“I reckon it would take mo’n thirty dollars to send fo’ Harriett, an’ Lawd knows we ain’t got three dollars in de house.”
Annjee lay limply back on her pillows staring out of the window at the falling snow. She had been crying.
“But never mind,” her mother went on, “I’s gwine see Mr. John Frank tomorrow an’ see can’t I borry a little mo’ money on this mortgage we’s got with him.”
So on Monday morning the old lady left her washing and went uptown to the office of the moneylender, but the clerk there said Mr. Frank had gone to Chicago and would not be back for two weeks. There was nothing the clerk could do about it, since he himself could not lend money.
That afternoon Annjee sat up in bed and wrote a long letter to Harriett, telling her of their troubles, and before she sealed it, Sandy saw his mother slip into the envelope the three one-dollar bills that she had been guarding under her pillow.
“There goes your Santa Claus,” she said to her son, “but maybe Harriett’s hungry. And you don’t want Aunt Harrie to be hungry, do you?”
“No’m,” Sandy said.
The grey days passed and Annjee was able to get up and sit beside the kitchen-stove while her mother ironed. Every afternoon Sandy went downtown to look at the shop widows, gay with Christmas things. And he would stand and stare at the Golden Flyer sleds in Edmondson’s hardware-shop. He could feel himself coasting down a long hill on one of those light, swift, red and yellow coasters, the envy of all the other boys, white and colored, who looked on.
When he went home, he described the sled minutely to Annjee and Aunt Hager and wondered aloud if that might be what he would get for Christmas. But Hager would say: “Santa Claus are just like other folks. He don’t work for nothin’!” And his mother would add weakly from her chair: “This is gonna be a slim Christmas, honey, but mama’ll see what she can do.” She knew his heart was set on a sled, and he could tell that she knew; so maybe he would get it.
One day Annjee gathered her strength together, put a woollen dress over her kimono, wrapped a heavy cloak about herself, and went out into the backyard. Sandy, from the window, watched her picking her way slowly across the frozen ground towards the outhouse. At the trash-pile near the alley fence she stopped and, stooping down, began to pull short pieces of boards and wood from the little pile of lumber that had been left there since last summer by the carpenters who had built the porch. Several times in her labor she rose and leaned weakly against the back fence for support, and once Sandy ran out to see if he could help her, but she told him irritably to get back in the house out of the weather or she would put him to bed without any supper. Then, after placing the boards that she had succeeded in unearthing in a pile by the path, she came wearily back to the kitchen, trembling with cold.
“I’m mighty weak yet,” she said to Hager, “but I’m sure much better than I was. I don’t want to have the grippe no more. … Sandy, look in the mailbox and see has the mailman come by yet.”
As the little boy returned empty-handed, he heard his mother talking about old man Logan, who used to be a carpenter.
“Maybe he can make it,” she was saying, but stopped when she heard Sandy behind her. “I guess I’ll lay back down now.”
Aunt Hager wrung out the last piece of clothes that she had been rinsing. “Yes, chile,” she said, “you go on and lay down. I’s gwine make you some tea after while.” And the old woman went outdoors to take from the line the frozen garments blowing in the sharp north wind.
After supper that night Aunt Hager said casually: “Well, I reckon I’ll run down an’ see Brother Logan a minute whilst I got nothin’ else to do. Sandy, don’t you let de fire go out, and take care o’ yo’ mama.”
“Yes’m,” said the little boy, drawing pictures on the oilcloth-covered table with a pin. His grandmother went out the back door and he looked through the frosty window to see which way she was going. The old woman picked up the boards that his mother had piled near the alley fence, and with them in her arms she disappeared down the alley in the dark.
After a little, Aunt Hager returned puffing and blowing.
“Can he do it?” Annjee demanded anxiously from the bedroom when she heard her mother enter.
“Yes, chile,” Hager answered. “Lawd, it sho is cold out yonder! Whee! Lemme git here to this stove!”
That night it began to snow again. The great heavy flakes fell with languid gentility over the town and silently the whiteness covered everything. The next morning the snow froze to a hard sparkling crust on roofs and ground, and in the late afternoon when Sandy went to return the Reinharts’ clothes, you could walk on top of the snow without sinking.
At the back door of the Reinharts’ house a warm smell of plum-pudding and mince pies drifted out as he waited for the cook to bring the money. When she returned with seventy-five cents, she had a nickel for Sandy, too. As he slid along the street, he saw in many windows gay holly wreaths with red berries and big bows of ribbon tied to them. Sandy wished he could buy a holly wreath for their house. It might make his mother’s room look cheerful. At home it didn’t seem like Christmas with the kitchen full of drying clothes, and no Christmas-tree.
Sandy wondered if, after all, Santa Claus might, by some good fortune, bring him that Golden Flyer sled on Christmas
