Dear Santa​

Issue 13

I
Her phone beeped. An SMS. From bae. Succinct, as always.
Babes, how far? Will be coming over later so we can get those Xmas items we talked about. See you later.
A smile spread across her face, doing to it what yeast does to dough.
“Miss Reneh!”
She looked up. The headmistress. Standing only an inch from her.
“Please follow me.”
They were in the playground before she spoke again. “Miss Reneh, I understand you are the moderator for the Christmas carol today.”
A nod.
“Ok, I will like you to note some things. First…”
A pupil, prancing to meet his friends, stopped to greet them with a bow. A courteous kid. Pleased, the headmistress rubbed his head tenderly. Just then, another kid walked past. But he didn’t acknowledge their presence with a greeting as a well-trained pupil of this morals-driven institution should. The headmistress pulled him back. Two heavy knocks on his head.
“What’s your name?”
“Paul Okafor,” he replied, tears in his eyes.
“Wait, isn’t he your pupil, Miss Reneh?”
She blushed. “Yes…he is. Paul, why didn’t you greet us?”
Silence.
“Ok, just go. Next time, greet your elders. Miss Reneh, as I was saying…”
Ten minutes later, she was back at her desk. Only one more script to mark. She would just finish that now and begin preparing for the carol. She had another twenty minutes.
 
II
Dear Santa,
Seven Things I Want For Christmas This Year

1. I wish whenever Daddy comes back from work, it won’t be with empty hands, as is his habit recently. That when he knocks, Mummy won’t pretend that she didn’t hear. That she will, like before, run to meet him at the door with “welcome” in her mouth and plant a kiss on his face. That Daddy will now hand her the big flower he had bought for her and they will now be hugging until one of us will clear his throat so they can separate and see us watching them.
2. I wish that what Blessing told me yesterday is a big lie. That Daddy didn’t buy for only her and Michael Christmas clothes, without buying for me too. That Blessing just wanted to make me angry because I didn’t cut for her my meat during dinner. That even if Blessing is saying the truth, when Daddy comes home today, he will buy my own Christmas clothes and say they didn’t have my size yesterday and that’s why he is only bringing it now.
3. I wish that when Daddy comes home to meet Michael, Blessing and me playing Whot together, he won’t shout at them and tell them to stop playing with me. So that when I want to join them to do skipping, they won’t say, “No, what if Daddy comes and catches us?” That all of us can be going to school together again, in the back seat of his car, with Blessing trying to rush and finish her homework because that girl don’t used to hear word. So that she will now give me and beg me to finish it for her. And I will now tell her that only on one condition. Which is that she will help me wash my socks when we return from school. That when I want to join them in the car, Daddy won’t say, “Why don’t you wait and follow your Mummy?”
4. I wish that Mummy’s eyes will go back to their normal size. That she will stop crying morning, afternoon and night. That she will return back to her business. That when one of her friends or neighbors come to ask about her, she won’t whisper into my ears, “Go and tell them I’m not around.” So that Aunty Nkechi will stop asking me, “Ahn-ahn where is your Mummy now? Hasn’t she come back? Abi did she travel?” So that even Pastor’s wife won’t be disturbing me about why our Mummy decided to change church.
5. I wish that I’m only imagining that Mummy is angry with me. That the look I always see in her eyes whenever I turn to catch her looking at me isn’t hatred. That she didn’t mean it when she told me, “All that’s happening now is your fault. Why did you have to be so sick?”
6. I wish that everything that has been happening in our home is a dream. That I will wake up and breathe in relief and later tell Mummy and Daddy all about it. And they will laugh and say, “God forbid. It’s not our portion.”
7. I wish that I didn’t overhear that conversation between Mummy and Daddy. That what Daddy said isn’t true, that I misheard it. That Daddy didn’t say, “The DNA test shows he’s not my son.” That Daddy is my daddy and not my uncle. That Michael and Blessing are my siblings and not strangers I have been living with.

                                                                                                  Yours sincerely,
                                                                                                   Paul Okafor.
III
​Her tears had soaked the script by the time she was done. She had been happy when she saw he had opted for the letter-writing question– write a letter to someone you know, telling him/her your Christmas wishes. She had expected an easy marking. But not this.She ran out to look for him. She found some of his classmates playing.
“Has any of you seen Paul?”
“Paul doesn’t want to play with us,” one said.
“Stingy boy,” another said. “He didn’t want to share his strange juice with me.”
“What juice?”
She mobilized all her pupils and they began scouring everywhere for him. Twenty minutes, and they still couldn’t find him. Just as she wanted to give up, she found an empty container on the ground. As she picked it, the boy said, “Yes, this is the juice.”
But it wasn’t juice. Boldly printed on the container was the warning: ingestion is lethal. Keep out of the reach of children.
Her phone beeped.
Where are you, babes? I gave you six missed calls. Was calling to fix the exact time for our meeting. Call me when you see this.
​

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John Ebute is a Nigerian medical student and a trained screenwriter. His works have appeared in Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Eunoia Review,  Spillwords Press and elsewhere. A member of the Swans Collective, he was the winner of TWEIN Recreate Contest 2024 (Prose category), RIEC essay contest, NIMSA-FAITH Suicide Prevention Campaign (Prose category) and first runner-up in the Paradise Gate House Poetry Contest

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