A Flash of Red

 By Jackie Clements-Marenda

Aunt Thecla was in the kitchen when I walked in from school. I could hear the click click click of her potato peeler. I hoped she wouldn’t notice my bad mood. The school year had barely started, and all the other second-graders were talking about was Christmas. I was living with my aunt for a while, just a few blocks away from my house in Brooklyn. My father had to go on a lot of business trips, my mother told me, and she had her hands full with her church work. Besides, Aunt Thecla needed some help around the house. But the situation made things confusing—especially Christmas. Would I still be at Aunt Thecla’s? Or back with my parents? How would Santa know where to find me? Then there was that nasty rumor Mary Margaret Sullivan had started at school. 

If there even is a Santa, I thought as I plopped in a kitchen chair. 

“That frown you’re wearing is blacker than the bottom of a dry well at midnight,” Aunt Thecla said. She poured a glass of grape juice and put it in front of me. I let it sit there. 

Aunt Thecla wiped her hands on the apron she wore over her flower-print housedress and pulled out a chair. “Out with it, Jacquelyn,” she said. 

“Mary Margaret Sullivan stood up in the middle of the class and said there is no such thing as Santa Claus!” The words burst out of me. 

Aunt Thecla slapped her potato peeler down on the table. “If brains were leather, Mary Margaret wouldn’t have enough to saddle a flea.” Aunt Thecla laughed at her joke, then got serious again. I looked past her wire spectacles into her blue eyes. “What did Sister John have to say about all this?” 

“Sister John said she’s in the God business, not the Santa business. And that each of us should ask our parents. I guess I’ll call Dad—if he isn’t on a trip.” 

Sadness fell over Aunt Thecla’s face. This seemed to happen whenever I mentioned Dad. “My baby brother,” she always said, “no matter how many candles are stuck in his birthday cake.” Sometimes I wondered if there was something going on I didn’t know about. Aunt Thecla was a good-sized woman who wore flower-print housedresses exclusively. I couldn’t imagine her in anything else, except of course for the apron that was often on top. She could do everything herself: chop wood, change a tire, and bake the most delicious pies. How could she possibly need the help of a seven-year-old? 

Aunt Thecla regained her composure and raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you think I know the truth about Santa?” she said. 

“So?” I asked. “Is he real?” 

“Some people don’t think so. That’s because mostly you can’t see him. But he’s always watching. Like when you were weeding the vegetable patch the other day. He was only there for a second, but he saw what you were doing.” 

I remembered that day very well. I didn’t much like pulling weeds. But Aunt Thecla said I’d be doing her a favor. It seemed like a small way to help her. Which is what I was supposed to be doing, after all. 

“Santa is shy,” Aunt Thecla went on. “If you do sneak a peek at him, pay him no mind. And tell no one, Jacquelyn. Just go on doing what you were doing.” She picked up the peeler and stood. “As long as you were doing something good, that is.” 

Aunt Thecla laughed her belly laugh and went back to her potatoes. I didn’t imagine Santa Claus himself had a heartier laugh. 

“I sure am glad your parents let you come stay with me,” she said. “You make me forget all my troubles.” 

Mary Margaret Sullivan wouldn’t ruin Christmas for me. Santa had to be real. And that’s what I would focus on instead of whatever the adults were trying to protect me from. 

That night in bed I talked to God about it. “Watch over Mom and Dad and Aunt Thecla. I think they need you, but I don’t know why. And please let me see Santa. Amen.” 

One evening I was doing my homework at the kitchen table. Aunt Thecla was making a roast, and she set the timer on the stove as she put the pan in the oven. “I have to make some phone calls from the extension,” she said. “Study that math till the timer dings.” She went off to her bedroom. 

I looked at the book in front of me. Multiplication. Yuck. I gazed out the kitchen window. A flash of red went by. For a split second I could have sworn it was a Santa hat, with the pom-pom on the end. No, I thought, it couldn’t be. Could it? Mary Margaret would turn her nose up at such evidence. But I knew what I saw. I went back to my times tables. 

Aunt Thecla asked me to clear the snow off the front stoop that weekend. “But it’s so cold out,” I whined. “Do I have to?” 

“It would be a big help to me,” she said. There was that word again. I put on my scarf and coat. I didn’t know what was worse—shoveling or weeding. 

Outside I shoveled the snow off the first step. It felt good to help Aunt Thecla. I didn’t care if Santa was watching or not. I concentrated on my chore and the hot cocoa she would surely have waiting when I was done. She was probably heating the milk already. I peeked inside the kitchen window. This time, I saw more than a flash of red. I saw the whole suit—and caught a glimpse of the fluffy white beard. Santa! 

Now that I knew it was true, who cared what Mary Margaret thought? That night in bed I thanked God for answering my prayer. “Please don’t forget about Mom and Dad and Aunt Thecla,” I told him. “I know they have prayers too.” 

Dad seemed to be gone a lot. He even had to miss Thanksgiving. Sometimes when Aunt Thecla took me to visit at my parents’ house, she and my mother got all teary-eyed. They’d whisper before saying good-bye, and Aunt Thecla always gave me an extra-hard hug when we got back to her house. The adults would tell me what was the matter soon enough, I reasoned. Meantime, each night I asked God to take care of them as well as Aunt Thecla was taking care of me. 

I saw Santa one more time before Christmas. I was mopping the floor after dinner, something Aunt Thecla usually did herself. But that night, her back was aching, so she went to lie down. Outside the kitchen window, he looked right at me and winked. Still, I told no one, just as Aunt Thecla had advised. 

Christmas Eve, I went to bed assured that the real Santa would come through the door (since Aunt Thecla didn’t have a chimney) and leave my presents under the tree. I wasn’t disappointed. Not even old Mary Margaret Sullivan could ruin that Christmas. It seemed to me that I got more presents than ever. 

I soon learned the truth about what was happening at home. That spring my father lost his struggle with cancer. Aunt Thecla died several years later, after I was already grown. I went over to sort through her clothes to see what we could give to charity. 

All her aprons and flower-print housedresses brought back memories. She’d loved me and helped me solve my petty problems, all at a time when she must have been so very sad about her “baby brother.” I reached way in the back of her closet and pulled out something red. A Santa suit. 

Santa is real. He’s just disguised as people like Aunt Thecla, wearing a flower-print housedress with an apron over it, peeling potatoes and baking the most delicious pies.