“It’s fine,” I said. “What is it?”
“Not so loud,” Jannie said, whispering. “It’s a potholder.”
“A potholder?”
“Yes, we learned how to make potholders in Starlight 4-H Club. And this is for Sally.”
“A potholder?”
“Yes, and this is for Laurie, and this is for Barry.”
“A potholder for Barry?”
“Yes, because in the mornings when his cereal’s too hot. Oh, golly.” Hastily she snatched the bottom package from the box and put it under her pillow. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” she said.
“I didn’t see it,” I told her. “I never even noticed it.”
“Good,” she said, “because that’s a secret, that one. I won’t even tell you who it’s for.”
Voices called from downstairs, and I helped Jannie get the packages back into the box and the box back into her dresser drawer and her dresser drawer shut and then we closed the door of her room behind us, with its forbidding sign, and hurried downstairs. The tree burst into light as we came into the living room, turning itself suddenly from an alien, faintly disturbing presence in the house into a thing of loveliness and color. “Ooh,” said Sally, and Barry nodded, smiling.
I took up the box named ORNAMENTS and opened it. On top was the stuffed Santa Claus doll which is always the responsibility of the youngest child, who must see that it is put under the Christmas tree and then put safely away again when the Christmas tree comes down. The Santa Claus doll is always on top of the last box because it must always be wrested at the last minute from the youngest child (“Christmas will come again, really it will”) and gotten hastily into the box and hidden. Now, just as I had promised last year, I took the Santa Claus doll and handed it into Barry’s waiting arms. “Santa Claus,” Barry said in confirmation, and returned to his place on the couch, holding the Santa Claus doll tight. Jannie began to sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and Laurie said sharply, “No, Dad, please. Let me do it; you’ll fall.”
Sally sat on the floor as close to the tree as she could get and chanted musically, “When I was youngest child it was the year of two trees, because when Mommy came to the man he had forgotten and our tree was gone for someone else. So Mommy said to the man where will I get a Christmas tree for my little children and for my little child Sally and the man said here are two thin trees with almost no branches will they do and Mommy said yes, I will take these two thin trees for my little children and for my little child Sally and we made red chains and golden bells and frankincense and garlands of red flowers and we put them around and about the two thin trees and it was Christmas and the loveliest Christmas there ever was. . . .”
“And the Christmas when Laurie was covered with spots,” Jannie said. “That was before you were born,” she told Sally.
“But I know it was because they gave him a paintbox and they thought that was why he was spotty,” Sally said.
“Remember the Christmas the furnace went off and we opened our presents all wrapped in blankets?” Laurie peered out from under the star he was fastening on top of the tree. “Boy, that was a real cool Yule.”
“Did you notice that I put ‘fur coat’ on my Christmas list again this year?” I remarked to my husband. “Not that I really expect—”
“Here it is, here it is,” said Jannie breathlessly. “The one I am going to give to my own dear daughter someday.” She had taken out her own particular treasure, a little china lady with a wide spun-glass skirt. “My own little daughter,” Jannie said.
“And you will tell her,” Sally continued smoothly, “how you used to hang it on your Christmas tree when you were a little girl, and how your mommy used to hang it on her Christmas tree when she was a little girl—”
“Mommy?” said Barry, perplexed. He turned to look at me curiously.
“When Mommy was a little girl,” Sally said, “they used to go in sleighs and sleigh bells and bring in a Yule log, but of course that was very long ago.”
“Hey,” I said, protesting, and Jannie started “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” Barry gave me a reassuring nod, shifted his Santa Claus to his other arm, and reached out for the popcorn.
I began to lift out the bright fragile ornaments. I handed them carefully to Jannie and Sally, who went back and forth from the tree, carrying the ornaments carefully with both hands and setting them with caution on the tips of the branches. Barry took the funny little wooden man, colored red and yellow, and hung him on a bottom branch, and then he came back for the little cardboard pictures of drums and soldiers and old-fashioned dolls which had come with my grandmother from England. He took them one by one and with great concentration, always holding the Santa Claus, tucked the little strings over the ends of the low branches and the little soldiers and dolls swung around and back, bending down the branches. Laurie came to the dining room table to select ornaments for the top of the tree. “Varnish dry yet?” I whispered.
“Shh.” He turned to watch his father, who was helping Sally with an ornament. “I think so,” he whispered. “You think he’ll like it?”
“It’s exactly what he’s been wanting,” I said.
“He’s going to be so surprised I can’t wait,” Laurie said happily. “By the way,” he added, “you just didn’t happen to notice a .22 rifle tucked away in a closet somewhere?”
“I wouldn’t even know what a .22 rifle looked like,” I assured him. “You know perfectly well I’m afraid of guns.”
“Brother,” Laurie said. “When Sally sees that—”
“Shh,” I said.
Laurie took up two ornaments and made for the tree. “Watch out here, you kids,” he said grandly. “This is where the professionals go into action.” He climbed onto his ladder again.
“—you will hear bells jingling and reindeers’ feet on the roof,” Sally told Barry confidentially.
I poured my husband a glass of eggnog and Jannie began to sing “The First Noel.”
“And milk and crackers for Santa Claus,” Sally went on busily, “and then we have breakfast, and you are all always my guests at breakfast and we sit on the floor in my room and eat cereal from the new cereal bowls green and red, red and green. And what do you do when you wake up?” she demanded suddenly of Barry.
“Wake Laurie and—”
I opened the last carton, labeled DECORATIONS. There on top was the cardboard candle Jannie had made in kindergarten. That always went on the dining room buffet and then there was the big Santa Claus face Sally had done in first grade and that went on the back door and the red and green paper chains Laurie had made when he was a Cub Scout went over the doorway. Not two weeks ago Barry had come home from nursery school with a greenish kind of a picture of a Christmas tree and that had somehow got itself established on the refrigerator next to the big chart Laurie always made early in December so we could all fill out our Christmas lists and keep them in plain sight. Here were the popcorn strings my mother strung when I was youngest child, and the paper bells Laurie and I made when he was so small it seems unbelievable now, and the jigsaw Santa my husband cut out that same year, and the painted candy canes and the red ribbons and the green paper wreaths. “Oh, my,” I said, looking at all of it.
“Here, you just sit down,” Jannie said. “You just don’t remember, is all. You sit down and I’ll do it.”
She sent Sally with the paper bells for the front door and Barry with the Santa Claus face and Laurie got back on his ladder and put up the paper chains and Jannie put the candy canes on the doorknob and the paper wreaths on the kitchen cabinets and the popcorn strings went around the foot of the tree because they were so old and delicate by now that they broke if we tried to hang them. Jannie and Laurie together put up the paper bells and Sally set the jigsaw Santa in the center of the dining room table. Sally reached into the box and took out the string of bells and Jannie sang “Ji
ngle Bells.” Barry hung the bells on the nail by the front door where they hang every year. “Bells and reindeers and presents,” Barry sang, and Jannie came over to drape a piece of tinsel in my hair.
“Tell me,” my husband asked Jannie confidentially, “what was in that package?”
Jannie thought. “A lovely new tie,” she said at last. “Colored red and green for Christmas and pink and yellow for Easter and red and white and blue for Fourth of July, and black.”
“I been telling you and telling you and telling you,” Sally said to Barry. “Now, do you peek?”
“No?” Barry said uncertainly.
“You get up in the morning and what do you do?”
Barry opened his mouth and said “I wake—” Sally sighed and said, “Well, then, who is coming tonight?”
Jannie began to sing “Silent Night.”
The tree was growing; it was hung with tinsel now, and every possible corner of the house held some touch of Christmas. “If one more child makes one more decoration,” my husband said, “we’ll have to move out to the barn next year.”
“You’d think some of it would fall apart from one year to the next,” I said helplessly.
“Tomorrow morning,” Sally said, “all under the tree will be presents.”
“That reminds me,” my husband said to Laurie, “you’d better get out the screwdriver and the hammer, for a couple of construction jobs we’ve got to do later. Last year I needed the wrench, too.”
“—and an orange in your stocking,” Sally said, and then at last it was time. Solemnly, reluctantly, Barry climbed down from the couch with the stuffed Santa Claus. He stood for a minute looking up at the lighted tree, his small face touched with reflected color, and then, bending low and wiggling, he crept underneath and set the Santa Claus against the trunk of the tree. “Now,” he said to the Santa Claus, “make it be Christmas.”
“He ought to say ‘God bless us every one’ or something like that,” Jannie pointed out.
“Say,” my husband said to Sally in a low voice, “how about that package hidden in the kitchen?”
“Mice,” Sally said firmly. “Full of mice.”
“Listen,” Laurie said in my ear, “suppose he doesn’t like it, after all? I mean, suppose he doesn’t like it?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “It’s just beautiful.”
Barry climbed up into his father’s lap to look further at the tree and his father bent and whispered in his ear. “What package?” said Barry, turning.
“Careful,” said Laurie warningly.
“Don’t tell,” Sally said.
Barry chuckled. “A elephant,” he said.
Jannie sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” Laurie took out the cartons to stack them on the back porch until we took the tree down again, Sally sat cross-legged on the floor watching the tree. Suddenly Sally and Barry spoke at once.
“Last Christmas—” Sally said.
“Next Christmas—” Barry said.
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