Christmas Carol
by Michaele Jordan
“O holy night,” sang Ilana.
She sang seriously and well. She sang well because she’d been taking voice lessons since she was nine. She sang seriously because she was practicing for the school Holiday Concert audition. She just had to get a solo!
“The stars are brightly shining!”
She hit the high note effortlessly. It had better be effortless, she reflected. There were higher notes to come. But, perfect high note or no, she was dissatisfied with her phrasing, so she sang it again. “The stars are brightly shining!”
Still not good enough. Part of the problem was the cold. The wind coming off the lake was like a knife blade in her lungs. Ilana wouldn’t normally practice in the park on a freezing cold day, with ten inches of snow underfoot—she’d go home. But if Mom overheard “O Holy Night” coming out of Ilana’s room, she’d have a coronary on the spot. And before the ambulance even arrived, Mom—still clutching her chest with the one hand—would be on the phone, chewing out the school for forcing a good Jewish girl like Ilana to sing something so Christian.
Of course, the school wasn’t forcing her. Students had been instructed to pick a song that was special to them. Ellie was going to sing Kwanzaa, which was a shoe-in for a solo. The lyrics were a real yawn, but it had great rhythms and would be the most musically exotic piece on the program. Rosa Gonzales had found a beautiful Spanish hymn, so she’d probably get a solo, too. Annette was doing something in French. Everybody expected Ilana to pick The Dreidel Song or something stupid like that.
She wanted to do O Holy Night. She didn’t care about the religious content. It was simply the most beautiful song she’d ever heard. The poignant rise and fall of “O hear the angel voices!” left her weak; the heartrending swell of “O night divine!” brought tears to her eyes.
There was no way she’d ever be able to explain that to Mom. Mom would say no. Mom would tell the school no. Ilana would end up stuck in the chorus. Or worse—Mom might make her quit the choir, maybe even pull her out of public school and send her back to Hebrew Day. A lot of kids hated public school. They’d never been to Hebrew Day. So Ilana wasn’t going to tell Mom. Or risk anybody else telling her either.
She opened her mouth to try again. “The stars… ” The phrase cut off with a squawk in mid syllable. The wind had flung a handful of gritty snow into her open mouth. She coughed, spat and reflected. She couldn’t work like this. She had to get out of the wind.
But where to go? The whole school was busy with tutoring, holiday event planning, and rehearsals. Even if she found an empty room somebody was bound to overhear. She needed someplace grown-ups would never go, someplace like… like… Make-Out Cave!
She ran all the way. Plenty of privacy—during the summer, a lot of hikers and climbers camped in the cave, but nobody would be there in the winter—and it wouldn’t even be terribly cold. (She’d read somewhere that caves always stayed the same temperature.) She had to stop and pant a little at the bottom of the hill before going in through the big open arch that was the entrance.
The front of the cave was like a big room, except for the vaulted ceiling. This close to the outside, the floor was still dirt and mostly flat, although there were lots of rocks, some of them really big, scattered around in heaps. Somebody had built a makeshift fire-pit out of smaller stones, and even dragged in some logs and set them in a circle around it. Beyond that, the room was richly decorated with graffiti. As far as Ilana could see, every single rock had something painted on it.
Mostly it was black and white stuff, dates and initials, stick figures and hearts, with an occasional “Kilroy was here” or “Troop 273 Rocks!” thrown in, but three items stood out. Somebody had worked hard to make them stand out, using brilliant day-glow colors to create giant curly balloon letters that sprawled across whole heaps of rocks. The content of the messages was strangely civic minded: street names instead of boasting or dirty jokes. “Lover’s Lane” proclaimed one sign, in electric orange. The artist had selected lime green for “Mud Bug Run.” In comparison, “Cavers’ Courtyard” in peacock blue looked almost restrained. Each of the legends was accompanied by a large arrow, pointing—if you looked carefully—to a small tunnel leading out of the camping area.
Ilana had been to Lover’s Lane once—not with a boy, of course. She and Ellie had checked the place out, to see what all the talk was about. You had to crouch down in the narrow, twisty tunnel, but the ceiling never got so low you had to crawl. The floor was dry and you ended up in a little chamber barely big enough to stand up in, with a pretty row of stalactites coming down along one wall, and a big ledge rolling out from another, like an invitation to sit awhile.
She thought about going there again. The big open entry was not keeping out the wind. She hunched her shoulders and pulled her coat a little tighter. Problem was, Lover’s Lane really was a lover’s lane, so you couldn’t absolutely count on its being empty. That other time, she and Ellie had stumbled in on a couple necking. The girl had her bra halfway off and everything, and it had only been 11:00 in the morning! She would die of embarrassment if it turned out somebody was there now.
She was NOT going into Mud Bug Run. It wasn’t even a proper tunnel. It was a damp hole. She didn’t like bugs, she didn’t like mud and her jeans were practically new—they’d only been washed once (in cold water on the gentle cycle, so the hot pink wouldn’t fade). Instead, she peered into Cavers’ Courtyard. It was very dark and hard to see. She pulled her keys out of her bag, and thumbed the little flashlight on the ring. The passage was suck-your-breath-in narrow, but the ceiling wasn’t even as low as Lover’s Lane, at least as far as she could see. Which wasn’t very far, because the tunnel veered off to the left. She didn’t need to go in very far. The floor was dry and she didn’t have to crawl. Cavers’ Courtyard, it was.
She carefully extended her purse strap and hitched it over the opposite shoulder so she couldn’t accidentally lose it before squeezing in. A huge jagged rock stuck out to one side, forcing her to lean over sideways and backwards. At least she was out of the wind. As soon as she could stand up straight she’d stop. Although it was also beginning to cross her mind that she could give up and go home, and think of someplace else for tomorrow.
She might have, too, only she’d gotten into a pinched place where backing up would be even harder than continuing. So she pressed on around the bend in the corridor, and was delighted to see the walls open out and the ceiling soar up into a huge vault, where somebody had—she couldn’t begin to imagine how—spray painted, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” She was so busy looking up, trying to read the message, that she forgot to look down. The cave, it turned out, opened up in every direction.
She didn’t realize that she was standing on a narrow ledge until her foot slipped off it. She scrabbled wildly, trying to catch herself, only to fall into blackness. It all happened so suddenly she didn’t even scream until she saw her keys glinting as they flew out into the void. Then the little light went out and she couldn’t see anything at all. She screamed again when her shoulder slammed unexpectedly into something hard as rock, and again when her knee slammed into some other rock. She tried to grab the rock that banged her knee, but it was wet and slippery so she slid right off it.
She did, apparently, slow her fall a little because immediately after sliding off the wet rock, she landed on a whole bunch of rocks, which were also wet, but mostly sharp. She landed on top of the leg with the banged knee, and she heard a little snapping sound—after that she didn’t stop screaming for a long time, because the pain was worse than anything that she had ever imagined.
Eventually she had to stop screaming. Somewhere along the line she had started crying, too, and the snot was backing up in her throat. So she lay still and sniffled and whimpered. When she lay still, her leg didn’t hurt quite so much. In fact, she thought she might get it to hurt even less if she could just scrunch over so she wasn’t lying on top a big lump.
Bad idea. The pain took her breath away. Even so, she managed to scream some more. She hadn’t even gotten off the lump. It was still right there under her hip, probably crushing everything in her purse. Her purse. After a very long time she put it together that the lump was her purse and she might be able to get it out from under her hip by pulling on the strap instead of trying to move the broken leg. That was nowhere as easy as it sounded, and still caused the leg to radiate waves of pain. It did, however, did result in freeing the bag, so she could lie almost flat. Much better—within what was now her hideous and limited perception of better.
It was so terribly, horribly dark. Ilana was not afraid of the dark. Or she thought she wasn’t. But she had never seen dark before, not dark like this. She lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers, but she couldn’t see them, whether they moved or not. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them wide. She still couldn’t see her fingers. Maybe she’d been struck blind? Had she hit her head when she fell? No. She’d hit her leg, not her head. But it was so dark! She couldn’t get her head around how dark it was.
She was going to die down here. The thought brushed across her mind and she screamed again. No! She couldn’t die! It wasn’t possible that she could die! There had to be a way out. Her frightened hands clutched convulsively, and one of them—still wrapped around her bag—found a smaller lump inside the lump that was her purse.
When she touched that lump she started to laugh. She laughed so hard it turned out she was crying, crying tears full of joy and relief. The little lump was her phone. Her phone!
She took a deep breath. She couldn’t afford to screw this up. She’d already dropped her keys—she couldn’t risk dropping the phone. Carefully, she pulled the strap of her purse—no matter how much the leg hurt—so the bag was on her left side, by the wall, away from the drop.
When she was sure it was safe, she opened the bag and reached inside for the phone. She knew her way around the touchpad well enough to turn it on. Even with the phone still inside her purse, the soft glow that rose up was dazzling. She sighed at the beauty of the light, then pulled the phone out and propped it up on her stomach. She would never have guessed how bright the screen was—she could see all around her.
She was in a sort of chute that seemed to go up forever, with ledges extruding from the sides at random intervals. She couldn’t see straight up because she was under an overhang (that would be where she’d banged her knee) but the opening of the tunnel where she’d come in couldn’t be that far up or she’d be dead. She didn’t try to look down.
The time… Mom must be frantic… She shivered, and shifted her gaze to Contacts. Who to call first? Mom, probably, except… Maybe she should call for an ambulance first? No. If she called 911 first, they would want her to stay on the line. She hit speed dial #1 (Home) and took a deep breath while the number dialed. She didn’t want to start crying the minute Mom answered the phone. Then she took another deep breath. And a third.
By the time she reached the fourth exhale, she was beginning to wonder why it was taking so long to connect. A few breaths later, her inhalations ceased to be deep and regular. Reception must be really bad down here. She told herself firmly not to panic. There was a cell phone tower just down the block. She’d passed it a million times. But she was underground.
She was still arguing with herself whether or not cell phone signals could reach underground, when the screen started to fade. She jabbed at a button to make it stay alight, but it continued to fade. The alarm bell tinkled and a little red skull and crossbones appeared. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “Please God, no!”
The scarlet skull pulsed and displayed a banner reading, Warning! Low battery alert! Please recharge! The skull winked at her and nodded. The banner scrolled by, repeating the message three times. The phone went dead. The light went out. Blackness resumed.
She didn’t scream. She was past screaming. She didn’t even cry. She stared into the dark and whispered, “I’m going to die,” over and over, like a sort of mantra, until the words had no meaning at all. She was going to die. She wasn’t ever going to sing O Holy Night. She wasn’t ever going to sing anything again. She would never sing… She wouldn’t…
She would. She opened her mouth and sang. It was the only thing left she could do. It was the last thing she would ever do, the one last thing even dying couldn’t stop her from doing. She would die doing something she loved.
“O holy night…”
Her voice was ragged and thin, her throat raw from screaming and her breath shallow and erratic from weeping. Plus, she was terribly thirsty. She turned her head, and licked the damp wall beside her. It was cool and refreshing.
“O holy night…”
It was like night down here, and more so. So utterly black, it had a supernatural quality. Holy.
“The stars…”
No stars here, and yet the word called them up in her heart, beautiful and perfect. Her voice grew stronger.
“For yonder breaks… She faltered on the words, “A new and glorious dawn.”
Something enormous lay ahead, but was it dawn? Was it glorious? Was it anything at all? Mom believed in the World to Come, or said she did. But Daddy didn’t, and was always quick to remind Ilana that Jews weren’t required to believe anything. She wanted to believe it but could she? Now, here at the last minute?
Or did it matter? She drew in more breath.
“Fall on your knees!” She’d already done the falling. “O hear the angel…”
She stopped dead. Because she saw something. Which was utterly impossible, but just the same, she did. Across the chute from where she lay, above a rock ledge much like hers but smaller, a glowing haze was spreading across the wall. It spread out into a smooth rectangle, until it looked like a lighted doorway. She shook her head. Phosphorescent fungus? Or more likely, she had to admit, a hallucination. Maybe she had hit her head, after all.
Then a man walked out of the door. That tears it, she thought. I’m definitely hallucinating. Much to her own surprise, what she said aloud was, “Are you an angel?”
He turned and looked down at her, and the last of her breath whooshed out of her lungs. It was Edward! Dreamy, beautiful Edward! Or rather, Robert Pattinson, since Edward wasn’t real. Except, of course, Robert Pattinson couldn’t be real either, not here, not now. Either way, he was standing right there in front of her, so she changed her question to, “Are you Edward?
He sniffed. “I am Elijah.”
Elijah? The prophet, the one that always came to Passover? Wasn’t he supposed to have a long beard or something? “You don’t look like Elijah.”
He jumped towards her, a quick squat followed by a long leap. The sinkhole had to be twenty feet across, but he cleared it easily, landing by her side on his toes, and then letting his weight drop down. A beautiful move, worthy of a glamorous vampire. He sank down to sit by her head, leaning his back against the wall, propping up one knee and letting the other leg dangle over the ledge.
“Yeah? What’s Elijah look like?”
“Not like Edward.”
“Who’s Edward?” He shrugged. “They said to pick a face that wouldn’t scare you.”
“You get to pick your face?”
For a moment that startled her, and then she remembered he was a hallucination. Hard to keep that in mind when he was sitting right there. Unless he was an angel.
“Are you going to save me?”
He stared down at her, and his eyes were cold. She suddenly remembered that Mom had always sniffed at Twilight, said that vampires were supposed to be blood-sucking monsters that killed people.
“Why should I?”
She looked around, as if there were an answer to that tucked away in the darkness somewhere. “Are you going to kill me, then?”
He laughed. “You don’t need me for that. You’re doing just fine on your own.”
Was she supposed to laugh or something? “Well, what are you going to do, then?”
“Dunno. I’m assessing the situation.” He leaned forward to prop his elbow on the upraised knee, and rest his chin on his hand. After a moment of staring down at her, he asked, “If I help you, will you do better?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. She would have promised him anything, but she had no idea what he wanted her to promise. “Better than what?”
He rolled his eyes. “Better than you’ve been doing up ’til now, Einstein.”
“You mean the O Holy Night thing?” At the mention of the song his face hardened, and she hurried on. “I’m sorry. No more Christmas carols, no matter how pretty. I’ll be a better Jew, I promise. I’ll go to shul every week. I’ll help the poor.”
He glared down at her babbling, his face growing more and more disgusted. “Puh-leeze. You think I give a shit how many Christmas carols you sing? Or if you ever go back to shul again? All that Jewish/Christian crap?”
That stopped her. “But…? You said you were Elijah.”
“To you, I’m Elijah. If you were a Muslim, I’d be the Green Man.” He smiled. Beautifully. He even sparkled. “You know what the Hindu call me? ‘Neti’. It means ‘Not this’. No matter what you think you see or know about me, that’s not what I am.”
“And you don’t care…?”
“Whether you’re Jewish or not? Don’t make me laugh. Only humans care about that stuff. They’re too small and stupid to see beyond their little mud-ball, so they make up a whole pack of lies. ‘Beyond this point be dragons’. Weird. But,” he stretched, brushed some imaginary lint or dust off the front of his shirt, and leaned back against the wall again. “Beside the point. So, if I help you, you’ll forget about singing that song?”
“But I thought you just said….”
“I said I don’t care about the Jewish/Christian thing. I still don’t think you should sing that song.”
His eyes were only barely visible, a tiny glint beneath his lashes. He seemed to be waiting, or hoping, for something. But whatever it was, he didn’t see it, and he sighed.
“You just don’t have a clue, do you? Nasty little mean-girl can’t imagine why she should do better.” He rose to his feet in single fluid move. “You’re not worth saving.”
Her breath caught, and she opened her mouth to beg, to plead, to promise anything, but what actually came out was an angry hiss. “Who you calling a mean-girl, you liar! I am not!”
It stopped him from going, anyway. He had already crouched to leap away to his magic door, but at her words, he relaxed and looked back down at her.
“Oh, yeah? And just why did you decide to sing O Holy Night? At don’t give me that ‘most beautiful song in the world’ crap.”
“But it is the most beautiful song in the world!”
“Think again,” he snarled. “When did you decide? Exactly?” He pointed at her and his finger seemed to drill a hole into her brain.
Edward, or Elijah, disappeared. A vivid recollection suddenly filled the darkness. She was standing in the corridor through the Music Department, talking to Ellie. Ellie was complaining that her parents wanted her to sing Kwanzaa, and the lyrics were awful. Ilana kept telling Ellie that if she played up the rhythms and threw in some cool scat, the lyrics wouldn’t matter. Ilana-in-the-corridor hadn’t doubted for a minute that Ellie would be great. Nothing wrong with that, insisted Ilana-in-the-cave.
Elijah’s voice came in as a voice-over narration. “Keep remembering.”
Remembering what? She and Ellie had talked and hugged. Ilana hadn’t picked her song yet but she swore she was not going to sing The Dreidel Song, no matter what.
“Nobody suggested you should,” murmured Elijah. The image of the memory paused and faded. “Nobody but you, anyway. By refusing to sing a song for little kids, you covered up that what you really didn’t want to sing was anything Jewish, anything your mother might approve of. Just what were you planning to tell her when she took a day off work to come see your concert? Or was hurting her half the point, to punish her for making you go to Hebrew Day?”
“You said you didn’t care about being Jewish!”
“I don’t. But you sure do.”
“You’re going to let me die because you think I’m anti-Semitic?”
“No.” He chuckled. “You may care but I still don’t. And your mother is your problem.” He waved a hand as if inviting her to look at something. “You still haven’t remembered why you picked O Holy Night.”
The memory swelled back up around her. She could see every detail. Ellie had been wearing her favorite striped top, and one of her dangly earrings had mashed against Ilana’s cheek as they hugged. They had been standing next to an open door, leading into a small practice room. There had been a schedule posted by the door, thickly scrawled with appointments and cross-outs.
“You’re almost there,” whispered Elijah.
Even when the hug was done, they’d continued to walk with their arms around each other. Just up ahead, two of the big kids started to…
“Back up,” injected Elijah. “You went right past it. Rewind.”
They had been standing by a schedule posted beside a small practice room. The door had been open. Ilana-in-the-cave stared at Ilana-in-the-corridor, wondering what was wrong with the image. The door was open. Why shouldn’t it be open? Because someone was in there, and practice room doors were usually closed when the room was in use. Somebody had been so eager for a few extra minutes of practice that they had ducked in, just because the room was empty and unguarded. A girl about Ilana’s age. She was singing O Holy Night. Her voice was not quite as strong as the song required, but still very sweet.
Ilana-in-the-cave and Ilana-in-the-corridor chorused in one heartfelt voice, “Oh, I could do that so much better!”
The memory went away, and so did Elijah, taking the light with him. But his voice continued to echo through the cave. “Kathy isn’t like you. She’s not an only child, she’s the fourth of six kids. She’s never owned a brand new garment. Nobody’s ever told her that she’s special. Her grades are ordinary, so she probably won’t go to college. Unless, of course, she gets a music scholarship. She does love music. Not that she gets much encouragement. A solo in the Holiday Concert would mean a lot to her.” There was a long pause. “Unless some spoiled rich kid takes it away from her.”
“I’m sorry,” whispered Ilana. “Dear God, I am so very, very sorry.”
He sat down again, this time with both legs propped up, and his arms wrapped around his knees. “Really?” He sounded pleased, but surprised. Not actually disbelieving, but very surprised. “Aren’t you going to tell me you didn’t mean it?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, I didn’t mean it. But that’s not the point, is it? I still did it. Not meaning it only makes it worse.”
He cocked his head almost sideways. “You’re not going to whine that it isn’t fair to let you die over something so small and stupid?”
She had to think for a long time about that. “I don’t think it’s fair to let anyone die over anything.” She shrugged. It made her leg hurt. “But everybody still dies. And there’s nothing small or stupid about a beautiful song.” She sighed and tried to turn her head to a place where she didn’t have to look at him. “Are you happy now? I’m going to be dead and Kathy can sing O Holy Night.” She managed a faint smile. “She is pretty good. She just needs to work on giving it more breath.”
“Well, what do you know? Maybe you are worth saving.” He grinned, and for the first time since he’d arrived he didn’t look like Edward, with his eyes all mischievous and full of mirth. “Tell you what.” He rose to his knees and leaned across her to pick up her phone, which still rested on her stomach. “I’m not really cleared for miracles, but I could probably manage a little low-level hacking.” He laid a finger, not on the keypad, but on the screen, which lit up instantly and launched a swirling logo. “See, this thing’s not dead, it was just a loose wire.”
She drew in a great lungful of air, and then breathed it all back out again. “Looks like a miracle to me.”
He slid down to recline beside her, so they were nearly face to face, and held up the phone between them, rocking it and waving it around in circles so fast it left little phosphor trails behind it.
“You want it?” he laughed. “You want it?”
She laughed too, and even grabbed at it, although of course she couldn’t get it from him. She could hardly move for fear of jiggling her leg, and he was too fast for her, anyway. He raised his hand to dangle the phone way over her head, where she couldn’t possibly reach it.
“You want it?” He smiled beautifully. “Tough shit.” He threw the phone out into the sinkhole.
His arm seemed to travel in slow motion, as he drew it back for the wind up. His pitch was hard and fast. He must have given it some torque—the screen blinked off and on as it spun away. She watched it arc up and over, taking her last hope of survival with it, until it dropped out of sight. It must have caught on one of the upper ledges—she thought she could still make out a faint glow on the far wall.
She stared at the glow. Nothing else to see. Elijah was gone, if he had ever really been there, which of course he couldn’t have been. Silly to think he would help her, or rather that he could. Except he’d seemed so real. You’d think a hallucination would be more. . . fraudulent. But Elijah was burned into her mind. When she closed her eyes she could still see him. Beautiful. And mean. Probably a lesson in that somewhere.
Real or not, once he was gone, she had nothing left to do with herself but wait to die. Except maybe sing? Not for the concert of course. It would be Kathy singing O Holy Night at the Holiday Concert. But surely it was all right for Ilana to sing it now, just because it was beautiful. “Oh, ni-ight divi-ine.” She didn’t even notice that she’d changed the words when she sang, “Oh, night when I was born.”
She was still singing when the police and the ambulance arrived, although she never remembered much about that afterwards. Just her mother kissing her and crying, and thanking God that her little girl had kept her wits clear enough to hit ‘911’ before she dropped the phone. Some man had solemnly intoned that it was a miracle the phone had not fallen so deep that it dropped out of range. When she heard that, Ilana had tried to protest that it wasn’t a miracle, just low-level hacking, but they all hushed her, and someone muttering about pain and delirium gave her a shot.
Even with her leg in a cast, she begged to sing in the Holiday Concert. She sang Moaz Tsur (or Rock of Ages, Jewish style, as she announced it). They gave her a slot on the rehearsal schedule right next to Kathy so they got to practice together a lot.
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Michaele Jordan has worked for a kennel, a church and AT&T. Now she writes. www.michaelejordan.com is undergoing reconstruction, so grab your hardhat before going in.