forgetting.

Derel couldn’t wait for the weekend to be over. Christmas mocks the lonely with its promises of joy and peace on earth. The blinking lights remind her of the flashing ambulance lights the night they came for her mom and never brought her back. She stood in the large family room window and watched the policemen load her father into their car with those same flashing red lights on the top of their cars.

Derel balanced the fourth plate on her arm near her shoulder so she could get the entire order out in one trip. The floor of the diner was particularly dingy tonight with wet footprints from the lightly falling snow that came in attached to the folks who wandered in to eat and let it melt off their traveled shoes. It would take extra elbow grease to mop it up before she could go home to her cold apartment. If she left the heat at sixty-one degrees, she could just afford the gas bill during the winter months, if her tips were good. Diners were particularly generous during the holidays even though she was not the most outgoing waitress; whether it was because of the season, an overwhelming feeling of generosity towards man, or maybe because they were just grateful that someone else would feed their family when they were harried and exhausted, she didn’t know, but it helped her get through the winter, nonetheless.

The family who was awaiting their order were huddled at that table near the door animatedly talking about when Santa would come tonight. The father, in a faded and ill-fitting suit, was checking his watch and whispering that Santa wasn’t far now and that after dinner they needed to get home and tucked into bed so that he would come to their apartment. The mother was nodding, bent over the worn table with a weak smile and tired eyes with the youngest child on her lap. She was in dark blue scrubs and still had her name badge on from the Whispering Hollow Memory Care home.

Derel saw the family every other Friday when the mom worked her late shift and tonight it happened to be Christmas Eve. The man had picked them up from the daycare two doors down when he finished at the struggling CPA firm and got off the 645p train. Mom always met them at the diner. Derel knew their order by heart. Dad got the burger and fries to share with the kids. Mom had the turkey sandwich. The oldest son almost always ordered a grill cheese, the oldest daughter a corndog and the youngest, the chicken nuggets.

Derel was putting down the plates when the diner door slammed open near her jingling the bell over the door frame with intensity. The hooded man wrapped his arm around her waist with his left hand and put the gun in his right hand to the side of her head and drug her nearer the cash register. The plates in her arms dropped with a crash to the floor and the youngest daughter in her mother’s arms began to cry. A woman beside her had screamed. Derel’s eyes were wide and her body was frozen in terror. Tears were sliding down her bright red cheeks.

The man demanded all the cash in the register.

Teagen, the nineteen-year-old college student, was trying to open the register as fast as he could. His hands were trembling, and he couldn’t remember the code to open the drawer. The hooded man was getting impatient, and Derel could hear his finger tapping rhythmically on the trigger. She knew if he tapped too hard…..he had pulled her so close beside him that she could feel the heat radiating off of his body and the beating of his heart in his chest. She could smell the sweat pooling in his crevices.

She knew there wasn’t going to be enough cash in the register. Hardly anyone paid in cash anymore. They used to go to the bank every day but now they only needed to go twice a week. He was going to shoot her. Just like her dad had killed her mother. In front of her. She was just younger than her mom had been when she died.  

Teagen was pulling out bills as fast as he could. He held them out at arm’s length with his head down. The man released his arm around Derel and reached for the small stack of bills. Derel dropped to her knees on the floor as he swept from the diner without a second glance. No one stopped him. The darkness and falling snow seemed to envelope him like a ghost.

The siren of the police car was wailing down the street.

The father of the family was instantaneously kneeling in front of her.  “Are you okay?”

Derel looked at him for a long moment. “Where am I?”

His eyes widened. “You are at the Byways Café.”

She looked at him strangely. “How did I get here?”

“You work here.” He whispered.

She looked down at her outfit and then at the people surrounding her where she still knelt on the floor. “I do?”

He looked back at his wife who was still trying to calm their youngest child whose crying had turned into a near constant whimper and she was tucked into her mother’s chest taking heaving breaths. The other two children were holding one another.

He looked Derel in the eyes. Where he had earlier seen pain and a sort of vulnerability, there was now a blank emptiness. “Do you know who you are? What is your name?”

Derel looked as if she was about to speak and her mouth was poised to answer but there was nothing. “I don’t….” she stuttered. “I don’t know.” She was panicking and her chest started to rise and fall more distinctly with each breath. She was scrambling for clues and her eyes fell on her name badge. “Am I Derel?”

The man nodded. “Do you know where you live?”

She shook her head and the tears started to drop to her uniform.

Suddenly behind her, police officers started to file into the diner. The next thirty minutes was a flurry of questions Derel could not answer. Teagen and the tiny family were giving details of the man, the gun, the robbery, the fear and how he fled so quickly. They were taking notes as each spoke and asking for further details. The story was as if she was hearing it for the first time instead of living through it. The man had helped her from the floor and secured her in an empty booth. Teagen was cleaning up the food covered floor and shattered plates.

The man looked at his wife and said, “I don’t think she should go home alone.”

She nodded solemnly. “She should come home with us.” And she smiled at Derel with the compassion of a mother looking on her own daughter.

“Would you like to stay at our house tonight?” he asked her.

She didn’t know anything about this man except he had been at her side with his entire family the entire night. She didn’t know how she would find her home or how long her confusion would last. How could she find another person to help her if her memory did not return? Every person in the diner was a stranger to her although some of them spoke with her as if she should know them well. She was frightened but not of this man or his wife or their three kids. She could not explain that. She found a phone in her pocket and she still had the police officers card in her hand. She could call him if she needed to.

She nodded at them.

Teagen looked up Derel’s address in the filing cabinet with her original application in it and gave it to the man. “Thank you, Sir. Please take good care of her for us.” Teagen put his name and phone number on the back of the policeman’s business card and told Derel to call if she needed any help. She nodded at him. From what everyone had told her, Teagen had done all the right things when the gunman was in the diner.

They put their three kids in their coats. They found Derel’s purse and coat in her employee locker in the back of the diner.

“I suppose I should introduce you to my family. My name is Steven Clarke. This is my wife Wendy. These are our three kids: Sammy, Stephanie and Kyla. We don’t live far from here. We have a couch you can sleep on and you can celebrate Christmas with us.”

"It’s Christmas?” she asked.

“Today is Christmas Eve. And we’ve got to get these little ones home before Santa comes. Right kids?” The two oldest, Sammy and Stephanie, cheered. It had been a very long night for them. Kyla had fallen asleep in her mother’s embrace.

True to his word, the apartment was not far, and the snow had stopped falling. Steven made Derel comfortable on the couch while Wendy dressed Kyla in her pajamas and tucked her into her crib. Sammy and Stephanie got in their pajamas, and they sat staring wide-eyed at the small four-foot Christmas tree that managed to take up a good share of the tiny two-bedroom apartment. They were taking it in turns to hold each of their three gifts under the tree.

Steven came in from the kitchen with a peanut butter sandwich for each of the kids. In all the commotion, they still had not had dinner. He asked Derel if she was okay if they read the Christmas story together from the Bible in Luke. She nodded her approval at him. They pulled out a toy version of the nativity and as each character came into the story, they let the children move them from the box to the manger scene. Stephanie brought the baby Jesus to Derel and let her put him in the cradle. This was all new to Derel and she didn’t know if it was the first time she had done this on Christmas Eve and even though her own name sounded strange in her own ears, she knew that she felt safe with this family.

They put out a plate of cookies for Santa and Steven and Wendy took the older children to bed still begging for one more story. From her place on the couch, Derel could see the family kneeling together with the two children for a bedtime prayer. They kissed them each on the forehead before pulling the door almost closed with the soft lighting of a night light inside.

Wendy got Derel and old pair of her pajamas, a pillow and a few blankets for the couch. “Please let us know if you need anything tonight. Our room is just down the hall and you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. I apologize in advance for how early the kids will probably wake you tomorrow.” Derel laughed and nodded. “I bet after a good night’s sleep, everything will come back to you.”

“I hope so.” Derel whispered. “I hope so.”

Wendy and Steve made their way down the hall. Derel asked them if they would leave the lights of the Christmas tree on for her.

Derel flipped through the contacts listed in her phone. Not one looked familiar to her. She looked through the few photos that were in her gallery. She was standing with someone with their arm around her and they were laughing. Would she ever know that person again? She prayed that sleep would help her mind and heart from racing with the fear that she would never remember who she was.

It was a fitful sleep at first. Her body was fighting for rest and finally dove into a deeper sleep. She found herself in a dream where she was Stephanie’s age. She was opening a Christmas gift and her mother excitedly waited for her reaction to the dark-haired doll. She hugged it with all of her little girl might!

Into her dream stepped a hooded man with a gun. Was it the man from the diner or her father? He pointed the gun at her and fired and she woke with a jolt she was breathing so quickly that it was catching at the back of her throat. It was coming back to her. On the periphery of her memory. She was Derel Coopersmith.

Something had happened to her mother. Her father. The gunshot.

The blood. The foster homes that followed.

She frantically reached for her phone. She found her list of contacts. Peter owned the diner. Bill was her next-door neighbor at the apartment. Sadie was her best friend. And that’s who was in the photo with her arm around her. It was back. She was back with all the painful memories that came with being her. She hated Christmas. But it was different in this house with people. With family. With safety. With hugs and smiles and Dad’s who protect their children. The lights didn’t scare her here or remind her of ambulances and police cars who took her parents away.

Derel climbed off the couch and sat down beneath the tree like the children had done seeing the tree as if for the first time.

She finally laid back down after some time. She was woken by children laughing and tiny voices calling for their parents that they were ready to see if Santa had come. Wendy and Steve went to the children’s room and brought them into the living room. With squeals, they pulled items out of their stockings. Wendy held Kyla on her lap.  The unwrapping didn’t take long. Wendy started making breakfast and the house smelled magical.

Wendy and Steve could tell that something was different with Derel. Steve bent down near her in a quiet moment and asked, “is it back?”

“It’s back.” She nodded and smiled. “I can’t thank you enough for taking care of me last night. And showing me what Christmas should look like.”

Steve smiled. “Of course. You’ve taken care of us at the diner this whole past year. We owed you one.”

Derel spent the day with the Clarke family, and it was the best gift she had been given in a long time. It was like being a kid again only better. And she realized that this family had done the greatest thing someone could do for another person: stay with them until they remember who they truly are.

And that she would never forget.