Becoming Johanna (8 page)

“
Where did everyone go?”
she asked Lucinda.

“
Office holiday
party.”

“
Oh,” Johanna gasped. “I
forgot all about it.”

“
You weren’t missed,”
Lucinda answered, pulling a lint ball off the sleeve of her sweater
and flicking it away.

Johanna felt like she had
been slapped in the face. She tried to be nice to everyone, but
after working there more than a month, she still felt like an
outsider.

A guy, who sat a few desks
away, placed some snowflake cookies wrapped in a paper napkin on
her desk. “I saw you couldn’t get out to the party, so I brought a
little of the party back to you.”

She felt her eyes sting.
“Thank you,” she said. His small act of kindness contrasted sharply
with Lucinda’s nasty retort.

By the end of the day,
Johanna had caught up on her work. Just two more days and LOI Book
Services would close shop for the four-day holiday weekend. She
wouldn’t get paid for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but she
wouldn’t lose her job either. Everyone had to take those two days
off—whether they wanted to or not.

After going to the bank to
cash their paychecks, Derrick dropped Johanna off at her door
Friday evening. “See you next Thursday. I’ll pick you up for work
in the morning.”

She did a double take.
“Not until Thursday?”

“
It’s Christmas. If I
don’t fly home and spend time with my family, my mother will hunt
me down and kill me. Or nag me to death. And she’ll never let me
leave on Christmas Day. I have very little choice in the
matter.”

“
Oh, right. I don’t know
what I was thinking.” She handed him the money she owed
him.

“
I told you it was a
gift.”

“
It’s too generous a
gift,” she said. “And it doesn’t include all the meals you’ve
bought me, or the rides you’ve given me. Please take
it.”

Inside, Johanna collapsed
on the futon. Derrick was going home for the holidays. Amaranda had
wished her a Merry Christmas before leaving the previous night with
her new dress and accessories. She’d announced she was going on a
family ski trip and wouldn’t be back until after the New Year.
Johanna hadn’t anticipated being all alone for the holidays. She
thought about Peakie’s. She’d hated it there, but at least other
people were always around. The previous year, the staff had
organized a Christmas Eve concert featuring a chorus of some of the
children. The next day they’d served a turkey dinner.
She
served the turkey
dinner. Cook specifically told her each child could only have one
slice of turkey, and she’d better not see Josefina dishing out any
more than that. Johanna tried to make it look like more by placing
it on top of the brussel sprouts everyone hated, and pushing it
close to the dressing, then dumping gravy on top. By the time she
got to eat her own dinner, it was cold. It didn’t seem like much of
a meal then, but it was better, in comparison, to the peanut butter
and jelly sandwich she would probably eat alone on Christmas
Day.

Boredom overcame her the
next day. She could have worked on the cottage if she didn’t have a
broken leg. She finished reading the books she’d borrowed from the
library and craved more, if only to occupy her mind. She could take
a cab to the library but hated wasting what little money she had
left. She decided, instead, to walk there. It wasn’t as far as the
town center, although it was easily a mile away. It should have
been a pleasant walk on a sunny, cloudless day; however, unusually
cold temperatures and the fact Johanna’s leg throbbed made it a
grueling journey. By the time she reached the library, she begged
them to allow her to put her foot up on a chair to help alleviate
the swelling.

“
You must want a
particular book very badly to walk here on crutches on such a cold
day.”

“
No,” Johanna replied. “I
just ran out of books to read and I wanted a few new
ones.”

“
Well, now, let me see
what we have,” the librarian said, embarking on a search for new
releases.

A half hour later, Johanna
made her choices.

“
How will you get these
home?” the librarian asked.

“
The same way I brought
the returns with me. I’ll put them in a plastic bag and tie the bag
to the handle of one of my crutches.”

“
Doesn’t that throw you
off balance?”

“
It hasn’t yet.” Johanna
watched a woman walk out of a nearby office carrying a plate of
food and a glass of punch. The woman placed it on a desk and took
her place behind it.

The librarian noticed.
“It’s our holiday party,” she explained. “Can I get you some punch
or a cup of mulled apple cider? Have you eaten yet? I could make
you a plate of food. We have more than we can possibly
eat.”

Johanna wanted to say “no,
thank you,” but her stomach chose that moment to growl, and the
word, “Okay,” slipped out when she opened her mouth.

“
You wait right here.” The
librarian disappeared into the office and re-emerged a few minutes
later with food and cider.

Johanna thanked her and
dug in. She found life to be either “feast or famine,” and she knew
she should feast before famine inevitably returned.

“
Do you have plans for the
holidays?” the librarian asked, making conversation.

“
Thanks to you, I plan on
curling up with a good book.”

“
No big holiday dinner
plans?”

“
No … but this,” Johanna
pointed to the plate of food the librarian had given her, “more
than makes up for it.”

A woman and her daughter
rang the bell on the circulation date. “I’d better get that,” the
librarian said, turning.

Johanna nodded as the
librarian rushed away. “Thank you,” she called out.

Ten minutes later, Johanna
hobbled home with a bag of books tied to her crutch and a belly
filled with food.

By Christmas Eve, Johanna
had finished reading all her library books and boredom returned.
She felt cooped up and isolated and a little depressed that she had
no one to celebrate the holidays with. She consoled herself with
the fact that she wouldn’t have to spend extra money that she
didn’t really have on gifts and decorations.

If the weather had been
unseasonably cold just before Christmas, it turned unusually mild
for Christmas Eve. It beckoned her outside, and she grabbed her
crutches and slowly made her way up to the strip mall. At the
corner, she rested by a temporary Christmas tree lot. It wasn’t as
crowded as she thought it would be on Christmas Eve, and she said
as much to the young man selling trees.

“
Everyone who wants a
tree, pretty much has one by now. I’m here for the holdouts—you
know—the parents who want their kids to think Santa put up the
tree. They’re the Type-A variety who drink designer coffee and run
on adrenaline and nicotine.”

Johanna pointed to a
scrawny tree that was barely t
wo-and-a-half feet
tall. “What will
happen to trees like that one?”

“
We’ll feed it to the
chipper and sell the mulch in the spring.”

“
Oh.” She didn’t mean for
it to sound like a gasp, but she felt sad about the tiny tree’s
fate.

“
Where’d you get your
tree?” he asked.

“
I don’t have
one.”

“
I’m guessing you couldn’t
wrestle one home with that broken leg.”

“
No. At least not a big
one.” She looked at the little tree longingly. “How much is that
one?” As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. She could see
her landlady with her hand out for the rent and hear Derrick’s
veiled suggestions about how she could repay him in lieu of cash.
She couldn’t afford to splurge money on a dead bush.

He looked her over. She
was kind of cute, even on crutches. “No one should go treeless at
Christmas, and that little guy won’t make much mulch, so if you
want him, you can have him. Free. But how are you going to get him
home? I’d help you, but I have to stay here for last minute
buyers.”

Johanna’s face brightened.
“Maybe you could tie it to my crutch.”

“
I could do that.” And so
he did, and Johanna limped home with a smile on her face
because
she
would
have a tree for Christmas.

“
Merry Christmas,” he
called out as she limped away.

“
Merry Christmas,” she
replied.

As Johanna turned the
corner to her cottage, she saw a delivery truck pull away from the
curb. On her top step lay a package wrapped in brown paper. She
slowly climbed the two steps to her door, being careful not to
knock off any tree needles. She’d lost a few during her trek home,
and she didn’t want to sacrifice any more. The tricky part would be
picking up the parcel. But saving the tree was more important to
her. She slipped her key in the lock and went inside but left the
door open to make sure no one swiped her package.

She grabbed a knife from
the kitchen drawer, so she could cut the string binding the tree to
her crutch, and placed the little tree on her table. Returning to
the front door, she leaned her crutches against the wall and held
onto the doorjamb while she slid down far enough to reach the
package. Lifting it turned out to be harder than she thought. She
couldn’t bend the leg with the cast, so she had to slide it outside
the door and along the step. There was no way she could pick up the
package with one hand and lost her balance, ending up on her butt.
That was fortuitous, because she now had two hands free to grab the
package and pull it inside. The trick would be finding a way to get
up again from the floor. In the end, she left the package on the
floor and wiggled across the living room so she could hoist herself
up on the sofa. At least she’d managed to kick the door shut with
her good leg on her way to the futon, but in doing so, she’d
knocked over her crutches, which now lay on top of the package. Her
little adventure and perplexing problem exhausted her, and before
retrieving them, she closed her eyes to rest and quickly fell
asleep.

The sun had set by the
time Johanna awoke, and she switched on the lamp to look at her
watch. It was ten p.m. She caught site of her little tree and
smiled. She used the folding chair like a walker and pushed it
toward her crutches. A sense of empowerment washed over her as she
sat on the chair, leaned down, and retrieved the fallen crutches.
With that problem out of the way, she grabbed a magazine Amaranda
had given her and made a paper chain out of strips of the more
colorful illustrations. She twisted each strip and then wet the
ends and twisted them together. Her first attempt looked large and
cumbersome, but time was on her side, and she used it to make a
finer chain with smaller loops to suit her tree’s
proportions.

She quieted her growling
stomach with a peanut butter sandwich. The bag of chocolates she
had purchased as an occasional treat sat in the fridge next to the
bread. Each piece had been wrapped in either red or green foil for
the holidays. She grabbed the candies and carefully set some of
them on the tree branches. Her decorating culminated in lighting
the candle she had purchased a couple of weeks before but always
felt too guilty to light. The aroma of cinnamon and spice filled
the air. She placed it by the tree, but not too
close
. I don’t want the tree to catch
fire.
The candlelight flickered off the
bits of foil on the candies, and Johanna felt a sense of peace she
hadn’t ever experienced.

It was well past midnight,
and she turned her head in surprise when she heard caroling
outside. She pulled back the curtain and saw a group of people
walking down the block, singing.

It’s Christmas,
she thought. The package she’d found on her
doorstep still waited for her to unwrap it. Once again, she used
her folding chair as a walker and sat on it while she picked up the
parcel. She placed the package on the seat and pushed it over to
the futon. She made herself comfortable before tearing off the
wrapping paper. She had no idea what could be inside but knew it
might be the closest she’d come to opening a gift at Christmas. Her
jaw dropped when she finally cast her eyes on what was hidden
inside—a first edition of
Heidi—
the same book she had been
looking at in
Artiqua
Literaria
. She leaned her head back
against the cushion to think. The woman who owned the bookstore
seemed friendly enough, but why would she give Johanna a valuable
first edition? The woman didn’t look poor, but she also didn’t look
like she made a habit out of giving books away. Johanna’s heart
skipped a beat when she remembered the little old man—the one who
had called her ‘Josefina.’
No, it can’t
be. How would
he even know where I
live?
Neither Amaranda nor Derrick had
been there, nor had she told them about the book, so she felt
confident it hadn’t come from either of them. She opened the cover
and discovered a small envelope with her name on it. Inside, a note
simply said, “Merry Christmas from one book lover to
another.”