Ugly Orange
December 1982
We had a big cardboard box of oranges, and I, at eight years old, ate the fire out of them. Every night, I peeled and ate one, or sometimes two, while we watched television. But there was one I avoided. It had a long, jagged brown scar all the way from the north pole to the south pole. If I ever accidentally picked up the ugly orange, I would discard it back into the box and select a nicer one.
We lived in a large rented white house with a big yard that was our wonderland during the warm months. But in December, the grass was brown, the trees were bare and the days were short and cold. Even inside the house was freezing. The only heat was a fireplace in one of the bedrooms, which did nothing for the rest of the house. Mom or grandma would tuck us in underneath a pile of thick, heavy hand-made quilts. Our bodies would slowly warm, but we could still see the white mist of our breath in the freezing air.
But on this night, the frigid house was not enough to chill our excitement. It was Christmas Eve. There were promises of Santa Claus if we’d been good, and high hopes that he didn’t remember the fights and arguments.
When our feet hit the icy floor the next morning, we rushed into the living room and were not disappointed. We saw gifts under the tinseled Christmas tree that had not been there when we went to bed. We even had stockings hanging near the fireplace - stockings that looked suspiciously identical to my uncles’ white tube socks with the blue and red stripes around the tops.
We opened gifts first, and then someone handed out the stockings. Santa had put small gifts in the socks, along with some nuts and fruit. I pulled out the surprises one by one. Toward the bottom, my fingers wrapped around something familiar. An orange! I pulled it out and received a shock. It was the ugly orange from the cardboard box. I would recognize that awful scar anywhere. I held the fruit in my hand and stared at it. This was the moment I realized that Santa Claus was not real. He would never have left me the hated orange. But I also realized that my mom and grandma had been pretending to be Santa all along. I knew they had gone without something to make sure we had a good Christmas. I decided to keep their secret.
-Melanie Patterson
© Forged in Words 2021