A Stranger at the Door
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Eleven-year-old Chiara was setting the table with the good silver and the red and green napkins for the big holiday meal, the one all the relatives came to, when someone knocked on the front door.
Her aunts and uncles and cousins were all in the house already. The men and most of the boys were in the living room watching sports, yelling occasionally. Chiara had never understood sports. People aiming to hurt each other was what she saw. Grunting and attacking, all because of a ball that meant nothing. You couldn't eat it and you couldn't spend it, so why care?
Her mother, her grandmother, a couple of her older cousins and two of her aunts were in the kitchen, helping get the meal together, or getting in each other's way. Grandma would curse the younger women and girls if they did anything she didn't like, but it was in Italian, which they all pretended not to understand.
The kitchen was noisy and giving out tasty smells that made Chiara's stomach growl. Turkey roasting in the oven, cider mulling on the stove, cloves and cinnamon and apple, cookies baking in the other oven, chopping and chaos and Christmas music on the radio.
Half of the girls and one of the boys were upstairs, visiting Chiara's twin sister Mirella's room. Mirella collected Barbie dolls, which fascinated the other girls in the family, and also Cousin Gennaro. Chiara suspected Mirella had other things in her room she showed to the cousins but not to Chiara. Chiara had no interest in dolls. She thought they were creepy.
Someone knocked on the door again and Chiara waited to see if the kitchen people or the living room people would respond, but nobody did. She set the last spoon on the twelfth Poinsettia place mat and went down the hall from the dining room to the foyer. The broad front door had a peephole in it that was too high for her to see out of, so she just swung the door open.
The man standing on their Welcome Christmas doormat was old and short -- just Chiara's height -- and he had pointed ears. He wore a red Santa hat with white fur around the bottom. Gray curls showed below the edges of the hat. No beard, though, and he was skinny. His eyes sparkled in nests of wrinkles. He wore a fuzzy green vest over a long-sleeved red shirt, black pants, and shiny black boots that reached up to his knees. The boots had pointy toes that curled up.
"Hello," Chiara said.
"Hello, Chiara."
"How do you know my name?" she asked.
"I know everyone's name," he said. "It's my nature and my job."
"What's your name?"
"Robin," he said. Which seemed like a strange name for an elf.
"Are you here to visit my mama? My dad?" she asked.
"Who's at the door, Chiara?" called her mother from the kitchen.
"I'm here to visit you," said Robin. "Will you invite me in?"
Chiara had read books about vampires. Sometimes your only protection was not inviting them into your house. They couldn't come in without an invitation. She wasn't sure that would work on elves. She was scared that she'd answered the door alone in the first place. "Mama?" she called. "Do you know a man named Robin?"
Her mother came out through the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a towel tucked into her apron at the waist. "What? Oh, you."
"Hello, Antonia."
"Robin." Mama's face had the look of someone facing a cop or a priest when there was something to hide.
Robin smiled. It was a twinkly smile.
"Your grandfather said I would always be welcome in this house," said Robin.
"And so you are," Mama said. "Chiara, let him in, and see if you can squeeze another place setting on the table. Use Grandpa's chair." She went back into the kitchen.
Chiara stepped away from the doorway and watched the elf walk into their front hall. He glanced both ways, then turned toward the dining room. "Come on," he said, and she shrugged and followed him.
