The Bodyguard ("Secrets" -- story #30)

SECRETS
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard’s mother has a set of antique Christmas ornaments carefully swaddled in blue tissue paper in her attic. Because she can’t sleep, she’s up there now going through her prized ornaments. Touching them. One by one. It’s nowhere near the Christmas season, that has nothing to do with why she is up there. In fact, lately, even during the holiday itself, it’s gotten so she doesn’t bring down but a few of the decorations. She can’t. They are too valuable.

She is sure if she sold them, she would never have to see any of the torn girls in the law office again. She thinks it might be especially nice if she didn’t have to listen to that jack-o-lantern girl—but the bodyguard’s mother knows she can’t do that (not until after the wedding, anyway). And there’s no way she could really sell the ornaments. To do so would be a crime in itself. Letting them go, letting who knows what kind of giraffe in black pants approach them, fondle them, tell them what to do and when? No, she cannot possibly let that happen. As long as she is alive, they will be free and safe in the boxes in her attic.

The shepherds and wise men roam around in a black cardboard one that once contained Russian vodka. But not the Holy Family. It and its attendant farm animals are in a better box—a wooden one that journied all the way from China for the task. The bodyguard’s mother likes to touch this special box and trace her finger over the strange Asian lettering on its sides. She doesn’t know what the box is trying to say to her and doesn’t really want to. She likes it that it has secrets. In fact it makes her feel better that the box protecting Baby Jesus can’t speak. In a way it’s perfect. In a way it’s as if someone has cut out its tongue. So now, instead of jabbering on about its pitiful past to whoever comes along, it can do only what is necessary.