Gwenyth pursed her perfectly heart-shaped, red-painted lips at Carol and stepped around Charlie, bringing those lips close to his ear. Carol seemed mesmerized by Gwenyth: her clothes, her sheer perfection in a sea of imperfection. Carol’s hands went to her hair that was pulled back into a ragged ponytail and then to her face. She was as black as the lumps of coal Hy-Lo threatened to leave beneath the tree for us, but with all of her midnight skin, the darkest blue bruise stood out on her face like a smudged thumbprint.
Charlie’s head was bobbing up and down in response to Gwenyth’s moving lips. She had managed to rest one delicate hand on his shoulder, and had moved in closer so that she could see the entirety of his face.
We all watched and waited. Delia had Carol’s empty glass in one hand and a jar of maraschino cherries in the other. Randy had taken a seat on the hassock nearest to Malcolm and me. Carol had moved away from mother and son and had settled herself on the couch near Mable. Mable had scooted closer to Sam while staring intently at the bruises on Carol’s cheek and neck, the keloid scars on the back of her hand, and the worn sneakers that covered her feet. Mable wriggled her nose at the stench of alcohol that seeped from Carol’s pores and the sour smell that came from not bathing, which clung to her skin. I closed my eyes and hoped that Carol wasn’t the ghost of Christmases to come.
“Mother!” He turned on her and broke the odd tranquillity that had settled around the room. Charlie’s eyes were wide and red and suddenly he looked like someone other than the playful uncle who slipped me a dollar whenever he didn’t need one from me.
Gwenyth took a step back, anger flashed in her eyes, and for a moment I saw her hand jerk as if to rise up and strike him. “Charlie!” she bellowed back at him but did not recover her spot on the floor inches from her son.
“Um, Charlie …” Delia started to interrupt but thought better of it and fell silent again.
Malcolm and I leaned forward, our eyes widened, and we held our breath.
“Where the hell you think you going, Mother? To the fucking Christmas Ball?”
Charlie snatched at the material of Gwenyth’s red dress. His words were filled with a spitefulness that liquor alone could not have produced.
“Always trying to show yourself off, like some type of goddamn queen.” He looked at her for a long time before he spoke again. “You ain’t shit!” he yelled at her and slammed his glass down hard on the makeshift bar. Two bottles toppled over the side and went crashing to the ground.
There was more to be said, but not right then. The story, the one that I was born into and could not escape, would come out later in life when I needed to understand.
Hy-Lo walked in just as the jagged pieces of glass scattered across the floor. It was almost two in the afternoon and the ham was still baking in the oven. The greens were done and so were the yams and the potato salad. The cornbread was the last to go in, he knew that, but the ham should have been done and now there was this mess to clean up.
He stood there and looked down at the glass and the clear liquid that covered his floor and ate through his wax. He did not say anything, just jingled his keys in his hand.
Gwenyth was struck stupid and remained glued to the spot she stood in. She did not want to move. If she even flinched that would mean she would have to look into our faces and see the disappointment that was etched there and it would say: Three sons. Three sons. All drunks. You must be so proud.
“Get out, Charlie.” Hy-Lo spoke quietly. The quiet words before the loud ones. Always. “Get out now.”
Charlie snickered. He thought so many things and so many people were funny. Only Gwenyth got him mad and I guess Carol too. “Hy, man, listen—”
“Out!” Hy-Lo cut him off and at the same time snapped his fingers at Delia to start cleaning up the mess. Mable opened her mouth to object and Sam squeezed her knee and shook his head in warning.
Charlie snickered again. And then, to everyone’s surprise, he looked at Gwenyth and bowed, bowed so low I saw my reflection in the baldness of his head. “Merry Christmas, Mother,” he said and then saluted her. “C’mon, Carol,” he ordered and started toward the door.
Now the apartment smelled like the belly of the Blue Moon, the part behind the bar where the floor was always sticky and wet, where the dirty lipstick-stained glasses waited to be relieved of the soggy cigarettes that floated dead at their bottoms. Hy-Lo must have felt at home for the first time since we moved in.
Gwenyth was shaken and did not want to remain on center stage. The bottle of rum that sat on the kitchen table in the dark of her own apartment was calling to her now, telling her she did not have to remain here and be subjected to this type of treatment. “I’m going home,” she announced. Her hands fiddled with the fake pearls around her neck, pulling them away from her throat as if they had suddenly shrunk and were cutting off her air supply.
“Make Mother a plate,” Hy-Lo ordered Delia as he walked into the bedroom and closed the door.
“I don’t believe this shit,” Mable hissed beneath her breath. Not even the soft touches and gentle nudges from Sam would sustain her tongue for much longer.
Delia looked up from her kneeling position on the floor, broom in one hand and dustpan in the other. “Okay, Hy-Lo,” she said helplessly and stood to do what she had been told.
Finally, we were assembled around the table. It was a disappointing unveiling. Delia lifted the ceramic turkeyshaped cover to reveal a turkey that had been victimized. The right and left drums were gone as well as a large portion of the breast. Gwenyth would not stay long enough for us to bless the meal and cut the bird. “No, no, I need to leave now,” she had insisted when Delia asked her to stay just until Hy-Lo had changed his clothes and washed his hands.
Mable rolled her eyes for the twentieth time that Christmas Day, but said nothing. Delia pretended that nothing was wrong. But then that was her life. Pretend.
I said the grace. Some meaningless words I learned at Sunday school years earlier. Words that never seemed to help me and so I had packed away the memory of them deep inside me and struggled to reach them when Hy-Lo said, “Kenzie, you say grace.”
He was drunk too. His posture was unsteady and his steps unsure. I imagined he’d had quite a few Christmas cocktails between work and home. Had probably had a few with Charlie, Randy, and Carol before sending them on ahead of him. “I’ll be there. I’m going to have one more with Paul. Robert. Jefferson. The man on the moon and anyone else who walks through that door. Y’all go on ahead.”
He had a drink in his hand. The third drink since he walked through the door and threw Charlie and Carol out. He set the glass down close to the edge of the table and then lifted the knife to slice into what was left of the turkey. He sliced a piece off the breast and plucked it up with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. It was tradition in our home, one he had created.
He chewed slowly and then lifted his glass and drained it. We waited.
“Delia,” he said, and her name was a low groan in his mouth. “This turkey is dry.”
Delia dropped her eyes and said nothing. Intermission was over; the second act had begun.
“I said the turkey is dry, Delia.”
Delia’s fingers came to her mouth and I started pulling at my cuticles.
“Get my coat, Sam,” Mable said and folded her arms across her chest. “Grab Delia’s too. Kids, get your coats.” Mable had had enough. She was clearing out the house. “What type of Christmas is this for your wife and your kids, Hyman? Your brothers come in here all drunk and insult your mother.” Randy flinched at her words and looked up at the ceiling. “You come home just as drunk,” she continued, her voice growing, filling the kitchen. “It’s Christmas, for God’s sake.” Mable shook her head in disgust and ran her fingers over Malcolm’s head.
“Delia and the kids ain’t going nowhere. You, well, you’re welcome to go.”
“Delia, is this how you want it?” Mable was staring at her daughter with an intensity I had neve
r seen.
“Mama, I—” Delia wasn’t able to utter another word. She threw her hands up to her face and began sobbing.
“Shut up!” Hy-Lo screamed at her. “Shut up now, Delia!” I felt my own tears push forth. I wanted to go. I wanted Delia to come with me and leave this apartment forever.
“Delia, I did not raise you this way.” Mable spoke softly as if to herself instead of her daughter. “I did not raise you this way.” She turned to retrieve her coat.
I peered up into my grandmother’s face. My eyes pleaded for her to stay. I wanted her to stay so that my Christmas would not end with my father choking my mother until she coughed and gagged for air. I did not want my Christmas to end with Delia locked in the bathroom, wailing, while Hy-Lo sent me and Malcolm off to bed so that we would not see him removing the bathroom door from its hinges with his trusty screwdriver. My eyes said, Please. So loudly that Mable almost handed her coat back to Sam, but then Hy-Lo spoke again.
“And you don’t ever have to come back here again. Ever.”
That was it. Mable snatched her coat and stormed out of the apartment. No final words, no rolling eyes, just heavy quick footsteps and slamming doors.
“The turkey is dry, Delia.” We were back at the middle and Hy-Lo waited for an answer. “Stop your sniveling, Delia!” He turned to her and plucked her on her head, atop the healing gash on her forehead.
Malcolm and I jumped at the sound, the thick timbre of it as the back of his fingernails made contact with her skin.
“Ahhhhh!” Delia wailed and grabbed at her head. “The turkey is dry, Hy. The turkey is dry, Hy!” She moved with a swiftness that I’d thought she’d lost a long time ago and pushed past him with a strength he thought he’d beat out of her long ago. She grabbed up the ceramic container with the mutilated turkey and moved to the window. “The turkey is dry the turkey is dry the turkey is dry.” Her words ran together like a Gothic chant.
Hy-Lo folded his arms across his chest. His face looked bored. “Delia!” His voice rang through the apartment; my ears began to ache.
Delia stood in front of the window, and with a force she must have pulled from deep down in her gut, she flung the ceramic container that held the turkey out through the closed pane. Glass went flying everywhere. End of act two, scene two.
The cold blew in and around Delia. The bitterness of it pulled her back to her senses. She stopped chanting and turned to look at us. Malcolm and I had our mouths open so wide that we could feel the cold pulling at our teeth.
Hy-Lo said nothing. His eyes held mild amusement. “Well, kids, see what your meathead mother did?” He looked at us and for some reason he sounded like the teacher in my third period science class, as if he were explaining the basics of biology. “And the ham is still not done.” He shook his head and unfolded his arms, preferring to shove his hands in his pockets now.
Delia just stood there braving the cold amidst the flapping sound of the ravaged miniblind. I was waiting for the pounding to begin, but Hy-Lo had been struck sober by my mother’s crazed act.
He stepped around the table and past us. We still did not move, half-expecting he would send us to our room, but he said nothing and then he was heading past us, coat in hand and out the door.
We didn’t have turkey that year. But we had ham and all of the rest of the trimmings. After Delia composed herself she threw on her black wool coat with the embroidered collar and went to the store and bought a box of big black plastic bags. She took the broom and broke out the rest of the splintered glass from the windowpane and then taped up three bags over the opening.
We had dinner in the living room. We sat on the floor around the tree, eating dinner and drinking cider. The television was on in the background to help fill the silence that fell around us every once in a while.
We watched It’s a Wonderful Life before we went off to bed and Delia cried at the end. I knew her tears weren’t for the characters, but for herself and us.
Chapter Twelve
I left Hy-Lo and went home to search through old pictures, looking for the periods in my life when I was happy. Black-and-whites, colored photos, and bent and ragged Polaroids lay scattered around me. We had boxes of pictures. Endless squares of memories that marked each year of our lives. I snatched up picture after picture and put aside the ones that showed me smiling. Out of the hundred or so that lay around me, I was only smiling in fourteen.
I looked at each one carefully, searching for a trace of real happiness, but after more than an hour I found only three where my smile was genuine. The others held smiles that had been asked for. “Smile for the camera.” “Say cheese, Kenzie.”
Even the pictures of my time spent away from our home showed unhappiness. By then, though, I had been unhappy for so long that it had penetrated my features and had taken hold of my character.
I looked again at the younger me surrounded by my classmates. Them grinning, me grimacing. I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror, still grimacing, still sad, still unhappy.
Mable was the one who had suggested it. I had no idea that anything like it really existed outside of the movies.
Boarding school.
She had a book full of them. Schools all over the country.
Schools that had classes that would enrich the lives of young adults. That was their line. The small black-and-white pictures in the book reminded me of the colorful glossy brochure I had from Camp Crystal Lake. Laughing children. Most of the faces were white. Others were Asian. Very few were black.
“You remember Jessica Nettles from around the corner?” Mable was talking fast and low as if someone would walk in at any moment and catch her sharing a secret with me. “Well, she went to one of these schools, she loved it, and now she’s in college somewhere down south. Black college, I think.”
She moved to the kitchen and grabbed the dish towel off its hook. Nothing needed wiping; she just needed to have something in her hands, something to twist and curl. “They have classes that you wouldn’t get in regular schools. They do things these city schools don’t do.”
I listened to her go on and on as if she were the national spokesperson for boarding schools. I flipped slowly through the pages of the book, through Arizona, Colorado, Delaware. There was at least one school in every state.
“Could I come home on the weekends?” I asked, cutting off Mable’s continuous babble.
She stopped midword and looked at me. “Why would you want to, baby?” she asked without even a hint of humor behind it.
She was afraid for me, afraid of who I might become living with Hy-Lo and Delia. She was afraid for Malcolm too, but would have to deal with us separately.
“Well, it’s just that some of these schools are so far away from home. I mean, could I come home when I wanted to?”
What I wanted to ask was, could I come home if I needed to. If Hy-Lo hurt Delia real bad and I needed to stand up in court as a witness to past assaults. If I needed to come home and be with her in the hospital to make sure the nurses were treating her well, keeping the life support unit well-oiled and working.
Mable knew what I meant and nodded her head yes.
“Sure. Of course, Kenzie.”
We looked through the book for a long time, folding the corners of pages that held schools that looked interesting to me. Folding the corners of pages that held schools that would not place me too far away from home.
There were applications to be filed, fees to be paid. Who would help me do that, who would pay the fees? Better yet, who was going to pay the $5,000-a-year tuition costs?
“You’re going to apply for every scholarship ever created. Sam will help you write the essays. We’ll pay for the application fees. Don’t worry, you’ll get in and won’t have to pay a dime. You’re a smart girl, Kenzie.”
Our plan became like Mission Impossible: scary and exciting all at the same time. I spent most of my weekends with Mable. Delia was there too, but she was mostly curled up on the couch staring at the televisio
n, regaining her strength for Monday through Friday.
Mable, Sam, and I would sit for hours, huddled over school and scholarship applications. I wrote so many essays that I developed writer’s cramp in my hand and had to soak it for hours in warm water and Epsom salts.
Mable wrote check after check for application fees and kept a book of stamps handy for my sole use.
“He’ll never go for this, Grandma,” I said one day after I had licked the tenth envelope and sealed it shut with a smooth movement across the flap.
The winter sun was setting, selfishly taking with it the meager warmth it had offered during the day. January wind howled outside the window and beat visciously at the sides of the house, offering me little comfort that I would ever see the bright warmth of spring.
Mable glanced down at me, her first grandchild, who looked so much like her only child, and her heart must have thumped hard in her chest. I saw the pity that welled up in her as she gazed into my eyes. There was no light left there. Her hands moved to my face and traveled lovingly over my hollowed cheeks.
“Don’t worry about that.” Her voice was sad. And I could tell that even with all of our planning, scheming, and plotting, she did not have a clue as to how she would convince Hy-Lo to let me go away to school. “Don’t you worry,” she repeated and then turned to leave. She walked away slowly, her age suddenly wearing down on her.
That night I lay down in my bed and listened to the cold winter wind rattle my bedroom window, not knowing that a solution to my problem was just a few days away.
“You have some mail here, Kenzie.” Mable’s voice was an excited whisper.
I pressed the receiver closer to my face. “From one of the schools?” I asked in the same whisper.
The Warmest December Page 13