You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas (3 page)

I noticed that even in the wide-open, breathy light of the morning that diffused the living room, I could see the bright red, green, blue, yellow, orange, and white lights from the tree reflected in Jesus/Santa’s shiny black boots.

I wanted those boots.

On Jesus/Santa’s face—so true to life—was an expression of genuine affection.

I wanted that face.

My grandfather had led my grandmother and mother into the kitchen. I heard the freezer door open then the shattering smack of a bag of ice hitting the counter. In an instant, my father came ambling up the stairs. The ice had called him like a dog whistle:
Special occasion cocktails in the morning!

I heard my grandfather’s sonic boom. “Well, hey there old man! How are ya, boy? Where the hell have you been? Your mama and I have been here for hours already.”

I just couldn’t believe it. This was,
this was
... I didn’t have the words to even describe the euphoria I felt. Not only would I love having Santa right here in the house with us for Christmas, but when the holidays were over, I would move Jesus right into my bedroom and he would live with me, full time.

My mother stuck her sweaty head out the kitchen doorway. “Augusten,” she called, “you can play with Santa later, come on in here now with your grandparents and say hello.”

“Coming,”
I shouted back. Then I quickly reached forward and touched the Jesus/Santa’s crotch.

When I walked innocently into the kitchen, my grandmother clapped her hands together then patted her thighs. “Come here, precious, and sit on my lap.”

I was still technically small enough to be able to fit on a lap. But in a matter of months, I would be banned from laps as I would shoot up almost a whole foot and weigh nearly as much as a big dog.

“Now, what’s this business about referring to Santa as,” and she whispered the name, “Jesus?”

I just looked at her and blinked.

“You know it’s wrong for you to make fun of Jesus, don’t you?”

I bristled at the mere suggestion, felt my small ears grow warm. I certainly
did
know this and furthermore, I wasn’t making fun. “I know that,” I said. “I would never say anything hateful about Jesus. That’s why I’m so happy he’s here.”

My grandmother studied me, her thin, lined lips puckering around a cigarette that wasn’t there. “Now, honey, when you say you’re so happy he’s ‘here,’ you mean
here
, don’t you?” and she placed her hand on her blouse, above her heart.

“
No,
Carolyn,” I said, calling her by her first name as all the grandchildren did. “I mean, I’m glad he’s here, in the house, out there in the living room next to the tree where Jack stuck him. You saw, you were there.”

My grandmother was now flustered. “Jack,” she said, “give me that,” and she nodded to the drink in his hand. She meant business, so he took a step over and passed it to her. She grabbed the glass from his hand and took a deep swallow, then handed it back.

That’s when she asked me, “Honey? Do you really think that big, red stuffed Santa we brought you is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior?”

The room fell eerily silent all of a sudden and everybody stared at me, waiting for my answer. It was the silliest question in the world, the answer so obvious that I was alerted to a possible trick.

I craned my neck around to look at my father, my mother, Jack—all of whom were looking at me expectantly.

“Well,”
I said carefully, as though taking my first step across a frozen pond, listening for the crack of ice, “I know that he’s
Santa
.”

And my grandmother smiled, pleased with my answer, and patted me on the head.

“But he’s
also
Jesus,” I added. And I felt her stiffen beneath my legs.

“Margaret,” Carolyn said, glowering at my mother, “what does he mean?”

My mother stepped over to the sink and ran the faucet over her cigarette, tossed it into the trash and immediately lit another. “I’m not sure what he means at all, Carolyn,” she replied, the new calm smile still attached to her face. “Augusten, why do you say Jesus and Santa are the same? How so?”

So this is how it came to pass that I got my first lesson in Christian theology. Front row center on my grandmother’s lap, I learned that what I had believed all my life was not only terribly wrong but deeply sinful and disrespectful.

In fact, I could likely burn in hell for all of eternity for my error.

Jesus
was real. Jesus was God’s own child, as surely as I was my mother’s. He lived in the sky—not,
absurdly,
at the North Pole above
Canada
—and he invented everything, including Eskimos and goats.

“And Pop-Tarts?” I asked.

“No,” my grandmother replied, “not Pop-Tarts.”

She continued with the lesson. Jesus was the
Holy Father,
or at least his son.

“Which?” I asked.

“I told you,” she said. “Jesus is our Lord and Savior.”

“Then who’s God?” I asked.

“Jesus is God,” she replied.

“But you said Jesus was the son of God just as surely as I am the son of my mother.”

My mother cleared her throat and everybody turned to face her. She asked, “I can’t interest anybody in thum cheethe and crackerth?” She winked, like she was trying to be a pretty television star, except it was just a muscle spasm.

Everybody turned away from her.

But the interruption had given my grandmother her escape hatch. She changed the subject and I still didn’t understand how Jesus could be God
and
the son of God at the same time.

Santa Claus,
she explained, did not
live
in the sky; he flew
through
it once a year on a sleigh powered by reindeer. He lived at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus and some little people who made toys for him.

“You mean midget slaves?” I asked.

My grandmother sucked in her air. “Goodness gracious, no, I most certainly do not mean
midget slaves.
Where did you even learn to combine such words? These are little leprechauns he has up there with him and—”

My grandfather blasted in. “Aw now, hell, Carolyn, don’t go twisting the boy back up in knots all over again now that you finally got him straightened out. They aren’t
leprechauns,
son. They’re elves. Leprechauns are those little drunk motherfuckers from Ireland.”

Carolyn let out a little yelp. “J. G. Robison, I should wash your mouth out with soap, you know better than to use such language in front of a child.”

I told my grandmother, “It’s okay. We say much worse things here.”

Her face grew dark. “You do?”

Jack chuckled into his drink and my grandmother moved on.

Once a year, Santa delivered presents to all the good boys and girls all over the world.

My grandparents had brought a life-size stuffed Santa, not a life-size Jesus. As my grandmother said, “Nobody knows for sure how tall Jesus was, anyway, so he could hardly be life-size, even if he
was
Jesus—which he is not, son. Which he most certainly is not.”

I was more confused than ever. “So, Christmas is Jesus’s own birthday?”

My grandmother said that it was.

I told her how in stores, sometimes you saw pictures of Jesus, but mostly, you saw Santa. On television, you saw cartoons and programs with both of them. And that’s why I figured,
Jesus brings presents to all the poor, foreign, and crippled children and Santa brings presents to the regular children, like me.

That’s what I thought in the beginning, anyway.

“But then I heard this song called, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ and it goes, ‘Hang your stockings and
say your prayers,
’cause Santa Claus comes tonight,’ and I realized, ‘say your prayers’ means they are the same person. It’s just that, most of the year, Jesus is naked except for his little rag and his thorn hat and then on Christmas, he puts on his good red suit.”

My grandmother stared at me in disbelief. And then she glanced up at my mother as if to say,
This is all your doing.
You could just about see those words right there in her eyes. But my mother didn’t catch the look because she was struggling to open a can of tuna at the counter; the opener kept sliding off the lid and banging against the Formica countertop. Frustrated, she finally tossed aside the opener and began stabbing at the lid with a fork until Jack gently placed his hand onto her wrist and smiled at her.

I knew my grandmother thought I was as dumb as a sock, but somehow, this had made perfect sense to me. It wasn’t like I actually sat down and figured the whole thing out. But my beliefs had evolved over time—one piece of false information layered on top of another—until I came to my incorrect and extremely sinful view of Christmas.

Darkly, I thought of all the wordy, bossy letters I had mailed to Jesus—long lists of products that I wanted and where they could be purchased. I’d even lied to him once and said, “My brother says he doesn’t want anything and I can have whatever ration you were going to give him, so could I have an above-ground pool?” You weren’t supposed to lie, and I had lied to the very man who made up the rule about not lying. I could not even think about how furious these letters must have made him. He’s busy building goats and rocks and air and I am pestering him and lying. Jesus, I realized, must just
hate
me.

Sitting on my grandmother’s lap as she explained that Jesus and Santa were two entirely different people with very different careers, I felt something drain out of me.
Joy
was bleeding away, being replaced with a kind of cottony confusion and a disappointment that seemed to have a physical weight, like stones.

What else did I believe that was wrong?

Once my grandmother was convinced that I was clear on exactly who was standing beside the tree, she allowed me to jump off her lap and run out to see him. I heard her say to my parents, “What a funny, funny child,” as I left the room.

It was two days before Christmas. My parents and grandparents sat in the kitchen around the table drinking Singapore slings and snacking on appetizers my mother had extracted from cans. My big brother was safely stored away in his bedroom doing the unimaginable.

I found myself alone in the living room with the twinkling Christmas tree and Santa—formerly Jesus—standing right beside it.

I dragged one of the chairs from the dining table over to the tree and climbed up on the seat. Standing, I was now eye-to-eye with Santa.

The sparkling blue eyes were so clear and bright that I was entranced. They looked like real eyes, taken out of a real person and put inside the doll. It was amazing, mesmerizing.

And the beard. And the lips. And just his whole face. It was all so real.

Standing now with my own face just inches from the stuffed Santa, I was trembling with emotion. Did it even
matter
whether he was Jesus or Santa, when one thing was certain: he was all mine?

I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. His wax skin felt warm and soft. Not hard and cold, like plastic. But silky, like a candle.

I took a sniff.

He even
smelled
like a candle.

I leaned forward again and this time, I kissed Santa on the lips.

A startling, nearly electric sensation shot through me and I quickly looked over my shoulder to make sure nobody was watching. I knew that Jesus was watching—Carolyn said he saw everything—but I also knew it didn’t matter what Jesus thought since I was already going to burn in hell for all of time.

Somehow, I understood that what I was doing was incredibly thrilling and must, therefore, be incredibly wrong.

But I was safe. The grown-ups were still in the kitchen, I could hear them laughing, my grandmother’s high-pitched, delighted squeal, “
Oh,
you don’t
mean
it!”

I kissed Santa again, and this time I stuck my tongue out and swiped it across Santa’s lips.

I didn’t know why I did this and the action surprised me. Kissing was something you did with your lips, not your tongue. So what made me do
that
?