By: Mari Snelling

Christmas has always been a hard time for me. A stepmother that did not like me at all raised me. She and my father had three children of their own and to her I was only a burden. My father loved her and he loved his kids but he was afraid that he would lose her and the other three if he stood up for me. The fact is that he would have. There weren’t many good days for me to begin with but Christmas was the worst.

I remember the Christmas I turned four. I don’t remember it in explicit detail but I remember having fun. Mom was pregnant with my baby brother and Dad had taken care of the Christmas decorations and the gifts. I am sure that’s why it was a good day. I already had a half sister who was two years younger, a brother three years younger, than I. My mother died when I was eight months old. She had scarlet fever.

I remember coming down the stairs in the project apartment we lived in. My sister and I were wearing matching pajamas. They were blue with ducks on them and had feet. Dad had the tree all lit up and there were so many presents under the tree. Although I don’t remember any Christmas’s before that I do remember standing there, concentrating on the lights while my siblings ran to the gifts with Dad saying, “Now here, here now.” He pulled them away from the tree and sat on the floor next to it. Mom was just coming down the stairs. As she lumbered to a chair that was placed close to the tree, I went to get her the morning coffee she would want.

I heard Dad ask, “Where did Mari go?” She responded with a does anyone care, type of comment and Dad told her to stop. He was kissing the top of her head when I carried the coffee in. Dad went back to his place in the floor, pushing aside the wrapping paper of the first gift he had given each of the other two. I remember looking at the dress up set that my sister had. She was trying to put the high-healed shoes on over the pajama feet. She had a purse, a boa and fake lipstick with the shoes. They were such a bright red and so very pretty. I remember being almost scared when Daddy called me over to him. He handed me a box and I remember looking back at mom. She did not say or do anything so I opened the lime green dress-up set that I got. My brother got a cowboy set. It had a badge, a hat, a gun belt with a holster and a gun.

Sissy had gotten a table and chairs set and I got a tiny, wooden piano and bench. Our brother got a small train set and a hobbyhorse. Then came the really big present. I was sure that it was from Santa. I hadn’t told anyone that I had seen the doll in the store. I hadn’t told anyone that I dreamed about that doll and pretended for weeks that I had one just like her. The only person that could have known was Santa.

It had been snowing that day when we got to the store. The day I first saw Suzie. By the time we finished shopping it was a terrible storm. I was told to stay at the front of the store with the cart while mom ran to the car, carrying my sister. While she was gone I stood close to the building, trying to keep out of the wind as best I could, I pulled the cart close in front of me and huddled behind it. I could see that mom was half out of the parking spot and her wheels were spinning uselessly on the snow and ice. It was then that I saw Santa coming out of the store. He stopped next to me and began putting on a scarf and fluffy white gloves.

“Santa” I said. He halted in the middle of throwing the scarf over his shoulder and looked around. I raised my head just a little, hoping that mom would not see me talking to him. My sister was afraid of him and that’s why we didn’t go to see him in the store like all the other kids did. “Santa?”

“What is it dear?” he said.

“Did you see the big dolly that was close to your chair? She has hair that is red like mine. Her name is Suzie”

“Yes, I saw her, but where is your mother?”

“She had to take my sister to the car. That’s her there,” I pointed. “I think she is stuck.”

“I will go help her. You need to step inside so you don’t get to cold and wet.” He started to leave.

“Santa! Please Santa.” I was almost crying. “The doll?”

“I will see what I can do dear.” He said as he went to help two other men push the car. He came back and loaded the groceries into the car for mom. I was so afraid that he would tell her about Suzie. That’s what I had named her. He remembered and I had my Suzie.

It had not occurred to me that the doll I saw in the store had red hair like mine and this one had black hair like the rest of the family. I was too happy to notice. Mom was not happy. She sat there and stared at Dad. I think she thought I was getting more than my sister but Dad reached behind the tree and brought out a dollhouse for her. It wasn’t wrapped; it only had a piece of material draped over it with a bow stuck on top.

Suzie was almost as tall as I was. If you held her hand just the right way and put a little pressure on her she would walk with you. We moved into our first home that summer and I was allotted the basement. I had to hide Suzie because someone was always trying to hurt her or take her away from me.

I kept her safe for two years in my basement hiding place before my brother found her and decided he wanted to know what made her walk.

I was hanging laundry out to dry and came into the basement to run another load through the wringer when I found him standing there looking into the hole her leg used to fit in. He reached inside as I began to scream and pulled out a rubber band.

After she had been dismembered I glued her leg in place as best I could and sat her on a shelf. I thought that now that she was broken no one would care that I had her. I guess I was wrong because the next day she was gone.

When the house was built the contractor had only removed half of the dirt under the house. They had made just enough of a hole to form the foundation as deep as the rest of the basement. Dad and I were digging out that half of the basement when I found Suzie’s torso. Her head was buried about three feet away from her body. Both of them had magic marker ink all over them and all her hair was gone. Not just cut off but gone. Like someone had burnt it off. Dad watched me closely as I placed the remains of my doll in the other part of the room, where my mattress lay on the bare floor. He never said a word. I never mentioned that there were no legs or arms found. I never asked Santa for anything after I asked him for Suzie. I stopped dreaming that day. I stopped hoping.

It was almost twenty years before I dared dream for anything again. I dreamt that I was writing this story for you to read.

I don’t know specifically what I got the next year. The Christmas’s that I do remember I always had just as many gifts under the tree as everyone else. Sometimes I had more. Dad didn’t do the shopping anymore after the Christmas I got Suzie. Not a single Christmas has gone by that I haven’t thought of Suzie.

I remember one Christmas, I was eleven then, my sister unwrapped a stereo, the oldest brother a fuel powered airplane that actually flew and the youngest brother had a huge train with a kit to build a village and make a landscape. I unwrapped a big box as well. It was full of baby powder and shampoo. I also got toothpaste, soap and deodorant. I may have gotten socks and panties, I usually did.

I don’t really know when it started and I didn’t give it much thought until a couple of years ago but sitting in the family room with everyone opening their nice gifts I always knew that there was one waiting for me. One that no one but Daddy and I knew about.

I would think about it all day long as I helped prepare the feast and when company came or when we went to the church for the candlelight service.

When the day was finally over, the kitchen and living room cleaned, I would go to my corner space in that dark, ugly basement and between my pillow and the wall there would be two other gifts. The odd shaped one was a candle that smelled really good and there was a pack of matches inside the glass to light it with. I didn’t get this one every year. That gift stopped after we moved to another house that did not have a basement. But every year there was that rectangular box that I had so looked forward to. My chocolate covered cherries.

Yes, it really was Santa that brought Suzie to me. When I left home, no matter where I was there was always a box of Chocolate Covered Cherries for me. Sometimes they were a day or two late. Sometimes they were early. Once they were crushed but there was only one year that he missed giving me those Cherries. I will tell you about that year in another story.

On July 5th of 2004, mom and Dad had had been at a barbeque party that one of mom’s sisters held every year for the fourth of July celebration. My granddaughters were with them. Dad drove about a mile and a half down the dirt road and pulled off to the side. He was a heart patient and the diuretics that he took caused him to urinate frequently. Mom looked down at the girls who were 8 and 6 years of age and said, “Poppa has to go pee.”

Saundra, the oldest, looked up at her and said, “No he doesn’t. My Grandpa’s dying.” Mom looked frantically at Dad to find him nodding his head. I will never know why she got out of that truck. I am not sure if I have forgiven her or not. I am sure that there was nothing she could have done anyway. But, she had his nitro capsules in her breast pocket. Instead of getting them out and giving him a couple she got out of that dam truck! She ran around it and stood outside the door getting the capsules out of her pocket. When she opened the door to give them to him he was gone.

He gave those babies a gift before he left us. While she got out and made her trip around the truck, he patted both girls on the legs and said, “You’re Poppa sure does love you.”

Saundra said, “He didn’t do no more breathing after that Granny.”

My sister called me and asked if my husband was home. I told her he was and I would go outside and get him. “No, I just want to be sure he’s there. Look, sit down quick. Our Dad just died. I have to get ready to go.” she hung up.

We did not have a vehicle at the time. But Jack borrowed one and we left as soon as we could the following morning. We live almost one hundred miles away in a neighboring state. My sister lives nine hundred miles away and she got there just before I did. She spent the day and half the night there and leaving her children, who were grown, with mom she and her husband left for Paris.

I am a lot of things but I am not stupid. I knew what mom thought of me and I was bound and determined to disappoint her. I held my head high. I greeted and consoled perfect strangers. I catered to older family members, especially Uncle Daddy, my father’s twin.

I wasn’t sure we would ever get Dad buried. It took five days. He wasn’t really a big man. He was only 5’11 in his prime. He had lost the left leg because of the loss of circulation after they took out the main artery for his heart surgery. I doubt that he was more than 5’7” when he died. But the man had a chest and shoulders that looked like a barrel. He had been a professional body builder when we were kids and it still showed. The largest casket that could be had wasn’t big enough to close the lid and they had to almost wedge his shoulders into it. A special ordered casket was on its way from Memphis. I am really not sure how I got through it.

We sat through the eulogy that mom and Dad’s pastor gave, not much of it had anything to do with Dad. I think he was trying to drum up visitors to his church. I may have heard five words in that long sermon.

The procession of people that we had to greet as they walked past my father’s body was seemingly unending. My husband was the last in line. I grabbed him and pulled him to my side. I knew that if he weren’t standing there mom would try to drag me off with her. She intended to give a speech in the anteroom.

She looked over her shoulder and saw Jack. I was turned as though I were going to follow her. I whispered to Jack. “Follow her and escort her out if you have to.” Bless his heart he did. I walked up to the casket just as they were closing it. Looking pleadingly at the funeral director was all it took for him to fully raise the lid again and take about three steps back behind the flowers. I said a few things to the shell that was my Dad, kissed his lips and walked away.

I almost lost it at the graveside. I felt that mom’s mother, whom Dad considered his own mother, should have been with us. I couldn’t find her and neither could my three nephews.

Then came the one thing that almost broke me. My stepmother wanted everyone, insisted that everyone follow her to the spot where my father had died. Jack and I were riding with my daughter as was my cousin Sienna. Mom had instructed my daughter to make certain that I was there with the rest of the family.

She just could not stand it! I had disappointed her and she knew that this was something I would not be able to take. I did not want to know where my Dad was when he left me. I told everyone in that van all the way there, “This is just to much.”

I kept my eyes closed on the entire trip. I did not fight when we got there, I did not look or even say anything but I did not get out of that van either. I kept my eyes closed all the way back to town. On the trip back I learned about what happened at the hospital just after Daddy died.

Mom told my daughter, “Your mother will go crazy. She won’t be able to take this. She will make a fool of the entire family at the funeral. Let’s not tell her just yet.” It was of course to late. Sister had already called.

It was the day after, when we were home that I fell apart. It was three months before I could say the words. “My Dad died.”

As that following Christmas approached I remembered the day I asked Santa, “Did you see the big dolly that was close to your chair? She has hair that is red like mine. Her name is Suzie”

It was then that I remembered him stopping and turning back while on his way to help push the car. He said to me, “What is your favorite candy?” I remember that I answered, “chocolate covered cherries.”

I had wondered, in the past, why it had become such a tradition for me. As much as I have missed that doll I know that I will never miss anything as much as chocolate covered cherries.

For years now, I have spent my Christmas’s alone. Jack spends the day with his family. There are members that will only make a precursory visit if I am there and that is not fair to Jack’s mother. So, I usually catch up on some research or play Internet games on that day. He is often gone most of the day before as well, visiting his daughter. My children live close to where mom and dad lived.

Christmas eve of that year, I went to the local convenience store for some supplies. It was late. I almost didn’t get there before they closed. John, the owner stuck his hands on his hips when he saw me and asked, “Just where have you been?” I was a bit taken aback. It wasn’t as if I was expected or anything. “You are always here, every Christmas Eve right around six.”

“Hahaha,” I laughed. “Well I assure you John that I do not plan it that way.” He bagged my items as we talked and I got my money out to pay him.

“Just wouldn’t be Christmas without seeing you.” he said. John did not say it but he was one person that was very worried about how I would take this day. I had not spent a Christmas with Daddy in years though. Well, in some way I was with him as I ate my cherries.

I took only the perishables out of the bags when I got home. I was tired and Jack and I went to bed. The next morning I helped him load the gifts in the car and watched as he left. Coming inside I turned the computer on to boot up as I put the rest of the groceries away. On the bottom of the last bag there was a gift-wrapped box.

I went to the dinning room table and opened the box. The only marking on it was, in magic marker in one corner, Mari. Opening it I found my chocolate covered cherries.

I have never told this story before today, to anyone. It was my secret, Dad’s and mine. Yet there it was.

On Christmas of 2005, I stood once again, watching Jack pull away. I saw my nearest neighbor driving down the road. As I turned to go into the house he honked his horn so I walked to the road’s edge to meet him. His wife had embroidered me a set of bath towels he said and he handed me a bag. We talked for just a moment and he turned to drive the two miles back to his home. I brought the bag in and took the towels out to admire them. She does a nice job.

Picking up the bag to dispose of it I noticed that it was not empty. I slowly sat it down and almost scared peaked into the bag. There again was a rectangular box with my name in magic marker in one corner.

Today is December 29, 2006. There were no gifts this year at all. No chocolate covered cherries mysteriously arriving. I do miss them but not as much as I would have if Santa had not remembered me these last two years.