Tomorrow's
Christmas
By
Nadine Martin for an Advance Composition class in 1964 or 1965
My mother typed this on a typewriter almost 50 years ago, and I retyped it on the computer.
Cora glanced over at the bland face
of the alarm-clock ticking at one end of the large, oak bureau, and saw that it
was almost time for her ten-year-old to be coming in for lunch. Then she bent again over the old
sewing-machine, her gray hair hanging in meager, untidy wisps about the tense
face. Her feet rocked the black-metal
treadle, up-down, up-down, and her fingers fed the brown silk to the
needle. A moment more and the needle had
picked its way to the end of the seam.
Cora let out a long-held breath and felt a tight muscle in her cheek
relax. She closed her eyes and rubbed
the lids with sandpapery knuckles.
The dress for Sharon’s Christmas was
done at last. Cora opened her eyes and
stared at the dress. How dull it was,
how lifeless, how unsuited to the dark, slight child she had made it for. “Ugly,” she said out loud in the silence of
the cluttered, unattractive room. Her
mouth was dry with disappointment. Oh,
what had she expected from an old hand-me-down, anyhow? A made-over dress for Sharon, their pride,
their delight! Her face felt hot and she
pressed the back of her thin, freckled hand to her face and found the hand
moist and cold. What were they going to
do? Her thoughts became jumbled and
frantic. What was to become of the three
of them, now that the grocery had failed?
Louie, worn out with worry…an old man at fifty. Could he even get a job?
Looking down at the muddy, brown
silk, she remembered happier, prosperous, younger days. She thought of the gay gifts in the
past. Sharon in a tiny frock of red
velvet—soft folds of creamy lace tickling fat folds of the baby neck…Sharon at
seven, wild with delight, a yellow bird on the sidewalk-bike. What could she do to brighten up this poor
gift…this old-lady’s leaf-brown frock?
She stood up and moved to the
bureau. Pulling out a deep drawer she
found an old, brown-spotted candy box filled with rolls of old ribbons, hand-crotched
lace…Yes! Here was what she was looking
for. From her finger a long length of
crimson ribbon unwound its lustrous coils.
Then she noticed the bent, frayed edge of a photograph. She peered at the sepia tint and flipped on
the light switch. The mild light from
the ceiling shone on clear, dark, candid eyes, on a wide breadth of forehead
with its wave of hair, richly dark and soft as a plume. The rather heavy lips met in a firm line,
repeating the line of even brow. There
was only a slight suggestion of a smile on the lips and the steadfastness in
the gaze seemed underlined by the firmness of a square and tilted chin.
“Oh, Louie,” her whisper was
tender. “What has happened to you..what
is happening to us all?”
She tucked the picture back into the
box, burying it under the hoardings of past luxuries. She closed the drawer and walked to the machine,
the crimson ribbon curling in her hand. Placing
it on the darkness of the dress, she admired its glow—soft, warm. I’ll make a sash, she thought. The screen-door slammed, and a quick smile
warmed her sallow face.
“D’ya have to always slam the door?”
she called out as she lay the dress with gentle hands in an empty drawer of the
bureau. Funny, she thought, how that old
ribbon had kept its young color. And she
went to fix lunch for her darling, her pride, her child.
After lunch Cora walked the short
block to her husband’s store. The wind
was shrill and bold. It spun the wires
on the telephone poles, then swooped to prickle her neck. She hunched her shoulder and pulled her head
deeper into the scruffy fur-collar of her coat.
Cora felt her heart become a hard lump of pain as she saw the crude sign
in the window of the small, red-brick grocery:
“Going out of Business: Fixtures
Cheap.” Through the window she saw her husband
bending over the gas heater, rubbing the palms of his hands together, slowly. The bell above the door jingled as she
entered then tugged the door shut against the wind.
“Vegetable soup. Be careful, it sure is hot.” She had unscrewed the top from the thermos
and handed it to him.
The steam curled up to mist her husband’s
steel-rimmed glasses. He blew at the
soup with little breaths and filled up the deep hollows under the high cheekbones.
“Sharon home?” he asked. She nodded, looking around the empty shell of
the store. Two rows of dusty shelves
held all that remained of the canned goods.
How hard it was to see it as it had been I the good days. Why, she thought in amazement, it had taken
the two of them and sometimes an extra boy just to keep up with the customers.
She reached up and tugged at the
long cord handing from the white-globe fixture suspended from the ceiling. The light was dim and did not penetrate the
gloom beyond the small area in which they stood.
“That was good, Cora. Hit the spot.”
While her husband went to the
backroom to wash the thermos-top, Cora walked to the cash register and found
what she was looking for—a shoe-box stuffed with cheap, gray charge books. She made her voice hard and cold.
“How long before you collect on
these dead-beats, Louie?”
“I can’t collect from most of those
accounts, now or anytime soon, Cora. You
know that,” his voice reproached her quietly.
“Some of those people haven’t worked in months.”
He bent over suddenly, his face gray
and drawn. The ulcer was acting up
again, she thought. But he had to be
made to see, to understand. It wasn’t
right for his own flesh and blood to have to do without so that he could help
strangers…It wasn’t fair.
“Mr. Kashuba’s getting relief
checks, now. Mrs. Cooper saw him cash
one at the drug-store yesterday. Look” She pulled out two charge-books. “He owes you $111.75, Louie! Make him pay some of it, at least.”
“I
can’t do it, Cora. All those
kids. Why, tomorrow’s Christmas.”
“Tomorrow’s Christmas,” her voice
was a savage mocking of his slow inflection.
“Louie, tomorrow’s Christmas and all I have for Sharon is an ugly brown
dress. It isn’t right!”
“All right, all right, Cora. I’ll go see if they can pay something.”
She watched him silently while he
changed from store-apron to his overcoat and went out into the December wind. Alone in the store she put her head on the
counter and tried to rest. But anxiety,
irritation, and a terrible sadness seemed to churn together in her brain. Maybe they’d have to go on relief. That’d be something, wouldn’t it! On the government, like the Kashubas. She saw the six, pale kids, string-bean thin
and with those dutchy haircuts and the old-timey braids. Can’t even speak good English. A hundred dollars! If Louie could collect even some of that she
could get Sharon a little red sweater…get the radio fixed, maybe…
Then Louie was back and she
knew—even before he shrugged his shoulders, apologized with his upturned palms.
“What could I do, Cora. Just the kids there. Looked scared to death.”
Disappointment made her tongue a
sharp, cruel weapon.
“You’re a failure, Louie, that’s the
trouble with you. You’re just a worn-out
failure.” She pulled her coat on and
started for the door.
“Cora,” he walked toward her, “Cora,
I’m sorry.” His voice was low and unsteady.
“My God, Louie!” She thought she might scream if she didn’t
get out of there. “What good is being
sorry?”
….
It was quite dark by the time Cora
reached the new shopping-center and the temperature had been dropping
steadily. The afternoon’s wind was a gale
now, but Cora’s fingers were warm as she
counted her change in the shelter of a doorway.
She told herself she was glad she had told Louie how she felt. Maybe it’d wake him up…make him see that a
wife and child had some rights too…A dollar bill and sixty cents in change, she
counted. I’ll get some ground-beef at
the butcher-shop, she planned, and I’ll fix it up nice with some catsup and
onion. It’d be nice to have turkey, but
a good meat-loaf…some people even preferred meat-load, she told herself.
Inside the butcher-shop the air
seemed close and still after the wind-swept freshness outdoors. She smelled the odor of cold, lifeless flesh,
dried blood, damp sawdust. A red
tissue-paper bell hung from crossed
ropes of green crepe paper intertwined with tarnished tinsel. She had thought she was the last customer,
but as she walked up to the counter she saw a puny figure—Mr. Kashuba. His hands were deep in the pockets of a
jacket dark with age and dirty.
Mouse-gray hair was plastered in thin strands over the high dome of his
narrow head. His mouth was pursed. Cora thought in wonder—He’s whistling! One of the kids was standing beside him. A plaited braid of nearly-white hair hung limply
down the back of her sweater. Cora saw
sharp points of elbows breaking through the untidy darns of the navy
pullover. Their eyes met, hers and the
child’s and Cora saw her tug at her father’s arm until he turned away from the
scrawny turkey being folded into the butcher-paper.
“Mrs. Kashuba,” she began. “Mr. Kashuba,” she started over. “You’ve owed Mr. Simpson on our bill too long
now…really, too long.” Surely he understands
English, she thought. I must make him
see why it’s all wrong…not fair. “Mr.
Kashuba, you must pay something on the bill.”
Her anger was red and hot. “I’ll
just thank you for the money, Mr. Kashuba.”
She saw the butcher’s red, sausage-shaped fingers begin to tie up the
turkey. “People on relief don’t eat
turkey!” she raged.
The man stared at her from
milky-blue, protruding eyes. Fish eyes,
she thought wildly. He stepped back a little
and hid his child from sight.
“Here,” he said, pushing the wrapped
turkey towards her. “Take it, take
it.” He fumbled in the outer pocket of
the plaid jacket and drew out a bill.
Throwing the money on the counter
he took the child by her hand. “Come,”
he said. The little girl followed her
father to the door of the shop. At the
doorway she paused for a moment and turned to look at Cora.
Staring back at the child and
holding the turkey against her breast Cora pleaded. “It’s fair.
Don’t you see? You owe it to
us.” Then the door slammed and they were
gone.
Cora walked to the door holding the
turkey in her arms. She thought
miserably, disconsolately—I don’t want just the turkey. I want them to know I’m right…tell
me they know I’m right…
{The poignancy of the mother holding the turkey thrust at her is made greater by her need to be understood, to be seen as getting only what was really hers to give to her own child. I feel sympathy for everyone in the story but especially for Cora, and I feel admiring of my mother that she could empathyze with the mother she didn't connect with very well. As for names...Cora was the name of my mother's grandmother, whom I called Gram. Kashuba sounded Japanese to me, but I could tell from the s instead of c and from the physical description that it wasn't. I looked it up, and it appears to be Slavic.}
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