Molly's Christmas


                            by
                         Chibicardcaptor
                < chibicardcaptor@dellmail.com >

Rating: PG, maybe PG-13.  No language or violence, but the story has 
pre-teens and young teens acting like pre-teens and young teens always 
do.

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is copyright (c) 1992 Naoko Takeuchi/Kodansha, 
TOFI Animation. English Language Adaptation (c) 1995 DiC Entertainment

Setting: Crossroads Junior High School has become Crossbow Academy, 
and the locale is a quiet residential or rural neighborhood. It is in 
Hokkaido, but could be in Canada, Holland, Scotland or Manchuria.  It 
almost could be in New Zealand, but it needs to be cold at Christmas 
time.  Melvin is less of a dweeb, and is really quite nice.


	"Gosh, Molly, your face is longer than a cat's tail; what is 
happening, girl?"  Melvin had dropped in to see his school friend.  It 
was Friday afternoon.  They were both thirteen, and went to a small 
country day school, Crossbow Academy, with barely more students than 
grades.  Their class had eight pupils.  Some had only two or three, 
others more.  Lots of individual attention was to be had, and they 
both loved their school.
	"Mom is at me to clean out my room.  And she really means it 
this time!  If I do not get rid of everything, I won't get anything 
for Christmas."  She was tearful, now.  "But I don't know where to 
start!  I use all of this stuff.  What does she want me to do, go 
around with nothing on?"
	Melvin had been through this before.  He had four sisters.  
Molly was an only child.  His own mother pirated out-grown clothing 
and toys from the older girls to give to the younger ones.  He had 
helped them all on occasion to sort, save and clear away out-lived 
possessions.  "Let's see what your mom is talking about," he said, 
opening a bureau drawer.  "You must have sixty pairs of these things, 
fifty too small or with the elastic stretched out.  And this thing:  
You're no Barbie-chan, but 28AA would not even be big enough for your 
cat.  And ---"
	Molly protested, "Get out of my underwear, you little creep!"
	"Well, look at these socks, then.  No two alike.  I bet it takes 
you a half hour to find a pair to put on.  No wonder you are late all 
the time, just like Serena."  Melvin checked her closet. It was almost 
floor to ceiling with board games, stuffed bears, and dollhouses.  It 
was a fire hazard.  The closet rod was crammed with dresses, uniform 
skirts and middy blouses.  Jeans and pants were rolled up on the 
shelves.  Shoes were everywhere.
	"I will help you," Melvin offered, "but I can be brutal."
	"Help her!" pleaded Molly's mother, who had just walked in.  
"Half of my queendom is yours if you will just clear out this log 
jam."
	"I won't ask for her head on a silver platter," Melvin promised.  
Much of this largesse came into her room when her parents were 
divorcing, when Molly was seven or eight.  Her father sent gifts when 
he could not take her for weekend visits.  Six-week summer custodial 
rights became two week stays, most of the time with a nanny, while her 
father worked or dated.  There was always a new dress, a stuffed bear, 
VCR tapes or CDs, just not much quality time with her dad.
	Molly gave in.  They grabbed a box of 100-liter trash bags and 
tackled the job with a vengeance.  Melvin pleaded, cajoled, bullied, 
scowled, glowered and praised.  Molly picked out about nine changes of 
everyday clothing, a few school uniforms and a couple of warm winter 
nightgowns, and discarded the rest.  All the summer shorts, tops and 
swimsuits went.  "Last year's won't fit you next summer anyhow," 
Melvin rationalized.  "And your dad will jump at any excuse to buy you 
new clothes."
	They disposed of nearly all of her costume jewelry, and only 
kept a few good pieces in a nice jewelry box she had.  The closet was 
next.  Most of the games were tossed.  Domino sets missing dominoes, 
Monopoly with no money or tokens, half-games of checkers, they all 
went into the dustbin.  He held up several dresses and skirts to her.  
Anything way above the knees was discarded.  They were for nine- or 
ten-year-olds.  Stuffed animals missing arms, legs, eyes, hooves, 
tails or snouts were bid 'goodbye' without ceremony.
	By ten that evening they were finished.  "Ugh, this place is a 
mess!" Molly moaned.
	Melvin called to her mother, asking if she would drive them down 
to the dumpsters at the shopping center.  They had six bags of trash 
and three bags for the charity receptacle.
	"Oh, we can do that tomorrow, or just put it out with the 
garbage Tuesday," she reasoned.
	"If you wait that long, Molly will have it all back in her 
closet and bureau," Melvin warned.
	"Better load the station wagon!" her mother commanded.  She saw 
the light.  Half an hour later they made a surreptitious deposit at 
the mall dumpsters, dropped the good cast-offs at the charity 
facility, and stopped in for carryout rice, vegetables and swordfish 
cubes.
	"Can Melvin stay tonight?  My room is just too cruddy to sleep 
in, and we can put sleeping bags in the rumpus room."  Molly was a 
good hostess.
	"Okay, but behave yourselves," Molly's mother admonished.  By 
eleven the two young teens were in the activity room feeding on rice, 
vegetables, seafood and hot chocolate, watching Sailor V on the VCR 
and playing gin rummy.  Gwendolyn, Molly's cat, was contentedly caring 
for a litter of kittens.  It was a happy scene.

	"We have to get busy on the Christmas pageant next week," Molly 
pointed out.  She was to be Mary, and Melvin Joseph.  Melvin's Irish 
wolfhound, Genghis Khan, would serve as Mary and Joseph's donkey.  
Many of the rest of the students would be shepherds and Persian Kings. 
Ami, Rei and Serena all wanted to be angels.  "Billy Culpepper can be 
a jackass," she giggled.  "He is half way to being one already."
	"I wish we had something better than a baby doll to use for 
Jesus," mused Melvin.  "That could ruin the whole pageant."
	"I have been working on that," Molly lit up.  "My good friend 
Katie, the tennis player, is fifteen, and she is going to have a baby 
early in December.  She said if everything goes all right, we could 
use her baby in the pageant.  She will have to be right there, though.
	"And don't look that way!  Katie is a nice girl --- sort of.  
Anyway, her baby is Jewish, same as Jesus.  You know how good Jewish 
mothers are."  They talked some more, and when the VCR finished, they 
drifted off to sleep.
	At seven a.m. they were again awake and cleaned Molly's room, 
top to bottom.  Everything got vacuumed, mopped, dusted and shined.  
The bed received clean sheets and a bedspread.  At ten-fifteen, 
Molly's mother came in.  "I just do not believe it," she said, 
astonished.
	Molly gleefully pointed out that everything remaining would fit 
her or was still useful.  "I even got rid of the Garfield and Snoopy 
underwear," she proudly proclaimed to her mom.  "Melvin said femmes 
fatale do not wear anything but black, lacy stuff.  Besides, they were 
way too small."
	"What would Melvin know about femmes fatale?" her mother 
snorted.  "But I am proud of you both.  What is in that box?" she 
asked, pointing to a large cardboard container, obviously headed for 
storage.
	"Oh, that is just some nice clothes, too nice to throw out.  
Dresses, blouses, winter pants, good things for seven to ten year 
olds," Melvin explained.  "It will all still be in style twenty years 
from now, we hope.  Molly may have kids of her own by then.  Some of 
it is still new, tags still on."  Melvin had known times when his own 
sisters wanted something nice, but their family could not afford it.
	As Melvin headed for home, Molly's mother slipped him twenty 
dollars.  "It is worth it, and I know you will spend it on your 
sisters," She explained.
	Molly added a ten-dollar bill of her own to it.  "And I need a 
pair of those cute little cubic zirconium ear studs.  They look just 
like real diamonds, almost.  Think of it as an investment in the 
future; my future Christmas gift," she begged with a conniving wink. 
Off walked Melvin to his own home and family, tired but happy.

	Over the next few weeks they rehearsed for the pageant, 
sometimes at school, sometimes at Melvin's house.  Serena would be the 
Angel Gabriel, and Melvin's sister Millicent would be Elizabeth, John 
the Baptist's mother.  A few dogs were recruited to be sheep for the 
stable scene.
	Katie insisted on being present on stage as Jesus' nanny.  "Did 
Jesus have a nanny?" someone asked.
      "He does now," Melvin replied.  Katie had her baby right on 
schedule, seven pounds even, born December eighth.
	The choir rehearsed Christmas carols.  All the students were 
sopranos, so two dads and the school principle filled in with baritone 
voices.  Stagehands built props of cardboard, cloth and wood, the 
stable scene being the main set.
	The plan was to have total continuity, with lights illuminating 
different parts of the stage, or the choir or lector, wherever the 
action was.
	On the night of the play, Molly swiped two Valium tablets from 
her mother's stash.  Melvin ground them up and mixed them with half a 
pound of chopped fish.  Thirty minutes before the play, he divided it 
between Genghis Khan and the three dogs that would be on stage.  By 
playtime they were totally zonked, stoned.  No dog fights here!
	The audience gathered and took their seats.  The auditorium 
lights went out and two floods illuminated the choir singing 'God Rest 
Ye Merry Gentlemen.'  The lights faded to Molly, Mary, in prayer.  
Serena had gone up into the vacant balcony where she transformed into 
Eternal Sailor Moon and jumped off the edge, flapping her wings.  She 
glided to the stage, circled it once to lose altitude, and flared for 
a perfect landing, not even stumbling at all, a real achievement for 
Serena.  Molly whispered a complaint to her friend, "Serena, you nut 
bar, you're supposed to look like an angel, not a cheer leader!  
Couldn't you have put on a longer skirt?"
	"Oh poo," countered Serena.  "These yo-yos wouldn't know an 
angel from a goose."  All the time the lector was reading from the 
Book of Luke, 'God sent the angel Gabriel ---,' after which Serena 
spoke loudly, "Hail thou that are highly favored.  The Lord is with 
you," and told her she would become the mother of the long awaited 
Messiah.
	Molly, Mary, replied at her turn, bowing deeply to Serena, who 
touched her lightly on each shoulder with her scepter, "Behold, the 
handmaid of the Lord.  Be it done unto me according to thy word."  The 
lector read a few more verses and the choir sang 'Joy to the World.'  
Serena then took a running leap into the air, wings flapping, circled 
the auditorium once while gaining altitude, and landed in the still-
vacant balcony where she de-morphed and came downstairs.
	"Wow, how did you do that?" Melvin asked. "Where did you get 
those wings, and when did you learn to fly?"
	"Oh," tee-hee, giggle, blush, "I took flying lessons last summer.  
I thought you knew that."  Serena got away from Melvin, fast.
	The narrator read from Luke how Mary would go visit her cousin 
Elizabeth, and the spotlight followed Molly across the stage to 
Millicent, greeting her as the mother-to-be of John, the cousin of her 
own unborn baby.  They bowed, exchanging greetings; and Molly, Mary, 
recited in a loud, clear voice, proclaiming the Magnificat, "My soul 
doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior ---."
	The lights faded to the choir singing 'Oh Little Town of 
Bethlehem.'  Molly, Melvin and their 'donkey,' Genghis Khan, were next 
seen at the rear of the auditorium.  "Look," whispered Molly.  "There 
is my dad.  He is sitting with my mom!  And they are not yelling at 
each other.  I don't know what to think about that.  I'm glad he is 
here, but I do think he should sit somewhere else."
	The narrator was reading again, "---so Joseph went up from 
Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David.  He 
went there to register with Mary, his espoused wife, who was with 
child ---."  The two children walked down the aisle with Genghis Khan 
carrying a pack of blankets on each side, Melvin also carrying a load 
of supplies.  Molly was supporting a padded tummy with her hands, 
looking very, very pregnant.  They disappeared behind the curtain as 
the lector finished, "---because there was no room for them in the 
inn."
	The choir sang 'Silent Night,' and the curtain opened on the 
stable scene.  Molly, Mary, was holding Katie's baby.  Dogs were lying 
around, spaced out on Valium.  They were intermixed with large stuffed 
animals and big teddy bears.  Shepherds, angels and shepherdesses 
stood or sat around, admiring the baby.
	The lector continued as Molly gave Katie's baby a nursing 
bottle.  Katie was in costume right behind them.  "Suddenly, a great 
company of the heavenly host appeared, praising, and singing, 'Glory 
to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace to men of good will.'"
	The three Persian kings, two of whom were Darien and Andrew, 
walked onto the scene with gifts for the new baby, while the choir 
sang 'We, three Kings, from Orient are,' and concluded with 'We Wish you 
a Merry Christmas,' and 'Joy to the World,' while all the children actors 
took a bow, and joined their parents for refreshments.
	Katie was later seated amidst Serena, Ami, Mina, Lita and Rei 
and several mothers, nursing her baby.  She was beaming with the 
attention both were getting and said, "She doesn't like bottles very 
well.  She likes the real thing better."
	"She?" someone asked.
	"Yes, she is a little girl.  Her name is Jessica Christa.  I 
hope you like the name.  It is not very Jewish, I know.  But I picked 
it out when I knew she was going to be in your play."
	It was a wonderful pageant, and was talked about in glowing 
terms for weeks afterwards.

	A few days later, on Christmas afternoon, Molly's dad came over 
to their house.  "You did wonderfully, Precious.  You spoke and acted 
well.  You're growing up beautifully and I am proud of you."  After 
some more small talk he went on: "Your mother and I have been talking, 
thinking about getting back together again; maybe, just maybe.  A lot 
of time has passed and there are hurt feelings to overcome.  No 
promises, but I wanted to know how you felt."  He was surprised at the 
uncomfortable look in Molly's face.  Her mother was watching, 
listening.
	"Don't expect me to jump up and down for joy, Dad."  Molly was 
weighing her words carefully.  "Before you left, six years ago, there 
was a lot of shouting and screaming.  I got swatted on the rear end a 
few times.  Maybe I deserved it, maybe I did not.  You and Mom weren't 
hitting each other then, just me.  How do I know there won't be more 
yelling if you come back?  How do I know you and Mom won't start 
punching each other out, now?  Maybe you couldn't have been a husband 
for her for the past six years but you could have been a father for 
me.  I got dresses I never wore, games I never played with, CDs I 
never listened to, and spent time with a sitter I had never met 
before, while you dated a teenager."
	"Be fair now," her dad protested.  "Brenda was a college girl."
	"Sure.  She was nineteen.  Well, I didn't need a teenybopper for 
a stepmother, to go mall cruising with, and I don't need a teenager 
wanna-be for a dad now.  I got yelled at and slapped around for 
nothing worse than acting like a kid at times.  Well let me tell you, 
I had more right to act like a kid than you did.  I AM a kid, 
remember?  And you two are supposed to be adults!
	"Mom has carried the emotional load for six years.  She is the 
greatest.  Do you think you can come crawling back here wanting to 
play 'daddy' just because it is Christmas?
	"Melvin and I put on a good pageant together.  The theme was 
'Peace on Earth.'  Is there any peace in your heart, real peace, peace 
worth working for the way Joseph worked at it?  He never left Mary and 
her baby and then sniveled to come back six years later.  Are you man 
enough to be like him?  Are you?  Are you hearing this, Daddy?  Are 
you?" she wept.
	Molly suddenly realized that she had been talking for several 
minutes, and both her parents had been listening to her, probably for 
longer than they had ever listened to her before in her life.  She was 
going to be sick, she was starting to throw up.  "I gotta go to the 
bathroom!" she bubbled, and ran down the hall.
	Half an hour later she had settled down, cleaned up, had her 
coat on and a few gifts in her arms.  "I am going over to Melvin's 
house.  Why don't you two have Christmas dinner by yourselves?  I will 
be back later tonight."  She left them standing there and walked 
through the door, outside.
	Molly was her bouncy, carefree self when she got to Melvin's.   
She had gifts for each of his sisters, and a nice gold tie clasp for 
Melvin.  "If you ever learn to tie a tie," she teased with a 
mischievous smile.  Melvin gave her a stunning pair of cubic zirconium 
ear studs set in fourteen-carat gold.  They looked beautiful on her.  
Maybe he did know something about femmes fatale after all.
	They had a nice Christmas afternoon.  Melvin's family did not 
have very much, but it did not seem to bother them.  After dinner they 
and the two elder girls went skating on a frozen pond, where Serena 
and the four other scouts joined them.  Molly told Melvin about her 
dad's announcement and what she had said to him.
	Melvin replied that her dad was older and, hopefully, wiser.  
Besides, she had always wanted a brother or a sister.  Melvin had 
filled that spot for her, and was used to being a brother, what with 
four sisses of his own.
	When it started to get dark, Melvin walked Molly home.  Her dad 
had left by then.  She and her mother got dressed for bed and sat in 
the living room watching and listening to Christmas carols on TV, 
drinking hot chocolate and eating a few leftovers.  "You certainly got 
your message across to your father, Honey," her mother praised her.  
"I wish at times I could have said what you did."
	"Maybe I got the best of you two in gene-pool roulette," Molly 
replied.  "Dad never has a problem speaking his mind, what little mind 
he has."
	"He has changed, Molly.  He really has.  I can see it."  They 
said very little else that evening. "Merry Christmas," they wished 
each other and went to bed.

                A year later, Christmas week

	"They lied!  They lied to me!"  Molly was trying to sound angry, 
but Melvin was not convinced.  He could see she was enjoying acting 
self-righteous.  "They said they were going to go slowly, not rush 
into anything.  So what happens?  Mom is a June bride, for the second 
time in her life, to the same man.  And if that was not bad enough, a 
shotgun wedding?  Please!"  She was holding her new baby brother on 
her lap.  Her mother was answering the telephone.
	"It's your friend, Katie.  She wants to come over and see the 
new baby.  Fine with me," her mother said.  "Okay with you two?"
	"Great," said Melvin.  "In fact, why don't I go over there to 
her house and walk her over here?  I can help carry her stuff."  
Melvin disappeared, and a half hour later was back with Katie, Jessica 
Christa, and a bundle of baby things.
	"Oh, let me see him.  Ohhh, he is sooo cute.  How big was he?" 
cooed Katie.
	"Eight pounds, six ounces.  A real big boy," Molly's mother 
replied, proudly.
	"Definitely not premature!" stage-whispered Molly to Melvin.  
She had been needling her mother ever since she had had morning 
sickness a month prior to her and her dad's second wedding.  
	"Well, at least he has a father," said Katie.  "That is more 
than Jessica has.  What is his name?"
	"Jeremiah," answered Melvin.  "Jeremiah Gabriel."
	"Boy, that is a joke," observed Katie.  "I got me a Jessica 
Christa and you people have a Prophet Jeremiah.  Hey, the first one 
can come anytime, that is what they always say.  What do you think of 
him, Jessica?"
	"Baby," she replied.  "Baby."
	Molly's dad was at work.  He was much mellower now.  There was 
no shouting, no yelling at all.  Molly figured that as soon as her new 
brother was a little older, maybe that summer, she and Melvin would 
baby-sit Jeremiah while her parents went out and had some fun away 
from the house.  Trouble was, Dad really did not want to leave home 
anymore.  He liked it there.
	It was truly a merry, merry Christmas, Molly's Christmas to 
remember.


                              The End


                  I hope you liked it.  Let me know.

                             Chibicardcaptor
                  < chibicardcaptor@dellmail.com >