Her eyes peered open in the dark. Everything was concealed in shadow. Head under the blanket to hide from the monsters that lived in the room, she peeked out. There were no monsters on Christmas.
She slid from beneath the blankets and shimmied down from the top bunk. She shared a room with her little brother. He couldn’t be quiet so she didn’t bother to wake him up. He would just be loud and make a bunch of noise. She had to check the presents before he got there anyway so he didn’t break or steal anything of hers.
Her favorite nightgown hung down around her ankles. Garfield splashed across its front. She got the nightgown when she was in the hospital, sick with a high fever and blood poisoning from a scrape she got off of a piece of metal. The kids in her class gave her the nightgown because she missed Easter that year. She wore it almost every night.
She padded barefoot out of the bedroom and down the hallway. A few articles of clothing were scattered here and there but it was mostly organized. Brown carpet covered the walkways. Down the little hallway and out into the living room she went.
The Christmas tree was still on, lights flashing in strings of crayola colors. By the light of the tree she looked around the room. Beneath the tree was bare. No presents were stacked up in brightly colored wrapping paper. That was okay. “Santa doesn’t wrap the presents,” she thought.
The living room was small. The front door of the singlewide trailer had a small window, one of the rectangular styles that only let in a little light. The kitchen window let in more light from the streetlamp outside. The countertops glowed in a pale white light that was cooler and more artificial than moonlight. It wasn’t a greatroom. There was a half wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. The brown carpet made the division between the rooms. It gave way to dingy linoleum on the other side of the front door.
Several little girl paces from the Christmas tree was a pile covered by an afghan blanket. It was a blanket that someone had crocheted by hand. Her aunt Mary, blonde and skinny like the little girl, was learning to crochet. Perhaps she made the blanket. By the light of the tree, its colors looked dark. The little girl was sure they were brighter. Rusts and yellows and browns and greens appeared to be shadowy in the darkness.
She crept quietly toward the pile of presents. “Santa covered them up so we wouldn’t get up and play with them too early,” she thought. “Mama and Daddy will be mad if we make too much noise too early.” Quietly, she tiptoed over to inspect the pile. It was long and irregular. She tried to peer into the holes but it was too dark. She tried to pull the blanket from under one edge of the pile but it was too heavy. “What kind of present is this?” she thought excitedly.
One small finger reached into the blanket, peeking through one of the holes in the pattern of the afghan. The hole seemed as big as the world in that moment. She stopped. Her finger had reached something… something warm and covered in cloth. It was a man sleeping soundly.
She stopped, drew back and looked at the pile beneath the blanket. Then, by the flickering Christmas tree light she could make out the shape of feet at the other end. If this wasn’t the presents then they must be somewhere else. She drew back and looked around the room. No piles, no boxes, no bows or decorations were present except for those on the tree. No presents.
The little girl’s heart sank. “Santa didn’t come this year.” She turned away from the sleeping stranger and padded on bare feet down the dark hallway. She shimmied back up the bunk beds and climbed back under the covers. There was no Christmas to discover so she went back to sleep.
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