The Christmas that Never Was

One afternoon after school in Helena my new girlfriend, Sharon, asked me to go to the store with her.  Once there in the little corner store, she began to sneak back to the candy aisle and I saw her tuck a bag of candy into her skirt front under her blouse.  I started toward her, shaking my head.  She shushed me and said, “You take one.”

     I don’t know why I did it.  Because she did and I admired her, I guess.  You can do a lot of things you shouldn’t just because you don’t know how to say no and you like people.  I grabbed a bag of Hershey’s chocolate kisses and pushed them into my skirt.  We walked out the door and ran down the alley laughing.

     That night at home I couldn’t sleep.  I had the candy bag under my pillow and it was like having a loaded gun.  It was going to kill me.  I was damned.  I had been taken to church every single Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday in Alabama.  Mama sent me off to whatever church Bible school was close by every summer I was with her.  Stealing was plain wrong.  I was a sinner and I was going to Hell for absolute sure.

     Crying now, I drew the candy bag from under the pillow and walked slowly into the living room where the only one still up was Mama watching television.

     “What’s wrong?  Why are you crying?”

     I brought the stolen candy from behind my back and held it out to her. 

     “Where’d you get that?”

     It was hard, but I had to say it.  “I stole it today when I was at the store with my friend.  She took a bag and told me to.  Now, Mama, I know it was wrong.  I can’t sleep because I stole something that wasn’t mine.  Mama, what am I going to do?”

     Mama was not always a monster, nor was she a monster about all things in dealing with her children.  She took the bag from me, now partially emptied, and pulled me to her.  She hugged me and told me what a Good Girl I was for telling her. 

     “We have to take it back,” she said.

     I’d seen her and Daddy march Brent back into a store one time for taking a lollypop they hadn’t paid for.  It wasn’t going to be pretty, but I deserved whatever I got.  I was a thief.

     “And you can’t see that girl anymore.  What’s her name?”

     This was the worst of it, worse than facing the store owner as the thief I was.

     “She’s not bad, Mama.  I don’t think she’s ever done this before either.”

     “What’s her name?”

     “Sharon.  She lives out on that farm outside town, remember?”  I’d spent the night there and seen the big tractors working the wide fields.  I’d eaten at her table, the meal consisting of plain, but generous portions of farm foods—corn on the cob, green beans, slices of tomatoes so big they almost covered the plate.  I’d laughed with her at night and ridden in her Daddy’s old car with her driving us fast down back roads, raising the dust behind us.  I had never known another thirteen-year-old girl who knew how to drive a car.  (Although my Daddy was already teaching me in his 1955 red and white Ford.)

     Mama said, “You can’t see her again.  You can’t go to her house.  I don’t want you hanging out with thieves.  Look what she made you do.”

     I could have tried to explain she didn’t actually make me do it.  I made myself do it.  I was singularly guilty and blaming her wasn’t fair.

     Yet, I knew my friendship with Sharon was over, and she would never understand it.  I could never tell her why.  I saw her one more time.  Three years later when we lived on Moon Lake, Mississippi, Sharon came by the lakeside café my parents owned.  She was married already at sixteen and had a little baby on her hip.  I had envied her and the wonderful farm she called home, but now I only felt sorry for her. I knew her childhood was over, she’d never finish high school, never go to a prom, never hold a good job. She had sealed her fate and it was very sad.

     Was Mama right?  Was Sharon’s urge to steal only one indication of a morally corrupt girl?  Was she destined to wind up married and a mother too young, her education ended, her future determined?  I don’t know.  But it could be Mama had saved me from going down a wild road I might not have been able to get off. Even people in your life you don’t get along with or who often cause you despair can also teach you morality. No one is ever black or white, totally wicked or totally saintly. Mama often tried to do her best by us.

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A lot of important events happened at the house in Helena, Arkansas across the street from the school.  I sneaked out at night, joined up with other kids on the prowl, and we broke into the cotton gin behind the houses and climbed three and four stories high on cotton bales. 

     I met another girl down the street and late at night we’d both sneak out and dance in the dewy grass in our nightgowns, pretending we were fairies.  I see me now in my mind’s eye, arms wide, head back and eyes on the stars overhead as I twirled and twirled until I was dizzy.  So silly and immature! 

     I guess I did a lot of sneaking out.  I didn’t get into any trouble or really do anything very dangerous or against the law, but sneaking out to play was the whole of my teenage rebellion. 

There were no gang initiations, gang rapes, gang drive-bys with guns blazing.  There must have not been many pedophiles, or else they didn’t happen to be around where I grew up.  There weren’t many “fast” boys and fewer fast girls.  If you were thirteen, the most you did was climb to the top of the cotton bales or dance beneath the night in a nightgown, pretending you had wings attached to your back and pointy-toed slippers on your bare feet.

     A thirteen-year-old today has seen five thousand horror movies, played thousands of hours of video games, shopped in malls for purses and shoes that cost as much as a bus trip cross-country.  Some, if not the majority of them, have given and received oral sex, practiced their intercourse techniques, and know all the words and all the jokes their parents tell before they tell them.

     It was simply a different time.  A lifetime away, two generations distant.  It was like a fantasy because today people can’t believe the world was so non-threatening and open for children to explore.

     About the worst thing that happened in Helena came around Christmas time.  Mama was obviously in one of her “up” periods.  She was baking and cooking, decorating the house, and buying gifts.  The day she told us we were all going to Alabama for Christmas Day, I almost fainted with happiness.  I’d get to see Bigmama!  Oh, God, it had been so long, and I missed home like it was a hole in my heart.

     On Christmas Eve Mama’s mood began to plummet. All indications pointed to a spree coming on.  She had already packed all the presents in the car and fried all the chicken and baked all the biscuits to take with us on the trip.  Brent and I ran around the house laughing and chasing through the blinking Christmas lights on the tree. We were like puppies let loose from a kennel. 
            Then I don’t know what happened, but it spelled a catastrophe.  Daddy said something to her.  Or she just fell headfirst into the dark hole that always followed her around.  Whatever precipitated it, the trip to Alabama for Christmas was off.  Totally, permanently, forever OFF.

     “We’re not goddamn going!”  Mama screamed and Brent and I stopped in our tracks.

     Daddy went to her and tried to calm her down, but she shoved him away.  “Get your damn hands off me, you son of a bitch.  I told you we’re not going.”

     “But Mama, the presents are in the car…” I said, trying to reason with her and change her mind quick before it set like concrete and we were all stuck fast in it.

     “I don’t care if they’re in the car!  I don’t care a damn about the goddamn presents.  I’m going to my room and shut the door and if anyone tries to come in I’ll fucking kill you, DO YOU ALL UNDERSTAND?”

     Jesus.  Please, Jesus.  I went to Daddy.  “Daddy, do something.  We would have been to Bigmama's by morning.  Can’t you make her change her mind?  Please, Daddy.”

     He shrugged and looked miserable.  He went to the bedroom door she’d slammed shut and whispered things to her.

     She screamed back at him and told him to go away or she’d rip his fucking heart out.

     I couldn’t let this be my reality.  I had been looking forward to the trip for at least a week.  My heart was set on it.  The gifts were in the car, the picnic lunch was stowed away there, the map, the pillows for our heads and the blankets to cover us in the back seat.  Bigmama and Bigdaddy were expecting us.  She had presents and planned the Christmas meal.  Even now she was in her four-poster bed waiting for us, one eye open.  We had to go.

     I would die if we didn’t go.  The alternative was to sit here in front of a tree with no presents beneath it and gloomily watch my mother fall completely to pieces. 

     As I often did, I took the problem into my own hands and went to the bedroom door.  I knocked softly and called her name.  “We have to go, Mama.  I want to go real bad.  Mama, it will be fun, you know that.  Daddy said he’s sorry if he made you mad.  Mama, are you listening?  Mama?”

     For the first hour she wouldn’t speak to me.  In the next hour of pleading, she tired of my whining and said, “Get away from the goddamn door and leave me the hell alone.  I MEAN it.”

     I began to cry, first quietly, and then in earnest.  “Mama, you can’t do this.  Mama, this is the worst thing you’ve ever done!  Can’t you see that?  You’re hurting me.  You’re hurting all of us.  Me and Brent want to go.  Mama, we have to go.  I’ve missed Alabama so much and Bigmama’s waiting for us.  Please, Mama, please, please, please.”

     I went on this way for hours more.  Most of the night, actually.  I cried until my heart drained its blood and dried to a husk in my chest.  I had been heartbroken many times, but this time it felt as if I might not get over it.  I remember the grain in the wood of the door. I remember the feel of the floor where I sat, my head against the door, crying, begging. I remember praying my mother would come to herself and remember it was Christmas and we had a nice trip to make that would bring all of us happiness.

 It felt as if this time I would never find a way to forgive her the suffering she had heaped upon me. I know it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t as if she was deliberately trying to hurt me. She was a woman beset by demons in her mind and she just couldn’t handle dealing with my heartache or anyone’s expectations.

   She would not relent. 

     Christmas morning came and Daddy brought in the cold fried chicken and the presents meant for us. 

     Brent and I, crestfallen and tired, opened them without expression. We sat quietly watching the Rose Parade on the television.

     There was no turkey swimming in its juices or ham studded with cloves and decorated with pineapple slices and cherries.  There was only the cold fried chicken and Daddy leaving through the door like he’d never come back, though we knew he would, he always did.

     Mama stayed in her room, silently brooding over whatever horror had entered her. I don’t even remember when she came out, a different woman again, and life returned to its semi-normal pace.  Christmas was over, the New Year loomed scary as a nightmare, and I didn’t know when I’d ever be released or how I would ever get back home to Bigmama.

     I knew now for certain I was cursed.  I was locked into this family with an insane woman and none of us could do anything with her beyond locking her in a padded cell. 

     She was Yvonne.  She would have her way.  The rest of us were the worker bees and she was the Queen of the hive.  If she felt well, she would bake you mouthwatering cookies and cakes.  If she didn’t feel well, you’d pay for it in one way or the other.  She wasn’t going to walk through Hell alone, nosiree. She was taking you with her.

I tell you this from the perspective of my thirteen-year-old self. I explained earlier I know about mental illness now and I have come to have some peace about my childhood. When it sounds as if I hated my mother, then that’s how it was—when I was thirteen and so terribly unhappy. Children do not understand about inner demons. They judge their parents by the parents of their friends. My mother was different from anyone I ever met and being at her mercy, I was surely always angry and sullen about what kind of life she was creating for me. I had no power. I just had to live through these growing up years the best I could. I began to keep some silent little spot hidden away in my heart where I could remember happier days so when the bad days showed up I could live through them without something permanent shattering inside me. A mother cannot neglect and willfully destroy her child’s happiness and then expect that child to grow up and love her the way she wants.

Being good, quiet, and making high grades in school was the way I kept myself going. I could excel and be proud, my small pride enough to keep me afloat in this sea of unhappiness. That and the hope sometimes I’d be taken home again to my grandmother.

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