The Christmas Hope

The Christmas Hope


Donna VanLiere



ONE




One Year Earlier



If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

—Martin Luther King Jr.



I jolted awake when I heard the snowplow outside my bedroom window. It snowed on December 17 and four days later it still hadn’t taken a break. City workers were getting lots of overtime trying to get the roads passable for each workday. I looked at my clock: three-thirty. I’d probably never get back to sleep now. For years I could always sleep through the night but it had been close to four years since I had a full night’s rest; if I awakened at three or four in the morning I was up for the rest of the day.

I threw my arm over my head and concentrated on falling back to sleep. I heard my husband, Mark, turn the shower on in the bathroom down the hall. He’d leave the house at four-thirty and be gone for the rest of the day. Our dog, Girl, pressed her nose to the bottom of the door; she wanted to be out with Mark but I was too tired to get up and open the door. After watching the closed door for several minutes she walked across the room and lay down on her pillow. At 4:00 A.M. I heard Mark walk down the stairs into the kitchen. He grabbed a bagel and poured a cup of coffee into an insulated mug before leaving the house. He didn’t open the bedroom door to see if I might be awake or leave a note; he never did. I knew his schedule; he’d be home tomorrow morning after his flight. He’d had the same overnight flight for years. When I got up at four-thirty the kitchen was spotless; no signs of bagel crumbs or a knife crusted with cream cheese. It’s the way I liked things. If his towel hadn’t been wet in the bathroom I never would have known that Mark had even been in the house.

I turned the shower on and stepped inside, turning my face into the water. Four days until Christmas. I put my hands on my face and let the water wash over them. Why was the holiday season so long? I shook my head and washed my hair. After leaving work today I would have the next ten days off for Christmas. What in the world would I do with all that time? I sprayed the shower walls with cleaner and used a squeegee to remove the water from the glass doors before reaching for my towel.

By 5:30 A.M. I was dressed and ready for the day. The phone rang and I sighed. I knew who it was. “Hello.”

“Good morning,” my mother said.

“Mom, why do you call so early in the morning?”

“I knew you’d be up.”

“But I could have been sleeping.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“No.”

“See. I knew you’d be up.”

It was no use. I could always count on at least three or four early-morning calls a week. For years I had tried to break her from calling so early, with no success.

“Just wanted to let you know that I’m going Christmas shopping with Miriam today. What do you and Mark want for Christmas?”

I opened e-mail on my computer and half listened to her as I read through them.

“Do you need anything for the house?”

“We don’t need anything, Mom.”

“You may not need anything but you might want something! Do you want anything fun?” Every year she tried so hard.

“I can’t think of anything.”

She was quiet for a moment before sounding upbeat again. “Okay, well, if you think of anything you just let me know. I’ll be out shopping on other days, too, and I can pick up whatever. You just let me—”

I cut her off and told her I’d call after I got home from work, and hung up.

When my father left, he told my mom he was going to the store to buy a newspaper and never came home. My mother had never known about the gambling; he was good at hiding things. He left right before the bottom dropped out. The police showed up on our doorstep before my mother had a chance to report him missing. He had taken thousands of dollars from the company he worked for and they had come to collect and throw him in jail (or in the case of his absence, take my mother to jail to question her or, as she said, scare the daylights out of her). I don’t think the police believed her when she said she didn’t know where my father was but they let her go.

We were evicted from our apartment, our belongings were seized, and the Dodge Dart was repossessed. We stayed in a motel for three nights, but then what little money my mother had ran out. We had been to church on occasion up to that point and on the morning we left the motel my mother packed our clothes in a paper bag and stuck it under her arm. She took hold of Richard’s hand and instructed me to hold on to his as we made our way down the street. After walking several blocks Richard declared he was too tired to go any farther and my mother lifted him onto her hip and pulled me close to her side. “Stay right here beside me,” she said, adjusting Richard and the paper bag.