Daddy's Coming Home For Christmas

Chapter Three: Soaked Through

Bethany

The Church encouraged us to make all of our own clothes, and to keep the fashions simple and modest. My mom had started teaching me to sew when I was about eight. So when Mr. Roach, the theater director, asked for a volunteer to sew costumes for the fall play, I happily volunteered. It gave me an excuse to stay after school, so I could avoid going home to an empty house.

The problem was, without the school bus, I didn’t have a ride back to the Four Corners community where we lived. There was a bus that stopped about a mile away, and then I had to walk from there, but it wasn’t so bad. I still got home before my parents, and usually had time to start dinner for my mother.

In exchange for all the hours of work I put into the costume shop, Mr. Roach let me take home some the leftover fabric scraps. It was a beautiful pale blue color, and I had a design I had been working on for a dress. Something that I thought was pretty and feminine, something that I hoped would hide the fact that I was too short and shaped like a dumpling.

Something that I hoped to wear to the Winter Formal dance.

Although I had my doubts that my parents would even let me attend. A co-ed high school dance? There was probably some rule against that. But maybe I could convince them if I told them I was just going with friends, and it was going to be chaperoned by parents and teachers.

I worked in the stuffy costume shop over the stage until 5:00 every day, and then I climbed down the ladder, picked up my book bag, and trudged through the school parking lot and down the street to the bus stop to wait for the 5:30 bus.

Sometimes, if I was lucky, I would catch a glimpse of Gabe and Rafe after their basketball practice. I thought about going into the gym to sit on the bleachers and watch, but I thought that would look too needy and desperate, and well…weird. But sometimes I saw them when they left the locker rooms, their hair still wet and slick from the showers. They would pile into Rafe’s car, and turn in the opposite direction.

Rafe was a senior. He had his driver's license, and his father had bought him a car. It wasn’t anything too flashy, like a sports car or an SUV, but it was shiny and new, and drew more than a few envious stares from other students who either had no vehicles, or were driving their parents' old models.

Halloween had come and gone, and people were already starting to change out their pumpkins and skeletons for turkeys, inflatable pilgrims, and in some places, Christmas lights. Halloween was strictly taboo in the Church, they said it was a satanic holiday.

Snow was starting to fall. Not the pretty, fluffy kind that floated down and coated the barren tree branches in pretty white veils. No, this was wet, sloppy snow that mixed with rain. By the time I left the school parking lot and turned onto the main street, my hair was already plastered to my head, and my thin jacket was soaked through. Still, I pulled it tighter around my body, as if pressure alone could help keep me warm. My canvas shoes were not waterproof at all, and soon my feet were squelching in my shoes with every step. I kept my head down to try and keep the rain out of my eyes, and prayed the slushy rain-snow mix wouldn’t penetrate my army-surplus backpack and make my books and papers wet.

A pick-up truck went speeding by, and drove through a deep puddle, spraying dirty, ice cold water across my legs, which were bare under my long skirt.

I am not allowed to swear, but I swore under my breath anyway. Now my skirt was sticking to my legs, making every step more difficult.

About halfway to the bus stop, a car pulled up to the curb and started honking. I thought it must be some kids leaving school, deciding to have a good laugh at my expense. I realized I probably looked like a half-drowned hen waddling down the sidewalk.

“Beth! Beth, get in out of the snow!”

Hearing Gabe’s familiar voice, I turned, and found Rafe’s black car pulled up to the curb beside me, windshield wipers going at a steady clip to keep the glass clear of the wet slop falling from the sky.

“Can’t!” I yelled back, “I’ve got to catch the bus.” I turned and continued walking.

The car crept forward, keeping pace with me.

“Get in the car, Beth!” Gabe yelled again. “Rafe will give you a ride.”

“No!” My face was so cold that talking hurt. “It’s too far.” I didn’t mention the fact that if my parents or one of their church friends caught me riding home in a car with boys, there would probably be dire consequences. I put my chin on my neck as much as I could and kept trudging forward.

I heard a door slam, and the next thing I knew, a pair of strong arms had scooped me off the sidewalk. “Jeezus, Beth, you are soaked through!” Rafe growled as he carried me back to the car. Gabe had got out of the passenger side and held the door open so that Rafe could stuff me inside.

It didn’t even occur to me that I should protest until I saw the leather seats. “No! Rafe, your seats!”

“Don’t worry, they’ll dry.” He stuffed my wet skirt inside so that he could slam the door shut. I was trying to disentangle myself from my backpack so that I could carry it on my back. A moment later he slid back behind the wheel, and shook his head like a dog, spraying droplets of water everywhere. “What are you thinking, walking in this weather?”

I stared at him. “I have to take the bus home.” I wondered if he was so filthy rich that he had no concept of how the other half lived.

He glanced at me, and his expression actually looked a bit hurt. “All you have to do is ask. I’m happy to drive you.”

Gabe had slid into the back seat. He rested his elbows on each of the front seats. “Yeah right, like Beth will ever ask for anything.”

For some reason his words stung. Rafe grunted and put the car back in gear. “Your from Four Corners, right?”

I nodded. After I buckled my seat belt, I held my numb hands in front of the heating vent. Noticing my too-white fingertips, Rafe reached over and turned the heat up to the max fan. I sighed as the hot air blew in my face. “That feels so good.”

I didn’t know why Gabe snickered in the back seat.

The town had salted the roads, so they were wet, but not icy. Rafe was a good driver. He kept two hands on the wheel and his attention on the road, and he didn’t drive too fast. I noticed his hands, not for the first time. Rafe had really beautiful hands, with broad palms and long fingers.

Music was playing over the speakers. It had a nice beat, but it wasn’t anything I recognized. I liked it though, because the silence didn’t seem quite so awkward. When we reached the edge of the Four Corners community, I reached out and touched his arm. “Could you stop here, please?”

“Why here?” He slowed down, but frowned, when he didn’t see any houses nearby. He sat back and gave me a hard look. “Are you ashamed to show me where you live?”

Well, yes, I thought, but that wasn’t the real reason. “It’s not that…it’s just, my parents are really strict. If they saw me riding home in a car full of boys…”

“Oh, yeah. Okay I get it. But it’s not too far, right?”

“No, not far, just down there,” I gestured vaguely to the first group of houses in the community. They all looked the same, small, square, and completely unadorned. The Church didn’t allow holiday decorations.

They didn’t even like a showy flower garden in the summer months.

“Thank you for the ride, Rafe.” I felt like I should offer him some gas money or something. After all, he had just driven twenty minutes out of his way to give me a warm, dry lift. But I didn’t even have five dollars to offer him.

“Any time, Bethany.” He reached over and touched my knee through my wet skirt. It made me shiver in a way that had nothing to do with my cold, wet clothes. “I’m happy to drive you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I hugged my backpack with one hand and scrambled for the door handle with the other. “Thanks again!” I called before I slammed the door. I waved a little as he pulled a U-turn, and started back the way we had come. I stood there, letting the cold snow rain down on me, until his tail lights had disappeared. Then I turned and started trudging along the side of the road. There was no sidewalk. Up until a few years ago, the road hadn’t even been paved. I walked past the first group of houses, down the road and to the left, and found my own driveway, the third one in the row. The driveway was empty, so my parents were still at the church.

I sighed and walked around to the back door, which was never locked.

On the kitchen counter I saw a hastily scrawled note from my mother, instructing me to peel potatoes for dinner. I rushed to the bathroom to strip of my soaked clothes and change into a dry pair before I went back to the kitchen, pulled a stool up to the counter, and pulled the potatoes out from the place where my mother stored them on the cellar stairs.

By the time my parents got home, I had already washed, peeled, and cubed the potatoes, and put them on the stove to boil. I was seated at our small, round kitchen table, as usual, with my school books spread out before me.

“Brrr, cold out there,” my father said, pulling off his jacket and hanging it on the hook behind the kitchen door. “You must have gotten drenched on the way home.”

I looked up from my math homework. “Yeah, I was a bit soggy.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother walk around the kitchen counter to inspect my work. She poked a fork into the potatoes, but I knew they weren’t done yet. Then she pulled a pack of chicken thighs out of the refrigerator, set it on the counter, and disappeared down the hall to her room.

My dad mussed my hair as he walked by, which was about the only way he ever showed any affection. He was a man of few words, and he seemed more than content to let my mother rule the roost and call the shots.

“Hey Daddy?”

He stopped in the doorway and turned toward me. His hair was getting very thin on top, and the worry lines on his forehead were deeply engraved. His shoulders seemed more stooped these days. He looked tired. “What is it, Beth?”

“Um… there is a dance coming up at school in December. The Winter Formal? I was wondering if I could go?”

For a moment, his eyes looked watery, then he blinked and looked away. “Better ask your mother,” he said, and then he shuffled from the room like an old man.