Sometimes, Magic Is Delivered
Etta Blanchard and I were never close friends. We sat next to each other in the fourth grade at Memphis Elementary, but never hung out together on the playground. Etta was friends with Bernadine.
Etta had an older sister, Florence, a sixth-grader. A beauty with silvery-blond wavy hair and a tip-tilted nose. In all of my daydreams I looked like Florence. Truth is, I just wanted to be Florence.
One bleak December morning, I trudged into school and started to climb the stairs to my second-floor homeroom. As I rounded the first-floor landing I saw Florence and a couple of the other older girls sprawled on a huge piece of paper that half-covered the main-floor hall just outside the principal’s office. They were working on a Christmas mural.
Florence was free-handing a larger-than-life nativity scene complete with lambs and wise men. The other girls were adding the color. Never had I seen anything like it. Books and bells forgotten, I gaped and inched closer to the miracle that was coming to life on that hallway floor.
Effortlessly, even as she chatted with the other girls, suggesting a color here or a shading there, Florence’s pencil lightly brushed the surface of the paper, leaving in its wake a tree, a manger, or a shepherd holding a lamb.
Spellbound, afraid to move for fear I’d be sent away, I sat tucking my dress carefully under me as insulation from the cold, stone floor. And as I stared, a king was given a face, and a baby suddenly appeared in the manger.
It was almost morning recess before I was discovered and dragged off to Miss Sisson’s spelling class. How, I grumbled, could spelling be more important than the creation taking place in the first-floor hall? How could the mechanics of stringing letters together measure up to the innate beauty of Florence’s talent?
When I didn’t show up at home for lunch, my mother came looking for me. Why, she kept asking as she pushed me toward the kitchen and the Campbell’s soup, would I pass up lunch to watch somebody draw a picture? I tried to explain but, like everyone else, she only heard my words. No one, it seemed, could hear the magic.
A couple of days later, the music teacher was assigning parts for the Christmas pageant. Etta and Bernadine were angels. I wanted to be one too. “No, dear,” Miss Toot answered, “we need you to play the piano.”
Still no magic. So I memorized “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Adeste Fideles,” and all the obligatory carols and played them over and over, sometimes loud (for the marching in) and sometimes sotto voce (for the miracles), but always uninspired. I wanted to be an angel.
I really wanted to be Florence Blanchard.
The pageant dragged on and so did I, anchored to the old piano bench. The only part I liked was when Billy Langston sang “Oh Holy Night,” because I’d never heard a boy with such a clear soprano voice and when he went for that high note “oh night…di-VINE” it made me shiver. Once during practice it made me cry but I didn’t let anybody know.
The show was over and we were leaving school for Christmas break. As I pulled on my boots and searched for my mittens, Etta handed me a large envelope made of two pieces of drawing paper stapled together. She told me not to open it until Christmas morning.
She might as well have told me to give up being in love with Alan Ladd. I raced home, shed my outer layers in the side hall and headed for my room. Carefully, I pried open each staple with my fingernail until I could lift off the top piece of paper.
Inside was a note. “I drew these just for you. Merry Christmas, Florence.”
My heart went upside down and landed somewhere in my throat.
Sandwiched in between two pieces of manila drawing paper were 31 pages of the most exquisite paper dolls I had ever seen. More than that, one little girl had cared enough to make a miracle happen for one even littler girl.
The magic was back.
xxxx