time, even for one beginning to despair, and doubt, and distrust. Secretly, Chris and I had been making gifts for Momma (who really didn't need anything), and gifts for the twins--plushy stuffed animals that we tediously backstitched by hand, and then filled with cotton. I did all the embroidery work on the faces when they were still flat. I was, in private in the bathroom, knitting Chris a cap of scarlet wool--it grew and it grew and it grew; I think Momma must
have forgotten to tell me something about gauge. Then Chris came up with an absolutely idiotic and
horrific suggestion. "Let's make the grandmother a
gift, too. It's really not right to leave her out. She does
bring up our food and milk, and who knows, a token
like this may be just the thing needed to win over her
affection. And think how much more enjoyable our
lives would be if she could tolerate us."
I was dopey enough to think it might work, and
for hours and hours we slaved on a gift for an old
witch who hated us. In all this time she had never
even once said our names.
We bonded tan linen to a stretcher frame, glued on
different colored stones, then carefully applied gold
and brown cording. If we made a mistake, ever so
painstakingly we'd do it over and make it right so she
wouldn't notice. She was bound to be a perfectionist who'd see the slightest flaw and frown. And never, truly, would we give her anything less than our best
efforts could produce.
"You see," said Chris again, "I really do believe
we have a chance in winning her over to our side.
After all, she is our grand- mother, and people do
change. No one is static. While Momma works to
charm her father, we must work to charm her mother.
And even if she refuses to look at me, she does look at
you."
She didn't look at me, not really, she only saw my
hair--for some reason she was fascinated by my hair. "Remember, Cathy, she did give us yellow
chrysanthemums." He was right--that alone was a
strong straw to grasp.
In the late afternoon, toward dusk, Momma came
to our room bearing a live Christmas tree in a small
wooden tub. A balsam tree--what could smell more
like Christmas? Momma's wool dress was of bright
red jersey; it clung and showed off all the curves I
hoped to have one day. She was laughing and gay,
making us happy, too, as she stayed to help us trim
the tree with the miniature ornaments and lights she'd
brought along. She gave us four stockings to drape on
the bedposts for Santa to find and fill.
"Next year this time we'll be living in our own
house," she said brightly, and I believed.
"Yes," said Momma, smiling, filling all of us with
cheer, "next year this time life will be so wonderful
for all of us. We'll have plenty of money to buy a
grand home of our own, and everything you want will
be yours. In no time at all, you'll for- get this room,
the attic. And all the days you have all endured so
bravely will be forgotten, just like it never happened." She kissed us, and said she loved us. We watched
her leave and didn't feel bereft, as before. She filled
all our eyes, all our hopes and dreams.
Momma came in the night while we slept. In the
morning I woke up to see the stockings filled to the
brim. And gifts galore were stacked under the small
table where the tree was, and in every empty,
available space in that room were all the toys for the
twins that were too large and awkward to wrap. My eyes met with Chris's. He winked, grinned,
then bounded from his bed. He grabbed for the silver
bells attached to red plastic reins, and he shook them
vigorously above his head. "Merry Christmas!" he
boomed. "Wake up, everybody! Cory, Carrie, you
sleepyheads--open your eyes, get up, and behold!
Look and see what Santa Claus brought!"
They came so slowly out of dreams, rubbing at
sticky eyes, staring in disbelief at the many toys, at
the beautifully wrapped packages with name tags, at
the striped stockings stuffed with cookies, nuts,
candy, fruit, chewing gum, peppermint sticks,
chocolate Santas.
Real candy--at last! Hard candy, that colorful
kind that churches and schools gave out at their
parties, the best kind of candy for making black holes
in your teeth. Oh, but it looked and tasted so
Christmasy!
Cory sat on his bed, bedazzled, and again his
small fists lifted to rub at his eyes, and he appeared
too bewildered for speech.
But Carrie could always find words. "How did
Santa Claus find us?"
"Oh, Santa has magic eyes," explained Chris, who
lifted Carrie up and swung her to his shoulder, and
then he reached to do this to Cory, too. He was doing
as Daddy would have done, and tears came to my
eyes.
"Santa would never overlook children
deliberately," he said, "and besides, he knew you were
here. I made sure he knew, for I sat down and wrote
him one very long letter, and gave him our address, and I made out a list of things we wanted that was
three feet long."
How funny, I thought. For the list of what all four
of us wanted was so short and simple. We wanted
outside. We wanted our freedom.
I sat up in bed and looked around, and felt a soursweet lump in my throat. Momma had tried, oh, yes.
She'd tried, done her best from the way it looked. She
did love us, she did care. Why, it must have taken her
months to buy all of this.
I was ashamed and full of contrition for
everything mean and ugly I'd thought. That's what
came from wanting everything, and at once, and
having no patience, and no faith.
Chris turned to look at me questioningly. "Aren't
you ever gonna get up? Gonna sit there the whole day
through--you don't like gifts anymore?"
While Cory and Carrie tore off gift wrappings,
Chris came over to me and stretched out his hand.
"Come, Cathy, enjoy the only Christmas you'll have
in your twelfth year. Make this a unique Christmas,
different from any we will experience in the future."
His blue eyes pleaded.
He was wearing rumpled red pajamas piped in
white, and his gold hair fluffed out wildly. I was wearing a red nightgown made of fleece, and my long hair was far more disheveled than his. Into his warm hand I put my own, and I laughed. Christmas was Christmas, no matter where you were, and whatever the circumstances, it was still a day to enjoy. We opened everything wrapped, and we tried on our new clothes while stuffing candy into our mouths before breakfast. And "Santa" had left a note telling us to hide the candy from a certain "you-know-who." After all, candy still caused cavities. Even on Christmas
Day.
I sat on the floor wearing a stunning new robe of
green velvet. Chris had a new robe of red flannel to
match his pajamas. I dressed the twins in their new
robes of bright blue. I don't think there could have
been four happier children than we were early that
morning. Chocolate bars were devilishly divine and
made even
sweeter because they were forbidden. It
was pure heaven to hold that chocolate in my mouth
and slowly, slowly let it melt while I squeezed my
eyelids tight to better savor the taste. And when I
looked, Chris had his eyes closed too. Funny how the
twins ate their chocolate, with wide open eyes, so full
of surprise. Had they forgotten about candy? It
seemed so, for they appeared to be holding paradise in their mouths. When we heard the doorknob rattle, we
quickly hid the candy under the nearest bed. It was the grandmother. She came in quietly, with
the picnic basket. She put the basket on the gaming
table. She didn't greet us with "Merry Christmas," nor
did she say good morning, nor even smile, or show in
any way that this was a special day. And we were not
to speak to her unless she spoke to us first.
It was with reluctance and fear, and also with
great hope, that I picked up the long package wrapped
in red foil that had come from one of Momma's gifts
to us. Beneath that beautiful paper was our collage
painting on which all four of us had worked to create
a child's version of the perfect garden. The old trunks
in the attic had provided us with fine materials, such
as the gossamer silk to make the pastel butterflies that
hovered over bright yarn flowers. How Carrie had
wanted to make purple butterflies with red spots--she
loved purple combined with red! If ever a more
glorious butterfly existed--it wouldn't be a live one--
it would be Cory's made of yellow, with green and
black splotches, and tiny little red stone eyes. Our
trees were made of brown cording, combined with
tiny tan pebbles to look like bark, and the branches
gracefully entwined so brightly colored birds could perch or fly between the leaves. Chris and I had taken chicken feathers from old pillows and dipped them in watercolors, and dried them, and used an old toothbrush to comb the matted hairs, and make them
lovely again.
It may be conceited to say that our picture showed
signs of true artistry, and a great deal of creative
ingenuity. Our composition was balanced, yet it had
rhythm, style . . . and a charm that had brought tears
to our mother's eyes when we showed it to her. She
had to turn her back so we, too, wouldn't cry. Oh, yes,
by far this collage was the very best piece of artwork
we had as yet turned out.
Trembling, apprehensive, I waited to time my
approach so her hands would be empty. Since the
grandmother never looked at Chris, and the twins
were so terrified of her they shriveled in her presence,
it was up to me to give her the gift . . . and darned if I
could make my feet move. Sharply, Chris nudged me
with his elbow. "Go on," he whispered, "she'll go out
the door in a minute."
My feet seemed nailed to the floor. I held the long
red package across both my arms. From the very
positioning it seemed a sacrificial offering, for it
wasn't easy to give her anything, when she had given us nothing but hostility, and was waiting her chance to
give us pain.
That Christmas morning, she succeeded very well
in giving us pain, even without a whip or a word. I wanted to greet her in the proper way and say,
"Merry Christmas Day, Grandmother. We wanted to
give you a little something. Really, don't thank us; it
was no trouble at all. Just a little something to show
how much we appreciate the food you bring to us
each day, and the shelter you have given us." No, no,
she would think me sarcastic if I put it that way. Much
better to say something like this: "Merry Christmas,
we hope you like this gift. We all worked on it, even
Cory and Carrie, and you can keep it so when we're
gone, you'll know we did try, we did."
Just to see me near with the gift held before me
took her by surprise.
Slowly, with my eyes lifting to bravely meet hers,
I held out our Christmas offering. I didn't want to
plead with my eyes. I wanted her to take it, and like it,
and say thank you, even if she said it coldly. I wanted
her to go to bed this night and think about us, that
maybe we weren't so bad, after all. I wanted her to
digest and savor all the work we'd put into her gift,
and I wanted her to question the right and wrong of
how she treated us.
In the most withering way, her cold and scornful
eyes lowered to the long box we'd wrapped in red. On
the top was a sprig of artificial holly and a huge silver
bow. A card was tied to the bow, and read: "To
Grandmother, from Chris, Cathy, Cory, and Carrie." Her gray-stone eyes lingered on the card long
enough to read it. Then she lifted her gaze to stare
directly into my hopeful eyes, pleading, begging,
wanting so much to be assured we weren't--as I
sometimes feared--evil. Back to the box her eyes
skipped, then deliberately she turned her back.
Without a word she stalked out of the door, slammed
it hard, then locked it from the other side. I was left in
the middle of the room, holding the end product of
many long hours of striving for perfection and beauty. Fools !--that's what we'd been! Damned fools! We'd never win her over! She'd always consider
us Devil's spawn! As far as she was concerned, we
really didn't exist.
And it hurt, oh, you bet, it did hurt. Right down to
my bare feet I ached, and my heart became a hollow
ball shooting pains through my chest. Behind me, I
could hear Chris raspily breathing in and out, and the
twins began to whimper.
This was my time to be adult, and keep the poise
that Momma used so well and so effectively. I
patterned my movements, and my expressions, after
those of my mother. I used my hands the way she
used hers. I smiled as she did, slow and beguiling And what did I do to demonstrate my maturity? I hurled the package to the floor! I swore, using
words I'd never said aloud before! I raised my foot
and stomped down on it, and heard the cardboard box
crunch. I screamed! Wild with fury, I jumped with
both feet onto the gift, and I wildly stomped and
jumped until I heard the cracking of the beautiful old
frame we'd found in the attic, and reglued, and
refinished and made it look almost like new again. I
hated Chris for persuading me that we could win over
a woman made of stone! I hated Momma for putting
us in this position! She should have known her mother
better; she should have sold shoes in a department
store; certainly there was something she could have
done but what she did.
Beneath the assault of someone wild and frenzied,
the dry frame shattered into splinters; all our labor
was gone, gone.
"Stop!" cried Chris. "We can keep it for
ourselves!"
Though he ran fast to prevent total destruction, the
fragile painting was ruined. Forever gone. I was in
tears.
Then I was bending down, crying, and picking up
the s
ilk butterflies Cory and Carrie had made so
painstakingly, with so much effort wasted to color the
wings gloriously. Pastel butterflies I was to keep all
my life long.
Chris held me fast in his arms while I sobbed as
he tried to comfort me with fatherly words: "It's all
right. It doesn't matter what she does. We were right,
and she was wrong. We tried. She never tries." We sat on the floor silent now amidst our gifts.
The twins were quiet, their big eyes full of doubts,
wanting to play with their toys, and undecided
because they were our mirrors, and they would reflect
our emotions--whatever they were. Oh, the pity of
seeing them so made me ache again. I was twelve. I
should learn at some time in my life how to act my
age, and hold onto my poise, and not be a stick of
dynamite always ready to explode.
Into our room Momma came, smiling and calling
out her Christmas greetings. She came bearing more
gifts, including a huge dollhouse that once had been
hers . . . and her hateful mother's. "This gift is not from Santa Claus," she said, putting down the house on the floor with great care, and now, I swear, there wasn't one inch of uncluttered space left. "This is my present to Cory and Carrie." She hugged them both, and kissed their cheeks, and told them now they could "pretend house" and "pretend parents" and "pretend host and hostess," just as she used to do when she was
a child of five.
If she noticed none of us was really excited by
that grand dollhouse, she didn't comment. With
laughter, and gay charm, she knelt on the floor and sat
back on her heels, and told us of how very much she
used to love this dollhouse.
"It is very valuable, too," she gushed. "On the
right market, a dollhouse like this would bring a
fabulous fortune. Just the miniature porcelain dolls
with the moveable joints alone are priceless, their
faces all hand-painted. The dolls are made in scale to
the house, as is the furniture, the paintings--
everything, in fact. The house was handcrafted by an
artist who lived in England. Each chair, table, bed,
lamp, chandelier--all are genuine reproductions of
antiques. I understand it took the craftsman twelve
years to complete this.
"Look at how the little doors open and close, perfectly hung--which is more than you can say for the house you're living in," she went on. "And all the drawers slide in and out. There's a tiny little key to lock the desk, and look how some of the doors slide into the walls--pocket doors, they are called. I wish this house had doors like that; I don't know why they went out of fashion. And see the hand-carved moldings near the ceiling, and the wainscoting in the dining room and library--and the teensy books on the shelves. Believe it or not, if you have a microscope,
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