Stille Nacht

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The girls are finally asleep. I have waited until I hear no more giggles coming from the tiny bedroom. Now I have taken out the Santa presents, and they are scattered on the apartment's scarred hardwood floor. I sit in the narrow dining room, which gives me a good place to hide as well as a view of the hall. It's hard to put the girls to bed on Christmas Eve. "Will Santa come, Mommy?" Suzanne asks me every year. "Will he really come?" And I know what she's asking. She's not asking about Santa. She's asking about Daddy.

"Santa will come, honey," I tell her and add silently, _Daddy won't_. Gretchen, on the other hand, is simply aglow. She's too young to remember Will, too young to recall all the Christmases when Daddy said he would come and never did. The least I can do is make Santa reliable.

I dread the day when I tell Suzanne that Santa isn't real. That is, mercifully, a few years off, although she has heard rumors. Little Kevin Targe, whose parents believe in angels and don't believe in discipline, has told all the children that Santa is "a merchandising ploy designed to keep the masses happy." Fortunately, Suzanne doesn't understand "merchandising," "masses" or "ploy." She does understand "happy," and that's where I come in.

I hope.

Although, at the moment, I doubt it.

I am sitting in the middle of kitten and teddy bear wrapping paper, tape stuck to my upper arm (I'm too chicken to pull it off --I hate ripping the fine hairs), and am staring at Barbie's easy-to-assemble Malibu Beach House. I had one of those once, and it too arrived fully assembled under the tree. I don't think I appreciated my own Santa until now.

I blow a strand of hair out of my face. I have dried cookie dough on my sweatshirt, and frosting beneath my nails. My butcher block table, purchased with hard-earned teaching dollars, has food coloring stains on its edges, child-size frosting prints on its surface, and red hots stuck to its legs. The dishes are in the sink, the kuchen dough chilling in the fridge, the remaining frosting is drying in its bowl. I have at least three more hours before I can sleep --that is, if Santa can assemble Barbie's Malibu Beach House without first getting an engineering degree. And the girls will wake me at the crack of dawn. I am sipping Christmas tea from France, a fragrant blend made of black tea, caramel flavor, pineapple, and sweet oranges, my one indulgence this year. When I ordered it, I imagined myself in my immaculate kitchen, tree lights twinkling in the nearby living room, the girls asleep down the hall. At that moment, Christmas seemed like peace, like light, like warmth.

Like television.

I sigh, and flick on the radio. The local rock station is playing the Drifters' cover of "White Christmas," so I switch to public radio. The King's Singers, with promise of the Cambridge Boy's Choir later. Christmas carols, sung beautifully.

I stop and hold the tea. The mug, a Denny's holiday cup, is warm against my hands. My Christmases were beautiful as a little girl. Cookies, and kuchen, and carols. A house decorated in every room. And while Santa didn't always bring the right gifts, he brought gifts, drank his milk, and left a half-eaten cookie on the plate.

This is what I want for my girls: a moment of peace in a year filled with disappointments, with missing daddies, and macaroni and cheese suppers.

A moment of peace is all I ever wanted.

We always went to church on Christmas Eve. Advent and Christmas are the only things I miss from my former religion: the smell of pine boughs and candles, the music sung with enthusiasm and love, and the sermon, always creative, always short. I got to stay up until midnight, and the world never looked more beautiful: white snow on the sidewalks, the hand-carved lanterns providing light into the church, the black sky above, the shouts of "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!" in the ice-coated air. Mother insisted on church, just as she insisted on reading from Luke before we opened presents. She believed in keeping the Christ in Christmas long before the phrase was trendy, and it gave the holiday a mysticism that it seems to lack now. Sometimes I could almost feel the hope, and the magic, that the shepherds and the wise men felt as they gazed on the tiny baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

Sometimes I almost believed.

"Mommy?" It is Suzanne. I bury the parts of Barbie's Malibu Beach House under a pile of wrapping paper, and slip into the hallway. It is dark and crowded despite the Mickey Mouse nightlight at the end. Apartment designers should remember that people have to live in these spaces.

"What, baby?" I whisper near her door, careful not to wake Gretchen.

"Has Santa come?" Her voice is tight with tension.

"Not yet, honey."

"He won't come when you're awake," she said.

I smile, and resolve to be even more quiet. "I'll go to bed soon."

"But what if we've already missed him?"

"We won't miss him, honey. Santa always comes."

"He didn't come to Katrina's house last year."

I sigh. How to explain why Santa misses the poor children in Suzanne's class? "I'm sure he tried," I say lamely.

"Mommy, what if he doesn't come?"

"He will, sweetie." I lean against her door jamb. She won't sleep anytime soon. "You want to get up and have some warm milk and honey? There's some pretty music on the radio."

"No, thanks," she says, sounding prim, sounding like my mother. "It's too late already." I can still see her, my mother, on all those Christmas Eves, her gray hair piled on the top of her head, her Christmas dress always green and red. She stands in the darkened pew beside me, holding a candle. The church lights are off, the candle is lit, illuminating her familiar face. She is singing "Silent Night" --only she refuses to sing it in English. She is a first generation American. Church to her should be conducted in German, and on Christmas Eve, singing the final hymn, she always rebels.

_Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht_...

The memory fades there. I cannot remember the German words.

Or the sound of her voice.

Barbie's Malibu Beach House is finally assembled and under the tree. It looks perfect, even though I put the second floor where the ceiling should be. Gretchen's PlaySkool tree house stands beside it, easier to assemble and just as impressive.

Santa is tired.

And she still has kuchen to bake.

I sigh, go to the kitchen, and turn the radio on softly. The dough is firm. I take out my grandmother's rolling pin, and put down the baker's cloth. I melt butter in the microwave, sprinkle flour, and take out the dough.

My grandmother made this dough with her hands. My mother used a hand-beater. I use an electric mixer, one of the few wedding gifts that still works.

I flatten the kuchen, add cinnamon, sugar, and raisins, then roll dough into a tiny tube. I wind the tube into a pie plate, and clip the top with my mother's pastry scissors. She used to make the same movement, her fingers nimble and quick, not tired and stained like mine.

The kuchen is a link from generation to generation. My grandmother baked her kuchen in an oven heated by flame. My mother made it in a GE electric stove she bought with my father's life insurance money. I use a tiny apartment stove whose temperature gauge no longer works.

My grandparents had no money. But my mother said they celebrated Christmas in style. My grandmother decorated every room in the house. She made all the presents, and baked for a month before. On Christmas morning, my grandfather opened the parlor and built a fire. When the room was warm, all nine children had to sit --one at a time --at the piano and sing a carol for my grandmother. When they were finished, she took over the piano, and led them in a chorus of _Silent Night_. In German.

The kuchen is baking and it finally smells like Christmas. I have had so much tea, my hands are shaking. The dishwater is a dirty lime green. Sprinkles float on top of it. I let the water drain, wipe my hands on the Santa towel I bought at Bi-Mart for ninety-five cents, and stare out the kitchen window. The only lights in the neighborhood come from the decorations which everyone leaves on for Santa. Red and green and gold reflect in the snow. The night is dark.

And I am the only one awake.

Except for the disk jockey. He says he is playing one final King's Singers' carol before playing a rerun of Cambridge's Christmas service. It is already Christmas morning in England. I put the stopper back in the sink and am about to fill it when the timer buzzes. I shut off the timer and open the stove. The kuchen is golden brown, the sugar melted, the raisins plump and juicy. Heat caresses my face.

And then voices fill my kitchen.

_Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht..._

The King's Singers are singing "Silent Night."

In German.

I take the kuchen out and set it on the cooling rack. I close the oven door, and listen. The words are familiar and warm. This is how the carol should go.

But I cannot sing along. During all those years she stood beside me, all those years I listened to her high, fluted, and perfect soprano float over the congregation, I never bothered to learn the words. I do not speak the language of her childhood.

I never have.

It is two hours before dawn. I have just finished frosting the kuchen, just shut off the kitchen light, when I hear a creak in the hallway. I peer around the kitchen door to see my eldest daughter, her Garfield nightgown ghostly in the dimness of the night light, tip toe into the living room. She stops in front of the tree. Her hands rise to her mouth. She doesn't move for the longest time. Finally she crouches and touches Gretchen's tree house.

"He came," she whispers to the empty room. "He really came." My room is cool, the bed inviting. I sink under the blankets and close my eyes, my body humming from tea, and sugar, and stress.

I am nearly asleep when I see my mother. Not singing in the candlelight, but as she looked on Christmas morning, her hair messed from sleep, a streak of flour on her cheek. She clutches a chipped mug of coffee in her right hand, and she has deep shadows beneath her eyes. She is watching me with an intensity I have never seen before, as if she could absorb my joy, my excitement into herself. Then she sees me --the adult me.

_Stille Nacht_, she whispers.

_Heilige Nacht,_ I whisper back.

We smile, and sleep finally comes.

Two hours of heavenly peace.

--END --