Free Las Christmas by Esmeralda Santiago Page A

out.
    â€œWell,” Mami hesitated. “Maybe he’ll bring one for the whole family.”
    â€œOh.” That dampened my happiness. In Fico’s house, they had one TV for his parents, one for the kids, and one for the maids. And now he was even asking for one to have in his very own room. But even a shared TV was better than none at all.
    â€œBut darling Cuca, Mami thinks you’d better not mention your
tío
Puchulo’s name. You see, Santicló doesn’t like him. If Santicló hears you mentioning his name, I’m afraid that TV won’t make it down here on his sled.”
    As far as I was concerned, Santicló had very poor taste if he didn’t like my uncle. Tío Puchulo was fun. Sundays, when he came over, he’d ask the boy cousins if they wanted to see the angels’ panties, and if they said yes, he lifted them by their ankles, so they could look upside down at the sky. And if you got a bad chocolate, girl or boy, Tío Puchulo always called you over and pulled a chiclet out of his pocket. But a TV was a TV. I gave my word I wouldn’t mention my uncle’s name.
    â€œThere’s a good girl,” my mother said. It was the first time in ages she’d said that about me.
    ON CHRISTMAS EVE, my grandparents threw a big party. All the grandchildren came for a little while, but before the uncles started tangoing on the dining room table or throwing themselves into the pool, we were marched home. Tonight nobody complained. We knew Santicló would not come until all the children in the world had fallen asleep.
    From my bedroom, I could hear the party going in the distance. Iluminada, the old nursemaid, helped us into our babydolls, and then we knelt down in a row to say our prayers. As I was going through my long list of whom I wanted God to take care of—my grandparents, my mother, my father, my aunts, my uncles—Tío Puchulo’s name popped out.
    I clapped my hand over my mouth. I looked up at Lumi. Maybe she hadn’t heard me?
    â€œWhy not pray for your
tío
Puchulo?” she said in a fierce, low voice. “May God help him,” she added, making the sign of the cross.
    â€œBut Santicló doesn’t like him,” I explained.
    â€œSanticló!” she snapped. “Your parents are bringing you up
sin principios.
” Scolds were usually delivered en masse, even if there had only been one offender. “All of you praying to a big fat white man in a red suit like the devil! You ask
niño
Jesus for forgiveness, and maybe He’ll come back again to this house and lift the heaviness that is here.”
    I never listened much to what the grown-ups had to say unless there was a TV involved or a visit to the ice cream shop or a squirt gun or a paddleball. But Lumi always made sense to me. She could read my coffee cup and tell me I was going to go away soon to another country where I would switch languages, homes, schools, friends, hopes, and dreams. She had been in my father’s family since the Haitian massacre way back before I was even born. My father’s mother, whom I had never met, had hidden the terrified Haitian woman and her little boy under a pile of laundry. When the dictator’s men searched the house, they found no one. Lumi was devoted to my father’s family, but especially to my
tío
Puchulo who had told the soldier ready to poke the laundry with his drawn bayonet, that if he ruined my grandmother’s sheets, he was going to have the devil to pay for them.
    I fell asleep with a heavy heart. No presents for me, I was sure of it . . .
    In the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of footsteps. Someone was moving above my bedroom. Footsteps on the stairs . . . voices . . . hushings. . . . A little later, a car started up. Did Santicló’s sled break down? Did he know how to drive a car?
    Years later, on safe ground, having escaped to the United States of America, having switched