The Christmas Portrait

by Phyllis Clark Nichols

  I could have put two stickers on December 18 because I made Granny smile when I told her I’d invite Laramie over to play. Putting that smiley face on the calendar before I went to sleep was as important to Mama as brushing my teeth or saying my prayers. We always talked about the kindnesses we’d seen or done that day, and then we said our good-night prayers.

  The wind was blowing, and it kept knocking that elm limb against the window. I pulled out my sketchbook. Without Mama, I didn’t know how to make much, but I could draw. I had the idea to draw a picture of Mama as a Christmas present for Granny Grace and Aunt Susannah Hope. So on Saturday I had gone through all ten Books of My Life. That’s what Mama called the picture albums she made for Chesler and me. She made one every year and said it told all about our lives in pictures. My birthday was in April, and it looked like if I wanted a Book Eleven, I’d have to make it myself. But there wasn’t much I wanted to remember about this year except Mama being alive.

  I had looked at all the pictures with Mama in them for a long time. I took the ones I wanted out of the book, but I was careful to label them because I wanted to put them right back where Mama had them.

  I opened up my sketchbook and picked up the photos I had chosen. I looked at them a long time, and then I chose one and began to draw. I made lots of lines, and sometimes my hand accidentally smeared them so the picture got all smudged and blurry, kind of the way I saw Mama in my mind now. I didn’t want to forget how Mama looked. My pencil could put the lines back on the paper, but nothing could make me remember Mama any better. I just had to close my eyes and try real hard to see her. And I’d draw her over and over again so I wouldn’t forget.

  I was making the long strokes of Mama’s curly hair when I noticed the silence. I looked at the clock. Ten after eleven and the movie had ended. I crammed my pencils in the cup and shuffled the pictures together and closed the sketchbook. After I turned out the light, I jumped into bed, blanket, housecoat, slippers, and all. I lay quiet, pretending to be asleep. Soon I heard Daddy’s footsteps coming up the stairs, slower than usual. Chesler had done it again, fallen asleep, even after eating marshmallows. Daddy knew better than to wake him up, so he was carrying him up the stairs. That meant no teeth-brushing. Sometimes I thought Chesler’s goal for the day was to get out of brushing his teeth.

  It wasn’t long before my door opened and Daddy came in. He bent over the bed, brushed my hair off my cheek, and kissed me. “Good night, little peep,” he whispered like he always did. Then the door closed behind him, and he went to his room. I just kept my eyes closed, and I was looking in my mind, remembering Mama’s face, when I went to sleep.

  Sometime later I heard the phone ring. Nobody in the Harding house liked it when the phone rang late at night. Then I heard Daddy talking. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but before long before lights came on and doors opened and closed.

  Daddy came into my room first. He sat on the side of the bed and put his hand on my cheek. When I opened my eyes, Daddy said, “Little peep, you have to get up. I have to go to work.”

  I knew that meant something bad had happened. “Don’t worry about getting dressed or taking anything with you, but just hurry. You can go to back to bed when we get to Aunt Susannah Hope’s.” Then he went to wake Chesler.

  “Don’t wake Chesler up, Daddy. You know how he is.” I looked at the clock. It was a little after two. I still had on my slippers and housecoat so I just went downstairs wrapped in my blanket. I got Chesler’s blanket off the sofa and met Daddy at the door to the garage. I knew he wouldn’t think to wrap Chesler up, and I knew better than to ask Daddy what was going on. He didn’t like to talk about bad stuff.

  When we got down the street to my aunt’s house, the front porch light was already on, and I could see her and Uncle Don through the glass door, standing there waiting on us. But before we got out of the car, Daddy said, “Katherine Joy, you’re a big girl now, and I want you to pray before you go back to sleep. Pray that it’ll stop snowing.” He squeezed my hand and said, “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  UNCLE DON TOOK Chesler out of Daddy’s arms and carried him to the guest room down the hall. I followed Uncle Don. “I’ll just sleep in the room with Chesler in case he wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn’t know where he is.”

  “You’re a good sister for thinking about that, Kate.” Aunt Susannah Hope tucked us in and turned on the night-light before she said good night and closed the door.

  Even though I worried about Daddy, and the wind howled outside the windows, I felt sleepy. But if Daddy asked me to pray about something, I figured it must be important. “Dear God, if You would, please just hold the clouds in Your big arms so the snow won’t come down for a while. Somebody must be in trouble, and snowing might make it worse. And dear God, please keep Daddy safe while he’s out trying to help somebody. My mama’s already in heaven, so please don’t let Daddy get hurt or lost in the snow. Amen.” I made sure Chesler was covered up, and I rolled over.

  When I woke up, I smelled bacon, and I could hear Daddy’s voice in the kitchen. Everything must be all right. I got out of bed and looked out the window. The sky was gray, but no more snow, and Daddy was safe. “Thank You, God, for listening to me and answering like I wanted You to this time.”

  I was heading down the hall to the kitchen when I heard Daddy. “Nobody’s seen her since nine o’clock last night.”

  Somebody had gone missing. I stood in the hallway outside the kitchen and listened. “We’ve got to find her soon or it could be too late if she’s injured or not prepared for this icy weather. This is about the worst December on record. All I can think about is what if it were Kate or Chesler out there in the cold. I want to see the kids, and then I have to go back out.”

  I didn’t want Daddy to go back out. He was just here to check on us and have a warm breakfast. I knew it. Then, he’d go back to help find whoever was gone missing.

  “Don’t wake the children; they’re still asleep. Do the police think somebody took her?” Aunt Susannah cracked eggs while she talked.

  “I guess it’s possible, but I don’t think so. There was no sign of forced entry, and her coat, hat, boots, and mittens are missing. Looks like she left walking, but the snow filled in her tracks so we couldn’t follow them.”

  I could hear Aunt Susannah from across the kitchen. “At least it stopped snowing. Surely you’ll find her. How did they find out she’d gone missing?”

  Then Daddy said, “The police said Fields had some of his buddies over to watch a game last night, and things got rowdy. The Harrisons next door heard the ruckus, and Roger walked over at about midnight. He didn’t like what he saw going on through the window and decided to call the police. When the police got there, they found some drug paraphernalia. Fields swore it wasn’t his, but they arrested him for possession and threatened to take him to jail. He told them he couldn’t go, he had a daughter asleep in her bedroom. So they checked, but no Laramie.”

  Laramie? Something had happened to her. Missing. Maybe lost. I wondered if she just packed her bags like her mama did and left, or maybe she was trying to find her mama. Either way she was gone. And nobody knew where she was.

  When I stepped into the kitchen, Uncle Don and my daddy were sitting at the breakfast table, Daddy holding his coffee cup in both hands like it was the only thing in the world keeping him warm. He looked up when I stepped into the room, and I hugged him hard before he could put his coffee cup down. Then I sat in the chair next to him.

  “Good morning, little peep. Did you just hear what I said?”

  “Just a little bit.”

  “Well, you’ve done a lot of growing up this year, and you need to know what’s going on. It looks like Laramie has run away from home. Do you have any idea where she may have gone?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir.”

  “Has she ever talked about a place she likes, a person she visits, or anything like that?”

&nbs
p; I drooped a little. “No, we don’t talk much.” Maybe if I’d been a better friend to Laramie, made her smile some more, she would have come to me instead of running off into the cold and snow.

  Daddy had that pinched little frown line between his eyes that he got when he thought on something too much, and he didn’t say anything more. I knew he was worried. He was probably remembering Friday afternoon when he stopped in front of the motorcycle shop and saw Laramie’s dad yanking her arm.

  Aunt Susannah Hope put breakfast on the table for Daddy and Uncle Don. “Don’t worry, John, I’ll take Kate and Chesler home to get dressed and to get whatever they want to play with today. They can spend the day with me.”

  Daddy asked, “Don, what are you doing today? Think you could help in the search? The more folks we have looking, the better our chances are of finding her.”

  “Sure, let me make a couple of calls.” Uncle Don ran his own accounting business, so he set his own hours.

  “Thanks, Don. And Susannah, tell Chesler I’m sorry about missing breakfast with him and I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Daddy gave me an extra-long hug and told me to keep praying.

  After Daddy left, Aunt Susannah Hope sent me to wake Chesler up. I sat down on his side of the bed and shook his arm. He opened his eyes and looked around, shaking his shaggy head of hair. “Why are we at Aunt Susannah’s?”

  I told him Daddy had been called out to work. “Come on, Chesler, get up. Aunt Susannah Hope’s taking us home to get dressed and to get some things to play with because we’re spending the day with her.” I didn’t tell him about Laramie because I didn’t think he needed to know.

  We went to the house to get dressed before breakfast. Aunt Susannah Hope liked to do things in order. The house was cold, so I dressed in a hurry. I got to thinking about Laramie, wondering if she was warm or where she might be.

  I could hear Aunt Susannah Hope asking Chesler what he wanted to wear. That boy had a mind of his own when it came to picking out clothes. Mama always picked out two outfits and let him choose one. That way he didn’t come out dressed like Eric on costume day at school.

  Mama had told me one time that Aunt Susannah Hope and Uncle Don couldn’t have kids. I thought that might be why she didn’t smile much. And she didn’t know how to handle us very well. She wanted to be a good aunt, I could tell she really wanted to, but she just didn’t know how.

  I knew she would need help with Chesler, so I marched into his room. “Chesler Mackenzie Harding, listen to me. We’re leaving in exactly three minutes. If you want to spend all three minutes deciding on which sweater to wear, that’s fine. That just means you won’t have time to get your games or movies to take to Aunt Susannah Hope’s.”

  Chesler dressed in a hurry and got his toys, and we went back to my aunt’s house. She hovered until almost lunchtime, making us play board game after board game. I thought I’d get a break when she started to fix lunch, but she said it was best if we came with her to the kitchen.

  “I’m going to stay here on the sofa and read.” I really needed some time to myself.

  “You can read after lunch. Besides, I have a surprise for you in the kitchen.”

  Chesler jumped up and skidded into the kitchen ahead of her. Dragging my feet, I followed behind.

  Her kitchen was like a page out of a magazine. Her whole house looked like a dollhouse. Too much white furniture and lace for me, and everywhere I looked was a bowl of dried flower petals that smelled funny. Why would she want pale, dried-up flowers when she could have fresh ones? Aunt Susannah pointed to the kitchen table, where she had set out two coloring books and two boxes of crayons. “I was planning to put these in your Christmas stockings, but I thought you might enjoy them today.”

  A Christmas coloring book? I quit coloring a long time ago. I preferred to draw. And if Aunt Susannah Hope thought Chesler would sit there and color elves and Christmas trees for more than three minutes without putting red and green marks on that white table, then she had another think coming.

  I told her thank you and pinched the back of Chesler’s arm. He yelped and when he looked at me, and I nodded toward Aunt Susannah Hope. He finally got it and thanked her too. I sat at one end of the table, and he sat down at the other end. He thumbed through the coloring book.

  I knew he wouldn’t color the elves or a doll. He didn’t like cartoons or clowns, or anything that kinda looked human but wasn’t. When a clown showed up at Gary Wilson’s birthday party last summer, Chesler nearly took down the hedge running away. I didn’t know about that boy. I guessed he just liked real people better.

  He turned every page until he saw skates and a sled, then he started coloring and chattering away just like he did in the car last night. He went over his wish list again, and then he started singing.

  I didn’t want to color, but I did. It was the polite thing to do after getting mad about the birdcage, and Aunt Susannah Hope was trying to make us happy. She just didn’t know I would rather draw a picture of Mama in my sketchbook.

  All of a sudden Chesler stopped singing and put his crayon down. “Look, Kate.” He jumped up, knocking his chair over on his way around the table to show me his picture. The little white Christmas tree, the one decorated with silver and gold balls on the window seat in the bay window? Well, it wasn’t ready for a five-year-old boy, in his sock feet, flying around the table with a coloring book for wings.

  I could see disaster coming. He bumped the table, hit the floor, and the coloring book went flying into the Christmas tree. Chesler’s feet, the coloring book, and that Christmas tree went in three different directions. I got up to see if he was all right. He always cried when he fell no matter if he was hurt or not.

  Aunt Susannah Hope ran to the Christmas tree and started picking up Christmas balls. Pieces of silver covered the floor, so I knew something was broken. She fussed at Chesler for being rowdy. “Chesler, why can’t you learn to be careful?” My aunt didn’t know that was like asking Granny Grace not to be bossy.

  I helped him get up off the floor before he got into the broken pieces. He was crying because he was scared. I tried to tell him it was okay, but Aunt Susannah Hope just kept saying, “It is not okay. You knocked the tree over and broke two of the Christmas balls.”

  I picked him up and sat down in the chair, and he held on to me like a baby spider monkey. “Tell her you’re sorry,” I whispered in his ear. This was something else on Mama’s list of things for me to do—make sure Chesler used good manners. But Chesler just kept holding on to me and whimpering. When Aunt Susannah finally got the tree back on the window seat, Chesler got out of my lap and knelt on the floor where my aunt was still picking up the pieces of the shattered silver ball.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Susannah Hope. I’m really sorry.”

  She shook her head. “You broke it. You broke it.”

  He tried to hug her. “I’m sorry I broke it, but I didn’t broke your heart.” I remembered what Mama used to say when we broke something: “It’s okay. What you broke was just a thing and now it’s a broken thing, but you didn’t break my heart.” After that always came a hug.

  Chesler said it again about not breaking her heart.

  Aunt Susannah Hope dropped the broken pieces on the floor and grabbed Chesler and gave him a big hug. She kept saying, “I’m sorry, Chesler. I’m so sorry.” I thought she was. I thought she was sorry about a lot of things. She wasn’t mean; she just didn’t know how to be like Mama. Then she ran out of the kitchen to the bathroom.

  Aunt Susannah probably had to breathe in her paper bag again, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to go home. I didn’t want to color anymore. I didn’t want to draw. I didn’t want to hear any more of Chesler’s stupid songs. I didn’t want to watch Aunt Susannah Hope get her knickers in a twist about a white plastic Christmas tree with silver balls on it, and besides, it didn’t even look real. Didn’t she remember it was Christmas and Mama wasn’t here? I just wanted to be at home, standing at the kitchen window, washing dishes
and watching the redbird in the cedar tree.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DADDY AND UNCLE Don didn’t come home for lunch, but Granny Grace walked in just about the time we sat down to eat. Maybe she could smell Aunt Susannah Hope’s barbecue and beans. My aunt didn’t know much about children, but she knew a lot about good cooking, the kind that Daddy said would stick to your ribs.

  Chesler wanted to ask the blessing before we ate. I gave him my look that said I’d pinch him if he did it wrong. Sometimes when he said the blessing, he used the one Uncle Luke taught him just to make Daddy laugh. “Good bread, good meat. Good Lord, let’s eat. Amen.”

  But Chesler said a sweet blessing, saying he was sorry for messing up the Christmas tree, and even asking God to take care of Daddy and Uncle Don. I opened my eyes while he was praying, and Granny and Aunt Susannah Hope were smiling with their eyes closed.

  After we’d been eating awhile, Granny Grace said, “Susannah Hope, you look a little green around the gills. Are you coming down with something?”

  Aunt Susannah pushed the beans around on her plate like Chesler pushed around brussels sprouts when he didn’t want to eat them. “I’m fine. I just haven’t been outside lately with all this cold weather.”

  Granny Grace just said, “Uh huh” and looked like she was worried about something she wasn’t saying. But she changed the subject. “Well, I like the Christmas plans you talked about this morning.”

  After Daddy and Uncle Don left this morning, I heard Aunt Susannah Hope talking to Granny on the phone. She told her all about Laramie, and then I heard her say, “I’m just plain weary of being sad, so I’m going to make a party out of the holidays starting today. I’m planning to do all the things Diana Joy would have done with Kate and Chesler if she were here.”