Christmas In The Air

by Nick

ith intense concentration, Jeanette carefully considered the texture of the sidewalk. She paced off five giant steps from the crack that had the tree root sticking out of it, an obstacle that she might conceivably trip over. She had fallen over it once before in her hopscotch game, and it hurt. Alright. If we draw the first box here, she thought, then ...four, five, six... the final pair of boxes would be ...perfect. Just before the hill, formed where the maple tree pushed the sidewalk squares up.

She held the pink chalk tightly, and began to draw the home line from the street side of the cement. She reached the edge of the sidewalk and began to mark out the top of the box, when a dark shadow caught her attention; she looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. Over the roof of her house, and low -- too low -- drifted a dark gray cloud. The cloud had been threatening her since she had awakened, but it always stayed at a distance. It was growing now, though, and looming. And it seemed to possess a prescience; it knew where Jean stood, and it was approaching... Closer... Suddenly, horrifyingly, a bolt of purple-white lightning strobed in silence from the cloud, and shot at her.

She bolted upright in bed.

Outside it was getting dark, though a faint skyglow was still visible in the western sky. She leaned over and pushed down the slats of the venetian blind, and saw Venus setting over the roof of Mrs. Thompson's house. Oh well, she thought, I must've fallen asleep doing my homework; I'll have to go down in a little while for dinner, anyhow. She set her notebook next to her pillow and swung out of bed, pulling herself into her chair. She rolled quietly out of her room, and down the hallway.

She glimpsed her mother in the kitchen, then continued through the house. In the darkness of her living room, silhouetted against the window, was The Christmas Tree. HER tree, she thought proudly. Two weeks ago her father had picked her up from her school, and the two of them had gone to the nursury where the new trees were displayed. He had carried her around the lot for nearly a half hour before her dad found the best tree; but as they followed the greensman to the cashier, Jean saw a tree that was perfect. She tapped her father's head and signed, then pointed; he looked, smiled, and then signed back to her. He called to the boy, who shrugged and exchanged the tree he was carrying with HER tree. The tree that was now in their living room.

She loved it.

Jean leaned down and flicked on the power switch, and the Christmas tree lights blinked on, infusing the tree and the whole room with magic. She pulled herself out of her chair and lay on her back, her head under the tree, looking up and smiling to herself. Hanging about two feet above her deep in the center of the tree was her secret Christmas ornament; a bird, crayoned a Cornflower Blue and with golden eyes, that she had made in her enrichment class. It wasn't very good, she knew, not compared to the ones her older brother made. She couldn't hold the crayon too well, and she had colored all outside the lines, so naturally she didn't want her mom and dad to see it. But she had made it all by herself, and last week when the tree had been decorated and her parents and brother were in the den watching TV, she had taken the ornament from her backpack and hidden it inside the tree where nobody could see, as high as she could reach by lying under it.

Her bird was the most wonderful Christmas ornament she had ever seen, on any Christmas tree, on any of her seven Christmases.

It was turning into a surprisingly tough day at school. Because of something called "austerity," which Jean didn't really understand, there was school on the day before Christmas, and the winter vacation was cut back to the one week between Christmas and New Year's. Jean didn't like school, and it saddened her to have only a brief respite from it.

Actually, Jean thought, that wasn't really true. She didn't hate school. She liked the classes, and she loved learning about the world. She was an avid reader. Her teachers taught her about places far away, and in another class she learned how she could use computers to make friends in these distant countries. Her dad had bought a computer but never really learned how to use it, and now -- with some help from her teacher -- she had made more friends with dad's computer this term than she remembered ever having in her life.

No, it wasn't school that Jean didn't like. It was the other kids, the kids who didn't like her. Congenitally deaf and unable to walk, Jean made an easy target for kids who were a little insecure about themselves; and in second grade, that included just about everybody. Did they think that because she couldn't hear them laughing, that she didn't "hear" it? That it didn't hurt?

Two o'clock, Jean thought. One more hour.

She rolled to the gymnasium, where some of the girls were already setting up the blue tumbling mats. Jean was excused from Phys Ed, of course, but the buses didn't leave the school until three; on gym days Jean usually spent the hour doing homework wherever her gym class was spending the period, in the gym or outside in the fields. She liked watching the other girls run, or throw the softball, or play lacrosse. Jean considered herself a realist, and never even pretended to herself that she would one day do any of these things, but watching other people have fun made her a little happier herself. Jean wondered what laughter sounded like... She opened her notebook, and started in on her arithmetic homework.

Patterns, she saw with dismay. She hated patterns. Two dots on a vertical line, then three dots and a vertical, then two dots under another horizontal line. What came next? Jean put the end of the pencil in her mouth, and thought. Okay, probably three dots, and then ... something. Three dots and... Ummm...

Jean coughed, and the pencil fell out of her mouth, bounced off her lap and rolled forward onto the gym floor. She looked up from her notebook, and saw Paige, Lynn, and Larissa, talking to each other. It looked like they were giggling. Jean said, "Can you give me my pencil?" The three girls grinned at her for a second, then broke out in laughter, their faces contorting in a cruel mimic of Jean's strained pronounciation. "Stop it!" she yelled. Lynn's mouth copied her, and the girls laughed harder. "STOP IT!!!"

Jean swung her wheelchair around, her notebook falling off her lap, and she sped along the bleachers and out the door, crying.

It was cold outside, though exactly how long she had been out there before she noticed, Jean had no way of telling. She reached behind her chair and pulled her jacket out from the netting. She struggled briefly trying to get both arms in but the coat wouldn't cooperate, and at last she balled the parka up and hugged it, her face buried in the fur, trying to stay warm. She wouldn't go back in the gym. She just wanted to go home, to the serenity of her home.

I want to be like them, Jean thought. I want to be able to walk, and run, and climb trees, and whisper a joke to my friends and hear them laugh. I want to hear Christmas carols, and the sound of sleigh bells, and skate on Ridders Pond in the woods off of Marcus Street. I WANT TO BE LIKE THEM!! The force of her feelings surprised her; this wasn't a wish that Jean had often. She began to cry again, uncontrollably.

Then Jean felt something on her arm. She looked up and wiped her eyes; perched on her wrist was a small bluebird, regarding her with the most expressive eyes Jean had ever seen. The bird cocked its head and fluttered its wings, and then Jean heard it chirp.

Jean heard it chirp.

She held her breath, and would have stopped her own heart if she could. She was afraid to move, afraid that the slightest twitch might send this bird flying away. But the bluebird showed no fright, and as it hopped a little further up on Jean's arm, it chirped again; and at the sound Jean cried out loud, a cry of profound joy. She closed her eyes, trying to inhale every sound that surrounded her; the wind cracking in the tree branches; the muffled sounds of the other kids through the closed gym doors; the sound of her own laughing...

She heard the bluebird ruffle its feathers, and she shuddered against the cold herself. She laughed again, out loud, and then opened her eyes, and flew.

Jean flew. She flapped her blue wings and soared up into the sky, high above the roof of the school; she then tucked her wings hard against her body and zero-g'd in a catenary arc, falling towards the ground in a rush of exhilaration. There she could see the empty wheelchair at the end of the ruts it had made in the mud when she rolled out of the gym; she beat her wings again and swooped up and into a helix, heading into the wind.

She delighted in the sound of the wind rushing past her ears as she flashed along the windows that lined the top of the gym wall. Inside she could see her classmates, revolving in lopsided cartwheels and well-practiced somersaults; swinging from impossibly high rings, four feet from the ground; and studiously pacing -- step by carefully-placed step -- on the balance beam, arms spread like wings, in their eyes a mixture of fear and uncontainable pride. And again Jean flew.

She reached the end of the building and flew up into an inside loop, then out over her school and towards Ridders Pond. The winter-barren trees passed under her: the oaks with their strong horizontal limbs made for spring climbing, the sycamores with their comically knobbed footholds, the maples -- the maples were her favorite, in the summer lying in their shade watching the pollynoses helicopter down on her, thousands of tiny angels visiting her from the heavens... She flew over the elms and the firs, the pines and the Roses of Sharon, until through the treeline appeared the clearing and the Pond. In the center of the pond pirhouetted a young mother, head back and arms outstretched to the sky, while her young daughter baby-stepped across the end of the ice, her choppy movements all but invisible beneath her overstuffed winter clothes. Jean heard the little girl laugh.

And again she flew.

Higher, higher. If it were possible to touch the clouds, Jean knew she could; and she rose, and she touched the clouds.

Then down, faster, down again, over Marcus, over Cowpath, along the ridgeline to her home... Circling the house, and hearing her father's records, his music; and over the music, a voice she knew belonged to her mother, singing...

"Cheer up, sleepy Jeanie,
Oh, what can it mean..."

She darted in through the vent in the eave of their roof, into the attic where the Christmas presents were hidden, all gold and red and green. Down then, and out through the attic stairs; she hovered for a moment in the stairwell, then across the living room, past the empty wheelchair and into the seclusion and safety of her Christmas tree, which shivered with crystal noises...

Jean lay on her back, her head under the tree, looking up and smiling to herself. Hanging about two feet above her deep in the center of the tree was her secret Christmas ornament; a bird, crayoned a Cornflower Blue and with golden eyes, that she had made herself. And in her secret Christmas ornament was a blessing, and the promise of freedom, of Christmas Eve flights and redemption that she would know her entire life.

It was a promise. And promises, as all seven-year-olds know, are to keep.