Stocking Stuffers

by Sara James

  The woman turned to leave. She only made it a few steps before stopping to turn. “Santa?”

  Other than not breaking character, Delia’s instructions had ended with Maxine’s departure. With no prepared contingency plan, she fell back on the habits and words of the character she was pretending to be. “Yes, Maxine?”

  “What’s it like?” She breathed the words more than speaking them, her voice filled with awe.

  Delia had no idea what she was talking about. “What’s what like?”

  Maxine began to well up, her wide eyes growing misty and leaking tears. Tears! “The children. What’s it like to bring so much joy to so many children all over the world?” Her arms struggled with her gift for a moment before shifting her grip on it. Hoisting it on one cocked hip, she held it to her with both arms like it was a toddler, precious and all important.

  This girl really believed she was talking to Santa Claus. She might even have reason. Delia had wondered more than once if the woman that had claimed responsibility for transforming her was the one in charge or just working for a higher power of some sort. Maxine could hardly be blamed for believing in Santa Claus in the presence of real magic. Or, as Delia’s mentor liked to say, “Christmas miracles.”

  What could she say in response to such a question? Delia had fed many, many wide-eyed children stories about cold nights, filling stockings in the dark, eating cookies, flying reindeer and the workshop at the North Pole. The words of those stories were second nature to her. She opened her mouth. It would be so easy to spin one more entertaining falsehood. One more lie. It would be just another day at the office, sitting on the throne at the center of Santa’s Village, presiding over it like the King of Christmas.

  Maxine went on before she could answer. “It must be the best job ever.” Her eyes were soft and round. The pure faith in her heart shone out of her soft, moist eyes.

  Delia couldn’t do it.

  The faces of her own children came to mind. They had been there earlier that same day, brought to the mall by one of their nannies. They seemed to think she was away on a business trip. Why not? In a way, she was. She’d gone away on them many times before, often without notice or contact for days or weeks at at time. In that moment, she’d felt relieved they weren’t worried about her. She hadn’t wanted to hurt them. She felt proud knowing they were strong enough to survive her absence.

  But was she strong enough to survive theirs?

  Delia began to speak without considering her words, thinking of her children. “The face of a young child is an amazing thing. It’s so honest. You can see what they feel with perfect clarity. The way they light up in joy and delight. Even their fear or displeasure is clear. It’s not like adults. Grown-ups wear masks that hide who they really are, what they really feel. An adult that isn’t nice can put on a mask to hide their nature. You can’t tell if they’re good or bad people inside.” She swallowed. “Naughty or nice. But a child …”

  Weeks of interacting with children crashed in on her. Everything she’d said was true. Being Santa was a crash course in human nature. There were good children and bad. You couldn’t really tell by their behavior, either. You had to look in their eyes. Wild, rambunctious children could have kind faces and sweet words. Well behaved children could be cruel with empty eyes and hearts as black as midnight without a moon. Or they could be just what they appeared to be. It was never the same, never simple. Not until you looked them in the face and saw them for who they really were.

  Sitting on this throne, she had held both of her children on her lap. She’d been gone from their lives for weeks without being missed. She knew what it said about them. They were strong. They were happy. They were smart, knowing exactly what they wanted from Santa and how to ask for it without wasting any words or seeming greedy. She’d been proud of them.

  What did that say about her? Or her husband, for that matter. They were both absent from their children’s day-to-day lives. What was that doing to them? What if they grew up to be adults that didn’t need love to survive? Was that her father’s real advice to her? To not raise her children to live loveless lives like his had been?

  Or like hers was becoming?

  The words flowed out of her again. “Children are an open book. Pure. They have to learn about cruelty and pain from the adults in their life.” She paused then, an idea coming to her. “I think that’s why I like doing what I do. Not to punish children for being naughty, but to help them remember that love and joy and kindness are the most important things in the world.”

  That seemed to comfort her. “Thank you, Santa. Thank you for everything.” She began to walk away, smiling through her tears as she looked back. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Delia echoed as she waved her goodbyes to the woman, but it was just a reflex. She could feel the stirrings of something huge growing inside of her. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it hurt. It felt like indigestion. Maybe hard work and stress were building up to a heart attack. Or maybe it was the sudden certainty that she had failed her children and would never see her family again. What if she never got a chance to make it right? What if she never saw them again?

  It took the girl that was acting as her head elf several tries before Delia heard her. “Santa!”

  She sat up straight, remembering where she was. “Yes?”

  “You have a visitor.”

  Delia looked down at the small girl in the pink dress that was holding the head elf’s hand. The little girl waved, happy to see Santa up close. Behind them stood four women, one of them holding a bag with the logo of the lingerie store that was just yards away. They must be doing some last minute shopping with the girl.

  It was closing time. Delia could have turned the girl away. The elves all looked ready to close things up and go home for the holiday. Instead, she reached out her arms, inviting the girl to come forward.

  The girl didn’t need any encouragement. She climbed onto Delia’s lap without a trace of help or hesitation. She wiggled until she was settled into place. “I’m ready.”

  “So I see,” Delia agreed with a smile. “What’s your name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Rose! My, what a pretty name.” The routine of it let Delia go on, even though this girl was breaking her heart. This girl was so alive! So messy, spontaneous and imperfect, but filled with joy, unlike her own daughter. Delia’s daughter, Rachel, had prepared a speech about what she wanted and why, complete with note cards. She had read it like a perfectly delivered homework assignment, yet she was just four years old. “And what would you like for Christmas!”

  She spread her arms wide, like she was including the whole world in what she was about to say. “I want to be a princess!”

  The right thing to say, the thing Delia had practiced over and over again, was to complement the suggestion, then transform that into a number of gift ideas that both the child and the parent would both appreciate. Something like a princess dress, or a toy wand, or a plastic tea set. With some gentle encouragement, a young girl could even be coaxed to ask for a stuffed horse to use as a “practice pony.” After that, child and parent would both want a picture of the child on Santa’s lap as a memento. For a small price, of course.

  It was the right thing to do. The profitable thing. The thing that would drive sales to the mall’s merchants and offset the cost of operating Santa’s Village. That was the point, wasn’t it? To maximize profit?

  Instead, Delia, with great care and solemnity, placed the tip of one white-gloved index finger on Rose’s nose. “But Rose, you already are a princess,” she whispered.

  The girl’s eyes widened and her delicate jaw dropped open. “I am?”

  “You are,” Delia confirmed, still whispering. She swept her arm to take in Santa’s Village. Taking a deep breath, she proclaimed in her full, baritone voice, “I, Santa Claus, proclaim you, Rose, to be the Winter Princess of Santa’s Village! Behold your domain!”

  As if it had been rehearsed, every sin
gle elf in sight curtsied. Even the adults that were with the girl played along by curtsying, or trying to. One of the women bowed instead.

  Rose didn’t wait to linger on Santa’s lap. She jumped down and ran to the blonde woman with the lingerie bag, who must be her mother. “Momma!” she cried out. “Momma! Santa made me a princess! Santa made me a princess!”

  “I saw! He did!” the woman agreed, scooping the girl up into her arms and getting a hug in return.

  “All hail Rose, Winter Princess!” cheered the head elf from her place at the right side of the throne.

  Following her lead, the other elves began to cheer and clap. Two linked arms and danced a little jig. It was the happiest she had seen the group of young women ever. Delia gave her best booming Santa laugh as the group left, waving as the elves surrounded them to escort them out, all the while fawning over the young girl.

  Her mentor walked up. She might be dressed as an elf, but there was no mistaking her aura of authority. Bending at the waist, she looked deep into Delia’s eyes. Whatever she saw there caused her to smile. “The mall is closing, Delia. You’ve earned your reward. It’s time for you to go Home.”

  Opening herself to the emotions she’d held back for so long, Delia bowed her head and wept with joy. When she looked up, her mentor was gone.

  She wasted no time looking for her. Every time she’d searched, the woman had been impossible to find. Instead, she began to quick-walk to her car, leaving the elves behind to close up. With every step, she became slimmer, younger and less male. As the weight she’d grown used to carrying around melted away, her pace increased, until she was almost running. By the time she burst through the doors at the mall’s exit, she was herself again, a woman, swallowed by the Santa costume that was still its original size.

  Under the dark winter sky, she spread her arms wide and turned in a circle, laughing. It was snowing. Looking up, she let the flakes fall on her tear-stained face like tiny, frozen kisses.

  For the first time, Max was eager to open one of Holly’s presents.

  Pausing only to remove his coat, he took the package into the living room. It seemed appropriate that this last package should be opened in the same spot as the first.

  In keeping with that idea, he decided to sit on the floor. It was a far more complicated process than he had anticipated. His high heels made it difficult to lower himself without simply tipping over. The petticoats beneath his skirt kept wanting to ride up over his hips. Even in the privacy of his apartment, he didn’t want to sit around with his dress rucked up around his waist. Perhaps oddest of all was his desire to sit gently to avoid rips or tears to the leggings. The superstitious part of his mind kept whispering that if he ripped the leggings, he would be stuck as a woman forever.

  After several minutes, he was sitting on the floor, skirts arranged with care around him, legs folded comfortably to one side. In front of him was his gift. He lingered in the moment. If everything went right, he would only be a woman for a few more minutes. As good as being a man again would be, he wanted to remember the novelty of what being female felt like. Of course, after his time at the mall, there wasn’t much chance he would be able to forget it.

  Taking a deep breath, he began to unwrap the package. Underneath the layer of familiar paper was a wooden box with a hinged lid. The edges were only slightly rounded. Max had been expecting a card for guidance, but there wasn’t one. Perhaps inside?

  He opened the lid. The interior was lined with red velvet, much like the cloth of Santa’s suit. It was otherwise empty.

  He frowned. Now what?

  He closed the lid, intending to flip the box over and look at the bottom. Or rather, he tried to close the lid. As if it was filled to overflowing, the lid resisted being closed. He opened it again. It was still empty. Lowering the lid again, it again resisted being closed with an inch or two still remaining. Pressing down with more force, he felt his body begin to tingle. In the air around him, flecks of light began to leach out of his skin and from his clothing, floating in trickles of light into the still open box. The harder he pressed, the faster the process went.

  In less than a minute, he was sitting on the floor, his body returned to normal. The box was closed all the way. He was left wearing only a pair of men’s underwear. By the looks of them, they were the same ones that had gone missing the night the leggings had first transformed the lower half of his body.

  Wondering if the female clothing he had been wearing was now inside the box, he tried to reopen the lid. It wouldn’t budge. Looking more closely, the wood of the small chest seemed more like a solid block than a box that opened. Only a keyhole and the faint scar of a seam revealed that the box even had a lid. It took several more minutes of prying and tugging to assure himself that it would not reopen for him without a key.

  Unsure what else what to do with it, he put it in his bedroom closet.

  The surreal memories of the last few days lingered, but he had things to do and a long drive ahead of him before he could see his family. He had already showered, so he got dressed, checked his face in the bedroom mirror to confirm that his makeup had been removed along with everything else female before packing an overnight bag. He put on his coat. Locking his apartment behind him, he went downstairs, loaded his bag into the back seat of his car and settled himself in the driver’s seat.

  It had begun to snow. It was just a light dusting to supplement the snow that was already on the ground. He smiled as he started the car. He always had liked having snow on Christmas.

  Christmas day at the Williams household was crowded and loud. With eight young children, seven adults, three dogs and two cats, there was a lot going on.

  Stockings and presents had been opened that morning. It had been chaos. The big meal was still to come in the late afternoon. His sisters’ husbands and his father were in the basement looking at dad’s latest woodworking project, sneaking a beer or two out of sight of their wives. The kids were busy playing games with their cousins in groups divided by age and gender. His mother and sisters were in the kitchen, doing more visiting than preparation as they waited for the roast to cook.

  Max took that time of relative quiet to sit in the bay window of the front living room, watching the snow fall. In the four days and three nights he’d been female, he hadn’t had a lot of spare time to reflect on what had been happening to him. It felt like he’d sprinted through the experience rather than living it.

  Now he had plenty of time to think. Little of it had to do with being female, though the memory of having that body kept haunting him, refusing to be forgotten. Most of what he was thinking about had to do with how he’d lived his life. Women he’d slept with then never called back. Estimating the amount of money he’d spent on pornography during his life. Female friends he’d alienated by his insistence on trying to turn them into sexual partners. Things he’d said to women that he’d thought at the time were clever or funny, or even flirtatious, when he’d really just been crude and obnoxious.

  “Hey.”

  He looked over his shoulder to find his sister Katie watching him. Her head was cocked to the side, as if she’d caught him doing something weird. At twelve, she’d had the same look on her face when she caught him looking at a dirty magazine in his room. It was less a look of disgust and more one of confusion.

  “Hey,” he answered, turning back to the window. The snow had grown heavier when he had arrived, is if to keep him from leaving. It was really coming down. Some of the neighborhood kids were outside playing in it. Their antics helped entertain him while he pondered deeper issues.

  She sat down across from him on the other end of the padded window bench. Pulling her legs up, she folded them beneath her. “Penny for your thoughts.”

  Max breathed on the window, making it fog up. “I’m not sure they’re worth that much.” He drew a Christmas tree with a star on top, only to watch it fade away as the glass turned clear again. He flinched at the sudden memory of having pubic hair that had been simi
larly shaped.

  “Try me.”

  He wanted to share the truth with her, but didn’t quite dare. There was a good chance she wouldn’t believe him. It might even be worse if she did believe. That last thing he needed or wanted was having his sister teasing him about being turned into a woman. If his sister Emily found out, she’d turn the whole thing into a comedy schtick at his expense that could last for years.

  “No thanks.” He looked at the kids playing outside and considered trying to convince some of his nieces and nephews to go out with him to play in the snow. They would probably resist. The three boys wanted to play the video games they’d gotten that morning, the three youngest girls had barricaded themselves in one of the bedrooms to play dolls and the two oldest girls were in a different doing whatever it was ten year old girls did in private. Whatever it was, the bedroom they were in was filling the rest of the house with the muffled sounds of shrieking and laughter.

  “What’s up with you?” she pressed. “It’s not like you to mope around.” Her head was turned to one side by just a fraction so she could squint at him like he had grown a second head.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I’m worried that I’m not a very nice person.”

  Katie raised her eyebrows. “You sound like my kids. Will’s been using all his best lawyer tricks to scare them into behaving. They’ve been acting all introverted and depressed, like a trio of Goth teenagers. He had them terrified that Santa wasn’t going to bring them anything.”

  Max couldn’t suppress the shudder that worked its way up his spine. “Maybe he wouldn’t have.”

  Looking over her shoulder to make sure none of the kids were around, she leaned forward, waving him closer until he did the same. “Max? I’m Santa!” The words came out in an over-dramatic whisper. She followed up on that with a loud gasp of surprise at her own statement. She even put her hands on her cheeks to accentuate her mock-alarm. And then, with an eye-roll and a chuckle, she was done. “Santa showing up was a pretty sure thing.”