Santa’s Secret Helper by James J. Murray
Martha Morton stomped around the kitchen. She cleared the breakfast dishes, loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the countertop near the sink and snarled to herself, “That lazy bum. I’m sick of him.”
She opened a drawer and brought out a small plastic bag of finely-ground powder. She measured a teaspoonful of the light brown mixture and sprinkled it into a coffee mug that was printed with “Hot Stuff” and had pictures of chili peppers circling the outside of the cup lip.
Martha ran tap water until it was hot to the touch, remembered the instructions not to use boiling water, filled the mug three-quarters full, and gently stirred the mixture.
She took a deep breath and thought about her life—a successful schoolteacher for decades, presently retired and devolved into a housewife and servant. Yes, that’s what she was, nothing more than a servant. That thought encouraged her to continue the plan.
Martha squared her jaw, clenched a fist and whispered again to the four walls, “No, he’s not getting away with this anymore.”
She picked up the hot mug, blew over it and walked into the living room. As usual, her husband Jake was reclining in his favorite chair and thoroughly engrossed in a crossword puzzle.
“I made you some tea. Flor says it’s a special brew that she’d drink all the time back in Argentina. I had some yesterday at her place, and it’s good. Here, try it.”
Jake didn’t react at first, as if the request needed further thought. He frowned, looked suspiciously at the tea and then at his wife. Without saying a word, he took the cup, set it on the end table next to him, and returned to the crossword puzzle.
As he did so, Martha thought about her visit the day before with Flor. Martha remembered how she had tearfully told Flor how Jake was acting. They were both retired, and Jake had lots of free time too, but all he seemed to do these days was work crossword puzzles, take naps, and read books. Martha did all the housework, the laundry and the cooking. Even mowing the grass had become her responsibility.
“That man is crazy,” Flor had said. “You’re a good wife. He needs my tonic tea—my yerba mate. I’ll fix some for you. If you like it, I’ll give you a small bag for Jake.”
“Will it give him energy?”
Flor smiled, lifted one shoulder and tilted her head. “It may even make him feel sexy.”
Martha drank the tea. It was rich in aroma and warmed her insides. She decided to take some for Jake. After all, Flor seemed to have the energy of two people. The sexy part didn’t interest her, but maybe it would help Jake get off his rear and help around the house.
Suddenly, Martha heard Jake say, “Are you deaf?”
“What? Oh, sorry, I was just remembering my visit with Flor.”
“Well, you’re right. It’s tasty.” He drained the cup. “How about fixing me another?”
“I’ll make you a cup after lunch.” Grinning, Martha went off to sort laundry.
Flor’s son, Max, walked into the house and gently closed the door behind him. He was tired and needed sleep. Tall, burly and used to getting his way, he turned into a mouse around his mom, who didn’t like him staying out all night. This was the second time in a week. He tiptoed toward his room, all the time looking around to make sure his mom wasn’t around.
As if by magic, Flor appeared from around the corner near the kitchen, standing rigid, with her legs apart and arms folded. “Again, Max? What do you do all night?” She sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a brewery, and you’re smoking again.”
“Ma, please, I’m over 21. I pay rent. I can come and go as I please.”
Flor stretched her five-foot frame as tall as she could, pointed an index finger at him and said, “My house, my rules. Now get some sleep. You have class this afternoon. You need to be smart, make good grades. Graduate college before you’re 30, for God’s sake!”
Max started to protest. Flor held up her hand, then pointed toward his bedroom. Without another word, Max headed down the hall.
That afternoon Martha made another cup of mate tea and Jake gulped it down like he enjoyed it. Martha decided to make the tea a daily ritual.
She called Flor to report that Jake had liked the tea and wanted to know where to buy it. Flor had responded that her special yerba mate was a personal blend and, since there was only a little left in her pantry, she would need the afternoon to prepare the ingredients and make a large supply for Martha. Flor did so, and then called Martha to pick it up.
Max had one ear squeezed into the small space between the door jam and his almost-closed bedroom door. He was too wired to sleep and needed to make his mixture so that he could deliver it to the buyer before evening. He heard his mom talking on the phone. She rattled around the kitchen, banged pans, and opened and closed kitchen cabinets. Finally, she left through the front door. Her car started up, moved down the driveway, and the engine sounds faded as it headed down the street.
He smiled, nodded to himself, and took the brick of cocaine that he had bought the night before out of his backpack. It was good stuff, had cost him a bundle, but he could cut it with sugar, starch and some of his mom’s tea blend to stretch it and make a good profit.
He’d watched his mom make her special tea before. It was a blend of dried holly leaves, the kind from Argentina that had lots of caffeine in them, and crushed holly berries. That was her secret. The dried holly berries, when crushed, made the taste a bit bolder.
Max went into the kitchen, cut the coke brick with powders from the pantry, and started to put the brownish mixture into small plastic bags. Suddenly, he heard a car come up the driveway. He looked out the window and saw that it was his mom.
He panicked, pushed the few small packs he’d made into his backpack, stuffed the remaining mixture into a large freezer bag, and hid that behind some cans of soup in the pantry. He swung the backpack over his shoulder and rushed to his room.
Flor opened the front door while holding a shopping bag full of dried holly berries that a friend had been saving for her. She shed her coat, put her purse down on the couch, went straight to the kitchen, and pulled out a large mortar and pestle from a cabinet.
After placing a handful of the dried berries into the ceramic bowl and using a vigorous twisting motion with the pestle to crush them, she transferred the now fine powder into a larger bowl and set that aside.
Next, she went to the pantry, took out the box of dried holly leaves that her cousin in Argentina had sent the previous month and measured a generous portion into the mortar. As before, vigorous twisting motions with the pestle to crush the leaves resulted in uniform minute granules.
She added the ground leaves to the berry powder, mixed the powders together until well blended, and repeated the crushing and blending process several times until a large bowl of yerba mate tea resulted.
“Now to package this up,” Flor said aloud. “I’ll have enough for Martha and still have plenty left over for me.”
Moving into the pantry to get a box of large freezer bags, she spotted something behind some cans. Looking closer, she pushed the cans aside and found a large freezer bag full of a previous blend of her herbal tea mixture.
“That’s strange. I don’t remember having this left from last time,” she whispered, then smiled at her forgetfulness and added, “such an odd spot. It’s a wonder I even found it. I must be getting senile.”
Flor frowned and tried to remember when she had last made a batch of mate tea. It had been months ago. She thought the mixture would be good for a long while but wondered if it had lost some potency from sitting on the shelf so long.
Deciding to mix this batch into the new one rather than waste the old by throwing it out, Flor rationalized that if some potency in the previous batch was lost, it wouldn’t be much, and not even noticeable after mixing it with the fresh one.
When everything was mixed well, she bagged the entire blend of new and old into eight one-gallon freezer bags, placed six of them on one
shelf in the pantry, and kept two bags out for her friend Martha.
She went to the phone and called Martha. “I have your tea ready anytime you want to stop by.”
“Now, Flor, are you sure you have enough to share?”
“Oh, I had plenty of ingredients, and then I found some more tea in the pantry that I had forgotten about. So I’ve got lots to share, and more if you need it.”
Martha promised to come by later that afternoon.
Early the next morning Max came home, opened the front door, walked into the house and listened for sounds that would tell him his mom was awake. Hearing nothing, he gently closed the door, tiptoed into the kitchen, opened the pantry door and looked at the shelf holding the cans of soup.
Something was wrong. The cans were placed differently than the day before. After a long night of partying, he decided that he was imagining things, shrugged and reached behind the soup cans, but came up empty-handed. Reaching further back, his fingers moved to the left and then to the right—nothing. He rubbed his chin. His hands were shaky and damp with sweat. He searched the pantry in a frenzy and, as his eye glanced over some freezer bags of powder, he froze.
“Oh, my God. The bags multiplied overnight.” He looked up to the ceiling and called out, “Thank you, God.” Frowning at the thought, Max rubbed his head and said aloud, “No, that’s not possible. But where did these bags come from? And where’s my stuff?”
Realizing that he was shouting, he put a finger to his lips and touched his other hand to his chest. He felt his heart pounding and thought of what could have happened to his stash.
A horrible thought popped into his mind. “Mom!” he shouted, and touched his finger to his lips again and whispered, “Oh, Mom, what did you do?”
He backed out of the pantry, slowly shut the door and zombie-walked to his room. In a daze, Max shut the bedroom door behind him, backed against the door, slumped to the floor and folded his hands over his head. He shook his head and tried to figure out what had happened.
Hearing the front door open, he listened closely. It was his mom. He remained on the floor, his muscles refusing to move, but then slowly stood and, as if in slow motion, opened the door and walked down the hall. His mom was in the living room reading a magazine.
Flor looked up when he entered the room, tossed down the magazine, and said, “I didn’t hear you come in last night. Were you out late again?”
“Not very.” The words came out more like a squeak. His mom looked puzzled. Max cleared his throat and smiled. After forcing a grin, he said, “I see you made a new batch of your special tea, a big one this time.”
“Well, I had a nice shipment of holly leaves I’d never used, and my friend had a bunch of dried berries. Then I found some in the pantry from a previous batch, so I added that into the mixture, and before I knew it, I had enough for several bags.”
Max rubbed his head and slowly closed his eyes. “You found some old mix in the pantry? Some that you didn’t remember you had?”
“What a surprise that was. I didn’t realize that I had plenty enough already to share with Martha.”
“You made some for Martha?” Max seemed to choke on the words.
“Well, I had already made the fresh batch, so I just added the old to the new. Now I’ll have enough to give as Christmas gifts.”
“Christmas gifts?” There was that squeaky voice again. “Your new tea mix as Christmas gifts?”
“Sure, why not? Everyone who’s tried it likes it.”
“But, Mom…”
“Shush! I have so much now, and with Christmas only three weeks away, I thought, ‘Why bake? Just give tea in a nice holiday basket.’ Isn’t that a great idea?”
“I’m not so sure about that, Mom. Maybe not everyone will like the tea. And there’s some old stuff in it.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Maybe I should throw it out. You could make a totally fresh batch.”
“Nonsense! Besides, I don’t have any leaves left. It’ll be fine.” She got up to go to the kitchen, but stopped and patted him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll save some for you.”
Max thought about all his mom’s friends. He tried to calculate how much cocaine would be in the mix, realized that it was too much. She would kill him if she knew. He willed himself to keep quiet and decided that he needed to think. He said, “I have to go study now, Mom. See you later.” He retreated to his room, closed the door and found the small stash of coke that he kept for personal use.
Martha stopped by to visit with Flor a few days later and was telling her how wonderful her tea was. Jake had been drinking two cups a day for the last week, and that he was like a changed person. “His mood is, I don’t know how to describe it, but definitely less sullen. He even put up the Christmas tree without me asking and sang Christmas carols the whole time.”
Flor smiled and nodded as she pointed at Martha. “My best batch yet.”
“And not only that, Flor, but Jake’s agreed to be the Santa Claus at the Lion’s Club Christmas Party tomorrow night. Before giving him your tea, he was thinking of quitting the club altogether.”
“That’s wonderful,” Flor said. “The leaves I’m getting from my cousin seem to be stronger lately. Maybe I should market that tea.” She spread a hand high across the air. “I could call it ‘Flor’s Fabulous Fix’. How does that sound?”
“Ambitious, but I can’t argue with the results. It has to be the tea that’s made Jake human again.”
The afternoon of the Lion’s Club party, Jake had two extra cups of Flor’s tea and asked Martha to brew a thermos full so that he could sip some during the party.
Since the Santa costume was bulky, Martha drove them to the party. She was in a great mood, mostly because Jake was so attentive and cheerful himself. She had never seen him looking forward to any holiday as much as Christmas this year. If only their kids lived closer, they could see the wonderful changes in their father.
Max, however, was worried about Jake’s temperament after he’d overheard his mom talking to Martha the day before. He wondered how much mate tea Jake was drinking, thought that Jake might overdose, and decided to follow them to the Santa gig to see for himself how Jake was acting.
At the party, Martha watched as Jake made the rounds of the room, glad-handing everyone he knew. She didn’t notice that Max had slipped into the reception hall behind some other guests and had planted himself behind an artificial shrub in the corner.
Max watched Jake from behind the plant and saw Jake’s good mood escalate. Jake seemed to be short of breath as well.
Martha watched Jake, noticing that his hands shook when not clasping on to someone else’s. Maybe the costume was getting too hot for him. She felt the thermos heavy in her purse, but decided that water might be a better choice.
She went to the bar, asked for a tall glass of ice water, and brought it over to Jake. “Are you thirsty? Maybe you should drink something.”
He looked at the glass and then at her with eyes that twinkled. “Great idea. How about some of that tea? Where’s the thermos?”
“I have it right here, but maybe water—“
“No, I want some tea. Give me a big swig, that’s all I need.”
Martha brought out the thermos and handed it to him. With a shaky hand, he unscrewed the top, tilted it up to his mouth, and took a large gulp. He wheezed a little, as if he’d swallowed wrong, coughed, sputtered some, but then recovered. Jake took another large swallow, screwed the top back crooked on the thermos, handed it to Martha and said, “Ho, Ho, Ho—Santa’s ready to roll!”
“What? Jake, are you okay?”
Sweeping Martha into his arms, Jake gave her a big wet kiss and said, “Never better, Babe.” He gave her a swift pat on the butt before heading over to the Christmas tree.
Max took in the scene and slumped to the floor behind the plant. “Overheated body, thirsty, crazy mood—I’m screwed. He’s going to overdose for sure,” Max mumbled to him
self.
Jake arrived at the Christmas tree and bent down to grab a present, but stumbled and fell into the tree. It twirled, and he landed face up on top of the fallen tree.
Gasps filled the room. Martha screamed and ran to him. Max scampered over, but stopped halfway to Jake and hid behind a group of people.
Martha looked down to see Jake’s smiling face. “Oops,” he said. “Santa went down the wrong chimney.”
“Jake, are you all right? Is anything broken?”
He moved his legs and arms. He stood, tilted sideways momentarily, and then bent over and vomited all over the Christmas tree.
“And now nausea and vomiting,” Max mumbled. “Next, it’ll be lights out.” He touched a finger to his lips when a woman turned to him with a puzzled look.
“I think you’ve had too much caffeine,” Martha said to Jake.
“No, Babe, it’s just too hot in here. I need to shed some of these clothes.” He kicked off his boots, and then started to unzip the Santa suit.
“But, Jake,” Martha whispered. “You don’t have anything on under that suit.”
He slipped off the Santa costume like one would peel a banana. The pants snagged on his hips and refused to move down further.
“Jake, stop. You’re making a fool of yourself,” Martha shouted.
A man rushed up, identified himself as an off-duty policeman, and asked if she was Jake’s wife. “Does your husband have a medical condition?”
“Yes, I’m his wife, but I don’t know of any medical problem that would cause this.” She looked at the thermos. “Maybe too much tea?”
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Is he on drugs?”
Martha looked around the room and then at the cop. “Drugs? Jake won’t even take aspirin!”
“It kind of looks like an overdose of something to me,” the cop said and called out to the crowd, “Someone call 911.” He turned back to Martha and frowned. “What’s in the thermos, lady?”
Jake weaved back and forth, coughed some, and then said, “My special tea, and I need another hit.” The Santa pants slid down one hip, but Jake didn’t seem to notice.
The cop grabbed the thermos out of Martha’s hands, unscrewed the cap and took a deep whiff. “Smells like tea, but with an undertone. What’s in it?”
“Only what my friend, Flor, made. It gives Jake energy and makes him happy.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s really only tea. Flor gets it imported from Argentina.” Martha looked at the thermos and furrowed her brow with uncertainty. “At least that’s what she told me.”
Jake staggered over, grabbed the thermos out of the cop’s hands and took a big swig. As he leaned back, the Santa suit slid all the way down to his ankles. Jake didn’t seem to notice and walked right out of the costume that lay on the floor.
He stood in all his glory and said, “Ho, Ho, Ho. Santa’s got a present for everyone.”
The cop looked from Jake to Martha and asked, “Does he have a drug habit? Is your friend his dealer, and you gave him too much?”
Martha opened her mouth to speak, but just then Jake clutched his chest, keeled over, fell back into the Christmas tree and had a cardiac arrest on the spot.
“I’ll need to know everything about Flor and her ‘tea’,” the cop said as he rushed to Jake.
A little girl watching the scene in her father’s arms yelled, “She killed Santa Claus!”