”Who's got a beard that's long and white?”
”Santa’s got a beard that’s long and white!”
”Who comes around on a special night?”
”Santa comes around on a special night!”
”Special night! Beard that’s white!
Must be Santa! Must be Santa, Santa Claus!”
Before kindergarten, I had no real concept of Santa Claus. I only knew that in December, Laurie would take us to Grammy and Pappy’s house, a large estate with a deceptively long driveway. There would be a fresh pine tree in the living room covered in bulbs and trinkets that twinkled in the soft string of lights hidden in the fir. Beneath the din of unfamiliar chipmunks arguing and laughing loudly while their pups ran around between their legs, soft holiday music served as a base-level white noise. The sweet smell of sugar cookies and hot cocoa mingled with the strong hickory crackling in the fire place as everyone gathered around the tree with their mugs and waded through the immense pile of presents underneath. 
To me, that was just a regular visit to the grandparents, whom I only saw once a year even though we lived about half an hour away. There was no magic in what amounted to a family reunion of strangers for a disinterested toddler. 
But the chubby caribou clad in red described so enthusiastically by Mrs. Bradford captured my imagination. All you had to do was be helpful to adults, do well in school, and mind your manners, and the bearded reindeer would bring you anything you wished for. I was a shoe-in, I thought. I was particularly bright for my age, always willing to help, and naturally reserved in demeanor, the model child by anyone’s standards. 
Well, almost anyone. I never quite met the bar for Laurie. She was unimpressed that I could read at the age of two, more concerned that I shoved my whole snout into my Dr. Seuss books so I could read the words on the page, and annoyed that I liked to read out loud to myself. If I did a cartwheel, my older brother Jeremy did it better, earlier. If I drew a picture, my sister Charlotte’s were far more worthy for the refrigerator door. And I was always in trouble. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure what I’d done to bring on her wrath, but I knew if I heard my name, it was time to hide. 
Needless to say, our three bedroom apartment was always very tense. There was never any tinsel over the doors, or any out of place trees covered in knickknacks. Year round, there was nothing to indicate the changing of the seasons except for a calendar in the room that I shared with Jeremy. I dreaded coming home after school, and spent as much time ambling back to our apartment complex as I could.
That Friday, though, when winter break began, I skipped all the way home, excited to start writing my Christmas wishlist to Santa Claus. I’d seen a set of K’Nex between my Saturday morning cartoons that I really wanted to build, and there were some books I found at the school library about space that I wanted to own and read to myself over and over. I didn’t even see Laurie sitting on the couch when I bounced through the door and hung my coat in the closet.
“Well, now,” her voice startled me from behind, “what’s got you in such a chipper mood, Clunk?”
“Oh, Mom,” I breathed, suddenly feeling very anxious. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“I asked a question,” she said in a pointed southern drawl. 
“Oh, well,” I began as I kicked off my shoes. “We learned about Santa in school, and I wanted to write him a letter and tell him what I wanted for Christmas this year.”
“Santa?” Laurie sounded interested. “What did you learn?”
My round ears perked, my whiskers falling as tension left my face. She sounded almost kind. Maybe I was allowed to be excited about this after all.
I told her everything in detail, and she listened and nodded, interjecting with matched enthusiasm. The chocolate-and-creme features of her face were warm and friendly, somehow. Could Santa’s magic already be at work?
“Well, maybe Santa will visit our home this year,” Laurie suggested when I was done.
“Do you think so?” I said, my bushy tail positively wagging. “Even though we don’t have a chimney?”
“I think if he really wants those cookies, he won’t mind using the front door.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” I agreed. “I’m gonna go write him a letter. Will you help me mail it?”
“Sure, Clunk,” she said, brushing a lock of fur out of her face. “Better make sure Jeremy and Charlotte write theirs, too.”
“Oh yeah!” I beamed, bruxing. “I’ll go tell them right now!”
In the course of the week, the apartment became more festive than it had been in all the years of my life. Laurie obtained a rodent-sized plastic tree and let me decorate it — with the begrudging help of my teenaged brother, and the decorative counseling of my ten-year-old sister. Charlotte insisted she’d learned the fine art of tree decorating from Grammy, and that we boys didn’t know what we were doing in the slightest. But since Jeremy was the only one tall enough to reach the top of the tree, she deferred to us for the grunt work. This tree seemed reasonable to me. Unlike the massive fir tree that spilled needles all over the wooden floor and took up a quarter of the room at Grammy and Pappy’s, this modest, self-contained erector set was clearly made to be enjoyed indoors.
We didn’t have a fireplace, so we hung our stockings on an accordion coat hanger screwed into the wall. We each got to pick one out. I remember Jeremy’s was incredibly practical: a simple, festive, argyle pattern of red and black, with plenty of room for extra candy. Charlotte found the most stereotypical, girly, pink stocking she could, while I settled for a black one that read “Starry Nights,” because I liked all the stars on it. Laurie opted out, since Santa didn’t visit parents. That wasn’t in the rule book from school, though, and I secretly wondered if she was just afraid she’d been too naughty all year. 
Jeremy supervised the kitchen duties. Laurie bought some very simple sugar cookie dough, and Charlotte and I used cookie cutters and icing to decorate our creations. Charlotte used the gingerbread mouse to make dolls, because there weren’t enough girl mice, while I opted for the star-shaped cutter — Christmas was a holiday for space enthusiasts, it seemed — and color-coded them to the different colored stars in the universe that I’d read about. We plated them carefully on Christmas Eve before bed, next to a caribou-sized glass of milk.
I crawled into bed and got comfortable, letting my tail hang out from under the covers for temperature control. Jeremy was laying out his clothes for the next day on the trunk at the foot of his bed.
“What did you ask Santa for?” I asked.
Jeremy clicked his teeth together, rolling his eyes. “Santa’s not for older kids,” he replied.
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “You wrote him a letter, didn’t you?”
“Clunk, you realize that—“ Jeremy stood tall and looked me straight in the eye. His face softened, his proud shoulders dropped, and his ears fell back. “You realize you can’t tell people what you asked for. It’s bad luck.”
“Oh,” I whispered. I didn’t know. I almost told him about the K’Nex. 
“You probably want to stay up all night, don’t you.”
“Kinda. I know—“
“Well, don’t,” he cut me off. “You have to be asleep when he gets here, or he won’t leave anything.”
Jeremy was a very serious chipmunk. Tall for a rodent, and fit from running track, whatever he said in his stern tone was absolute. I knew he wasn’t kidding around, so I pulled my cover over my ears and closed my eyes as tightly as I could. 
Jeremy was still up and about by the time I fell asleep.
He was also the first thing I saw when I woke up. He stood over me and shook me awake gently. “It’s morning,” he said simply.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and stretched the stiffness out of my limbs. “Did Santa come?”
“I haven’t checked yet.”
Charlotte shrieked from the next room. Her steps clopped down the hallway, and she threw open the door. “He came!” she chirped, blissfully unaware of her terrible bedhead. 
I grinned up at Jeremy, and he smiled softly. “Shall we see?”
I threw back my comforter in reply and jumped out of bed. I grabbed his paw and dragged him down the hallway to the living room. There, in front of the Christmas tree, Charlotte kneeled next to an Easy Bake Oven, trying to figure out how to open the box. Next to her, a Huffy bike with pegs on the front and aft wheels leaned on its kickstand. Standing next to it, it was clear that the bike was sized for my older brother.
I looked around the room. There was something missing. “Where’s my present?”
“Did Santa come?” Laurie came up behind us from the hallway, dressed in her silk robe with her hair pulled back into an admittedly attractive pony tail. You wouldn’t have believed she’d just woken up.
The cookies were gone. The milk glass was empty. 
“I think so,” I said, furrowing my brows as I searched under the tree.
“Did you check your stockings?” she suggested.
Of course! The stockings! I bounded over to the dining area with Charlotte close behind. There hung three stockings, but only two of them seemed to be brimming with candy. My sister didn’t seem perturbed, snatching down her stocking and dumping it out on the table. “Oh! A Twerpz doll!”
Jeremy hesitated, eyeing Laurie gravely, before reaching for his stocking and mine. “I think there’s something inside here, actually,” he said, weighing it as he took it down and handed it off to me.
“Really?” I said, feeling my whiskers bristle with hope. I reached my arm in, and grabbed on to something firm but dusty, one of a few knocking around in the toe. I squeezed, and part of it broke off. I pulled it out. 
“What is that?” Charlotte said, disgusted.
“I… don’t understand.”
“Uh oh,” Laurie said with concern. “Looks like someone was on the naughty list.”
I stared stupidly at the large lump of charcoal that blackened my paw. 
“Oh, yeah, you have been pretty naughty this year,” Charlotte agreed.
“Charlotte, stop,” Jeremy swatted.
“What? It’s true! He’s always getting in trouble!”
“Stop.”
I just kept staring, dumbfounded. The brittle edges broke apart in my tightening grip.
“Dammit, don’t get it on the carpet, Clunk,” Laurie scolded. “Go throw it in the trash and wash your filthy paws.”
Automatically, I did as I was told. I carried it with the solemnity of a pallbearer to the kitchen, stepped on the lever to lift the lid, and lowered it into its grave. Despite my best efforts, I left a trail of dust behind me, but I didn’t really hear Laurie complain. I only heard my own pulse thumping in my ears as I walked carefully to the bathroom with my left paw outstretched so as not to get my pajamas dirty. Managing things with my right paw was foreign and difficult. I carefully pulled out the foot stool, stepped up on it, and turned the tap. The water bled black as it flowed through my digits. Black and black and black. When I went to pump soap into my palm, I noticed there was carbon up to my elbow from where I’d reached into the stocking. So I scrubbed. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but it clung steadfastly to my arm.
“Hey, Clunk.” Jeremy stood in the door frame. I could hear Charlotte talking to Laurie about her new oven in the living room.
“It won’t come off,” I said.
“Just use some soap.”
“It won’t come off. It’s in my fur.”
“Let me help you.” Jeremy stood behind me, and I went limp as he took over lathering my paws together and cleansing my fur. The water was too hot, but I didn’t feel like I should complain. With his help, the stream soon turned from gray to clear. “There. All better. No more coal.”
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at my paws as if they were still covered in charcoal dust. 
“Hey,” he said, steadying my shoulders. “You know, I’ve got too much candy. You can have some of mine.”
“No, thank you.”
Jeremy ground his teeth together.
“And you know,” he tried again, “Grammy and Pappy always have the best gifts anyway.”
“Uh huh.”
I felt him exhale in my ear, then drag his whiskers against my cheek from behind.
“Are you OK?”
I hesitated. “Do you think I’m naughty?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, studying me through the mirror. The step stool was the only way we were at eye level with one another. 
“OK.”
Jeremy watched my face for a moment more, then squeezed my shoulders and started to walk away.
“You know,” he said, stopping and turning around, “Santa Claus isn’t real.”
“What?” I shot my gaze at him.
“Santa’s not real. He’s made up to make kids behave. There’s no magical reindeer or flying sleighs. I heard Mom setting all of this stuff up last night.”
“So that means…”
“Mom put the coal in that stocking, not Santa.”
The bridge of my snout began to sting, and my vision blurred. I stepped off the stool and fell into my brother, squeezing him around the middle and hiding my face in his belly. He put a paw on the back of my head, and I sobbed, relieved. “Thanks, Jeremy,” I sniffled out finally.
“Will you help me eat my candy, Clunk?”
I nodded, wiping my tears away with his fur.
Despite Laurie’s protests, Jeremy helped me clean up the trail of coal, because a five year old wouldn’t know how to get stains out of a carpet, as he explained matter-of-factly. Shortly after, we were buckled in the car and headed to our grandparents’ house. Charlotte told Pappy all about her stuffed stocking and special oven, and even told him about Jeremy’s trick bike and the Magic: the Gathering cards that were hidden under all his candy.
“And what about you, Clunk? What did Santa bring you?”
Laurie caught hell when I explained that Santa wasn’t real, and that my mother had put a giant, crumbling lump of charcoal in my stocking. I was treated to a lot of sweets that year, even before Christmas dinner, much to the dismay of my numerous cousins. And while hearing Laurie get chewed out all day for being a terrible mom wasn’t on my wishlist to Santa, it was a special gift all the same.