Christmas Time

An excerpt from someone else's life. Written by Chase Winter

The last few years have been tough for me. Hell, the last decade’s been tough for me. I’m twenty-two now, ten years older than I was when my dad left my mom. My dad left but my mom’s to blame. It took me a few years to realize that. He left once he found out she was having an affair with some nobody from Riverton, the town over. It’s tough to justify leaving one of your kids behind with the woman who cut your family to pieces, but I imagine it was the easiest route for my dad. I blame him, sure, but some days I don’t.  

When I look at it from a matured standpoint, I think I would’ve done the same. I share more similarities with my mother, I was a miserable pre-teen, and I had friends here. My sister, Emma,  was three at the time- with her own set of problems, sure- but a little kid is easier to raise fresh than a weathered-in brat like myself. 

I think in passing I had to pick who to go with, but I can’t really remember. My father never said a bad word about her. He told me what happened in kid terms- your mother has been, well your mom she, Dave from Riverton has been, well, sometimes people have to take a break for a while. I understood what he was trying to say, but not why. My mother never did anything wrong to me back then, so I took her side. If I had the option to go either way with the divorce, I must’ve picked my mom. 

I wonder if things would’ve been different for me if I’d gone with dad, or if they’d stayed together. 

That first couple months with her wasn’t actually so bad. She cared a lot about me then, gifts all the time, trips to restaurants, sometimes we’d go to the movies. Most weekends she’d set up the TV behind the counter at her convenience store so I could hang out there. Anything to avoid being at home. I got sick of fast food and Chinese though, quite quickly, and I gained a lot of weight. She did too, although as a kid you don’t notice these things. Looking back on it, she was really unhealthy. 

At some point she got it into her head that we should move. We didn’t move far- one block up onto 9th Ave. Same house number, funny enough. 281 9th Ave, Little Bay, Michigan. Far enough to block out the memories in the house, not far enough to inconvenience anyone. Her and I and ‘my new uncle Dave’ walked all of our furniture over to save money. I never saw my new uncle Dave again after that. 

Just like most midwestern women in the 80s with ever-expanding waistlines, she got wrapped up in Weight Watchers for a while. This of course spilled over to me and my husky jeans. We ate a lot of cottage cheese and cucumbers with black pepper sprinkled on top. I hated it. The texture reminded me of the gunk under my foreskin.

We also drank a lot of smoothies, which she said had no points because it was fruit. Breakfast smoothie, lunch smoothie, dessert smoothie. Three a day. The scale never dropped a pound for either of us. In fact, it only went up.  

Years later I still get the manuals in the mail. When I told mom about the difference between eating fruit and drinking fruit, she denied it, saying that it cannot be true. “How will your body know the difference?” she said. Midwestern education, I suppose. 

++

It was around Christmas, that year of the divorce when things with her got bad. She’d gained about fifty pounds, picked up smoking and drinking, and was “getting back out there.”

Little Bay isn’t a big town- population back then was two thousand-some. 

We went from a regular, happy family to the talk of the town almost overnight, and it only got worse with time. I think my mother began to feel the shame of the whole situation around Christmas in ’89. On the weeks leading up to Christmas, she’d promised over and over that we’d set up a Christmas tree, but she needed help bringing one home since our car was too small to strap one to the top. One night, she went out drinking and convinced a man- Jerry, the plumber- to help her bring a tree home and set it up. I’m pretty sure he paid for it, since our ‘tree money jar’ was still full the next day. 

The three of us set up the tree at 1am. Mom came up to my room heavy-footed and flicked my lights on and off over and over until I got out of bed. I begrudgingly put my pajamas over my boxers and went with her, hair matted up the side of my head.  Downstairs, they were sloppy drunk, him taking every opportunity to grab her ass, her unbuttoning her blouse a bit more as the night went on, bending over just enough to show her cleavage. He kept calling her Missus Claus and squishing her hips. I remember he gave me a big bear hug at some point, cigarette dangling so close to my head I could feel the ash, his hot whiskey breath beating down on the top of my bowl cut, damp chest hair tickling my nose. Merry Christmas, kiddo. I tried to pull away but he pulled me closer and I felt a poke on my rib from something in his jeans. I think he noticed because he pulled away beet red in the face and stuttered. He offered me a beer like an olive branch. I took it but never opened it. It turned from ice cold to room temperature as I watched the two of them get drunker.

Eventually, he took his shirt off and replaced it with tinsel, dancing around the tree to “Here Comes Santa Claus.” The decoration clung to his jiggling belly, sweat beads flinging from his forehead. My mom started rubbing his hairy stomach like a buddha while she kissed the middle of his chest. He started to unbutton the rest of her shirt but she stopped him, motioning back to me. He pried. She whispered something in his ear and giggled. He grabbed her ass and bit her ear.   

Revolted, I tried to sneak upstairs to my room, fearing they’d start to get it on with me there, but my mother demanded I stay. She said it was a ‘family tradition.’ As she said it, I watched her smile turn downwards, realizing what she just said. Jerry turned the music up louder and we finished putting the ornaments on the tree. I sat on the living room floor, tired eyes glued to the carpet amongst old crumpled newspaper we used as ornament wrappers. As they made their way to the couch, then to the bedroom, I picked through the clippings and read headlines to avoid listening to their thumping and grunting. He was loud.

Nuclear Disaster Leaves 4000 Dead. Exclusive: Challenger Explodes, Teachers On Board. Local Home Targeted in Series of Break-Ins. 

The next morning, mom came down to the kitchen to find me passed out on the couch amongst the mess. Bathrobe half tied around her big waist, she picked up the trash from the night before, stumbling around. She mumbled and giggled to herself quietly, still drunk, chucking beer cans into a paper bag. Jerry came clambering down the stairs, cursing his headache. I pretended to still be asleep on the couch while she begged him to stay for breakfast. Judging by the inconsistencies in his excuses, he couldn’t get out of there soon enough. 

“I’m on call.”

“Don’t you have staff for that?”

“Well, they’re on Holidays.”

“How come you weren’t on call last night.”

“I gotta go.”

“Call me?”

“Mmm.”

It was hard to see her so desperate but I was thankful when he left.

-=--=-

Christmas Eve, 1989.

Jerry hadn’t been by since the Christmas tree fiasco. Mom said he was working lots and didn’t have time but I saw him leave his store at 5pm sharp every day when I was at mom’s convenience store. They shared a wall. She denied it, but she saw him every day too. She stared longingly as he walked right past the window and into his truck. Some days she pretended like he wasn’t there, in the same way he did; like his head wouldn’t turn left or he couldn’t see right into our windows. 

As a kid, I was always excited with Christmas. I loved gifts, cookies, snow, the whole thing. I knew that Santa Claus was fake but we always played into the bit for the holidays. Dad was really good with it- he kept a fake naughty list that he’d tally up with me on the 23rd, the night before they brought the gifts out for the tree. Somehow, no matter what I did, I was always in the net positive. 

There was no list this year on the 23rd.  And there were no gifts under the tree on the 24th. 

I was home alone for most of the day since the store was open on Saturdays, even though it was Christmas Eve. There wasn’t much on the TV; some Christmas specials of I Love Lucy, the news, a cooking show with a goofy Swedish lady, and static. The house was quiet. 

Mom left that morning for work in a hurry, with a big travel thermos of half coffee, half Baileys Irish Cream. ‘Tis the season.Bored, I opened the bottle at the table and took a big sticky gulp. I coughed it up into my mouth but managed to swallow it again. It burned my throat but it was so sweet I had to take another sip. My nose felt hot with every swallow. I thought about Rudolph the Reindeer and his nose while I had a few more swigs. Sitting at the kitchen table, the same way mom would after dinner, I stared at the space under the tree and had another drink. 

For a moment I wondered if Santa was coming even though he never got a naughty list from dad this year. I took another sip. Santa isn’t real. Suddenly my face was warm and my hands were fuzzy, like TV static and kisses. I got up from the table and felt a little dizzy. I turned my head and started laughing at nothing, like I’d just remembered the funniest joke. Bottle in hand, I strolled around the living room as the warmth began to overtake me. I started stumbling over the furniture, so I crumpled on the floor in front of the empty Christmas tree and fell asleep to the Swedish woman telling me how to make a perfect holiday ham. She was funnier like this. Life was funnier like this.

++

I woke up a few hours later to the phone ringing on the hook. My vision was spinning as I pried myself off of the shag carpet. I’d tipped the Baileys over in my sleep onto my clothes and the floor, which was dry already. By the time I made it to the phone it had stopped ringing. 

It was around 4pm. Mom would be home in an hour and the house was a mess. I picked up the bottle of liquor from the carpet and got a wet towel to clean up some of the spill. Mom would notice the bottle was empty, so I threw it in the trash and covered it in crumpled chip bags and paper towels. I tried to tidy the place up but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the tree. I’d been naughty. 

I waited on the couch for mom to get home, picking at the leather seams to distract me from my pounding head. I had to pee but I didn’t want to move in fear that my head would ache more. When she got home, she immediately noticed her bottle was gone. She barely said hello before she started rummaging through the cabinets, hoping she’d put it away. Unsuccessful and angry, she pressed me for it. I told her I knocked it over when I was making breakfast and that I threw it away. I stood attentive, trying to keep my composure. Noticing the tan stain on the floor behind me, she grabbed my arm and pulled me right up to her face and had me say it again. She sniffed my breath as I lied to her. Without warning she smacked me across the face and yelled at me for drinking her liquor. I cried on the floor and wet myself. 

++

Stupid brat.

Mom said she needed to go get booze but refused to leave me home alone.  So, she bundled me up and we drove in to town. The heat in her car wouldn’t come on no matter how long we waited. She shivered in the front seat, gripping the steering wheel, her puffy knuckles whitening. Avoiding her, I sat with my greasy forehead pressed against the fogged window, watching the Christmas lights on everyone’s houses go on. “Do you think I made it on the nice list?” I asked, hoping to remind her that I was supposed to get gifts. She started bawling. 

To my surprise, and after a moment of deceleration, we passed the liquor store and kept going up Main Street towards Redd’s Department Store. She told me that she was going to buy a few things and then we’d go home. Gifts. As we turned onto the parking lot, the car sputtered off. Mom yelled. She took the key out of the ignition and put it back in, turning it. It ticked. No power. The dashboard lights were out completely. She yelled more and cursed, kicking under her chair like a toddler. I kept looking out the window but I was crying now too, quiet enough so she wouldn’t feel bad. 

After a moment of heavy breathing, she grabbed her purse and told me to stay in the car. Furious, she waddled her way through the parking lot but slipped on a patch of black ice. I watched her hit the ground sideways and scramble to get back up, cursing as she flailed her purse around.  From thirty feet away and inside the car I heard every word. God fuckin dammit fuck this stupid fucking ice, god, what the fuck Can’t I get a fucking break god dammit. FUCK.

Sopping wet, crying, dirty from the road sludge, she hobbled to the door, only to be greeted by my father, who was leaving the store with my sister and what my mom refers to as that skinny little skank girlfriend of his.

Mom, covered in snow sludge, tried to shove him but he backed away in time for her to just fall forward again and smack her head on the sliding door. The security guard helped her up and my dad shuffled Emma and his girlfriend back to their car. He looked around the parking lot for her car but he never saw it. I didn’t bother to wave.

-=--=-