hair and then pinned one side back with a rhinestone barrette.

  Lady’s dress was incredible. She took an old slip. At Nick Kerz in their tree-trimming section she had bought a bunch of that silver tinsel to hang on Christmas trees, and she sewed it to the slip in overlapping rows. She sewed some to a white turban she had made to cover her chopped-off hair. She looked like she belonged on top of a Christmas tree — but not exactly as an angel. Mama said Hollywood should hire Lady. Lady is kind of a genius even though she’s flunking Latin and not doing so hot in trigonometry.

  We just ate beans on toast and tomato soup for supper. I love beans on toast. We’re all going to the movies. Papa said Mama should go, too. I think she went just to please him although he’s not going.

  Later

  Papa is gone! He has left! There was a note. I cannot believe this is really happening. I can’t write anymore now.

  An hour later

  This IS really happening. But it still seems very unreal. When we got home from the movies, we sat down by the Christmas tree. It had begun to snow outside and we turned all the lights out in the living room and turned on the Spartan, which had Christmas music. Kate Smith was singing “O Holy Night.” Then Mama got this funny look on her face, jumped up, and ran upstairs. She went first to the room on the third floor. Then we heard her coming down again to her and Papa’s bedroom. Then we heard this little yelp. Gwen, Ozzie, Willie Faye, and I all jumped up and raced upstairs. Mama was standing by the bedroom door. She was holding a piece of paper. It trembled in her hands. But I was really not looking at the paper so much as I was at Mama. In the space of two minutes Mama had been transformed. It was as if she weren’t Mama anymore. There was an old lady standing in front of me. She had shrunk in her dress. Her shoulders hunched and her lips moved around the shape of words that would not come. But finally they came. “Papa has left us.”

  “Forever?” Gwen asked.

  “I don’t know. He says we are not to worry. Not to worry, hah!” Mama’s voice came out hot and scalding. Her lips scrolled into a hideous smirk. Mama looked like a monster. And then suddenly she just seemed to crumple up, crumple up like that piece of paper she crunched in her fist. She doubled over and sank to the floor. Gwen went to her and held her. Gwen kept saying, “It’ll be all right, Mama. It’ll be all right.”

  And Mama said, “Nothing’s right. Nothing’s been right for a long, long time.”

  Then Ozzie, trying to be helpful, but I could tell he was reall
y scared, said, “Well, Mama, at least he didn’t blast his head off like Mr. Otis.” Gwen gave Ozzie a poisonous look and Willie Faye grabbed Ozzie’s hand and yanked him away.

  Even later

  Lady and Clem came back and Marlon and Homer were with them along with the O’s. Gwen had to go down and tell them. Lady asked if Gwen had read the note but Gwen said Mama just told her it said not to worry. But no one has actually read it.

  I said before that this was going to be a different kind of Christmas. I sure didn’t expect this, however. It truly is The Time of the Dwindling. Our family is just dwindling away. You can’t replace a father. I mean, it’s nice having Willie Faye here, a girl my own age. And I am awfully glad that Clem has such a nice boyfriend as Marlon. But we need a father. Not just a father. We need Papa.

  December 18, 1932

  There is always this kind of funny time, I think, when you first wake up in the morning, when your head is a little bit foggy. This morning when I woke up I felt this horrible sadness. And for the first few seconds I didn’t know why I felt that way, but I knew I felt it. It just lay on me like a big clammy, wet thing. Then I remembered: Papa’s gone. He’s left. And it was as if I had to work on it. I had to think about it and kind of nod my head and say, Yes, this is true. This is so real and at the same time unreal. Other people’s fathers leave, but not ours. Now it feels like there is this big hole in our family, and I feel as if I have been snapped in two, as if I am a piece of furniture that has lost a leg or something. And this afternoon is the stupid Christmas pageant. I don’t want to go at all but Mama says we must “soldier on,” whatever that means.

  We got to school a little bit late, and when we went backstage all of a sudden everyone stopped talking and I could tell that they were looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. Within three seconds I knew that they all knew about Papa. I whispered to Willie Faye. I said, “Willie Faye, I don’t think I can do this. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “You can’t leave. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.” If I hadn’t been so upset I might have laughed. Imagine Willie Faye helping me. Willie Faye, who barely weighs sixty pounds, Willie Faye, who blew into our lives like a ball of tumbleweed, Willie Faye, who had never even seen a toilet. But I go ahead and start putting on my costume. Actually Willie Faye gave me a little push toward the rack where all the costumes hung. Then I see Martine Vontill coming toward me. She has her face all arranged in a kind of mask of pity. If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s pity, especially fake pity, and this is definitely fake pity. Willie Faye sees her coming and is just finish­ing strapping on her angel wings over her white tunic. Martine says, “Minerva, we are all so sorry to hear about your father deserting your family.”

  “DESERTING!” I can’t believe I’m hearing that word. I can almost feel this strange little tremor pass through Willie Faye. And then I hear Willie Faye speak, but it’s not really like Willie Faye’s voice. I don’t know whose voice it is but it’s coming out of that teensy body of hers and her tinfoil halo is kind of crooked over one eye. She says, “Martine, you are mistaken.” And I see Martine kind of stiffen up. “Mr. Swift has not deserted anyone. He has been called.”

  “Called?” Martine says. The arrangement of fake pity on her face begins to slip away and be replaced by genuine confusion. She wasn’t the only one confused, however. I had no idea what Willie Faye was talking about, and her voice . . . it was stranger than anything I ever listened to on The Shadow.

  “We can’t say anything more,” Willie Faye says.

  “Who called him?” Martine says, a little bit of snottiness creeping into her voice. By this time Betty and Lucy have come over. Betty turns to Martine and says, “Don’t you have ears to go with that big mouth of yours, Martine? Didn’t you hear Willie Faye say that she was not at liberty to speak?” Betty Hodges is really something when she gets her dander up. This was perfect.

  Then Lucy jumps in. “It’s obviously a mission of some sort.”

  Willie Faye nods, and when I saw her so did I. Martine just turned and walked off in a huff.

  Martine plays the innkeeper’s wife. It suits her. And I bet if she had been the innkeeper’s wife back in the time of Jesus she would have turned Mary and Joseph away, too. Some people never change.

  Then Mrs. Gordon came out and called, “Places, everyone! Places!” But before I went off to sleep in the heap with Lucy and Betty, I turned to Willie Faye. “Willie Faye, how’d you ever think up that story?”

  “I didn’t really have to think it up, Minnie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t exactly explain. I just think it’s true. Your papa wouldn’t run off. He’s not a running-off kind of man. I just know it.”

  “How do you know it, Willie Faye?”

  “I just do.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “You try too hard to understand. Your whole family does. They are just so filled up with ideas and words. It’s wonderful but sometimes it just doesn’t work.”

  “But what does work?”

  She looked down at the toes of her shoes, the ones we bought her at Stout’s. She scuffed them on the floor and the feathers at the edges of her wings sort of quivered in the breeze. “I don’t know. You just kind of got to believe.” Willie Faye turned and starting climbing the steps to the platform that the angels stand on.

  I thought about this the whole time I was in the shepherds’ heap. I sure didn’t think about bosoms even once, and if I had I don’t think I would have laughed. When it is time for the angels to come on, they play the angel song. The lights come up and the angels in their silvery satin robes appear. Everyone in the audience always goes, “Aaaah,” because it is a pretty sight. But this year you could hear them almost catch their breath. I looked up. I knew right away it was Willie Faye that made them catch their breath. She was so tiny up there but she seemed to sparkle like no other angel. And around her head, well, yes, there was the tinfoil halo but I swear there was something else. It almost looked like those little clouds of dust that puffed out of her shoes when she first arrived. But the dust wasn’t dark now. It was lit by the stage lights and seemed to swirl around her head all silvery and bright. I couldn’t take my eyes off Willie Faye. It was as if she were some little dust angel who had been blown out of the Texas Panhandle all the way to Indianapolis just for me and my family.

  Willie Faye had said, “You just kind of got to believe,” and I realized that she must have meant that we had to have faith. For what is faith but believing what you can’t see. I can’t see Papa right now but I believe that he did not desert us. I believe that he is on a mission. I think Willie Faye is right. Sometimes our family is just too talky, too filled up with ideas and trying to understand every­thing so completely, but we can believe. It’s kind of like radio. We listen to all our favorite programs, Charlie Chan, Buck Rogers, The Shadow. Radio is funny. You can’t ever see the people but you do see them in your imagination. In one way you know they aren’t real, but in another way you kind of believe they are. And it is just by believing in them, real or not, that it somehow changes you inside. It’s kind of like reading. You don’t have to believe every book you read is real to believe that it could happen. That it is a good story.

  I decided right then on stage, about three minutes before Miss Gordon got to the “Lo” part for the shepherds, that I was going to believe that Papa is on a mission. I don’t care what anybody says. I am going to have faith, and that’s all that counts in the end. I just marched right across the stage with my shepherd’s crook and looked right into the face of that raggedy old doll that they have every year in the manger and said to myself, “I believe.” And I felt Willie Faye looking down at me from the angel platform.

  I didn’t say anything more to Willie Faye that night about how much she had helped me. I didn’t say anything to Mama or Gwen or Clem or Lady or Ozzie. I feel kind of private about this. I think maybe that faith is kind of a private thing. Or maybe it’
s like what Mama always says: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”

  December 19, 1932

  Mama IS soldiering on. Her face is grim and set looking, and it seems to me that she marches instead of walks around the house. But every now and then she lets her soldier’s mask slip.

  The wind is blowing hard now, whistling down the chimney. The eaves creak and the windows rattle. When we were at the kitchen table there was a sudden gust that just turned the world outside white. Jackie looked out and said, “Even a colored person could get hisself lost in this.” Then she realized what she had said and clapped her hand over her mouth. I saw Mama’s eyes fill up with tears.

  Clem jumped right up and said, “I’m going to put on some cider with cloves and cinnamon. I just love that spicy smell swirling about on a day like this.” I think Clem would have said anything to change the subject.

  Mama just gave this brittle smile and got up from the table and said, “I’ve got some Christmas secrets to work on.” I can’t imagine what. As a matter of fact Gwen and Clem told Mama and Papa last month that they shouldn’t bother themselves with gifts for us children, that we would understand. Ozzie and I were not so sure about this. But Gwen gave us such a severe look that we didn’t say anything.

  We are all for that matter working on Christmas secrets and we have to work separately so we won’t give away any surprises. Lady and Willie Faye are working in our bedroom, putting the finishing touches on the feather hats for Clem, Gwen, and Mama. They are also working on a plaid tie and vest for Papa. I’m going up to Papa’s room to work on the decoupage boxes. Ozzie is in his lab, and Clem and the O’s are in Clem’s bedroom.