That Time Of The Year

It was Christmas again. The cold, the snow, the cheerful kids running, the air being literally filled with joy. Perfect, right? I hate Christmas.

No one ever remembers the running around trying to get gifts, or long aisles in supermarkets,  the traffic, the sucky last minute shoppers….no, no, no, it’s almost like no one ever notices these things. Albeit, that is not why I hate Christmas.

What are your fondest memories of Christmas?

Sitting in front of the fire place, sipping hot chocolate, while your parents tell their favorite childhood Christmas stories? Or helping your mom decorate the Christmas tree? Or the Christmas morning when you rush down and see your presents waiting for you under the tree, that moment when your face lights up brighter than the tree itself, wondering what was wrapped for you?

As I trudged my way home through the snow, I wondered how different my life would have been if I had memories like that.

“Sorry ma’am.” A freckled face kid said after running into me, I didn’t even bother to look back or acknowledge the kid, I just wanted to be back home, in my room at that instant.

 Life begins at forty, right? Unfortunately for me, at 17, I’ve seen it all.

As I reached my house, I took it in before I entered. Unlike other houses on the street, it had no Christmas decoration outside, no kids playing on the lawn…honestly, it looked kinda lonely.

“What took you so long?” My father yelled as I entered through the door. I hadn’t made any noise when I entered, it was like he had a special kind of sixth sense that perceived my presence.

“The snow is at least three inches deep and you didn’t give me cab fare, in my opinion I was pretty damned fast.” I said to the house, I couldn't tell where he was.

He poked his head out of the kitchen doorway and stared at me and then at my hand or rather the six pack of beer I was holding. I flung it to the nearest seat, “It’s all yours” I said.

This is probably the best time to mention that my father was bipolar drunk, who had no reservations about laying his hands on his daughter. He was a man of few words and mainly actions, he rarely ever spoke to me. Most times I didn’t even know what I was being hit for, I just always took the pain in. I knew these were the only memories I would have of my life with my father.

My mother on the other hand was a fleeing coward that ran away when I was probably four. The bitch.

But most importantly, my father and I…we were alot like nomads. My father couldn’t hold a job down for long and always took any job that was willing to accept him. No matter how far away it was from our present location.

 Initially, we never celebrated Christmas because we didn’t have the money, then my father just didn’t see the point, after that he saw Christmas as a frustrating season and he always took out his frustration on me. Always.

As I walked out of the living room into my room, I flung myself on my bed and wondered why I didn’t have a normal family. I reached for my wallet and opened it, inside was a picture of my mother, about forty three dollars, a fake identity card, a picture of my childhood best friend, Candice and I, and a letter I wrote to Santa when I was seven years old. These are the reasons I hate Christmas.

First off, the fake id card was given to me by my father when I turned 16, so that I could go out and buy him alcohol, or I could go ‘chill’ in a club when he brought his dates over. What kind of father gave his 16 year old daughter a fake i.d. card to go to a club? Mine.

secondly, the forty three dollars, are left over from the five hundred dollars, my grandma gave me last Christmas to buy myself ‘pretty things’. Yes people, believe it or not, I kept five hundred dollars for almost a year. It would have been my first Christmas with presents and trees but my father got into a huge fight with his dad before we got settled in so we have to leave. Another disappointment? No surprise there. I’d spent Easter, thanksgiving, random holidays with my grandparents but never Christmas. And my dad just had to get in the way.

The picture of my mother was a constant reminder of what a coward she was and to serve on as warning to me not to ever leave my kids or they would hate me as much as I hated her. The beautiful failure she was. A lesson to me.

My dad never talked about her but because so many bad things had happened to me at this time of the year, I assumed my mother walked out on us during Christmas.

The letter I wrote to Santa was pretty self explanatory. It didn’t have depth or soul, just a wish that never came true. “Dear Santa, please don’t let my dad hit me any more starting from this Christmas. I’ve been a good girl all year and I’ll continue to be good. Please Santa, pretty please. Love, Levie.” And when Santa didn’t work I tried God too. That didn’t work either, I guess he doesn’t like being second choice.

Now, the story of my friend Candice. We had just moved to Arkansas after my dad got fired from his bartending job in Vegas, guess he couldn’t stay sober on the job.

Anyway, Candice and I were neighbors when we were ten. We both lived in shitty houses, had shitty dads and fucked up lives. I just never had any idea how fucked up hers was.

We immediately took to ourselves through an unexplainable bond. We never spoke about how our fathers raised their hands or how scared we were to leave each other at night, but we knew because the scars on our bodies told us all we needed to know.

I had bought Candice a 'Winnie the pooh' teddy for Christmas and she got me my first ever Barbie doll. My dad had managed to hold this job for nine months but I knew it wasn’t going to be long before we moved again. Candice and I had planned to run away together. Away from our dads and everyone who knew us and didn’t care, once Christmas was over but she didn’t make it that long.

It was two days after Christmas day, middle of the night when police officers pulled up to Candice’s house opposite mine and dragged her father out, my curiosity got the best of me but Candice was nowhere around to ask, no one in the neighborhood knew why either. A couple of days later we found out that her father was sentenced to death by lethal injection for murdering his daughter. Apparently he hit her and she fell. She died of induced trauma to the head.

But that wasn’t all, a little birdie told us (and by little birdie, I mean Mrs. Whittaker the neighborhood gossip) that Candice’s father had been sexually assaulting her over the years. He did unspeakable things to the poor child that even a grownups would not want to hear about. Her body was found in dumpster about two blocks away. Sweet, precious Candice, she deserved better.

We moved the very next day.

The wallet itself was old, patchy and rugged. I found it a couple of years ago when my father and I had just moved to Wisconsin…I think I was fourteen back then, I can’t remember exactly. we had just moved from San Francisco, where we hadn’t lived for up to three months. It was the first time in years we had moved into a house, not an apartment but a real house, with a yard and stuff. I thought we were going to stay there for a while so after unpacking my things I opened the box of things my mother had left when she ran away.

After my mom left, my dad packed all her things into box and took it with us whenever we moved. Back then I didn’t understand why he kept her things but as I grew older I realized he was still in love with her and hoped she would come back.

I took our her pale pink lipstick first and smiled, ‘vintage’ I thought. This was the first real connection I had to my mother. Ever.

I may have hated her, but I was still curious.

 Next it was her jewelry box. ‘She had good taste’,  I thought as I pulled out a silver gypsy-fashioned necklace. I stared at it a while before putting it on. I continued rummaging through her things. I looked at her picture albums and couldn’t resist smiling at the resemblance.

It was just a smile, nothing else. A smile with no underlying meaning. So don’t go thinking I missed her or wondered what it would be like if she stayed. I just smiled, doesn’t mean I cared or anything.

 Continuing, I was trying on her old school, hippie t-shirts when I heard my dad come in. “Dinner’s on the table.” I yelled. It was Christmas eve and as usual we had no ornaments hanging around the house or Christmas tree in the living room. It was just a normal day in our lives.

He didn’t answer me or act like he heard me but I heard him pulling out a seat in the kitchen and assumed he was settling down to eat.

I didn’t hear him again till I took off the jeans I had on to try one on my mother’s leopard print leggings. At that instant, my door swung open. “What are you doing?” he bellowed.

“Dad?” I yelled as I stretched to used the blanket on my bed to cover my panty clad legs.

He marched towards me without preamble. He went first for gypsy fashioned necklace and yanked it off, then he dragged the leggings from me and threw them in the box. Like a crazed man, he searched for her things around my room and put them back into the box. “Take off that shirt” he said not caring that I was about to cry.

“She was my mother, you know?” I yelled at him

Then he slapped me, his eyes full off rage “Take it off, or I swear to God, I will tear it off you.”

I knew my dad too well to know that that was more of a promise than a threat.  I took off the shirt and gave it to him. He shoved me onto the nearby table before pushing me onto the bed. I was wondering when my Christmas beating would come, what took him so long? Alas, it was the night before Christmas.

 He took with everything else she owned leaving me lying there in my underwear. I crawled into my bed. And cried myself to sleep, this had become my Christmas eve routine. The next morning, while I was cleaning my room, I found the wallet under my bed, he must have missed it, a sign that led me to know it was mine to keep.

These are my memories of Christmas, not exactly jolly, eh? Not much can be said. We live and we learn. What I’ve learnt is that in my next life, I’m choosing the family I’ll be born into. No joke. One lifetime of hardship was enough.

Seriously though, it hasn’t been easy but I can’t wait till my 18^th birthday when (unfortunately borrowing a page from my mother’s book) I walk out of the door of the house we’ll be staying in then and never look back (at least l won’t leaving any kids behind).

For me, Christmas is a season of tears, anger, frustration, abandonment and death. I want my own chance to reinvent Christmas, just the way I want it.