Chapter Eight

The next morning when I heard Grandma and Dad in the kitchen, I stayed in bed, afraid of another explosion when they found the tree gone. Grandma was so preoccupied with fixing breakfast that she hadn’t gone into the living room yet, and hadn’t noticed the tree was missing. Finally I heard Dad go into the living room. For a moment there was silence, then he went back into the kitchen.

“What did you do with the tree?” he asked Grandma.

“What?”

“When did you take it down?” he asked.

“I didn’t take it down,” she said, and she went in to see for herself. “Oh, dear! Addie must have done it. You had her so upset. I told her it made you feel bad because it reminded you of Helen. I guess I shouldn’t have done that.”

I heard him coming toward the bedroom. He opened the door and called to me to wake up. I pretended to be asleep and finally rubbed my eyes and rolled over.

“What did you do with that tree?” he asked.

“I gave it away.”

“You what?”

“I gave it away to Gloria Cott, because they don’t have one.”

“When?”

“Last night, when everybody was asleep.”

He looked at me as though I were crazy. I thought he was going to yell at me for being out alone at night, but he said nothing.

“I didn’t wake anybody up,” I went on. “I just put it on their porch and put a note on it that said, ‘From Santa Claus’ so they wouldn’t be mad that it was charity.”

He looked out my bedroom window, toward the Cott’s house down the block.

“It’s not there now,” he said.

I looked too. “I bet they got up early and found it!” I said.

“That’s the damndest thing I ever heard of,” he said, and went back into the kitchen and closed the door.

He told Grandma what I had done, and then he left for work. I was afraid now that he was so angry he might not even let us go to Uncle Will’s house for Christmas. Maybe Will’s tree reminded him of my mother too.

The Christmas pageant was that night, and after supper we all raced around getting ready. I had to put on warm clothes under my angel costume and find a way of carrying my cardboard wings so they wouldn’t get bent.

Grandma was getting all dressed up, and I had to help with her shoes. When she dressed up, she wore high-heeled shoes with straps and buckles on them. She could never see the tiny holes to buckle them, and it was always my job to get down on the floor on my knees and fasten them for her. I would try one hole, and then she would throw her leg up in the air and wiggle her ankle around to determine if that was too tight or too loose, and then put it down for further adjustments, if necessary.

Finally we were ready and we all piled into the pickup for the quick drive to the church. On the way we passed the Cott’s house, and we could see the schoolroom tree in their tiny living room. All the kids were putting paper ornaments on it, and at the top, still wired securely on, was the star Carla Mae and I had made.

“Sure looks nice, don’t it?” Grandma whispered to me as we passed, and I knew Dad had heard her. He didn’t say a word, and neither did I. I vowed I would never mention a tree in front of him again.

When we got to the church, I met Carla Mae and the others backstage, and we milled around and whispered while the pageant began and we waited to make our entrances as angels and the animals in the manger scene. I could hear Billy Wild out on the stage, doing the narration, while everyone else shuffled on and off on cue.

Someone dressed as a cow approached Carla Mae and me.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“It’s me—Gloria,” she said, and took off her cow mask.

“I didn’t even recognize you! That’s a really great costume!”

“Yours too,” she said.

“Yeah. My dad says I’m miscast as an angel, though.”

The three of us laughed.

“Guess what we have, Addie? A tree!” Gloria said. “Santa Claus brought it.”

We smiled at each other, and I knew she had guessed where it came from.

“You’re wearing your locket!” Gloria said, looking at the front of my costume.

I quickly covered it with my hand, embarrassed. “Oh, I was just trying it on. I forgot I was wearing it!”

She and Carla Mae giggled, and the three of us sat around whispering, waiting to go on. We took off our shoes to rub our feet, trying to keep warm in the drafty halls of the church, when Carla Mae and I got the bright idea of tying the toes of our long, heavy stockings together. We were both wearing our horrible garter belts, and we stretched our stockings at the toes until we had enough fabric to tie her left toe to my right toe and vice versa. Then we stood up and hopped around like a crazy, four-legged thing with wings and halos.

At just that moment, Miss Thompson came in and told us it was time to go on. We nearly panicked when we discovered that we couldn’t untie the toes of our stockings. They had pulled into knots while we were jumping around, and now the knots wouldn’t budge.

“Well, let the cow through!” Miss Thompson said, and she motioned us to sit down on the floor. Then Carla Mae and I stuck our feet up in the air, and Miss Thompson worked frantically on the knots. She finally untied us, and only then did it occur to all of us that we simply could have unhooked our garters and removed our stockings.

We quickly ran on stage as the stage manager let the big star of Bethlehem plunge into the scene, and we waved our cardboard wings and I made the “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings …” speech. As I moved toward Billy Wild, at the side of the stage, I suddenly realized that he was staring at the locket, and I slapped my hand over it. I managed to keep one wing waving as I finished my speech.

I could see Grandma and Dad in the audience, and I gave them a little wave. Grandma waved back, and in the half-darkness, I thought I saw Dad smile.