Christopher and I dance. All the couples dance, as the bubbles of light on the tree warm us. I inhale the scent of his wool sweater, unused to boys who smell of winter. As each record ends he releases my hand, but we stand together, waiting for the next record. Shyly we smile at each other. His front teeth slightly overlap. And while I know it’s probably irrational, I decide I love this small flaw and hope he never fixes it.
“Does your house look like this?” I ask him. I nod toward the tree.
“Well at Easter we usually have baskets with stuffed bunnies and my sisters dye eggs.”
I laugh—but imagine his sisters running downstairs on Christmas morning in slippers and robes to rip open their presents. “They still believe in Santa Claus?”
“The two youngest.”
I realize I want to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I want to believe in Tinkerbell. But I also want to believe in Jesus, God, or Zeus. It doesn’t matter.
“You go to church for Christmas?”
“Christmas Eve.”
I imagine the flame of white tapered candles reflecting on stained-glass windows. I imagine the scent of incense and the rustle of silk robes. I imagine voices singing Christmas hymns, imagine Christopher standing with his family, all in a row. When they return home after the service, his father will build a fire and his mother will fix hot chocolate. Christopher will plug in the tree, and his sisters will hold hands and whisper to each other what they hope Santa will bring them. And I want this as much as the church service, this: the fireplace, the hot chocolate, the lights on the tree. I imagine his sisters preparing for bed. I see them brushing their teeth and changing into pajamas. I see them pulling back sheets and nestling against pillows. But then, I don’t know what else to see, what else I’m supposed to see. I want Christopher to tell me. Tell me: How do your sisters sleep through night until morning? How much does your father love his daughters? What does he do to show it?
When the next record begins to play, Christopher takes my hand and we dance. His skin is warm from the fire, and I see tiny licks of flame reflecting in his eyes. In the foyer just past the tree a few couples pretend to dance. It is dark there; they sway, don’t dance. Boys run hands the length of girls’ backs, pulling them closer. I think I can almost feel those hands on my back, on my shoulders. But no, stop—I don’t want that. I don’t want, could never want, that which happened with Steve, with Christopher. Surely I’m not even that girl anymore and no longer remember her name. With Christopher, I will never be that girl again. With Christopher, I am a shy suburban girl and surely no other. As I dance with him I feel drugged by his warmth, drugged by the scent of pine and cinnamon candles. But it is a gentle warmth. The skin on his hands is slightly rough. It is boy skin: skin that plays sports, skin that tinkers with engines. Safe skin. Skin too shy to touch girls’ bodies.
Christopher’s father waits in a red Rambler. We rush through the snow laughing, skidding. Christopher holds my hand. I hold on tight—my feet have missed years of practice walking on ice. Wind tingles my fire-warm cheeks, and I am breathless when we reach the car, breathless with cold and with this teenage girl giggle bubbling from my lips. Then, it is okay I don’t have a Christmas tree, the myths, the hot chocolate. Now, at this moment, what I do have—flecks of snow on our eyelashes, his hand ensuring I don’t slip—is enough. I have enough.
But I don’t want it to stop. Rather, I want to stop time so this will last forever. The car moves slowly through unplowed streets, and my feet press the floorboards as if they’re brakes, as if I can stop it. I want to think of something to say to Christopher’s father to stop us. I want to spend the night in their home, in a sleeping bag on the floor of the room with his sisters. I want to be Christopher’s sister. But we turn down Lowell Road, aiming toward my porch light.
Now, walking up the path, Christopher and I are not laughing. My grimness, which he will never, over the years, understand, which I will never be able to explain, is nevertheless contagious. I know this. Shyly we say good-night. There are thanks for a wonderful time, but as he turns to go I reach for his arm. He glances at me, questioning, slightly impatient. His father is watching, and I don’t know how to explain why I have touched him, why I have stopped him, why I have called him back. I know no words to explain how badly I want him to save me. When I say nothing he gently tugs away.
And now he is returning to the car where his father waits, the engine running. I watch as he opens the car door, imagining the warmth of the heater. I wish he and his father would glance in the rearview mirror to see me, as if this glance could then carry me with them. I watch the taillights until they turn left on Rutland. There are no other cars on these streets. No other people. In small, silent furies, snowflakes whirl around globes of streetlights. I turn the knob on my front door, not wanting to touch this metal, instead wanting to remember the texture of Christopher’s warm wool sweater.
I sit in the kitchen watching my mother peel potatoes for dinner. My father is not yet home, nor is my sister. My mother tells me stories from her childhood, about growing up in Chicago during the Depression. Her father taught himself English by reading the dictionary. Uncles, aunts, cousins were always passing through, dropping in for breakfast or dinner. They slept two, sometimes three, to a bed.
“What about your father?” I ask.
For a moment she stops peeling and looks at me. She shrugs. She tells me he was a Socialist, that he cared about the Workers, that he didn’t have time for his five children, barely had time to earn a living. He was always at meetings, but they were happier when he was gone, she says, laughing, because he had a terrible temper.
She tells me: They didn’t have enough money for food. One day her mother walked down the street to borrow an egg from a neighbor and on her way home she dropped it. She retrieved it in a saucer and still used it.
She tells me: We never had enough to eat. We were always hungry.
She tells me: We ’re lucky your father earns a good living. You don’t know what it feels like to go to bed hungry.
She tells me: Things aren’t always the way you want them, but you have to manage. That’s what I learned to do. Get by. Manage.
She tells me: No one has a happy childhood. Everyone’s got problems.
I hear the garage door open. My father is home. I stand and begin to walk down the hall toward my bedroom. “Yes, Mom,” I say. “But just because you have enough food doesn’t mean you can’t still go to bed hungry.”
What I don’t notice in novels: that the fathers in the novels don’t touch their daughters the way mine touches me. Yet while I don’t believe our relationship strange, I would never tell anyone about it. These contradictions are logical. Contradictions are always logical. Now, even though our family lacks a Christmas tree, still I believe we are exceedingly normal.
This year I receive Christmas cards even before I mail mine. Again I decorate my room with them, but no longer is this enough. After Robin’s party, I must have a tree. I ask my parents if we can get one, just this once. No angels or religious ornaments, just a tree. “No.” If I don’t spend money on decorations? Our presents would look so pretty under a tree. “No.” I’ll use my own allowance. I’ll make all the decorations myself. We’ll put it in some corner where it’ll hardly show, where no one would see it. “No.”
Every day I walk to the lot next to the railroad tracks where trees are sold, watch fathers lift trees atop cars and tie them securely. Mothers slide trees into the backs of station wagons. In the evening, after the last commuter train pulls from the small station, the man who owns the trees leaves, without locking the lot. I head toward home, slamming my boots in puddles of melted snow. It is past dusk, and green, red, white outdoor Christmas lights glitter on eaves and doors and windows. On one house a giant Santa is attached to a chimney. Magical blue lights twinkle on every tree and bush in another yard. Ours is the only house on Lowell Road without magic, without lights.
Two days before Christmas, when
I get off the bus from Ridgewood where I’d gone to buy presents, I notice the price of trees has been cut in half. The owner wears a blue ski cap pulled low on his forehead, and he sits on a wood crate smoking a cigarette. I wonder if he’s noticed me standing in this same spot every day. I don’t care. I set the shopping bag by my feet and watch the few remaining trees that haven’t been purchased. Most of them are scraggly, with branches broken or missing. Even with the price cut, the man sells few trees. Today I abandon my vigil before he closes, lugging home my shopping bag of Christmas presents.
My Christmas presents. In Ridgewood, all the stores had smelled of tinsel and golden perfume. I had bought my sister a book, my mother a wool scarf, my father a necktie. These presents are unoriginal, but it doesn’t matter. Kiki will thank me profusely for the book she will never read. My mother will inspect the scarf as if it has moth holes. My father will adore his necktie, wear it every day, but never truly see it: I could have bought a tie with any design, in any color.
On Christmas Eve my sister is home early since all her friends are with their families. She is upstairs in her room, the door shut. I am downstairs in my room, the door shut. A symphony blares on the record player in the living room, the walls of the house shuddering in sound. For hours my father will play his music, even though we, his three little girls, detest it. Still, we would not consider asking him to lower the volume.
My mother is in her bedroom, their bedroom, her door also shut to avoid the music. But I want my mother to be in the kitchen. There are no scents of special foods. There are no Christmas cookies or cakes. Not a shred of a decoration or sign of Christmas joy. Although they couldn’t possibly be, my feet feel frozen, and I sit on my bed holding them, trying to warm them, believing they are iced solid enough to kick my mother’s bedroom door to pieces, kick my father’s record player into the street.
For dinner my mother serves hamburgers and potato chips. This emphatic gesture is her response to Christmas, since she believes it a personal affront to her Jewishness. While every family across the Christian world decorates trees, cooks special foods, buys presents, and prays in churches, my mother will believe each decoration, each cookie, each present, each prayer, is an attempt to rob her of her self. There is no room in her heart for those who are different. My father imagines himself more generous. He believes he is a great humanitarian who loves everyone.
I drench the burger in ketchup before devouring it, barely chewing, barely tasting meat, swallowing chunks in order to appease my ravenous hunger. My fingers are sticky with ketchup but I don’t stop to wipe them, nor can I stop eating chips. My mother has bought only one bag. I eat most of it, and my sister is angry. I eat a plain bun, without a hamburger, soaking it in ketchup until it is soggy. I eat four dill pickles, but it is bread I need, starch, or meat, foods far more solid than pickles. I suck my fingers. I need more food, more potato chips, more something. I press a damp finger to the bottom of the bag for the remaining crumbs of chips. Even salt. I suck my fingers for the last grain. Still, I need more … more meat, more starch, more salt. I need more now. So without plan, not caring that stores are closed, in fact not even considering this, I yank on my jacket. My parents yell at me: Where are you going? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I must go, go, go. They can’t stop me. Threats are useless. What could they possibly threaten to do? I can’t stop moving.
The wind seems to propel me toward town. This is how quickly I seem to be walking. Snowy puddles have iced—I have forgotten my boots—and I skid on leather-soled shoes, without slipping or falling, skid as if the ice itself is part of this plan to hurry me along. I am not in my mind; rather, it is my slick feet which understand the destination. I do not. Nothing could stop them; nothing could even try. But maybe it is my mind urging my feet forward, a mind suddenly galvanized, now clearly focused, free of the bounds of home.
Surely I know I have not come to town for potato chips that would not be for sale tonight anyway. Instead, I am at the Christmas tree lot where the owner is long gone. Lights from the train station reveal the few trees leaning against a makeshift wire fence. Easy access. No gate, no lock. No one to say no. The streets are deserted. No witnesses. Never have I been so close. Now, finally, I will enter the lot, this for the first time.
Most of the trees have broken branches. Dented sides. Crushed needles. Some are too thin, some too short and stumpy. This doesn’t matter. Although I know I will take one, what I want, for the moment, is just to be with the trees. All of them. How can I choose just one? I have forgotten my mittens and I move closer to them, my arms outstretched, until the tips of my fingers can almost smell dark-scented pine. I move deep into their midst until I am surrounded by them, hidden by them, believe I could almost be one of them.
But these trees shouldn’t have to be hidden in this lot without Christmas lights. I trail a finger along the wire fence until it vibrates in friction, warming it, warming my finger, until the wire is humming in a blaze of flashing lights. The lot shimmers. The trees seem decorated in glitter. Wands of light beam out to the stars; the stars echo back, drizzling Stardust onto the gentlest green branches. Thousands of birds shed white feathers to dust the pine needles with snow. Rings from Saturn encircle the treetops with halos. Icy diamonds stud the boughs.
And now I don’t search for the best tree but rather the worst: the tree no one would ever buy. Not out of guilt over the stealhardly. Rather, I want it. This one tree. Walking backward, I drag it home by the base. The journey seems to take hours. My arms ache. My shoulder blades cramp. The bark scratches my hands, but when I pause to rest and press my palms to my face, I smell dark, rich sap. It warms me. I continue on, dizzy in the backward movement, in my abrupt steps. The wind gusts my hair around my face, but I don’t let go of the tree to brush it aside. Up the path to my house, up the steps to the front stoop, I pull it. As I push the tree inside, the storm door slams against it. No one comes to inquire about the noise. Certainly no one would help me. I lug the tree across the living room carpet and down the hall to my bedroom.
I have no stand in which to place the tree, so I lean it against the wall and secure it with every book in my shelf. I pop popcorn and string it, draping it round and round. With construction paper, I glue together circles of red, green, purple, and gold and loop the chain from the top of the tree to the bottom. I hang garlands of aluminum foil crunched to glittering balls. I thread my Christmas cards and dangle them from branches. Dabs of Pepsodent toothpaste are flecks of snow. From every brush in the bathroom I comb out the hairs. I brush my own hair a hundred times, pull the strands from the brush, then brush it another hundred. I mat and mold all the hair into a bird nest and balance it atop the tree. Small wads of white paper are eggs, and I cut a dove from a piece of gray paper. With crayons, I draw the crèche I’d seen at Robin’s and wrap it around the base. In my darkened room I prop a flashlight on the floor and beam it up through the branches. I smell the sap, the popcorn, the peace. Tonight no one comes near the door to my room; tonight no one would dare invade this alien room of peaceful Christmas spirits.
The next morning, Christmas day, my parents and my sister enter my room to see my earth-green shrine. I believe they think it pretty, although they say little. That afternoon my father builds a fire in the fireplace. I sit on the couch and feel warmth flare about the room. On the coffee table is a monkeypod bowl filled with oranges and walnuts. Snips of flame reflect in the silver nutcracker. The record player is not turned on, nor is the radio. Our house is quiet. I breathe quietly, listening to the click of needles as my mother knits me a sweater. My sister sits next to me, turning the pages of the book I bought her for Christmas.
Christopher invites me to the following dances: Harbor Lights, Paradise of Hearts, Hawaiian Dream. I buy new dresses, cut my hair again, select lipsticks to match my new clothes. We attend parties together. We walk together in the halls between classes. We exchange pictures. Finally, he holds my hand. My parents have no objections to him—how could they? He
is a shy, sweet boy. Except sometimes, when he and I are dancing, I glance away from this shy, sweet boy and watch Ryan, who dances with both arms encircling a girl. I think I can feel the taut muscles in his arms as he presses her to him, his eyes closed. The girl holds him, too, her face cradled between his neck and his shoulder. Sometimes I want Christopher like this. I want Christopher to hold me tight and stroke me. Otherwise, how can I know he loves me? But do I really want this? Maybe I want Christopher the way he is. It is that girl, the one with long blonde hair, the one who desires my father and Ryan—she is the one who wants Christopher to be like Ryan. Truly, I could belong to Christopher or to Ryan. If I belong to someone else, then I can’t be alone with my self.
Elizabeth invites me to her pajama party. I take this literally—that I must bring pajamas. But my mother won’t give me money to buy pajamas; she says what I sleep in—that nightgown—is what I will bring… she will not waste money on … on what? Suddenly I am not sure about any of my clothes. Once I wore a tight knit sweater to school and I thought I noticed a surprised hesitation to Christopher’s “hello.” At the time I thought little of it, but now I’m unsure. My mother helped me select the ruby-red dress I wore to the Paradise of Hearts dance. The cut was lower than the cut on other girls’ dresses. But my mother says it’s okay to look this way—it’s important to attract boys, just don’t allow them to touch you.
While I stood before the full-length mirror examining myself in that red dress, my mother came up behind me and cupped her hands over my breasts. She told me I was developing nicely. But I don’t understand. I don’t understand this body. Why do I think my father hates these breasts that are developing, hates this hair growing on my body—breasts and hair that seem to be beyond his or my control? Why do I think he wants me to remain his little girl—always? I don’t know how my body should look. I don’t know what kind of body would make my mother and father happy—would make Christopher happy. Must I have three bodies, and three sets of clothes, in order to keep everyone happy? Or if I discover the right clothes, will I then have the right body?
Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You Page 12