Chapter Seven

By the time Grandma and I went to bed that night, I was sorry I had brought the tree home. I was beginning to feel guilty about Gloria Cott not having a tree—“the poor souls,” Grandma always called the Cott family. And I was sorry I had ever raised my hand in class. I shouldn’t have let anyone know that my dad wouldn’t buy a Christmas tree. There was something very bad about it, and it was going to ruin our whole Christmas.

I crawled into the old four-poster bed and huddled up between the freezing sheets. Grandma was always warm, even on the coldest nights, and I loved to sleep with her because she let me put my cold feet on her warm legs. Whenever I had to cry over something, it almost always happened at that time of the night. Being close to Grandma in bed gave me some sense of freedom and relief, and whatever had hurt me during the day usually came out then. Sometimes she could help me with my problems and sometimes not, but she always held on to me, and that made me feel I could get through it. That night I cried and cried.

“How long you goin’ to cry?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know. Maybe all night!” I said, still sobbing.

“Don’t you worry, he’ll get over it,” she said.

“He’s so mean …”

“He’s not mean,” Grandma said. “Jamie’s a good man.”

“Jamie?”

“That’s what we called him when he was a boy. He was proud then too. He always had a lot of pride.”

“What’s so great about pride?”

“It’s a way of … of thinkin’ well of yourself. You’ve got it. That’s why you hit that kid today.”

“Was that pride?”

“You were stickin’ up for me because you love me, and I’m your family. Your father insists on payin’ our way because he loves us, and we’re his family. He’s always been the kind who wouldn’t take nothin’ from nobody, even if we were starvin’. Ten, fifteen years ago, during the Depression, we had a bad time.”

“What was the Depression?”

“Wasn’t any jobs. Nobody had any money. Lots of people had to go on charity. Your father wouldn’t even take the flour or the potatoes the government was handing out free.”

“Would Dad have let you starve?”

“Of course not. But he was pretty stubborn about acceptin’ anything he hadn’t earned. Wouldn’t take charity.”

“When you take a present, like a Christmas present,” I asked, “is that charity?”

“No,” Grandma said. “That’s a whole different thing. A gift is somethin’ from someone who wants to make you happy.”

“He doesn’t love me!” I said, starting to cry again. “He just doesn’t love me!”

“Hush, now, I’m not listening to such talk! The truth is,” she said quietly, “your dad hasn’t wanted a Christmas tree in this house because it reminds him of your momma and your first Christmas with the three of you together, and it makes him feel bad.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He misses her an awful lot.”

“You mean the tree made him unhappy?”

“Maybe,” she said, “but it’s not your fault. Someday he’ll get over it, and things will be all right. Think you can go to sleep now?”

I nodded my head, and Grandma hugged me close. I tried to go to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t shut off.

I lay there for a long while and tried to remember my mother, but I couldn’t. All I knew about her were the things I found in her scrapbook and the snapshots in the family album. My father never talked about her. I tried to remember my first Christmas, but I couldn’t remember that either. I wondered if my father had gone into his bedroom and cried when he saw the tree. It scared me to think of him being so upset over something that I didn’t even know about.

I thought more about just what charity meant and about my father and about Gloria Cott. After a while, when I heard Grandma snoring, I quietly moved away from her across the icy sheets. There were so many heavy quilts and comforters on the bed that I could hardly make my way to the edge of it. Finally I managed to worm my way out from under the covers, and when my bare feet touched the painfully cold wooden floor, I wanted to scream.

I tiptoed to our closet and slipped into socks and pulled a sweater on over my pajama tops. Then I sneaked into the living room and carefully tipped the tree down to the floor. I thought about taking off the decorations, but I knew I had no time to waste. I found some paper and a pencil in the writing desk, wrote a note and struggled into my boots and coat. I unlocked the front door and opened it slowly. It let out a groan like the creaking door on the opening of the “Inner Sanctum” mystery show.

I eased the tree out onto the porch, and the frozen snow crunched under my feet. I was sure Dad would wake up. His bedroom window overlooked the porch, and he always slept with the window open a bit, even in the dead of winter. I recalled every cowboy movie I had ever seen, and tried to remember how the Indians had crept silently up on the settlers. After what seemed like an hour, I had eased the tree down off the porch steps and onto the lawn, the frozen snow making explosive cracks with every step I took.

I had never been out alone at this hour, and I was a little frightened. It was after midnight, the dead of night for Clear River, and there wasn’t a house light on or a car in sight, only the distant sound of trains and the occasional bark of a dog. There were big dogs in the neighborhood, and they ran loose. I didn’t know if they could see in the dark the way cats could. What if they mistook me for a burglar?

I was glad it was only a block to Gloria’s house. I slowly dragged the tree down the snowy sidewalk and across the Cott’s lawn and propped it up against their rickety porch railing. Then I pulled the note I had written out of my pocket and stuck it onto the tree. It read, “To Gloria, From Santa Claus.”