I like the hamper. The hamper is just big enough to fit. What I do is this: I take out half the laundry and then get inside and pull the laundry back around me, like I'm wrapping a gift from the inside out. I am buoyed by last week's bath towels, the shirt my father mows the lawn in, my mother's favorite bra. To my nose, the odors of my parents? dirty clothes are sweet. I am wedged with my knees
tucked to my chin. My right ear is mashed by a pair of grass-stained jeans. From here I can see the toilet, the bathroom sink, and my mother's bathrobe hanging on the back of the door.
A red candle in a nest of holly flickers on the back of the toilet. Over the mirror is a tinsel boa that says HAPPY NEW YEAR. I can see all this through the weave of the hamper. It is like being a baby in a basket floating down a river and watching the scenery pass by, grassy banks, whistling reeds, through the woven interstices. It is like that, somewhat, the main difference being that I am not a baby, but five years and ten and a half months old. The smell of dirty clothes is cut by the boysenberry candle on the toilet.
There is a holiday party in motion downstairs. Music and the happy murmur of grown-up voices throb through the floorboards, further muffled by dirty socks. My mother and father are great throwers of parties. My father is the preacher, but still, our house is fun. We have open houses (around the holidays) for the pillbox-hatted ladies? worship committee sort and their husbands, and then there are parties where my parents? more spirited wholesome friends (the ones who drink and smoke and tell dirty jokes) get together. Tonight is of the latter. These kind of parties are much more fun. And, truthfully, they are much more frequent than the other churchy kind.
There are a few kids, older kids who have usurped the TV room to watch The Cat from Outer Space. There is also a little girl a year and three-quarters younger than me. I have already seen The Cat from Outer Space nine times, so, for most of the evening I just hid under the tree in the front room and stared up into the colored lights in the boughs, and tried to stay invisible, because if I'm good (i.e., invisible) then I can stay up to see the ball drop. I have never seen the ball drop. I have never made it to midnight. That is my intention this year: to go un-noticed till midnight, to see the ball drop.  But then my mother asked me to entertain the little girl. I made her a passing kangaroo on my LiteBrite, which I got for Christmas, but she insisted on re-arranging the pegs into a truck. I almost got upset, but what good would it do? Only get me in trouble, that's what.
Anyway, I was not married to the kangaroo. Still, I had drank three glasses of punch, so, when it seemed like the little girl could entertain herself, I had a good excuse to sneak upstairs to the bathroom. Then, for no real reason, except maybe that I can, I niched myself away in the laundry hamper.
This is fun too. I have watched six men and three women pee. When Mr. Wiley came in he peed with one hand and held his drink with his other hand. He took forever to drip himself off before he put it back in his zipper. After, standing at the sink, Mr. Wiley crunched ice in his teeth for a while, and then laughed at himself in the mirror. Then he splashed water in his face and went away.
After Mr. Wiley left, Mr. Jones came into the bathroom. Mr. Jones is a dead ringer for Mr. Claus. To my mind, Mr. Jones is Santa. Every year at the Christmas potluck he and Mrs. Jones, dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Claus, hand out gifts to the Sunday school kids and then, after supper, in the Fellowship Hall, where we have all our potlucks, Mr. Jones lets all the mommies sit on his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas. Then we all polka dance. Pauline Jones, who's about four feet tall, plays the hell out of the piano, her specialty being polka.
This Christmas Eve, in bed, still spinning from all the dancing, feeling giddy because in the morning I was going to open a wrapped box inside of which would be a LiteBrite, though of course, I didn't know that yet, only that at any moment, hauling a sack with at least one presumed LiteBrite — with all the promise of the visible spectrum! — I knew that Santa Claus, through his illimitable stealth, would lawfully enter our house. And then, just as I was turning off my light, he did! Standing in the doorway of my bedroom (my mother not so well hidden behind) was the unmistakable profile of Cringle. He sat on the edge of my bed, told me a slightly digressive story about one of his reindeer, asked me if I'd been good this year (yes!), and then tucked me in and gave me a scratchy kiss on my forehead. That the pipe smoke smell in his beard was familiar only supported my ninety-five percent suspicion that Mr. Jones more than resembles Santa. We are, after all, quite close to the Canadian border, only a hop skip and a jump from the North Pole as anyone will tell you.
Tonight, when Mr. Jones comes into the bathroom he is not dressed like Santa. He wears plaid pants, a holiday shirt, and white shoes. He is not alone. Mrs. Jones is behind, wearing a dress that looks on fire with flowers. Her hair is long, not as white as Mr. Jones?, and held back with a wooden barrette. She is laughing because Mr. Jones is being funny, and she covers her mouth with her purse. Her eyes crinkle and flash like snowflakes.  Mr. Jones carries a glass of wine and a paper plate with crackers and cheese. When he puts the glass on the sink a bright red stain of light from the candle jitters on the toothbrush holder. Mrs. Jones carries, along with her purse, a Kmart bag.
The Jones live across the street. Sometimes I go over in the afternoon and talk to Mr. Jones while he weeds. He has a big garden. Sometimes I find both of them in the hammock under the big maple, napping, Mrs. Jones? head asleep on Mr. Jones? chest.
Mr. Jones helped fix my sled once after I crashed it in the cemetery right into a headstone. It's the best hill around, so that's the risk you take, if you want a good sled ride. Mr. Jones lets me smoke his pipe. He can make perfect smoke rings. I am learning. I remember once going over to Mr. Jones? with my father in the summer. We found him in his garden, wearing suspenders but no shirt, his belly sticking out, sitting on a turned over wheelbarrow whittling a cucumber with a pocket knife. We caught him by surprise, he had been in deep concentration, and when he first saw us he looked embarrassed, but then he showed my dad the cucumber, proudly, and my dad laughed. Mr. Jones smiled shyly and told my dad that he was carving it for Mrs. Jones. "No doubt he actually means to use it," my father told me on our way home. "Damn thing could win a prize; veins and everything." He winked to let me know I was in on the joke. "Helen's probably waiting inside too."
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