Christmas on Pleasant Hill, Excerpt 1

“Christmas on Pleasant Hill,” my book of Christmas short stories set in our Cincinnati neighborhood, is a collection of twelve fictional stories in real places, that give us a glimpse into the lives of its diverse people; old and young, rich and poor, black and white. I’ll be posting one of the stories in blog-sized segments this holiday season, starting this week:

                              Kyle Helps Santa

When it came to decorating for Christmas, the town of Pleasant Hill gave a patchy performance. Some of the grand old houses were beautifully done-up, with lights spiraling down their columns and outlining their turrets.

The streets of the newer developments were bright and cheerful – although even ‘new’ in Pleasant Hill meant forty years old. Yards busy with statuary showed Santa fraternizing with shepherds and wise men, snowmen sharing space with the holy family. But many of the streets had smaller houses, where life was too low budget for decorating. Most of them boasted no more than a door wreath, or a tree peeking out the window, if anything. In the big apartment complexes that offered government housing, there was no evidence of Christmas at all.
No blanket of snow had yet arrived to offset the drabness of the bare trees. It was just bleak and cold. There were not many kids outside.

This, however, did not stop Kyle Sorensen from wandering around his big front yard each day after school, kicking at stones, watching squirrels, seeing how many times he could run up and down the driveway before he was completely winded. His was one of those houses with lights outlining its impressive Victorian form. His parents were painstakingly restoring it.

Loneliness could be traced in the slight downturn of Kyle’s mouth and the searching motion of his eyes. The cheerfulness of his new winter outerwear, all coordinated in oranges and olive greens, did not match his serious face. He stayed outside, even on the cold drab days, because it felt less lonely than inside.

He could watch kids playing across the street in the community center playground, where he could not go unless a parent was with him. He was literally locked in his front yard with its iron fence and ornate electronic gate, but he could pretend that kids were about to come and play with him, and once in a while someone would talk to him as they passed.

It would chagrin his mother when she drove up to the gate at six o’clock or so, to see the boy standing in the bare, dark yard, peering through the iron bars. She just had a wall knocked out between his bedroom and the room next to it to make a large play area. The room had a space theme, with planets and moons suspended in mid-air, wallpaper of sky and clouds above the chair rail, fluorescent stars on the ceiling. The kid had his own galaxy up there and here he was, peering pathetically through cold bars.

“What are you doing here?” she would ask, then before he answered, “Did you practice piano?”

“Yeah.” Ania the house keeper always supervised his piano practice as soon as he got home from school.

“Well, what are you doing out here in the cold?’

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Don’t you like all your toys?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t there anything on TV? ‘Blue’s Clues’ or something?”

He hadn’t watched ‘Blue’s Clues’ for years. He was seven now.

“No, Mom.”

“Well, tomorrow I’d like you to find something to do inside. You’ll catch a cold out here.”

But he would always go outside as soon as piano practice was over. The big house was too still, with no one but Ania vacuuming or chopping vegetables. She was a quiet person and did not speak much English. “Snack ready for you,” and “Piano now, Kyle,” was about all she said.

***

“Christmas on Pleasant Hill” is available at Amazon.