Rosalyn's Christmas Tree

He ran. The child’s head against his chest, his left hand holding her chin to her face, blood dripping through his fingers.  New York’s August heat beating down on him, he ran. One street, two. He had lost count of how many blocks he had gone, only knew the Emergency Room was ahead. He could feel her heart fluttering against his own, could hear his own, beating hard and fast in his ears. The street sounds receded around them, the fish monger’s pitch fading to little more then a harsh whine, the street worker’s machinery punching the tarmac as his pulse punched through his veins, the two indecipherable. Other pedestrians and fellow street wanderers gave way as he pushed on. Three blocks, four? His shirt painted red with the child’s blood, soaking through to his skin, they both became slippery, and he feared he would drop her at any moment, this precious cargo. So he tightened his grip on the tiny girl and ran.  They would fix her, put her face back together. He would not lose another child. His Rosalyn gone, he would not lose his grand daughter as he had his child,. 

She was his second child, another girl, born in ’32. A beautiful baby, with soft brown eyes and round pink cheeks. Healthy and happy. They were poor, half his wife’s family living in their Bensonhurst apartment, the depression taking it’s toll on everyone. But he  felt like the luckiest guy alive. His beautiful doll of a wife, and two little girls, Rita and Rosalyn. He still had a job, working 12 hours a day, so how could he complain. A little tired, a little sore. He came home to hugs and giggles. So he considered himself a lucky guy. 

The winter of ’38 was particularly wet. The rain never seeming to let up completely, always a dirty mist in the air. One that stayed on your clothes and came inside with you. Lingering like the stink of garbage. Landlords were pretty cheap with the heat that year as well. He remembered months and years later how he begged the landlord to warm things up when Rosalyn failed to recover from what seemed like an innocent cold. She had a cold, that’s all. But it went on for months, and when the Doctor told them it was TB, they weren’t really that surprised, were they. Rita disappeared during those dark days. At least that was how he remembered it, his seven year old daughter became invisible as her sister became frailer. One withdrawing in anticipation of  losing  the other. That was how he put it together in his memory. And his Leah, Oh my God, Leah. As their child faded , the light in his wife’s eyes dimmed. There were days when she would rush around the apartment, ready to tear at the walls in frustration, but towards the end, all she could do was sit in an old kitchen chair and stare out at the traffic below. 

Rosalyn died December 29, 1938. During her last days her sweet nature never abated. But she had one request of her father, one that he could not have anticipated. 

Rosalyn had seem a picture in one of her mother’s magazines that fascinated and amazed her. It was a Christmas tree, with a little girl sitting beneath it in her nightgown. The tree was alight with what seemed to Rosalyn to be diamonds and rubies and amazing lights and what  grandma Rebecca called chockas. But why and how was the tree inside? Her father explained that the Goyum, the non-Jews, the “Others” had many strange behaviors. And one of them was to kill a tree, drag it into their houses and put chockas on it. The Goyum did this every year right after Hanukah. He knew it had something to do with the Jesus fellow but he didn’t know how dragging a dead tree into your house related to it.  So Rosalyn sighed, knowing she would never know either. She imagined the pine smell, how intense it must get in the warmth of the living room. And how did they decide what chockas would go where on the tree? As one day poured itself into another in the girl’s sickroom, she clutched the now tattered magazine. Her father would come home from his shift at the ship yard and wash up quickly, not wanting to miss a moment left to him with this child. Holding his daughter’s last moments like sand in his hand, slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he gripped them.  Slipping through the doorway of what was now officially the  “sickroom”, he would take his usual place next to the tiny body on the bed. Holding her close to warm her frigid limbs, realizing that her breathing was evermore ragged and shallow. 

“How is my shooting star today” he would whisper

“ Daddy...Daddy look”

It was a ritual that had taken place every night of late. Her small fist would raise up and she would show him the picture clutched within. 

“Can we look at the chockas on the tree Daddy? Through your looking glass so we can see each one?” “ Do only rich goyum have the tree?”

even as she struggled to breath, the Christmas tree held her fascination. He didn’t share it, only knew it was foreign to them, not for them. But as she fell asleep, the magazine, or what was left of it, rising and falling with each tortured breath, he knew what he would do.

Rising up from his daughter’s bed, he put his soaked galoshes back on and headed out into the slushy rain. He knew he wouldn’t find what he was looking for nearby. There were no living room windows glowing with christmas cheer in this neighborhood. Each window he looked at as he trudged by had the prerequisite menorah, four candles burning in each, three for the third night of hanukah, and of course one to light them.

He would have to travel out of the known to find what he needed. 

He was gone for several hours, spent money they could ill afford, and dragged his purchases up the four flights of stairs to their apartment. Leah came out of whatever dark place she was in when he banged across the doorstep. 

“Be quiet! The girls are asleep. What’s wrong with you!”

Her tone angry as it had been of late. He couldn’t help but feel she blamed him for Rosalyn’s illness, perhaps felt he should have fixed this as he had everything else that had come their way over the years. But he couldn’t fix his daughter. No one could. And they had taken her home to die. 

“I bought one of those goyum trees for Rosalyn. Help me set it up.” 

He seemed driven, dragging the wet shrubbery through the kitchen on his way to the living room. 

“Leo, don’t put it where the neighbors will see. They will think we lost our minds and forgot we were Jews. “

“No, I want it just like her picture. It will go by the window, over there, to hell with the neighbors!”

And for the next hour, Leo set up his first  Christmas tree. Carefully unwrapping each ornament he had chosen for his daughter’s delight. struggling with the foreign lighting and re-working it several times until he felt it was just right. Going back to her room each time to check and compare the picture with the reality he tried to create in their damp apartment. If what he was doing was some kind of a sin, an affront to the God of his people, then he would commit this sin for his child, his fragile flower. 

When he felt he had managed as close a facsimile as possible given his lack of knowledge about such things, he again, slipped into his daughter’s room and stood by her bed. He watched her struggle to breath, now a tremendous effort. and he gently stroked the hair off her forehead. When her eyes opened, and her lips curved into a smile at the sight of her father, he lowered himself down so their faces were on the same level. 

“I Have a surprise for you my shooting star.” and with that he slipped his arms around the little girl, her arms struggling to reach up and embrace her fathers neck, finally giving into the weakness that was all she knew now and settling instead to rest her head on his chest. He carried her into the living room, lit only by the lights on the tree. Her half lidded eyes opened wide at the sight of it, glowing by the window, full of diamonds and rubies, and yes, chockas, just like the picture. 

“Daddy!” Her voice stronger then it had been in days. her face bright with excitement and wonder. Her father gently placed his fragile flower under the newly decorated tree, and handed her a box covered in gold paper and a circle of ribbon. she had never seen something so splendid, so ornate. upon opening her gift, Rosalyn found a tiny gold bracelet, as delicate as the girl herself. 

So for the first and last time, the Isaacs family had a Christmas tree, and Rosalyn, just like the little girl in the magazine, received a beautiful Christmas gift. After the funeral, Leo came home and re-wrapped the bracelet in its ornate box , ribbon and all. It was not to be unwrapped again for fifty years.

He kept running, falling into a steady pace. Surely the hospital was just down the street. His grand daughter silent against his chest. Not unconcious, just secure that whatever had happened, the pain she felt,  grandpa would fix it. He picked up the cop about a half mile from his goal. Falling into place beside him, quickly appraising the situation and clearing the path as they went. leo could do little more then pant out his name, relay to the cop that his daughter was the mother, no he didn’t know where she was, the child had fallen in the alley while playing.  a shard of a broken flower pot nearly separating her chin from her face. His voice tight and wheezing. He was fifty-one, and in good shape. But the fear, the blood, conspired to deplete his reserves. His limbs were tightening, shaking, the almost weightless child starting to gain weight in his arms. But he kept going.

The county hospital in sight now, he found new energy and sprinted through the doors held open by the panting policeman. A  nurse ran up and tried to take the child from his arms but he shied away. 

“I can take her now Sir. You can let go”

But he didn’t, couldn’t. “where do you want me to lay her down. Tell me and I will take her”. and without an argument, the nurse turned on her heels, leading Leo to the surgery.  As he laid his grandchild down, he continued to hold her chin in place, frightened that letting go would be horrendous. He murmured to the child, calling her his shooting star, his beautiful baby, and although the girl must have been in pain, the scene nightmarish, her eyes never left her grandfathers’, her tears never fell. They remained connected in this way as the Doctor took over and clamped the child’s chin to her jaw, started and finished the stitching necessary.  He had no idea how long they stayed this way, through the sewing, through the cleaning up, he never flinched as his eyes stayed locked with this serious little person. It wasn’t until the lollipop was offered that she broke contact and he could rise up, stretch his back, feel the heaviness in his limbs and think about the situation at his home. Where the hell was Rita? The baby, little more then three, was alone in the alley. Her mother was not in the house, nor on the street. She had left this child alone before, had forgotten she had her and left the carriage in front of the butcher shop when the girl was little more then a year old. He ran then too, all the way to Mendelson’s Butcher store, when he realized Rita had come home with only one of her daughters. 

“Where’s the baby?” he asked his distracted daughter. 

“Baby?” and then the horror of her misstep showed on her face. and without a word more, he ran. He had covered, fixed and made excuses for his eldest child her whole life, probably out of guilt that she was ignored for so much of her childhood, more then likely because, on some level, he knew there was something just not right about that girl. 

But leaving the baby alone outside? This was new, extreme, even for her. Leah would make some excuse for their daughter when she got home from work, was probably wondering even now where he was. Had anyone even missed the girl? knew where she had been? He saw her fall as he came out of the subway station, could hear the cry before he was aware that it was his own granddaughter. He yelled, bellowed really, “Rita! Rita! come quick, the baby’s hurt”. 

But there was no response, the house empty, the child alone and injured. So he picked her up, and he ran....