Splintered Heart Read Free Page B

and China.
    The price was 79 cents, so Marian bought it. She put the remaining 30 cents back into the piggy when she got home.
    After stringing the colored balls on red yarn, Marian hung them in her window in a graceful scallop. She draped eight tinsel icicles between each ball. On the window sill she placed her green hair ribbon and some absorbent cotton. Once the royal rickshaw was carefully placed on the ribbon, it looked like a roadway surrounded by snow drifts.
    Marian presented the shrine to her parents the way the guide at the museum had presented the Egyptian exhibit. She stood up very straight, gestured to the window sill, explaining that decorations were traditional , it was important to conform to traditions since she was going to become a non conformist when she grew up and celebrating Christmas was a way of orientating herself to the heritage of mankind .
    Daddy did not say anything, but as he was examining the rickshaw, he smiled an extra big smile. Mamma said, "But darling, where did you get the money for all these things?"
    "It's just leftover stuff from school. Some lady gave me the rickshaw. She didn't want it because it was made in Japan ." Mamma was like Mary Ellen Warner. You sometimes had to invent things for Mamma. Little white lies were O.K. to tell, if you told them in order to be polite.
    The explanation seemed to satisfy Mamma, and Daddy started talking about the boycott, the surplus inventory because of the War.
    The night before Christmas Eve, Marian looked out up at a star.
    "Please dear God, a pearl necklace, a watch and maybe a piano — I would certainly appreciate that, but I'd especially appreciate it if you would show me that YOU are there!" She was thinking of Joan of Arc and her voices. "Even if you can't give me those things, just give me a little sign that YOU can hear me."
    Christmas Eve, she hung up a stocking and read a poem. So it would be a ceremony, she sang "Silent Night" and "Away in the Manger", then blew a kiss to the North, to the South, to the East and to the West. She thought long, hard, and prayerfully about her brother Ralph — checking the clock to be sure it was a full thirty-minutes. She did "Now I lay me down to sleep" ten times, very slowly. The prayer wasn't to Santa Claus, it wasn't for pearls, watch, or piano. Marian wanted to know if there was a God and this was God's chance to prove it.
    She left the window open wide even though it was freezing cold, just in case there was a Santa spirit that might want to come in.
    Christmas morning Marian sprang out of bed and rushed to the window. Her stocking was empty. There was no sign, not even the tiniest indication that God or Santa had heard her prayers or that either one of them or anything like God or Santa existed.
    Her room was cold. She stayed there most of the day.
    When Marian brought up the subject at dinner, Daddy explained it: "Praying is something that people invented, it gives them comfort. Don't count on praying, dear. You have to do things yourself. What you pray for you do not necessarily get!"
    She nodded. The philosophy was very clear.
    A week later, Mamma told Marian that Ralph wasn't coming home. "Your brother has a birth defect, and he can never grow up to be a normal boy."
    Marian felt as if she was going down the swooping curve on the Coney Island roller coaster and had left her stomach behind at the top of the hill. She wondered if what had happened had anything to do with being an Agnostic, disobeying Daddy's rules, praying to God and Santa.
    Marian put her four dolls in a shopping bag to give to Mary Ellen Warner who thought having a lot of dolls was very important. The green ribbon went into the wastebasket; the cotton was flushed down the toilet. Then she broke the Christmas tree balls one by one and put the pieces in the kitchen trash can. She gave the royal rickshaw to Sara the maid.
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    Chapter 3
    When the telephone rang, Marian's hair was combed, coiled, pinned back into