Finding Father Christmas Read Free Page B

my cotton pajamas clung to me as the dripping pool water puddled at our doorstep,
     leaving more traceable chlorine with every drop.
    “Open!” my mother commanded the doorknob. Suddenly the key worked. We pressed through together as I stifled my squeals.
    My mother quickly shut the door, locked it, bolted it with the chain, and motioned for me to cautiously peek out the front
     window behind the closed curtain. I squinted at the submerged yellow eye that hadn’t moved from the pool’s deep end. We stood
     together, barely breathing in the darkness, reeking of chlorine. My heart raced deliciously.
    A few days later I was in our motel room alone, waiting for Carlita to arrive. I had planted myself in a chair beside the
     window and was watching a girl in a flowered bathing suit as she squealed and splashed in the pool.
    I wasn’t on a vacation like she was. I lived there at the Swan Motel, and I knew all about the yellow-eyed dragon that cameout on sweltering nights and breathed his fiery breath across the pool water. I wondered if I should tell her.
    The blithe girl scrambled up on her father’s shoulders, plugged her nose, and did a clumsy free-fall dive into the deep end.
     She did it again. And again. She had no fear.
    I wanted to do that. I wanted to gallop down to the pool and join them. I wanted to be the next one to dive off the shoulders
     of the laughing girl’s strong father into the pool. I wanted what she had.
    Hurrying to put on my bathing suit, I returned to the chair by the window. As soon as Carlita arrived, I would convince her
     to take me down to the pool. I would finagle my way into the father-daughter diving contest somehow. Once I did, I would be
     the best diver of all. The girl’s father would cheer the loudest for me.
    Then something inside me said no. That would never be so.
    The man in the pool was her father. He was not my father. He would always cheer the loudest for her. No father would ever
     cheer the loudest for me.
    That was the first time I realized what a gift a father was. And I hadn’t been given such a gift.
    Carlita came puffing up the motel steps and bustled into the room, wheezing with apologies for her delay.
    “I want a father,” I said.
    Carlita chuckled. “Most girls your age want a pony.”
    “Well, I don’t want a pony. I want a father.” I stood up and put my hands on my hips, imitating my mother’s extended chin
     gesture just so Carlita would know I wasn’t making a childish request.
    “You have a father.” She set down her small bag of groceries.
    “I do not.”
    “Yes, you do. Everyone has a father. Every person who has ever been born has a father. A father and a mother. It takes the
     two for you to be born.”
    I scowled at her. Carlita had no magic in her words the way my mother did.
    In a more instructive tone she said, “This does not mean that every child gets to live with both her father and her mother.
     But you do have both. Everyone has both. You have a father, Miranda.”
    “Then where is he?” My voice was still defiant but diminished.
    “Your father is somewhere. I don’t know. Maybe he is dead. It does not matter. You have a mother who loves you and cares enough
     for you. You should be grateful. Now sit down. I have brought you some cookies.”
    That night, when my mother slid into bed next to me, I pretended to be asleep. When she was making the soft, sighing sounds
     of sleep, I rolled over and whispered to her, “Do I have a father?”
    “Hmmm?”
    I had often heard her carry on conversations in her sleep. Sometimes the half sentences were lines from one of her performances.
     Other times she twisted her neck and yelled at people with a muffled fierceness I never heard in her waking hours. My plan
     was to make her respond to me while those mesmerizing eyes of hers were shut.
    I wanted to know the truth, so I tried to sound like an adult. “Eve Carson, the actress, does your daughter, Miranda, have
     a father?”
    What proceeded