The Christmas Debt
Kemi C. Amusan
CHAPTER 3: An Elf Came Crip Walking
Black Friday arrived too early, too loud, and somehow both exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.
Maya’s alarm went off at 3:45 AM, though she’d barely slept anyway, her mind cycling through strategy the way other people might rehearse a speech. Best Buy opened at four for doorbusters. Target had a limited-quantity deal on the artificial tree she’d been eyeing — the nine-foot flocked one that looked like something from a magazine spread. If she wasn’t in line by four-thirty, it would be gone.
Jason was already up, dressed, drinking coffee from a thermos in the kitchen when she came downstairs.
“You’re actually doing this,” he said. Not a question.
“Every year I do this.”
“Every year I hope you’ll change your mind.”
They left before the kids woke, driving through empty pre-dawn streets that felt strange and slightly apocalyptic, streetlights haloed in the cold November air.
They got the tree. Nine feet of pre-lit, flocked artificial pine, discounted from six hundred dollars to three hundred and fifty. They also got string lights, a set of programmable outdoor projector lights, three new throw pillows, and a countertop hot cocoa station Maya had seen on someone else’s Instagram and immediately needed for herself.
“Total?” Jason asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.
Maya checked the receipt. “Eight hundred and twelve.”
“That’s not actually how saving works, though. Is it?”
Maya didn’t answer. She was already scrolling through her phone, planning their route to the next store.
The credit card statement arrived three days later. Maya set it aside without opening it — she already knew what it would say, and knowing was worse than not looking. That evening, after the kids were asleep, she finally looked.
Current balance: $9,847.31.
Minimum payment: $367.
She did the math she already knew. The Target card. The Amazon store card. The Visa with the expired introductory rate. Somewhere north of twenty-two thousand dollars in credit card debt. Plus the thirty-five thousand in student loans that never seemed to move.
This is temporary, she told herself. Once the holidays are over, I’ll get serious.
Upstairs, Jason was reading, oblivious to the specific numbers weighing on his wife downstairs. He had his own accounts, his own version of financial reality he never discussed and she never asked about.
Fair, she reminded herself. Separate. Clean.
She poured a glass of wine and opened Instagram instead.
December arrived with its momentum. The school holiday concert required new outfits for both kids. The neighborhood cookie exchange required four dozen cookies from scratch, Pinterest-worthy, despite Maya working full-time managing a household and a social media presence that had stopped feeling like a hobby.
There was the annual family photo session — two hundred dollars for an hour of posed smiles.
There was the constant stream of packages, so frequent the UPS driver had started leaving them without knocking, stacking boxes like he was building a fort.
“Big Christmas this year, huh?” he’d said once, and Maya had laughed without quite hearing the edge in it.
The arguments happened in whispers after the kids were asleep.
“We need to talk about the budget,” Jason said one night in mid-December, standing in the kitchen doorway while Maya wrapped presents, tissue paper spread across the dining room table like colorful debris.
“After Christmas,” Maya said, not looking up.
“That’s what you said last year.”
“Because it’s true every year.”
“What if it’s not, though? What if ‘after Christmas’ never actually comes?”
Maya’s hands stilled on the ribbon. “Are you saying I’m a bad mother? That I don’t deserve to make Christmas special for our kids?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you’re implying.”
“I’m implying that we’re spending money we don’t have, and at some point that catches up with people.”
“Then drop it,” Maya said, sharp enough to end it.
Jason went upstairs without another word.
From the top of the stairs, unseen by either parent, Olivia stood frozen in her doorway, a book forgotten in her hand, absorbing something she was too young to name and old enough to feel the shape of.
Two days later, on a Saturday afternoon, they went to the boutique home store for candles.
They left with the Santa.
He was impossible to miss. Nearly life-sized, he stood at the back of the store beneath a pool of dramatic lighting that made the entire display feel less like a Christmas arrangement than an installation in a gallery. He wore a beautifully tailored red velvet suit trimmed in thick white fur, but it was everything else about him that made Maya stop. A black bowler hat sat at an angle over his white hair. Dark sunglasses covered his eyes even though there was no sun anywhere near him. One gloved hand rested on the head of a polished cane, while the other held a small silver snuffbox between two fingers as casually as though he had been carrying it for decades.
Maya slowed to a stop.
“Oh my God.”
Jason followed her gaze and, almost instinctively, looked for the price.
“Don’t,” he said.
She barely heard him. She had already moved closer.
There was something about the Santa’s posture that she found irresistible. He wasn’t smiling broadly. He wasn’t trying to look jolly. He stood there with his chin slightly raised and one shoulder dropped, radiating the kind of self-possession Maya associated with people who had never spent much of their lives wondering whether they were being liked. He looked amused by the whole world and entirely confident that the world would eventually catch up with him.
“I like his attitude,” she said.
Jason looked at the sunglasses.
“He’s a Santa wearing shades.”
“Exactly.”
She laughed, touching the velvet of his sleeve. It was extraordinarily soft, almost unnaturally so, and warmer than it should have been in the air-conditioned store.
“He’s got personality. Look at him. He’s brazen.”
“Brazen.”
“Yes. Brazen. He’s got panache.”
Jason looked at her.
“Panache?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“He’s not trying to please everybody. That’s what I like. He’s just standing there like, this is who I am, take it or leave it. Sometimes I think everything is so politically correct now that people are afraid to have any personality at all.”
She tilted her head, studying the bowler hat.
“And I like that he’s a little outrageous. A little old-fashioned. A little inappropriate. It gives him character.”
Jason glanced at the snuffbox.
“Why does Santa have a snuffbox?”
“I don’t know.” Maya smiled. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
She moved around the display, still smiling, and that was when she noticed the figures gathered around his feet.
There were seven of them, each about two feet tall, arranged in a loose semicircle around the Santa as though they were attendants waiting for instructions. They were not the identical little elves she remembered from ordinary Christmas sets. Each had been given a different face, a different build, a different height, a different expression. One was Black, with a mischievous little smile and a face that seemed almost too knowing for a Christmas decoration. Another appeared East Asian, smaller and delicately built, with precise features and an expression of almost unnerving composure. There was a Mexican-looking elf with a broad, cheerful face, a West African-looking elf who stood unusually straight, almost regal in his bearing, another with dark skin and long hair whose features suggested Native American ancestry, one exceptionally tall and slim with sharp Balkan-looking features, and a shorter, rounder elf with South Asian features and a solemn little face that made Maya smile.
“Oh my God,” she said again, but this time with genuine delight. “I love the diversity.”
Jason looked down at the seven figures.
“They’re elves.”
“I know they’re elves.”
“Then what does that have to do with diversity?”
“Everything.”
She crouched slightly, examining them more closely.
“Look at them. They’re all different. They’re not trying to make them all the same. Look at this one.” She pointed toward the tallest figure. “He’s tall and slim. And this one…” Her finger moved to the rounder elf, and she paused, visibly reconsidering her wording. “He’s large.”
Jason glanced at her.
“Large?”
“I’m trying to be respectful.”
“To the elf?”
“Yes, Jason. Obviously.”
She laughed, but she kept looking at them. The more she studied the collection, the more convinced she became that there was something unusually thoughtful about it. The eccentric Santa in his bowler hat and sunglasses, surrounded by seven distinctly different little figures, seemed less like a decoration and more like an idea somebody had decided to turn into an object.
“You know what I love about this?” she said.
Jason’s expression suggested that he was afraid to ask.
“It’s the combination. You’ve got him, with all this attitude, and then you’ve got all of them. Different sizes, different faces, different backgrounds. Nobody looks like anybody else.”
She stood up and looked at the whole display again.
“This is actually a statement.”
Jason looked at the price tag.
Maya followed his eyes.
$1,280.
She hesitated.
Jason saw it.
“Babe.”
“No, listen.”
He waited.
“This isn’t just a decoration.”
“It is literally a decoration.”
“No. I mean, technically, yes, but look at it.” She gestured toward the entire arrangement. “The craftsmanship. The design. The characters. The whole thing has a point of view.”
She pointed at Santa.
“Look at him. He has aura.”
Jason’s eyebrows lifted.
“Aura?”
“Yes, aura.” She laughed, but she was serious. “Presence. He’s got presence. You know when something just has it? This has it.”
She looked at the seven elves again.
“And then the diversity makes it even better. Sometimes I just want to say screw political correctness and let people be interesting. Let people be eccentric. Let people have attitude. But then look at this. He’s completely himself, and they are completely themselves. Everybody gets to be here.”
Jason stared at her.
“I’m not sure that’s how diversity works.”
Maya waved him off.
“You know what I’m saying.”
She had become animated now, almost as though she were presenting the idea to someone rather than persuading herself. “I just love that they didn’t make every elf the same size, the same shape, the same face. There’s the tall one, the slim one, the large one, the serious one, the cheerful one. They’re different. That’s the point.”
She paused and looked at Santa again.
“And he’s got all this personality. It’s not sanitized. It’s not trying to make everybody comfortable.”
She smiled.
“This is artwork.”
Jason said nothing.
“It really is. And honestly, this is the kind of sentiment I want to carry into the new year. Diversity. Inclusion. Individuality. People being allowed to be different and still belong together.”
There was a moment in which Maya seemed to surprise herself with the elegance of the argument. She had started with a Christmas decoration and somehow arrived at a philosophy.
Jason looked at the price again.
“Twelve hundred and eighty dollars.”
“I know.”
“For Christmas decorations.”
“It’s the whole set.”
“The whole set is still twelve hundred and eighty dollars.”
Maya looked at Santa. The sunglasses. The bowler hat. The snuffbox. The seven attendants gathered around him like a strangely sophisticated household.
Then she looked at Jason.
“Ruth would buy it.”
The words came out quietly.
Jason’s face changed.
Maya regretted saying it almost immediately.
Ruth had been in her life for so long that sometimes Maya forgot how much of her own taste had been built in reaction to another woman’s existence. She had been eleven when she first noticed Ruth, two grades ahead, already moving through the world with the effortless assurance of someone who had never had to ask whether she belonged. Ruth had never seemed to strain for anything. Things simply seemed to open for her.
Maya looked back at the Santa.
“I want our house to feel special,” she said, softer now. “I want people to walk in and feel something.”
Jason sighed.
“We already have decorations.”
“I know.”
“And this is enough.”
“I know.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then at the display, then at the price.
He had learned, over the years, which battles were worth fighting and which ones would only make the evening longer.
“Fine,” he said. “But this is it. No more decorations this year.”
Maya smiled immediately.
“Absolutely.”
She already knew she did not mean it.
Jason handed over his card.
The cashier began wrapping the figures carefully in tissue paper, starting with the elves before moving to the Santa. As she lifted the Black elf from its place in the display, its little face caught the light, and for the briefest instant Maya thought its expression looked almost amused.
“These are very popular this year,” the cashier said.
She smiled at Maya, then at Jason.
“People seem to find the set difficult to resist.”
Maya laughed.
“I can see why.”
The cashier continued wrapping.
“There’s something about this particular collection,” she said, her voice pleasant and unhurried, “that really completes a house.”
Maya glanced once more at the Santa. “I feel it too,” she replied.
That evening, after dinner, after homework, after the extended bedtime negotiations that had somehow grown three separate requests for water, Maya and Jason positioned the new arrivals throughout the house. The Santa was given pride of place beside the tree, while the seven elves distributed like a household staff — one to a room, one on the mantle, one on the kitchen counter, one tucked at the base of the stairs, waiting to greet anyone who came down in the night.
The remote control sat unopened on the coffee table, promising synchronized movement and a musical feature that would coordinate with “classic holiday tunes” for what the box called an immersive experience.
They didn’t open it yet. That could wait for tomorrow, for full family participation and photo documentation.
Instead, they settled into their evening ritual — a Christmas movie, something formulaic and comforting. Tonight’s offering was called Christmas Miracle at Snowfall Inn. Maya watched with genuine emotional investment despite having seen some version of this exact plot perhaps forty times, tears gathering as a stressed city executive chose love over ambition and a small town assembled itself into a picture-perfect celebration around her.
“See?” Maya said, wiping her eyes as the credits rolled. “That’s what Christmas should feel like.”
Jason, half-asleep against the couch cushions, made a noncommittal sound.
“Babe, that’s not real,” he mumbled. “It’s a movie.”
“I know it’s not real real.” Something in her voice suggested she wasn’t entirely certain of the distinction. “But it could be. If we just tried harder. Made it more special.”
Jason’s breathing evened into actual sleep.
Maya sat alone in the blue glow of the television, phone in hand, scrolling automatically past her own feed to the accounts she followed for inspiration. A friend from college had posted an hour ago — her own tree, her own garland, seemingly more elaborate than Maya’s despite Maya’s recent additions.
The familiar tightness gathered in her chest.
She opened Amazon. A garland set similar to her friend’s. Crystal ornaments. A tree topper that would photograph better than her current one.
$347.82 total.
Her finger hovered over Place Order.
The rational part of her brain — the part that had reviewed the statement three days ago, that knew the balance already exceeded nine thousand dollars — whispered its objections.
The louder part reminded her that Christmas only came once a year. That her kids deserved magic. That she could figure out the money later. That somewhere, someone was always watching, keeping score, and she could not, she absolutely could not, let her feed look like she was losing.
Her finger began to move.
The Santa’s head turned, rotating with a slow, deliberate motion that had nothing mechanical about it, bringing its eyes to rest directly on her.
It smiled. “You really can’t help yourself, can you?”
The voice was warm, conversational, entirely wrong in its ease. Maya’s phone slipped from her fingers and landed screen up on the coffee table, the checkout page still glowing, still waiting for a tap that wasn’t coming now.
“Jason.” Her voice came out thin.
He didn’t stir, still slumped against the couch cushions where he’d been for the last twenty minutes.
“Jason.” Sharper now, her hand finding his arm and gripping it.
He jerked awake, disoriented, already annoyed. “What — what’s wrong?”
“The Santa. It moved.”
“It’s a decoration, Maya. It’s not —”
“Hi, Jason.” The Santa’s head had turned toward him now, unhurried, patient, the same courteous smile still in place. “Remember me?”
Jason’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“So,” the Santa said, settling back slightly, “what was the problem you said you were having with your finances again?”
“That’s not.” Jason’s voice cracked on the second word. “That’s not possible. You’re not.”
The Santa raised one gloved hand, and Jason stopped as though something had physically closed his throat.
“Never mind,” he said.
Its gaze drifted, slow and almost lazy, around the room.
The nine-foot tree, flocked and glittering, stood beside the windows like the centerpiece of a showroom. The garland along the staircase was threaded with gold ribbon and tiny warm lights. Crystal ornaments caught the glow from the tree and scattered it across the walls. Four boxes of outdoor string lights had been wound through every available surface, along the banister, around the windows, across the mantel.
The Santa looked at the television next.
The enormous flat screen mounted above the fireplace. The soundbar beneath it. The sleek console with its hidden compartments and carefully arranged accessories. Then the coffee table, the sculptural vase Maya had ordered after seeing it in a designer’s home online, the expensive candles that were never allowed to burn all the way down, the decorative books stacked beneath a ceramic bowl that served no purpose other than looking beautiful.
His eyes moved to the kitchen.
The marble countertops. The brass fixtures. The oversized refrigerator with its touchscreen glowing faintly in the dark. The espresso machine that had seemed essential when Maya bought it and had mostly become another polished object occupying valuable counter space. The countertop hot cocoa station still sitting in its box by the kitchen doorway, waiting for the photograph it had been purchased to appear in.
He glanced toward the dining room.
The upholstered chairs nobody was supposed to spill anything on. The centrepiece Maya changed according to the season. The pendant lights she had insisted were warmer and more sophisticated than the old ones. The serving dishes still in their packaging because she was saving them for when people came over.
His gaze traveled upstairs.
The bedroom furniture. The upholstered headboard. The layered bedding. The accent chair that held clothes more often than anyone sat in it. The children’s rooms, each carefully decorated, each with its own color scheme and matching storage baskets, because even their clutter had to look intentional.
He took it all in.
Not quickly.
Not greedily.
With the quiet, proprietary interest of an owner conducting a long overdue inspection.
“I love your house,” he said.
A pause.
An unbearably long one.
The Santa slowly looked from Maya to Jason, then back around the room. His gloved fingers brushed absently over the arm of the chair, testing the fabric between thumb and forefinger as though assessing its quality.
“You two have bought yourselves a lifetime of work.”
He paused.
Then he looked directly at Maya.
“And you will work for me.” Another pause. His smile widened by the smallest fraction.“For a long, long time.”
“What do you mean?” Maya barely managed to get the words out. She fell to her knees. The ground gave way several inches beneath her knees, soft and yielding, as though the floor had suddenly forgotten that it was supposed to be solid.
Maya stared down in horror.
“Great posture,” the Santa said.
She looked up.
“But don’t worship just yet. It’s a bit premature.” He lifted one gloved finger and gave it a slow, leisurely wag. “There are rituals. Familiarities. You know, the likes. Things you have to be commissioned into. Or ordained into. Whatever the appropriate terminology is.” He smiled. “No rush.”
Maya felt the words land somewhere below her ribs, a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature, though the temperature was dropping too, her breath beginning to show faintly in front of her.
The Santa’s smile didn’t move. Its eyes did. They slid sideways toward the darkened hallway, toward the kitchen, toward the stairs, toward every corner of the house where something had been carefully placed, purchased, arranged, or displayed.
The Santa’s face was shifting now, subtly. The jolly roundness of its cheeks drew tighter. The twinkle in its eyes hardened into something far more patient and far more awake. It became, somehow, more itself. The jolly mask was simply thinning to reveal an expression that had always been underneath it.
“Boys,” he called.
A low, thudding pulse, bass-heavy and electronic, rose out of nowhere and everywhere at once, threading itself around the bones of a melody she recognized: “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” bent and slowed and laced through something else entirely.
The walls stopped being the walls of a suburban living room.
The paint, the family photographs, the crown molding all began to dissolve at the edges, like something seen through heat. The ceiling drew itself upward into a darkness that had no fixture, no source, no reason to exist.
The floor beneath the rug seemed to drop away, then reassemble a foot lower than it had been.
The cold deepened.
The lights guttered into something amber and low, built for a very different kind of gathering.
Maya grabbed the couch cushion. Then Jason. Then anything solid she could reach. But Nothing was steady anymore.
And just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, the music changed. The low pulse of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town deepened, the melody stretching and slowing until another rhythm began to emerge beneath it. A heavier beat. A familiar one.
Maya knew it before she understood what she was hearing.
The opening pulse of Dr. Dre’s Still D.R.E.
The two songs folded into each other, Christmas melody and West Coast hip-hop beat becoming one strange, impossible track.
Maya stared toward the black mouth of the hallway. Something moved inside it.
An elf stepped into view. Its little feet crossed and glided over the floor with effortless precision, one stepping behind the other, its body dipping and shifting exactly in time with the beat. It was crip walking.
Maya’s mouth fell open.
The elf kept coming.
It passed beneath the amber light, its tiny face wearing the same fixed, knowing expression it had worn in the store, as though nothing about this were unusual. As though it had always known how to move like this. As though it had simply been waiting for the music.
Maya didn’t breathe. Beside her Jason was panting heavily.
The elf reached the edge of the living room and stopped.
Then, somewhere behind her, came the soft creak of a stair.
Maya turned.
Another elf was standing on the first step. It placed one tiny foot on the next stair.
Then the other. It paused. And smiled.