My eyes open to the sound of chickadees laughing through the cold and scattering birdseed - kicking little tally marks into the snow. It’s seven a.m - but there’s no sun yet.
I get up and make the bed. I shower and wash my hair, tying the front portion back with a clean, white ribbon.
I brush my teeth. I fold my pajamas and lay them on the pillow. I put on clean clothes, though I don’t have many of those left - and head down the stairs, pull on a coat - head out the door.
I walk with intention down the snowy - ice-glazed sidewalk toward the florist shop - feeling carefully for the safe places to step, but keeping my eyes forever on the horizon line - and the houses - the sleeping trees.
The bell laughs cheerily over the shop door as I push my way in - like it’s happy to see me. The dryad behind the counter looks up from a hard copy of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and smiles a small smile, as bright and amiable as the chuckle of the bells.
“Can I help you? We don’t have any peonies today…”
So she remembers me. I glance around the room - almost unchanged since the last time I came by - except that there are blue flags and poppies where the peonies had been and more ferns. Just perfect.
“No flowers today,” I say, with a wave toward the green things. “Actually, could I just get some ferns?”
*
The treads in my shoes chew the snow, crunching contented solefuls of dirty frost at each step. I imagine I can see the fingertips of the inflatable Santa waving around the edge of one glowing house before I turn the corner onto my street.
All of the houses but mine have Christmas lights up now, and a few have red-capped snowmen in the front yards. By my landlord's rules, I’m not allowed to string up lights of any kind, since the house has been divided up into 4 little apartments - and it would look weird to have only a quarter of it festive - since the other seventy-five percent is uninhabited. At other times, in other years, I’ve been known as “the weird neighbor who gift-wraps her door” but I don’t have the energy for that sort of silliness this season. Still, I think I might like a garland, just to jazz the place up a little bit.
I set the ferns stem down in a half-gallon canning jar and place it on the middle shelf of the mostly empty fridge, taking a quick survey of what eatables lay therein.
Not much. I let myself take a deep, slow breath.
I’ve gotta go to the store tomorrow.
Grabbing the last slices of a loaf of bread and a couple of eggs, I make myself breakfast. Scrape the crumbs into the trash, and wash the dishes.
There’s a poem about this - I think - but I don’t know it.
‘Oldie but a Goodie’ is still playing. ‘White Christmas’ or ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas.’ I never know the names of ninety percent of songs.
I dry the dishes and put them in the cabinet next to the kitchen sink. Hang the dishcloth back in its place, to get some air.
Wiping the dampness from my hands onto my sweater I turn the kitchen light out and draw the living room curtains, letting the early morning sunlight spill into the living room like a bowlful of stars. The snow twinkles on the driveway and the sidewalk. The inflatable Santa bows.
Sometime next week, I’ll shovel.
For now, I walk briskly through the living room, collecting scattered plastic and styrofoam - the shoes I discarded so unceremoniously the night before - until the room looks a bit more like a house and less like the habitat of some savage sort of trash dwelling monster.
That done, I set my easel up in front of the bay window, and sitting down on the carpet, start blending paints into Christmassy shades of red and green - blueish white.
I wipe the acrylic from my fingertips - onto a tissue this time, instead of my clothes - and set the unfinished chickadee on the easel. With my little finger I begin freckling its yellow body with a thousand tiny dots of ‘sky’ until it almost appears green - screaming of yuletide.
I like Christmas, but not reindeer-antlers-on-your car- candy-cane-flavored-eggnog- like Christmas. If I wanted that I would just stir in toothpaste.
But Mrs. Moon is a sucker for all things ‘Christmassy.’ She buys ‘coal’ themed candy, and eggnog ice cream. She watches holiday themed romances, and every Christmas morning she plays a kind of Spanish, Christmas-nursery rhyme, about a little donkey, that her mother gave her on a record when she was five years old, for tradition.
My family has no Christmas traditions. My aunt was too tired for much celebration during the holidays, and Natividad spent most of her freetime with her friends - Christmas or no.
The only ‘real’ Christmas holiday I’ve ever had in my life was the one I spent at Mrs. Moon’s place, my sophomore year of highschool.
She insisted that I just ‘had to’ stay at her place for winter break, and I agreed because she begged me to. Not that I didn’t want to stay with her in the first place, but I could tell that Kattar had something against it - and I think his mother could too.
Mrs. Moon goes all out when it comes to Christmas - and that year was no exception. She’s the one who got me into gift-wrapping the door. She hangs mistletoe. She buys bowlfuls of nuts no one ever eats. She burns incense.
It was a little bit over the top for me, but fun, in an ‘extra’ sort of way.
I give the chickadee ferns for wings, and shimmering holly berry eyes.
We went everywhere together that week - the movies - art galleries - a Christmas parade.
She took Kattar and I both to this bazillion dollar sign restaurant which remained the fanciest place I’d ever been in my life until the award show-
But I make the eyes…too red. Almost bloodshot…and…
-Then there was Christmas itself. On the 25th Mrs. Moon threw this huge Christmas party with all her pretty business lady friends in red and green dresses and skirt suits.
I remember hearing their conversations about me - spoken in rather loud - chipper tones - but they were all nice things:
“So that’s the clever little doll Clara has been telling us about, the one who drew the bluebirds she has hanging in her office. Isn’t she dashing? Come here, darling. Look at those eyes! What I wouldn’t do to be young and gorgeous like that.”
When the party was over, and the other guests went home, Mrs. Moon went to the kitchen to serve up mint-chocolate pound cake and peppermint ice cream, but Kattar and I sat on the couch, waiting for her to bring the plates, watching the opening scene to “The Sound of Music.”
I thought I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life, and I remember whispering to him, “Wouldn’t it be perfect if your mother adopted me?”
“No,” without even an ounce of amiability.
He’d always patronized me in all of my whims up until that point and the chill caught me off guard. I felt the need to argue, though I could see that his jaw was set - his lashes low - physically ignoring me.
“But then we could be together all the time…”
He just looked at me sideways, and then back at the mistletoe on the ceiling, saying as flatly as he had the first time, “No.”
Then Mrs. Moon brought the cake out and brushed him off laughing - pinching his cheek:
“It’s because my little prince is an only child - he couldn’t stand to share his mamma with a sister - the spoiled little monster…”
But Kattar just stared stubbornly, numbly, at the television set.
I couldn’t explain why that upset me so much, but it did.
When Mrs. Moon asked me to stay with her again during my Junior year, I promised that I would come to the party but made a dumb excuse about how I had too much homework to finish before the end of the break, and really should stay home…
It was petty. It was bitter and I’m sure I upset her - and she wasn’t even the one I was mad at.
Maybe I should have gone anyway - just to spite Kattar. Just to make his blood boil.
I was angry at him for bursting my bubble, for simultaneously shoving me aside and outside of the pretty perfect world his mother wanted to bring me into - that I wanted to - needed to be part of.
But that was forever ago. I was just sixteen - and hurt and angry…
I’m 28 now - angry and hurt.
If he does love me, I wish he would have just said so instead of fighting against my happiness - with him and without.
Do you want me or not, idiot?! If you love me then say so - instead of trying to keep me in a little box - a princess in a tower - just in case -
Just in case he ever does decide to condescend to say something.
If I was a little louder, I’d say it to his face. But it’s never been my way…
When my mother did die, my senior year - after 3 years of rehab - and relapse - and rehab again - I think it was Kattar’s obvious, albeit quiet, disapproval that kept Mrs. Moon from going through with her plan of adopting me.
So maybe he wanted a girlfriend instead of a sister - maybe.
A part of me - maybe all of me, hopes that he does - hopes that that pained, quiet fire I see in his eyes is because he likes me too - and I hope it hurts - just as much as his silence hurt me - hurts me.
It’s been twelve years and I’m bitter. It’s been twelve years and I don’t - don’t care.
It’s not every day you get to break your heartbreaker's heart.
Comments (1)
See all