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With your mother in bed and your brother holed up in his room, the house is almost completely dark aside from the soft white light emanating from the Christmas tree in the living room. The heavy scent of brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger still linger when you pass close to the kitchen, and the mountain of presents is artfully arranged on the tree skirt so that the tallest presents just barely brush the green boughs. Your mother did all the decorating before you arrived (with minimal assistance from Dave, you’re sure), but she had reserved the honor of placing the star atop the tree for Kanaya, practically accosting the poor girl with it as soon as the two of you walked through the door. The last flickerings of a fire sputter in the hearth as you take down the pink rhinestone stocking, rubbing your finger absently against the childish scrawl of “MAMA” across the top in silver glitter glue.
“What are you doing?”
It’s still jarring to see Kanaya wearing her hijab with her thick flannel nightgown, but with Dave skulking around the house and popping up with little to no warning, you know she’d rather be safe than sorry. She’s holding a cup of cocoa in her hands, and when you look up from the travel-sized bottle of Vodka you’re stuffing into the toe of the stocking, she’s seated on the couch with her bare feet tucked under the snowman afghan you abandoned there earlier.
“Stuffing mother’s stocking,” you reply, the glass clinking softly against the martini glass ornament you hand decorated to go with the collection you started giving her when you were sixteen. “She’s going to take care of ours and Dave’s at the crack of dawn before we get out of bed, but if I don’t do hers, she doesn’t get one.”
“What’s the significance of the stockings?” she asks, breathing in the steam from her mug.
Once you moved away from home, you never got in the habit of celebrating alone; without your family, it just seemed too lonely to decorate for a party of one, which made Kanaya’s conservative Muslim upbringing remarkably easy to work around. The winter holiday was a small affair, usually with small gifts and a special meal, and instead you celebrated Eid al-Fitr with all the exuberance she was accustomed to (although you didn’t adhere to the strict fasting that she did). Much to your surprise, though, she’d suggested spending the holidays at your family’s, and you spent most of December teaching her Christmas carols and the traditions of your family.
Without the heavy religious overtones that could be expected for some families, the longer she was there, the more relaxed Kanaya became, until she was flicking M&Ms at Dave during the sugar cookie decorating and refilling your mother’s eggnog without needing to be asked. She sang last night, while Dave took out his guitar and looked very put upon, but her heavy tenor was a perfect contrast to his contralto, they ended up trying to out-carol each other long past when your mother stopped harassing them.
“Stockings are part of the Saint Nicholas myth,” you explain, tossing a handful of chocolate coins into the pink monstrosity. “It’s said that he left gold coins in the stockings of three poor sisters whose family did not have enough money to pay for their marriages. The tradition has moved beyond just money, and at least in our family, we use it to accumulate small little gifts that are too insignificant to wrap but make us think of each other for various reasons.”
Kanaya tries to hide her amused smile behind her mug. “Is that why you bought every tiny bottle of alcohol you could when we picked up the rum for your mother the other day?”
“It’s hardly enough to get her through the day, but having all the tiny bottles makes her happy,” you sigh, setting the stocking against the fireplace seeing that all the glass within made it too heavy to hang once it was full.
“I thought stockings were usually Christmas colors. Why is hers pink?”
You can feel the back of your neck getting hot, and you sincerely hope that it’s too dark in the room for her to see. “Well, it was shortly after the divorce, and a lot of our Christmas decorations got lost in the move since we left so quickly. She managed to keep my stocking,” you motion to the stocking hanging in the middle of the mantle with little candy canes and wreaths and reindeer cross-stitched on by hand, the red velvet backing worn with the years but still reflecting all the love that went into making it, “but lost hers. We were supposed to make stockings for ourselves at my elementary school, but since mother didn’t have one, I wanted to make her one instead. You’ve seen how she dresses, she’s always been like that, so I just wanted it to reflect that style. She loved it then, and she loves it now.”
Kanaya stands, shuffling over to lean over and trace the clumsily made rhinestone heart that rests right at the toe and up over the silver crystal swirls that lead up to the lettering across the top. “You made it just for her, so it’s no surprise she still treasures it.”
You blow a stray strand of hair out of your eyes and cross your arms across your chest in as grumpy a fashion as you can, knowing that the pink on your cheeks is obvious this close to the fire. “It’s still embarrassing. I’ve tried to buy her newer, nicer ones, but she always makes me return them.”
Standing up straight, Kanaya wraps her arms around your waist underneath the garish red bathrobe you’re wearing, head nestled right at the crook of your shoulder. “I’d keep every tiny thing you made me, especially if it was something from when you were so young.”
“That,” you say, blowing air across her ear under the thick fabric to hear her giggle, “is because you are a hopeless sap who I am clearly struggling to convert to my lack of sentimentality.”
She smiles against your neck, which makes something settle in your stomach that you don’t feel comfortable acting on in your mother’s house. Slowly, her lips move from the base of your neck up the side to your ear, where she whispers barely loud enough to hear, every word a caress against your skin, “I know where you keep every single card she’s ever sent you.”
You groan with absolute unabashed horror, trying to squirm away but only ending up with a faceful of hijab for your troubles. Her hands are warm against your skin and her eyes twinkle the reflection of the Christmas tree lights. “We should come back next year.”
That causes a different kind of warmth to settle in your stomach, so you stop trying to wriggle away and instead pull her to rest her slight weight against your slightly more solid form, watching the fire burn out and the lights glinting off the crystal ornaments, and if she starts to hum “Baby It’s Cold Outside” slightly off key, well, you certainly don’t hold it against her.