Authors: Brenda Ortega
We stand there, with me studying the fruit bowl painting on the wall and Jazzy studying me up and down like I truly am an alien life form. I feel like a towering idiot with nothing to say, but little kids aren’t my thing. The lady in charge returns just in time.
“Oh, I see you’ve met Jazzy, our resident greeter. Please, Dani, make yourself at home. Have a seat, take off your backpack. My name is Mrs. Jenkins. I have a couple things to do upstairs and I’ll be right back to get you started.”
Am I still wearing my backpack? I sit on a dining chair and slide my backpack to my feet. I unzip my bag, digging around inside for no other reason than to avoid the little girl. I wish her mom would call her away, but she’s not paying attention.
My fingers grab hold of some lip balm. I can kill ten seconds with that. Maybe Mrs. Jenkins will be back by the time I’m done. I pull it out and Jasmine’s face lights up.
“Ooh, what is it?”
The lip balm’s plastic container is shaped like a Coke bottle. It says Coca-Cola on the side, but inside it’s just a normal tube of lip stuff. The cool part is it tastes like Coke. Grandma bought it for me.
I hold it up so the little girl can see.
“Do you drink it?” she says. Then before I can answer, she adds, “I want some!”
“No, you don’t drink it,” I say, pulling the Coke bottle top off and showing her the lip balm. I smear some on my lips and smack them together. “See? It’s to make your lips soft. Plus,” and I give them a lick, “it tastes like pop!”
She jumps up and down, clapping her hands together. “Oooohhh! I like it! I want some! Please, can I? Please?”
Her mother says, “Jazzy, settle down and leave that girl alone!”
The little girl pays no attention to her mother. She starts doing a little dance, swinging her hips and arms from side to side: “I want summa that. I want summa that. Gimme some, please! Plea-plea-plea-plea-pleeeeeease!”
Jazzy doesn’t see her mother coming, but I do. The woman’s eyes are blazing.
I try to intervene. “It’s OK, she can use it,” I say, but she doesn’t respond.
She yanks Jazzy’s arm so hard her head snaps. “Owww!” the girl cries. Then the mother lifts her up by one arm and smacks her on the bare skin between the top of her pants and the bottom of her sweatshirt. Jazzy yelps even more.
My whole body clenches. As if I’m being hit.
“You stop that begging right now, you hear me? Get over here with me!”
She pulls Jazzy across the living room floor by her arm, the little girl screaming the whole way, one minute kicking, the next dragging her feet.
I’m a wound spring with no room to uncoil. I clench the lip balm in my fist. I try to swallow, but my spit gets stuck in my throat.
Normally if I see a mom yelling and hitting her kid, it’s at the mall, or the park, or somewhere big I can escape. Here I look at the fruit painting, I snap the top on my lip balm, I put it back in my bag, but I can’t get away from Jazzy’s wailing.
Thank God Mrs. Jenkins rushes downstairs. Jazzy’s sitting on the couch next to her mom, full-throttle bawling, mouth open wide, drool hanging across her lips. Her mother – still holding the girl’s arm – stares at the TV.
“My goodness, Jazzy, what’s the matter?” says Mrs. Jenkins. She leans down next to the couch and pats the girl’s hand.
At first, Jazzy cries louder, so Mrs. Jenkins hugs her. “Shhhhh. It’s OK.”
The little girl’s arms squeezes around her neck so that Mrs. Jenkins’ long hair pulls tight like a winter cap over her head and then flows down her back in bumpy waves. Jazzy’s crying pauses. She sucks in two rapid breaths and whimpers quietly. Mrs. Jenkins pulls back from the hug but holds Jazzy’s hands.
The mother looks over and shakes her head. “I don’t know what to do with this child. She don’t listen to nothing but shouts.”
Somehow, miraculously, Mrs. Jenkins is patient. “That happens sometimes. We get used to certain ways of talking and listening. Why don’t we put that on your family’s goal sheet – improving communication? So you don’t yell and Jazzy listens.”
“Mmmm hmmm,” the mother agrees.
Mrs. Jenkins turns to me. “You ready?”
Is she kidding? I nod, and she kisses Jazzy. I shove my backpack into a corner of the dining room and follow her upstairs.
“I’ll give you the grand tour,” she says.
She shows me all five bedrooms, including in the attic, the biggest room with the most beds for large families. She explains how only moms and kids can stay at the shelter up to one year.
“You’d be amazed how many people are this close to being homeless,” she says, holding her finger and thumb so they almost pinch. “All it takes is a bad illness with no health insurance, a lost job, a few too many unexpected bills, and people end up in their cars. Or they bounce around from friend to friend. That’s where we come in. We’re not just about providing a place to stay for a while. We’re trying to launch people into new lives where they can make it on their own.”
She leads me back toward the stairs, pointing out the one upstairs bathroom with a shower that everyone has to share. “That can cause some friction, just like in any household,” she says.
It must be crazy in the mornings, but now it’s quiet. Mrs. Jenkins says people work, go to job training or look for a job during the day. Older kids go to school. For younger children, New Horizons runs a daycare and preschool in a building next door.
“Everyone will be getting home soon, so you can meet some more folks,” Mrs. Jenkins says as we head back through the living room, past Jazzy and her mom. “Then it’ll be time for someone to get dinner ready. We rotate chores around.”
We cut through the kitchen and step out a back door into cold air. We trot a short distance from the house to a brick building, obviously newer and taking up what used to be the back yard. It’s shaped like an L, going back to the outer edge of the property and then cutting right, ending behind the preschool next door.
Mrs. Jenkins swings the door open but stops before going in. She points at a separate entrance off the driveway. A sudden winter breeze makes her grimace. “That’s our multi-purpose room for group gatherings and holiday dinners for anyone in need,” she says. “I hope you can help us with our Christmas Eve dinner next week.”
We hop through the doorway and try to shake off the cold. “So, what do you think?” she says.
“It’s a nice place.”
“No, I mean about Christmas Eve. We’re having a community meal and visit from Santa. We sure could use the help. It’s a lot of work.”
I can’t believe she’s expecting an answer. “Maybe,” I say.
“It runs from one to five. How about you come for the last two hours?”
“I guess so.”
“That’s great! You’ll love it. It’s a heartwarming thing, working here. And eventually I’d like to get you helping out in the preschool. But for today, Mrs. Czarnecki needs you to stock shelves in the food pantry.”
“Oh.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No. Can I go get my stuff in the house?”
“Sure,” she says. “I’ll meet you behind the counter in the pantry.”
I blink away tears, rushing back toward the house and slipping inside the kitchen door. I already dread Christmas, divided between Mom and Dad. For the first time in my life, all I want is for it to be over. Now I’ll be working Christmas Eve. I don’t feel heart-warmed, just empty.
And what is this? Jazzy is on her knees in the corner of the dining room, her face and arm inside my open backpack. “Can I have my bag?” I say.
She springs to her feet like a Jack-in-the-box popping out. Some of my school papers are on the floor. I kneel to scoop them up and notice her fist squeezing around the plastic top of a miniature Coke bottle.
I look in her wide eyes – really intense, to send a telepathic message like I do with Bobby when Mom’s nearby.
Give it back
.
She jams her hand in her pocket.
I stand, and her head tilts as I rise. We don’t lose eye contact until I glance over her head, at her Mom watching
Judge Judy
.
I won’t ask for the lip balm out loud. She can have it. I don’t ever, in a kazillion years, want her mother to find out what she’s done, even though it wouldn’t be a big deal if she’d just give it back. I can’t risk making that mom go all ballistic again.
I leave without another word, telepathic or otherwise.
now
this is Christmas
Now that my parents aren’t living together, they fight endlessly about one thing: the visitation schedule.
I’ll hear them arguing on the phone. Then later I’ll ask an innocent question, such as “What time is dinner?” and Mom will say something like “Your father has decided at the last minute he absolutely must see you kids tonight. To hell with my plans. Ask him what time you’ll eat.” Or we’ll be at Dad’s and he’ll say, “As usual, your mother cannot budge her schedule one inch to accommodate anyone else. So we have to leave early to take you back.”
The holidays have only made things worse.
Because we spent Thanksgiving with Dad and Grandma, Mom gets Christmas Day, and it’s killing Dad. Me too. I used to love this time of year, but that was for all the Christmas traditions we did the same every year. All of us together.
Christmas Eve we used to order pizza and eat it picnic-style on a blanket next to the lit-up tree. We’d finally be allowed to bring out the gifts we’d bought each other. Then we’d dress for the late-night, candle-lit church service. And even though we arrived home close to midnight from church, Mike and Bobby and me slept together in Mike’s bedroom with three alarm clocks set to 5:30 a.m. Every Christmas morning, we marched into Mom and Dad’s bedroom and woke them by pounding pots and pans with spoons.
“Go away!” Dad always yelled. “It’s the only day of the year I get to sleep in!”
Of course, we never let him. We banged and shouted and jumped on them in the bed until they got up. Then we sat impatiently on the hallway floor, waiting for Mom and Dad to dress, because we weren’t allowed downstairs until they got in position with cameras. When they finally went down ahead of us, they’d knock around doing nothing for several minutes, until we yelled, “Are you ready? Can we come yet?” And Mom would shout, “It looks like Santa forgot us! Might as well go back to bed!”
Always the same. Year after year, the pictures of us three – in our pajamas, tumbling downstairs – showed pure delight.
It wasn’t just the presents I loved. It was the sweetness of it, even after I stopped believing in Santa Claus: the glittering lights against the snow, singing our favorite carols over and over again, eating tons of ham and cheesy potatoes, chocolates and cookies and cakes. I loved being cocooned with my family inside our house – Grandma included – with nothing going on in the world outside, no cars on the roads, no stores open, because we didn’t need to go anywhere or buy anything. We had everything right there.
Not anymore. I keep telling myself to get over the past, move on, it’s over, but then I daydream about it while watching TV, or trying to write my apology to Creeper, or walking Barney in the woods.
Or like now, riding in the car with all of us looking out the windows, not saying anything to each other. On our way to a pretend Christmas morning at Grandma’s, even though it’s Christmas Eve.
The only sound is Mom’s car engine speeding up and slowing down, her turn signal blinking, the windshield wipers thumping out and back. A blizzard of giant, heavy snowflakes drops like a curtain through a windless gray sky. The snow is starting to stick instead of melt, at least on the grass and bushes and house roofs.
I used to get on my knees and pray for snow on Christmas Eve. Now the snow feels heavy, blanketing all the colorful outdoor lights in a white gauze. Passing those holiday scenes, one house after another, makes my mind wander where I don’t want it to go, back to the past again, to when things were good.
I force my thoughts in another direction by picking a topic to dwell on. Types of zoo animals. My lines from the play. If my mind finds a way back to Christmas, I change the topic to anything that will keep my mind busy – the book I read in bed last night.
Mom stays in the car when we arrive at Grandma’s apartment and get out. Dad snaps our pictures as we drag through the front door juggling the gifts we brought.
“No presents till after breakfast!” he shouts in a fake cheery voice, like he expects us to beg, “Aw, Dad, can’t we open just one before we eat?”
Instead, I look at Mike and Bobby as we all three force our lips into pathetic smiles. It looks like someone pointed a gun and told us to grin or die.
I keep seeing those same smiles, when Dad tries to make a joke or say “Best Christmas we ever had!” Only sometimes Mike forgets, and I look at him with my fake grin and see his eyebrows pushed together instead.
At breakfast, Dad tries to get us talking so the only sound won’t be our forks scraping plates. He asks us questions about school and our friends, but he mostly receives one-word answers, so he gives up and gets Mike talking football and which teams will make the Superbowl. My mind wanders, and I don’t stop it or try to change direction. I let it go where it wants to go…
… Back to the previous Christmas Eve, the night we got Barney… I don’t want to think about it, but the memory is too strong to shoo away with thoughts of zoo animals, or books or the play.
… Dad set the tiny puppy’s big paws on the foyer floor, and I leaned down and opened my arms. It felt like we already knew each other. Barney put his front feet on my thighs and sprang up to lick my nose. I wrapped his wiggly body in a hug. His tail swished back and forth just a few inches from my face, he was so small then.
Mom watched from a distance. I know, I looked at her, and her eyes burned so red they almost crackled. I ran to Dad, holding Barney…
Grandma interrupts my thoughts. “Dani, are you OK?” My fork hangs in mid-air.
“Fine.” I push scrambled eggs around my plate. I put a cold piece in my mouth.
… Mom didn’t need to speak. She was furious, with both of us. She’d made it clear for months – no way in a million years were we getting a dog. I’d given up on convincing her and focused my campaign on Dad.