Maya’s Christmas Eve

Noah loves sitting on the chair near the window in the living room. No other kids are living in that street. He is alone all the time. Books and toys are his only friends, but this chair and the view through the window is what keeping him more active in the evenings. Maya told him once that when the sun goes down, people take rest and sleep. He then turned off the light in the living room and showed her the world outside through the window. She never realized that her son observed the world way better than her. Now there are two chairs near the window and the mom and son have their warm milk party there.

“Why are we not going out anywhere Maa?” he asked her. She didn’t know how to tell her son that she’s broke on Christmas eve. “I didn’t want you to miss the chance of meeting Santa Claus. He comes on Christmas eve, you know?”

Even if that was a lie, she said it as she believed it. Life has taken her to the edge of believing in a miracle because she had nothing else to hold on to. Noah shifted over to his mother’s lap and leaned onto her shoulders. The long yawn didn’t stop him from telling her that he wouldn’t fall asleep before Santa’s arrival.

She put him onto the bed once he had fallen asleep on her arms. She kept the living room lights off just the way Noah liked and sat near the window. She knew that Noah was right. The world outside her window is always so colourful. Christmas lights everywhere, family gatherings and celebrations. She wondered if someone would ever invite her over for dinner. She was a mysterious Indian mother with a half-American child in that area. People never live there long enough to know her life story. People who lived there when she moved in with Isacc, had gone long before Isacc. Isacc left them only a year ago. No one knows that she had come to the United States of America for college education and ended up quitting the college to marry her American classmate and had his baby. He had then left her when he couldn’t handle the medical bills of his child. She paid off the medical bills using her college fund provided by her father before he had banished her from the family. Now she works at a store as a salesperson for a living. Noah is all she has. Then the rented house. A small house with a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen cum dining area.

A car honk has brought her back to the present. It was the neighbours. Now that house is also empty. The street is empty on a Christmas eve except hers. It was late that she finally decided to sleep. Before going to bed, she made sure that Santa’s gift for her son is safe underneath her ugly dark Christmas tree. The gift is nothing but the second-hand copy of the first book of the Harry Potter series. That’s all she could afford.

While she was getting up to walk to the bedroom, she noticed a shadow near the window. She knew that someone was outside. As she was frozen standing in the middle of the dark living room, she realized that someone was trying to open her door. She was too scared to take another breath, but she had to run to the bedroom to Noah. The fear of being shot or raped made her think faster. She held Noah up and before the half sleepy boy could mumble anything, they both were hiding under the bed. She made sure that her palm was tight against his mouth. “Santa is here. But you can’t make noise and scare him. If you listen carefully you can hear him and if we are lucky, we could see his feet. Okay?” The moonlight never reached under the bed, so she couldn’t quite understand Noah’s reaction but she had felt his head nodding as she finished talking.

They heard footsteps in their living room first. Minutes later, the intruder was inside the bedroom. She was too scared to even breath, but Noah was calm watching the movement of the shoes through the moonlight. The intruder opened the closet and searched for something valuable but found only books and some clothes. He didn’t close the bedroom door when he left the room. They hid under the bed until they had heard the closing sound of the main door. Noah wanted to run to the living room to search for the gift from Santa, but Maya held him tight and asked him to wait for a few more minutes. She then slowly walked over to the living room and looked outside through the window. The intruder was going to the house from across the road. She then called 911 and informed about what happened in her house and where the intruder was going next. Noah patiently waited for mother’s approval to even come to the living room. She joined her son in the bedroom and they both hid under the bed until the police arrived. When she heard the police siren, she closed her son’s ears because she knew that someone was going to get shot. She didn’t want her son to remember the sound of a bullet shot on Christmas eve. But surprisingly no one got shot. Minutes later, police came over and called for her from outside her main door. As she approached the police officers appreciated her for helping them catch the thief they had been searching for over a year. She requested the police officers to make sure that the thief would never get to know her details. The police officers left after wishing both Maya and Noah a merry Christmas. When Maya was able to get her breath on track, she smiled and asked Noah to search for the Christmas gift from Santa. He wasn’t excited anymore after all the chaos, but he did find the gift under the Christmas tree. “He wasn’t Santa, was he?” Noah asked.

Maya didn’t know what to say, she just nodded instead of saying no.

“Is this gift from dad?” That was the first time Noah had asked about his dad. Tears were falling down from her eyes that she couldn’t answer her son’s question. She sat on her knees and cried like no one was watching. He opened the gift wrap and screamed Harry Potter. He had only heard about the book and the series. He ran over to her and hugged. “Thanks, Maa, I love it already.” She has never felt this relieved in her life, so she slept clam, cuddling her little boy, who was, in turn, cuddling his new book.

She woke up the next morning hearing a knock on the door. She was surprised to see a couple outside her house.

“Hi, I am John and this is my wife Mary. We live from across the road.”

“Hi, I am Maya,” she said while she was shaking John’s hand.

“The patrolling officers told us what had happened last night. You were so brave my dear,” said Mrs John. To which Maya didn’t know what to say but smiled. “If you don’t have any plans for today, why don’t you and your son come over for lunch?”

“Yeah, we will be happy to,” the smile on Maya’s face was as bright as the moonlight.