The Inverted Cross 

Sreekumar K

All her children, three boys and two girls, her annual productions, had gone to bed. No, not to bed since there was no bed, but torn wall posters spread around where the foot path was the widest. The wall posters showed the famous movies stars and every night there was a fight on who slept on whom.  

On a chilly night like this no one likes to see a leper, more so if he is walking towards you and even more so if the only place you can withdraw into, your own house, happens to be a sheet of plastic stuck on a single pole much shorter than you. That was the predicament she found herself now. 

She knew he was a leper, his limbs were all bandaged, a bundle under his arm, a begging bowl in his hand. On the other hand he had a short piece of reed with a few holes burned into it, almost a flute which made his a street entertainer, one of the many who wander around in the city. He came in and beyond him the sky lit up with the fireworks going up near the church. She wanted to wake up her children to see that. It was Christmas eve.  

“Jesus! It is so beautiful,” she exclaimed. 

The leper also turned back to look at the sky and turned back with an expression of cynical disdain. She stood outside the hut as if it was not hers at all. He may look around and go away. She herself had nothing; a beggar, even on a Christmas night as this was unwelcome and there was nothing unfair about it.  

But he rudely went past her and sat down. Now what! Sing a carol song for nothing? Not bad! 

He took a few loaves of bread from his cloth bag and the children who were fast asleep jumped up and stood around him. When you are hungry, food has such a strong aroma. 

Each of them got a loaf and they say down munching it. He took out his flute and played a tune. 

The children seemed to have heard it before. He asked them whether they would like to hear stories. They said yes. He gave them the choice of a subject. One of them put up his half bitten loaf of bread and said he wanted to hear a story about bread. He told them the story of how Christ fed five thousand people with just five loaves of bread. He added that it is no miracle. Tongue in cheek, he told them, it would have been a miracle, had he made five people eat five thousand loaves of bread, even five hundred would have been impressive. The children were so hungry that one of them said he it might be possible for them to finish five thousand loaves. But one of them smelled the bread doubtfully and said, “Not this kind of bread.” 

He told them the story had another meaning. The woman was also attentive now.  

“See, me, a stranger comes in and gives you a loaf each. When you grow up and be like your mother or me wouldn't you do the same for other children. Now if each of you do it ten times that will be fifty people fed. Now they too may do it and in no time you have fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread since that was how it all started.  

The woman was moved. She didn't expect this. Jesus! This man was something.  

The children also agreed. He was about to go. He got up. Tuned around and asked the children why don't they have a Christmas tree. He asked for a cross lying in the corner of their hut. The eldest one had made it when he attended a free carpentry workshop. He planted it upside down outside the hut right on the pavement and asked them to decorate it with whatever they could find. 

So saying he hugged the woman and walked away to cross the street.  

She didn't appreciate him hugging her like that in front of the children, he being a stranger, though older than her dead husband and younger than her father. 

He was now crossing the street and she was looking at the children trying to decorate the upside down cross like a Christmas tree. She felt hurt to see the cross planted upside down. It was an unholy act on a Christmas night like this, or any day for that matter. 

A car was speeding down the street zigzagging with some people coming back from the Christmas party. It was pretty dark and she couldn't see what was happening. 

Had he crossed....? She held her breath............  

 “Jesus!” 

The car had passed by. From the other side, the man asked her something, his hands cupped around his mouth. Still he wasn't loud enough. She shook her head from side to side to say, she didn't need any more bread.   

But she was not sure that was what he had asked her. But he had gone. It was only later that she figured out his exact words. 

 “Did you call me?”