I
had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to
bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs.
There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold wind blew
around my dress. Everyone was
calling me. "Look who's here!
Look who's here!" I
looked. It was Santa Claus. Whom I never ‑ ever ‑ wanted to
meet. Santa Claus was looming in
the doorway and looking around for me.
My mother's voice was thrilled: "Look who's here!" I ran upstairs.
Like everyone in their right mind, I
feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God.
Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw
you; he knew when you'd been bad or good.
And I had been bad.
My
mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn't come down. My father encouraged me; my sister
howled. I wouldn't come down, but
I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with
night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus
stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and
repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down.
I don't know who ate the cookies.
*
For so many years now I have known that
this Santa Claus was actually a rigged‑up Miss White, who lived across the
street, that I confused the dramatis
personae in my mind, making of Santa Claus, God and Miss White an awesome,
vulnerable trinity. This is really
a story about Miss White.
Miss
White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. She liked having me around; she plied
me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in
finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure. She would set up
easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and
paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by
occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp. I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her
failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.
That day, a day of the following summer,
Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very
still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted
to a point. It burned; I was
burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn't
look back.
Even
now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his and
focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?
But
no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from
you. I am still running, running
from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and
I felt only fear, and pain. So
once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two
worlds, and we were all afraid.
