The Christmas Portrait (10 page)

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.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

D
ADDY AND
U
NCLE
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.”

I was thinking she had gotten off to a bad start on her plans. Mama would never have gotten so out of sorts about a plastic Christmas tree.

Then Granny changed the subject again. “Any news from John or Don?”

My aunt said, “Nothing yet. I hope they find her soon. I can't bear to think about that poor little girl out in the cold.”

Granny and I had seconds. Lunch was so good, especially the potato salad, but Aunt Susannah Hope just kept pushing food around on her plate. I thought Chesler and I were just too much for her, and we had worn her out.

After lunch, Granny Grace made an announcement. “We're making PB and F before your aunt and I go upstairs to work on a project. And don't you ask me any questions about this project. You kids know it's getting close to Christmas.” Then she winked. Granny always winked when she was up to something.

Chesler was getting whiny. “I don't want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because I just had lunch.”

Granny laughed. “No, we're making PB and F, peppermint bark and fudge, not PB and Js.”

Nobody made fudge like Granny. Everybody told her she could start a business with that candy. She made a thick layer of dark chocolate fudge, and on top, she put a layer of white chocolate with crushed peppermint candy.

Now this was Aunt Susannah Hope's kitchen, but when Granny was there, she was in charge. She started passing out orders again like the parade marshal. “Susannah Hope, get all the ingredients out for me and bring me the biggest, heaviest pot you got.” Granny was doing all the measuring and mixing. “Now, Kate, you stir when I put it all in the pot. Chesler, you and your aunt need to start breaking up the peppermint candy for the white chocolate.”

Aunt Susannah put the peppermint candy pieces in a cloth bag and got the hammer and let Chesler go to work. He liked to hammer, and he was good at breaking things. Aunt Susannah Hope turned on the Christmas music, and Chesler hammered in rhythm to “Deck the Halls.” The scent of chocolate and peppermint filled the kitchen, making it smell more like Christmas instead of dried-up flowers.

When the sugar and butter and chocolate and milk had boiled exactly eight minutes, I quit stirring and Granny Grace poured it out fast onto a pan and set it out on the back porch for a few minutes to cool. “Come here, Chesler. While the fudge is cooling, let's melt the white chocolate. You pour in the peppermint candy and stir it.”

When the white chocolate was ready, I brought the fudge in for Granny to pour the peppermint bark on top. Then I took it all back to the porch. Chesler stood at the window. Granny asked him, “What are you doing?”

“I'm guarding the PB and F.”

“Guarding the candy? What on earth for?”

“Some bird or squirrel might try to get it.”

“Birds and squirrels don't like chocolate and peppermint. Now it would be another story if we put my sugarcoated peanuts out there.” Granny laughed at him.

Chesler didn't have much to worry about, but when he did worry, he worried about strange things. So he just kept standing there, his nose to the window. At least it kept him quiet for a while.

The hardest part of making that PB and F was waiting for it to cool so Granny could cut the first piece. It didn't take long because it was freezing outside. I thought about how fast that hot fudge cooled on the back porch, and then I thought about Laramie and how cold she might be wherever she was.

Granny cut us a little piece of fudge from the corner. Aunt Susannah Hope didn't want any. “Maybe I'll eat some on Christmas day. You know, I can't remember a Christmas without Granny's fudge.”

“Me, either,” Chesler piped in.

“That's right, all five Christmases of your life. Now listen to me, you two,” Granny Grace said. “If you behave while Aunt Susannah and I work on the project upstairs, I'll slice up some so you can take it home with you tonight.”

My aunt put on a Christmas movie for us to watch. It wasn't cowboys and Indians, but Chesler settled in to watch while I pulled out my sketchbook. I heard the creaks when Granny Grace and Aunt Susannah Hope climbed the stairs, and before long the hum of their sewing machines started.

Mama loved this old house where she grew up, with all its secret hiding places and stairs and closets. She told me one time it was over a hundred years old, and that's why it moaned and groaned like Grandpa getting up out of his chair after a nap.

After Aunt Susannah Hope bought the house from Granny and Grandpa, she and Mama used the second floor to run their sewing business. Mama could design things, and they both could really sew. They made curtains and pillows and dresses and anything else the rich ladies in town could think of. And when they weren't sewing for somebody else, my aunt made things to decorate her house, and Mama sewed dresses for me. I missed picking out fabrics and patterns with her, and modeling the finished product, twirling in front of a mirror while she smiled.

One day last summer before Mama got sick, I read upstairs while they sewed. Mama and Aunt Susannah Hope started chatting about how when they were girls they made secret hiding places for their treasures. They would stick things behind loose boards in closets and under the shelves in cabinets. I was tired of reading and decided to look for some of their secret places. It didn't take long to find one of their treasures, a note stuck with chewing gum underneath a bookshelf. I brought it to Mama, and her eyes lit up. “It's a love note to that boy I had a crush on in fifth grade!” she laughed after she read it. “We even got into your granny's reddest lipstick so I could seal that note with a kiss.”

“Can I keep it?” I asked. I could hardly believe Mama had been a girl my age. This was proof.

“Okay, but you'll have to hide it again.” She handed me a stick of gum and winked. “You know what to do.”

When I got back home, I chewed the gum then stuck the note to the bottom of my desk drawer with the gum. It was still there, my own hidden treasure. Thinking of it now, I tried to draw Mama's lips in my sketchbook, just to help me remember.

Then I remembered another treasure. Once when I was nine, I was poking around Granny Grace's old sewing chest, with its pull-out drawer that held spools of thread. I opened the top drawer and found an old envelope. Inside was a strand of hair tied in pink ribbon.

“What's this?” I asked Granny Grace, holding it up for her to see.

“Oh, that,” she laughed. “That's one of my favorite treasures. I once cut a lock from your mama's hair when she was a little girl so I'd have her with me forever.”

Forever came too soon. But Granny's treasure gave me an idea for Mama's Christmas present.

Those sewing machines hummed all afternoon. Chesler watched fifteen minutes of the Christmas movie before he fell asleep, and I worked on my drawings in my sketchbook. I liked being in that old house and thinking about all its treasures and especially Granny's treasure. I could see Mama, and I could almost see her running around this house when she was a little girl, when it didn't have white furniture and dead flowers and so much stuff to break.

It was nearly dark when Daddy and Uncle Don finally came through the front door, their faces looking like Pastor Simmons did just before he preached, all serious like. They would have been smiling and talking if they had found Laramie. Daddy said, “Go gather your things. We need to get home because Uncle Luke's coming.”

Now Chesler always forgot to brush his teeth, but he didn't forget what Granny Grace said about taking some PB and F home with us. So he went yelling and running up the stairs for Granny. She and Aunt Susannah Hope came down the stairs and started asking Daddy and Uncle Don more questions than my teacher asks on review day. Daddy just said Uncle Don could fill them in after we left. That meant Daddy didn't want to talk about it, and he didn't want us to hear about it.