Like Christmas

Note: contains sexual and physical violence.

LIKE CHRISTMAS

The eclipse came and so did my relatives, in a fashion similar to the Fourth of July or Easter. Casseroles, potatoes, pie. Tin foil. It was not like Christmas. I will explain why.

My cousin, Melony, came last, and put a greasy bag of gas station JoJos into my hands. Said curtly, “Muffins burnt up.” Shot a withering glance at her new husband, who refused to meet it.

“I’ve been craving these anyway. We should get together more often,” I said.

“Of course.”

This was the stilted talk of those second-tier holidays. No one pretended to hide their distaste of the occasion. Everyone was drunk on arrival. DOA. There was no attempt at merriness—this was obligatory.

I moved about the walls of the house, sticking to the outsides of things. Melony and her new husband stood stiffly away from each other in the backyard. I saw though the big windows that had a view over the lake. She smoothed a hand over her pregnant stomach, and the wedding ring glimmered sparkly-new. Melony’s husband wore the remnants of business casual—bare feet and an unbuttoned starched white shirt. My family was a corporate family—all the men looked like Melony’s husband, because it was a Friday after work. That was why Melony got with him, because he was like the others.

Melony’s husband licked his lips and pressed a beer bottle to them.

I ate a JoJo. Licked the salt and pepper from my lips. I liked the crinkle sounds of the bag—hardened with grease.

My mother was soon upon me and snatched the whole thing away. “Ashley, where did you get that? You know there’s veggies on the table.”

But the table was in the center of everyone and, besides, the only thing we ever ate here was veggies.

Mother softened her judgement and rubbed my back, and I was self-conscious of her feeling my bra straps through my shirt, nested between my shoulder fat, so I twisted away. She signed. “Fresh broccoli. With that ranch you like.”

I didn’t like broccoli and I was ambivalent about ranch; I don’t know how she got those ideas of what I liked into her head. Over Mother’s shoulder I saw old Grandmama coming over on her motorized scooter. I tried to escape into the backyard, where the scooter couldn’t go, and where her old crusty voice couldn’t reach, but Mother held me firm.

Grandmama stopped and peered up at me, her ugly glare highlighting deep wrinkles. She was probably born that way, with such a grimace.

She had dentures, so words didn’t come out quite straight: “Looking more like Melony every day.”

Melony and I had grown to the same height, and we did our hair the same. People thought we were siblings and I never dissuaded the idea. It would be nice to have one, and Melony was cool. But now, Melony’s stomach peered out between her pants and her shirt.

Grandmama kept on with a few other insults, and Mother finally let me go to the backyard after she’d finished her tirade.

My uncles poked at the propane grill, trying to get it to light. Tich tich tich. “You’re sure it’s hooked up?” Tich tich tich. “It’s out of gas.” Tich tich tich. “Well fuck I just bought it yesterday. It’s not out.” Tich tich tich. “It’s just out. I don’t know what to tell you.”

My aunts sat around the firepit watching the crescent shadows on the ground through the leaves in the trees. They sipped wine and stared and didn’t really say much to each other, even though an eclipse was happening.

Like I said, this was not like Christmas, where everyone at least smiled sometimes.

The conversation at the failing grill had moved on. “I don’t see why I can’t just look through my sunglasses.” “They say it’ll blind you.” “I look at the sun all the time, and now it’s even partially covered. What’s the big deal?” “Some lady went to the hospital last eclipse and her eyes were permanently damaged.” “What lady?” “She’s a damn idiot—she looked too long.” “Well what’s the point of my sunglasses, then?” “It’s a marketing scheme.”

But I knew they would wear the special eclipse glasses anyway because my family was what investors called risk adverse. Except for Melony, getting pregnant before marriage. That was why everyone stopped talking to her the way they used to. She was risky and therefore unpredictable, and my family prescribed to the “bad apple” theory, which is also why Grandmama tried so hard to warn me off my ways, and why Mother only had me eat vegetables.

The backyard quieted down, a pattern of the people that followed the animals. My uncles, disgruntled and hungry, thought this was a great time to turn on the music, which I thought ruined the whole moment. The wind blew cold. I took a pair of the special glasses from the back table and crept up to my room.

Through my own window I saw everything. On the gutter above my window was a yellow jacket hive—a dozen bees crawled back in their little hole as the sky darkened and did not come back out.

“Don’t be an idiot,” came Melony’s sharp voice from the yard below. Her husband was squinting up at the sun without glasses. His face was smushed and in pain.

“I’ll do what I like,” he replied.

So then I knew he wouldn’t put the glasses on at all, and would stare at the sun for a long time, just to prove her wrong. My group of uncles, all with their special glasses wonky on their faces, tittered by the grill. It took a long time for complete darkness; when it did come, Melony’s husband finally looked away and sagged, hand rubbing at his eyes. I looked about my dark room—which wasn’t really my room but a guest room because it was Grandmama’s house—and noted the time, and then snuggled up in bed.

I must’ve dozed off in that unnatural light, because when I awoke people were moving about in the hall and setting their belongings down, claiming rooms for the brief weekend. The scent of McDonald’s coated the air—the grill must’ve never worked. Mother would be appalled.

Some commotion was happening downstairs. Sounds of digging through the ice machine and rebukes about going to the doctor. I was too hungry and therefore too tired to care much, and so I quickly fell back asleep.

It was a good deal later that I woke up to true darkness. And the sound of someone else breathing. I looked over. The silhouette of someone stood in the open doorway. I shot up in bed.

The figure—a male—had paused, face pointed toward me. “S-sorry to wake you, babe,” he slurred. “Stepped out to piss.”

That was Melony’s husband.

#

Last Christmas was white. The relatives drove up in fits of concern about parking and chains and with wetness seeping from their shoes and pant legs. Grandmama’s front table had a thick cloth over it that was covered in wrapped gift baskets the uncles had received from their jobs. I saw chocolate covered almonds and short breads and fudge behind cellophane and ribbons, but Mother wouldn’t let me have any of them. Which was dumb because I knew Grandmama would just throw all of them away after we left.

Grandmama’s kitchen, which was full of aunts and giggling gossip, stank of brussels sprouts and dark gravy, and I was not looking forward to the dinner, when everyone would get drunk and joke with each other but not me. People said hello to me when they came in, but no one complimented my new necklace that I had received for a present, as I had hoped. I stood in the empty hall and toyed with it against my chest, wishing Grandmama had at least a cat or a dog to keep me company.

But as I was observing an old portrait in the hall I was quickly found, and by the devil herself. Grandmama’s motor whirred as she came to me, and I imagined her as an animatronic woman, living off of the batteries’ juice and WD40.

Because it was Christmas, her first words were not mean. Instead, she turned to observe the portrait with me, and said, “I love looking at him, as well.”

It was an oil portrait of a man with a musket slung over his shoulder. His hair was the same color and texture as Grandmama’s used to be, and as mine and Melony’s. So, some sort of relative, but I did not know who.

“He was my great grandfather,” Grandmama said. “The first of us to settle in America. He came to Virginia, and his second son, my grandfather, would embark on manifest destiny and ultimately settle us here in Washington.”

I was half-listening, still eyeing the packaged sweets on her entry table, thinking of how I could steal a few without anyone the wiser. Grandmama was prone to history lessons, so I was not much inclined to savor this information.

“You see the musket?” she asked. “He fought for the Confederacy; had owned a vast track of land in the south.”

That did sharpen my attention; no one had ever mentioned slavery in my family’s history. I wanted just to decide that Grandmama was speaking out of her ass.

“When they came for his people in the fields, he killed them all rather than set them free. His eldest son sought to interfere but, in the struggle, he killed him, too.” Her droopy little eyes had not left the painting. “It really was a massacre.”

This information—which I reminded myself may or may not be true—settled like a sliver in my brain.

Grandmama noticed my discomfort. “Oh, don’t act like that. His type is in our blood, Ashley—we are a violent, greedy people. Better to just accept it.”

So I stood there in the hall staring at the painting, thinking horrible thoughts, while snow fell outside. I thought that Grandmama was not doing her part of pretend merriness very well this Christmas.

When we did all sit for dinner, it was with a lot of observance of Melony’s new boyfriend, who she’d brought to meet us for the first time. People seemed to like him—he worked in finance. I secretly liked him, too. I liked the way he brought the fork to his mouth, and the way his arms looked when he gripped his glass of wine.

I ate my fill, even of the side dishes, watching him. People drank. There was merriness, by sheer force of will. Even Grandmama sat pleasantly as an endcap of the dining table, observing and thankfully speaking only when spoken to.

As plates were emptying and rumors of dessert were passed along, Melony said she had something to announce. She gripped the hand of her boyfriend and people raised their brows.

“We’re pregnant,” Melony said. “And we are getting married.”

Everyone stopped; eyes slowly shifted to the boyfriend. My lips thinned, and I stopped looking at the boyfriend and back down to my own plate of withered greens.

I was sad for Melony because I was sure Grandmama would berate her, but I also wasn’t sad. You weren’t supposed to get pregnant before you were married. She should have known better.

I braced myself against Grandmama’s words, and I watched as sinful Melony did too, gripping the boyfriend’s hand harder. “Well,” Grandmama said, “we are all happy for this news.”

And that was all.

The aunts sprung up to get dessert, and I stared about the table, shocked. The uncles spent another moment warily regarding the boyfriend, and then turned back in on themselves and spoke of the usual topics.

Mother left the table. I waited a moment and then followed her out to the back porch, flimsy shoes crunching through the snow drifts. I heard a lighter strike, and then smelled peppery cigarette smoke. I gaped, and she turned as I approached. I didn’t know she smoked.

She scoffed but rubbed at the tired wrinkles on her forehead. “Honestly, Ashley. Cut me a break.”

I stood beside her on the porch railing, overlooking the lake.

“Mom, why didn’t Melony—?”

“Get what she deserves?”

I nodded.

“Honey.” Mother puffed on the cigarette, red sparking ember lighting up the cold white blanket of things. “It’s Christmas, okay?”

Later in the evening, when we exchanged presents, people hugged and thanked Melony for their gifts. And people smiled at her, even though she had done such a thing.

#

I didn’t know what was going to happen with him standing in the doorway like that. But I did have a deep-down thought.

I squinted and saw his features more clearly: a loose cotton shirt and—my eyes darted betrayingly downward—just boxers. I squirmed farther up on the headboard. As he came closer, and I expected him to properly notice me and get out, then I saw the bandana tied over his eyes. In blurry memories I relived the talk downstairs about a hospital, and him looking straight at the eclipse to prove my cousin wrong.

Melony’s husband was on the bed now, weight pressing fully into the mattress. Then he was beside me, easing his head back onto the pillow. He grunted a sigh: a sour thing that smelled like the core of men. My mouth was open in silent surprise, because I could feel a man so close beside me—the weight of him in my bed, and his body heat even through the covers. I didn’t look at him, terrified to find the bandana untied and his whole gaze upon me.

Muttering and fumbling, he peeled back the covers, and nestled in with the hair on his arms brushing my own. Grandmama called me a chimp once for my arm hair. My breath was coming fast and I feared he would hear it and get confused, but he must’ve been too drunk still.

He put his arm around me and pulled me too him, and I was fully nestled beneath his body and I felt on fire.

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” he murmured. I worried he was seeking an answer I couldn’t give him, but it soon became clear he was not. He rubbed my belly, then contorted and pulled up my shirt and kissed my bare skin with his lips. They were slightly wet and chapped. I gasped as quietly as I could, fisting my shirt in my hands and feeling scared, scared, scared.

He rubbed my belly more. Melony was in her third trimester. And he found no difference, thinking he was soothing his baby. This was only fat. I was only fat. But he kissed my stomach again like he loved it so so much, more than anyone had loved anything. More, I almost said aloud. Love me. More.

He snaked back up my body and then his face was an inch from mine, and we were staring at each other. Me to the bandana. He would kiss me now. I knew it was coming. And then he would know, because I wouldn’t kiss anything like Melony, even though everyone said we had the same mouth.

But he didn’t kiss me then. He took his underwear off. He took mine off. Then he found my body willing. I stared up out the window to the moon which had earlier eclipsed the sun; I the swollen sun and him the blind moon. I was sure I was breathing too heavily, and I pressed a palm to my mouth to stop my noise.

When it ended, I was shaking and my head was fluttery. So, I wasn’t prepared when he kissed me then. Hard, with tongue. I balked, and he paused, terribly sudden and wholly. Cocked his head at me. We stared at each other again but not really, listening to each other breathe. Slowly, confusedly, he lowered himself back onto his side of the bed and was soon asleep.

I levered myself up carefully. Things leaked out of me onto the mattress. I redressed and fled downstairs, intent on claiming a couch, half-baked plans of playing dumb forming in my head. I stopped in the kitchen on the way to the living room, amid the lingering smell of McDonald’s. Something dripped down my thigh, sticky. I went to the trash and plunged my hand down through the wet opened condiment packets, half-eaten nuggets, and used tissues with boogers gooey in the creases of my fingers. At the bottom of the trash, I snagged the paper bag.

I crammed JoJo after JoJo into my mouth, thick potato wedges sealing my teeth together like caulk. Pepper flecks in my throat made me cough. I took the bag with me to the squishiest couch I could find, and I fell asleep with my hand inside it and a smile on my mouth.

#

So here is why the eclipse was not like Christmas: because I told Melony very early the next morning that her husband loved me just as her, and she frowned weirdly and asked why, and I told her how he had loved me, and how I would have his baby, too. And instead of accepting this gift and pretending, she began to scream. And instead of hugging me and thanking me, she took the poker the uncles were going to use for the meat on the grill and put it through my belly button.

And instead of me keeping the gift Melony’s husband had given me, I bled it all out of my stomach until I had nothing. And I wondered about DOAs when one of my uncles finally found me and called the ambulance. The paramedics did not wear Santa hats. It was a second-tier holiday, and it was not like Christmas.

#