Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Christmas

Chicago, Illinois

1959

When Dena was fifteen, her mother was living in Chicago, in a large red-brick apartment building called the Berkeley. Dena’s boarding school was outside Baltimore and she couldn’t wait to see her for the holidays. She had called and called her mother from school but each time she missed reaching her at home. She called the department store where her mother worked and they told her that her mother was no longer working there. Her mother changed jobs quite a bit and sometimes forgot to tell her, so Dena wrote a letter and told her what time her train would be arriving. All the way across the country she was humming with excitement. She loved riding through the small towns and seeing all the Christmas decorations and looking in the windows of the houses. When her train finally pulled into the station, Dena was the first person off. She looked up and down the platform but her mother was not there. She waited almost two hours. She didn’t know what to do. Maybe her mother had not received her letter or had to work late. So she went outside and took a cab to her mother’s apartment building. Her heart jumped with joy when she saw her mother’s name written on the small strip of paper next to the buzzer. She pushed the button. But there was no answer. The air was freezing and the wind was so cold it hurt. It was getting dark when a man came, took a key, and opened the big glass front door leading into the lobby. Dena said, “Excuse me, could you tell me if there is a superintendent or something? I need to get into my mother’s apartment. I don’t have a key and she’s not home yet.” The man let her in and pointed her to the brown door. “Ring that bell.” Dena saw that it said MRS. F. CLEVERDON, MANAGER. A middle-aged lady in an apron opened the door. “Hello. I’m Mrs. Nordstrom’s daughter and I just got here and I was wondering if she left me a key.”

The woman smiled. “Well, no, dear, she didn’t leave a key. But I’ll take you up and let you in. Your mother’s on the sixth floor. Hold on while I go get the key.”

“Thank you. Guess she’s working late … you know, because of Christmas.”

“I imagine so,” Mrs. Cleverdon said, “they keep the stores open late. Thank heavens I don’t have to get into that mess. I’ve done all my shopping—well, all the shopping I am going to do.”

They took the elevator up and she followed her down the hall to apartment 6D and opened the door. “Here we are. I know your mother will be glad to see you. You have a nice visit, now.”

“Thank you.”

Dena walked into the apartment and switched on the lights and noticed unopened mail lying on the floor. Her letter was right on top. Then it dawned on her. Her mother must have gone out of town on a buying trip for the store. She often did that; she was probably on her way home right now.

The minute Dena walked into the bedroom it smelled familiar—her mother’s Shalimar—and she felt at home. She liked this apartment. It had a little kitchen and a nice-sized living room. The furniture was pretty much like the furniture in all of the furnished apartments they had lived in, a trifle worn and tired but comfortable. Then she noticed that her mother had put a small white ceramic tree on the dining table in the living room by the front window. It had tiny, little colored lights. She plugged it in and it lit up in red and green and blue. She decided to keep it on, and if her mother happened to look up when she came home and saw it, she would be surprised.

After unpacking her things, she opened the front closet to hang up her coat. Four beautifully wrapped Christmas packages were on the floor. Each one said: To Dena. From Mother. She put her gifts for her mother by the little tree and sat down to wait for her, wondering what was in the packages, especially the big one. That night, every time she heard the elevator door open and heard someone come down the hall, she held her breath; she just knew it was her. But it never was. They all walked on. At about ten o’clock she was starving and there was nothing in the refrigerator, so she wrote a note and propped it up against the Christmas tree. Mother, I am here! I have gone to get something to eat and will be right back.

She put her coat on and had to leave the door unlocked because she didn’t have a key. She went down the street to a coffee shop and got a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke and a piece of chocolate pie to go, but when she got back to the building it was locked and she couldn’t get back in. She buzzed her mother’s apartment, hoping she would be home by now. There was no answer so she had to push the manager’s buzzer again.

The next morning she woke up and got dressed and fooled around the apartment all day, killing time. Each time she went out she left the same note in the same place. Two days later she called her school until finally someone picked up. Dena asked if her mother had called and left her a message. They said she hadn’t.

Christmas morning she got up early and made a pot of coffee. She combed her hair and put on her good dress and sat by the window and waited for the phone to ring. Every time she heard the elevator door open, her heart jumped. She knew it was going to be her mother this time. And her heart sank again as whoever it was walked on down the hall. She sat there all day. The window was ice cold but the apartment was warm. At about six o’clock she went in the kitchen and heated up the frozen turkey dinner with mashed potatoes she had gotten at the store and sat down and ate it. She watched the Perry Como Christmas special on the old black-and-white television set in the living room. She waited until eleven o’clock and then she went into the closet, got her presents, and put them in the middle of the floor and opened them. She saved the big one for last. She cleaned up all the paper and went to bed.

All through the rest of the holiday, she waited. Each day, Dena was convinced that her mother was going to walk in the door at any minute. With each day that passed, the feeling drained out of her body, until at the end of the week she was numb. On her last day she packed, called a cab, put on her new blue wool pea coat that her mother had given her for Christmas, went over and turned off the lights on the Christmas tree, locked the door behind her, and went downstairs to wait in the lobby for her taxi. Mrs. Cleverdon came out to see about a hall bulb that needed replacing and saw that Dena was leaving. “Did you have a nice visit?” she asked pleasantly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Upstairs in apartment 6D a note was on the table. “Mother, I was here. Love, Dena.” Three weeks later the note she had left on the table in the living room was still there. Mrs. Cleverdon told her so on the phone. Her mother did not come back. Her mother had disappeared off the face of the earth. But Dena did not cry. Not once. Back at school, if anyone asked how her Christmas had been, she lied. She pretended it had never happened. It took years for Dena to really believe that her mother was not going to come back.

That next Christmas her grandparents wanted her to come and be with them, but she took a train to Chicago and spent the holidays alone in a room at the Drake. The first day she got in a cab and went over to the Berkeley and stood outside the building for a long time and then went back to the hotel. Christmas Day she dressed up and went downstairs and had Christmas dinner in the Cape Cod room. She sat at a table by the window and ordered a lobster. She had never had one before so she decided to try one. People looked over at the pretty girl sitting all by herself with a lobster bib, trying to crack the shell and figure out which part you were supposed to eat, but she did not see them staring at her because she spent most of her time looking out the window as though she was expecting to see someone she knew.