Don't Call Me Christina Kringle

by Chris Grabenstein

  Giuseppe shook his head. “No. The shoes, they are special.”

  “Why? Because you run a shoe shop?”

  “Those bronzed booties, on the bottom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They were my son’s. When he was a baby.”

  “Fascinating. Now then …”

  “My son love Christmas. All his life. So do I.”

  “Fine. Great. Whatever.” He tossed the angel on the counter so he could get down to business. “Now then, Mr. Giuseppe Lucci, you are hereby notified that you are delinquent and in default on your loan. If we do not receive payment in full by Wednesday of this week, that is in forty-eight hours, we will be forced to forthwith ask you to vacate these aforementioned premises.”

  “You want I should go on vacation?”

  “No!” said Mr. Bailey who wanted to pull out his hair. “I want you out of here!”

  He slapped the foreclosure papers down on top of the angel.

  The store bells jingled.

  “Excuse me,” said the lady entering the shop. “Can you do anything with these?” She held up a pair of high heels.

  A stockbroker burst through the door and shoved his way past the lady. He had his loafers off. A crowd of about a dozen others trailed him through the door. They were all holding up their shoes. Some carried pastry boxes.

  “Wait a minute,” said the pushy broker. “I was here first.”

  “No you were not,” protested the lady who had come into the store before him. “I was here before you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I had the idea first!”

  “No you did not! I did!”

  “Can it, sister,” said the broker. “Old man, I will pay you one thousand dollars to fix my shoes like you fixed that other guy’s!”

  “I’ll pay you eleven hundred!” countered the lady.

  “I’ve got twelve hundred,” shouted someone else.

  Now there were about twenty people jammed into the snug little shop. They all had their shoes off so the air inside the tiny shop was starting to smell. Sort of cheesy. Like a laundry hamper filled with old socks. The crowd pushed and shoved and backed Mr. Bailey, the banker, into a corner where he clutched his briefcase tightly to his chest and tried not to breathe through his nose.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Giuseppe. “What is wrong with your shoes?”

  “Nothing,” said the lady holding up her strappy high heels. “They’re fine. But, we saw what you did to that other man’s shoes.”

  “What other man?”

  “Me!” shouted Mr. Trench Coat as he strode triumphantly into the store carrying a pillar of a dozen shoeboxes stacked one on top of another. He also had a box of fresh-baked French pastries that smelled like they had just come out of a warm oven. The crowd parted as everyone gasped and gawked down in awe at his twinkling, wondrous shoes.

  “I want you to fix all my shoes the way you fixed the first pair!” He proclaimed. “And, to show my gratitude, I brought you fresh-baked Christmas cookies!”

  Giuseppe’s eyes lit up like a little boy. “I like Christmas cookies.”

  The woman quickly plopped her strappy shoes on the counter and stuck out a fistful of one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “Consider this my deposit.”

  Giuseppe didn’t know what to do. So, he took her money. His hands trembled when he tried to remember where the one-thousand-dollar key might be on his cash register.

  When the money door slid open and the tinny bell pinged, the stockbroker stepped forward with another wad of bills.

  “Take as many as you like!” he said. “But make my shoes look better than hers!”

  When Giuseppe took the dozen one-hundred-dollar bills the stockbroker offered, the man insisted he take another.

  “And,” he said, “I’ll be sending over two pounds of those fancy French cookies this afternoon to sweeten the deal!”

  Then the woman, who didn’t want to be outdone, tossed five more fifties on the counter. She promised to bake Giuseppe oatmeal-raisin chocolate-chip cookies from scratch.

  Soon everybody in the shop was tossing money at Giuseppe. One-hundred-dollar bills. Fifties. One man even tossed in a thousand-dollar bill (it had President Grover Cleveland’s face on the front).

  So much money was being tossed toward the counter, the bills fluttered around Giuseppe like autumn leaves, except these leaves were green instead of brown.

  Happier than he had been in years, Giuseppe rang up the deposits on his rickety register, nibbled on cookies in between dings, and handed out claim checks.

  “Mr. Bailey,” he shouted merrily to the banker, “you come back Wednesday morning. Maybe I have your money for you. Maybe I have it all!”

  Twenty-five

  Christina slipped out the back door of the crowded shoe shop, headed up the alley to the street, then strolled down the sidewalk and headed for school.

  Her backpack was slightly heavier than usual.

  Not much. Just a couple pounds. Just the weight of the two nine-and-a-half-inch brownies who had still been in the workroom nibbling on cookies and sipping cream when she peeked behind the curtains to see if she had been dreaming on Saturday night. Fortunately, none of the customers mobbing Grandpa’s store had seen what Christina had seen.

  “Okay,” she whispered over her shoulder, “I guess you guys are real. You’ll keep helping Grandpa, right? Because he just got a ton of new customers!”

  “Not to worry,” came the muffled reply from Professor Pencilneck.

  “You keep bringin’ us cookies,” said Nails, “we’ll keep knocking out the clodhoppers, wing tips, and wedges.”

  “So,” Christina said to the backpack, “this Mister Fred you used to work for. I’ll bet he’s looking everywhere for you two. I mean you guys are good. Real good.”

  “Too bad!” said Nails. “Mister Fred insulted us!”

  “I know. You told me. He gave you sweaters.”

  “Never give a brownie clothes,” said Professor Pencilneck. “If you do, we leave. Such has been our people’s way since time immemorial!”

  “Right,” said Christina. “No clothes. Got it.”

  She felt the two brownies squirming around in the backpack.

  “Now what’re you guys doing?”

  “Just popping up to take a quick peek,” said the professor.

  “Don’t let anybody see you!”

  “I shan’t. I’m merely peering through a tiny crack in the zipper.”

  “I poked a nail hole through the nylon.”

  “Nails!”

  “Relax, Professor. I’ll sew it up when we’re done checking out the scenery.”

  “My,” Professor Pencilneck sighed, “what marvelous shop windows! What festive decorations!”

  Christina looked at the same old storefronts she passed every day on her way to school. They were all decorated for the holidays. Twinkle lights. Wreaths. Fake snow flecked on windowpanes. Disco-dancing Santa dolls.

  “Just a bunch of cheap plastic crap you have to take down in January when it’s freezing cold,” she said. “It’s another reason I hate Christmas.”

  “Really?” said Nails skeptically.

  “Totally. If you ask me, Christmas is a waste of time and money. Christmas stinks.”

  After Homeroom, Christina went to music class.

  She was quite good on the violin; she had been taking lessons since she was six.

  This morning, as part of the school orchestra’s rehearsal for the upcoming holiday concert, she performed a piece she had worked up over the weekend. It sounded sad and melancholy. Like a funeral dirge. Something an undertaker string quartet might play during a graveside burial service.

  “That was … interesting, Christina,” said her music teacher, trying to sound positive. “Somber. Morose.”

  “Thank you. That was my intention.”

  “Uhm-hmm. What, exactly, was it?”

  “A yuletide classic.”

  “Really? I didn’t recogniz
e the tune.”

  “It’s ‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.’ That’s what it sounds like if you play it really, really slow.”

  After music came math.

  The teacher, who liked to wear loud Christmas ties all through December, strolled up the aisles between desks collecting homework papers.

  “Miss Lucci? Your homework.”

  Christina winced. She had forgotten all about her math homework! She had started it that night when Nails and Professor Pencilneck first showed up but had never gone back to finish it.

  “Right,” she said, wondering what to do or say. “Homework.”

  “You did do it, didn’t you? You had all weekend.”

  “Oh, yes sir.” She bent over. Fussed with her backpack. Unzipped the top. “But I think …”

  “What? Your dog ate it?”

  The other kids laughed.

  “No, sir. We don’t have a dog. …” She reached into the bag.

  “Where, then, is your homework, Miss Lucci?”

  “Well, sir, I …”

  While her hand was inside the backpack, she felt a stack of papers that was shoved into it.

  Stunned, Christina slowly pulled out the pages she had never worked on and handed them to the teacher.

  “I certainly hope, Miss Lucci, that you gave this assignment more attention than you typically …”

  He looked at her work.

  Then he looked amazed.

  “You factored the trisection of the angle and the quadrature of the circle?”

  “I did?” She felt a small kick in her shins from her book bag. “Yes, I did.”

  “I didn’t assign those.”

  Christina pasted a smile on her face. “I figured I could use the extra credit.”

  “Well,” said the math teacher, scratching his head, “this is a true Christmas miracle. You answered every question correctly. And your extra-credit work is exemplary. Congratulations, Miss Lucci. You might actually pass this class after all.”

  He strolled up the aisle to continue collecting papers. Christina leaned over to find a fresh pencil in her book bag.

  Actually, she wanted to whisper a word to Professor Pencilneck who was hiding behind her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “Show-off,” she said with a very grateful smile.

  The professor touched the tip of his cane to the brim of his top hat and gave her a slight bow.

  “Just finishing the work you had started,” he said in a hushed voice. “After all, it’s what we brownies do.”

  Twenty-six

  After math came language arts.

  The usual teacher was out with the flu. They had a substitute: a lady with big hair and poinsettias knit all over her sweater.

  Elizabeth Grabowski stood in front of the class and proudly presented her essay on her family’s favorite holiday traditions.

  “Christmas is the smell of cloves and mulled cider. It is a fuzzy-faced nutcracker nestled upon the mantle. It is warm cocoa and cozy mittens. It is family and friends and, just like the song says, it is the most wonderful time of the year! The end.”

  The girl smiled smugly.

  “Bravo!” the substitute teacher gushed. “Gosh, I feel all warm and toasty inside. Thank you, Elizabeth! Thank you for sharing your gift.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Let’s see …” The teacher scanned her roster. “Is there a Miss Lucci? A Miss Christina Lucci?”

  Christina limply raised her hand. “Here.”

  “Come on up. You’re next, dear!”

  “Can someone else go before me?”

  “Why? Is there some problem?”

  “Yeah,” said Christina. “I’m still in sugar shock from listening to Elizabeth’s sappy essay.”

  Her friends laughed. The teacher did not.

  “Miss Lucci, I may be a substitute but I demand full-time respect.” She snapped her fingers. Pointed to a spot on the floor directly in front of the blackboard. “Your essay. Now, if you please.”

  “But, I …”

  “Now, young lady!”

  Christina shuffled to the front of the class. She had a crumpled sheet of paper stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans. Most of her friends wouldn’t look at her. They looked down at their desks or their feet because they felt so sorry for her. Christina hated it when people pitied her.

  “We’re waiting,” said the teacher.

  Christina unfolded her essay even though she hardly glanced at the paper while she spoke.

  “Christmas Traditions,” she said, her voice strong and somewhat angry. “We have so many in my family because my father absolutely loves Christmas. We decorate every room in the apartment and every window. We buy a tree on the Friday after Thanksgiving and decorate it that night. We help my grandfather decorate his shoe shop. We exchange gifts on the morning of Christmas Eve. Right after breakfast. We open all the gifts except one. We each save one special gift for Christmas night.”

  The teacher sat back in her chair and smiled. Christina could tell she was feeling all warm and toasty again. The lady loved Christmas. Stupid substitute teacher.

  “Why do we save one special gift for Christmas night?” Christina continued. “Because on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, when normal people open their presents, my father is always busy. He puts on his Santa hat and loads up his fire truck with all sorts of toys to take to the kids in the hospitals and up in the housing projects. Kids who aren’t going to get anything else for Christmas, just the stuff Santa delivers off the back of the Engine Company 23 fire truck.

  “But then, last year, Santa, my dad, gets a 10-75 call. That’s an All-Hands Fire. So Engine Company 23 responds to the scene and Santa never comes home. There’s no special gift on Christmas day. No nothing. Just his empty place at the dinner table and a framed photograph and his bronze baby booties hanging on a fake aluminum tree in a crummy little shoe repair shop. Christmas traditions? They just remind you of what you used to do with people who aren’t around anymore. They stink. They stink like crappy chunks of cloves floating around in stinking mulled cider at Elizabeth Grabowski’s house. They stink like Christmas stinks.”

  She folded up her paper.

  “The end.”

  The horrified substitute’s jaw was hanging so low you could count her fillings.

  Christina sat down at her desk and jammed the essay into her backpack.

  When she did, she heard Nails whispering: “Boy, somebody up there sure needs a Christmas miracle. Either that, or a year’s supply of pixie dust.”

  Twenty-seven

  While Christina was reading her “holiday traditions” essay to the class, the school janitor, a roly-poly man with plastered-back hair so black and glossy it looked like he painted it on his head every morning, was waddling up the hall toward the boys’ bathroom.

  The janitor was carrying a very large wooden toolbox, a crate so heavy it made him tilt to the side.

  “Just a few more feet,” he said to himself, huffing. “Almost there.”

  This was the hardest part of his job: lugging the box up and down the school’s corridors.

  He used his free hand to push open the swinging bathroom door and stepped inside. Since classes were in session, no boys were in the boys’ room. He set the wooden toolbox down on the tile floor, went over to a sink, and swiped its water spigot with a rag. Twice. Then he touched a toilet seat with a bristle brush. Once.

  “Oh, me,” he said in a loud and stilted voice. “Some human has started cleaning this bathroom but they have not finished the job.”

  He flipped up the latches on his toolbox and raised the lid.

  “I’ll be back,” he said to his tools. “Do a good job, and I’ll bring you a carton of milk from the cafeteria!”

  Twenty-eight

  Between classes, Christina went to her locker to stow her backpack.

  “Thanks for the help on the math, Professor,” she said as she stuffed the nylon bag into the bottom of the locker.

  “You’
re welcome. Perhaps, this evening, we could take a second look at your holiday traditions essay. Jolly it up a wee bit?”

  “No thanks. Look, I have to go to science class now and I don’t want you guys playing with the chemicals and junk.”

  “I make a swell foaming volcano,” said Nails.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re not studying volcanoes!”

  “So?”

  “Just stay in here and try to stay out of trouble. Maybe you could grab a quick nap. Don’t forget, you’re going to be working on shoes all night. You need the rest.”

  Professor Pencilneck poked his head out of the book bag. He had torn off a corner of Christina’s lunch sack and origamied it into a beautiful brown rose. “My condolences on the loss of your father,” he said, handing Christina the delicate paper flower.

  “Yeah,” said Nails who had climbed up beside the professor. “Ditto.”

  Christina smiled faintly. “Thanks,” she said. She took the brown rose and tucked it into the pocket of the hoody she always wore to school in the winter. “After science, I have to go to this stupid Secret Santa party in social studies.”

  “Sounds like fun!” said the professor.

  “Yeah. Right. The whole thing’s a rip-off. Besides, I forgot to buy anybody anything. Just another human task left undone.”

  “Won’t Miss Tanake be disappointed?” said the professor.

  “How’d you know I drew Kaio’s name?”

  “I saw the note in your notebook: ‘Buy Kaio Tanake stupid Secret Santa stuff.’ ”

  “Yeah, well, she’ll get over it. The holidays are one big downer.”

  “Check your coat,” suggested Nails.

  “What?”

  “The pocket,” said Professor Pencilneck.

  Christina took her coat off its locker hook and felt around inside the pockets.

  “What’s this?”

  She pulled out a foil-wrapped gift box topped with a bow and glittering ribbon.

  “It’s for young Miss Tanake,” said the professor. “Have fun at the party.”

  “This wasn’t in here earlier.”

  “Really?” said Nails. “Well maybe some magical-type beings slipped it in when you weren’t looking. They’ll do that you know, them magical-type beings.”