Nativity
By Darren DeFrain
January feels like March did not so far back. The whole world keeps going backward-ass inside-out, where it’s cold when it used to be warm and other ways round; perennial mushy-mush, I’d call it. Warm enough now I could sit out here in my drawers on a night like this if some uppity neighbor wouldn’t fetch the cops on me again. One thing around here isn’t changing, though: even though she’s passed, Mom’s still making me bring down those Christmas lights well before Valentine’s. It’s as if she always thought the holiday police might kick down the door if the hearts and cupids and shit didn’t get slapped up already.
The ‘thunking’ sound of those Christmas lights coming on makes me jump. Jimmy will stick his head out any minute to catch me smoking. To be honest, you being here makes me a bit jumpy as well. In my Thorazine drowse, I can’t tell if you’re reading this from my brain or if you’re a mess from my neurons sending out signals like some broadcast where the DJ feels each radio come on. Either way it’d be real nice if you could maybe back the fuck off until I finish my smoke. No? Reader-thinker-thunker-thought. I thought not. Go on then and be another nail in the coffin of my diagnosis.
After this year somebody’s going to have to call in professional light stringers to come break their necks Christmassing and unChristmassing this monstrosity. Too much house to be a home I always said. When they do I’d like to come watch it happen. But we’re unwelcome now that mom’s gone. Jimmy and I were never too welcome in this neighborhood to begin with, but now there’s only one somebody with her name on the mortgage and she means to have the place sold by March. By “somebody” you know I mean my half-sister, Fatricia, mom’s precious gunt-baby; sole owner of Bat Shit Manor. And sole inheritor of mom’s estate. All I know is if we want to get paid the rest of what’s coming and not die getting it, Jimmy and I have to get to that Nativity out front knocked down before the cold weather comes back. The cold always comes back, no matter how long the warmth lingers. And then we still have to finish packing all the other shit; mom’s and Fatricia’s. And packing our shit. And getting moved out to who knows where. If you have any ideas don’t be such a useless lump.
Even before she started paying us for the odd job here and there, I honestly never minded bringing out the 10,000,000 pieces of Christmas mom needed set up inside each year here and at her old house: the army of mechanical Santas and lady Santas; snowy hedgehog families made from real pinecones; entire countries of miniature ceramic villages; all manner of dangly elf shit. So long as nothing got broken, it felt like doing something important and sort of pulled us all together for a little while each year no matter how bad things got. It’s like none of us can get our shit straightened enough to be the family we all nonetheless pine for this time of year. Mom piling the holiday decor up to our eyebrows made it seem we might get pretty close.
That outside Nativity, though, is a frozen-ass bitch—screwed in and ice-melted to the ground even on warm nights like this. And yet when I’m reminded this is the last year I’ll have to worry about tackling that Nativity, it only makes me want to take this hot cherry and burn it straight through my eyeball into whatever part of my gushy brain convinced me moving us into this ridiculous house meant my life swung up. What’s gotten better these last couple of years? I’m stuck tighter to my meds with no prospects, no home, and no experience save being mom and Fatricia’s indentured servant; mom’s dead; and Fatricia’s packed on so much lard it looks like she ate Santa and most of his reindeer. How are we supposed to live on one and half disability checks? Where?
Jimmy sticks his head out. “How cold it got to be out here, Baby Girl?”
“Colder than a witch’s tit,” only saying it out loud opens a pit in my stomach. “Turn those fucking lights off. I’m trying to find my center.”
“You gonna find yourself pneumonia’d again, standing out here smoking,” he says. “It ain’t that warm you ding-dong.”
“Fuck you, Jimmy! You’re the ding-dong! I’ll be done when I’m done!” Go on and grumble your nasty grumbles and sloosh on closed that door. “Ding-dong!” Holy hell, he remembered to thunk the lights off again! It’s just us again, you and me, in this delicious gloaming. It’s forever gloaming here, once the sun drops over what’s left of the pasture and the far ridge, see over there, above that smoldering, whooshing interstate. I believe it’s what’s meant by “light pollution,” these endless fancy suburbs, creeping like brushfire through the old farmland and wildwoods along the interstate. The faint light feels like it wants to be enough warmth, though, doesn't it?
When I was real little I would ask my mom how cold it was outside and she’d always say “Colder than a witch’s tit” and we’d fall out laughing. It’s one of those things that when you think about it is kind of funny: witch tits. She’d pile on sometimes, too: “Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra” or “Colder than a witch’s tit dipped in chocolate ice cream.” You had to be there, I suppose, but we’d laugh like hyenas.
The pasture behind this house sometimes has cows wandering around, but they haven’t been seen in a while. I liked standing out back, even in the cold, taking the little rush off the smoke and staring out at a dimly lit and empty field. Time slows until I almost feel I’m floating in forever. Sometimes there’s an owl or a fox or some critter you’re not meant to see. If I turn to the left or right there’s those new, big mansion-houses full of rich folks for blocks, but you’d never know it in the evening. Just like Bat Shit Manor, the whole neighborhood is full of the dead. In spring weather we’ll get the occasional jogger out front, some chippy that caught herself a lawyer or doctor, but in the evenings and at night: cool silence save for that interstate traffic over the distant ridge, like a faraway orchestra forever tuning up. I can find my center like this.
Inside the house is a different game. Two years on there’s still that new car smell hitting you in the face even though it wasn’t technically new when we all moved in. The walkout basement, where Jimmy and I reside, isn’t even wholly unpacked yet, but one lesser tragedy is that it's mostly mom’s stuff from the old house. I mean look around at all this shit we’ve still got to do. We’ll have to unpack the packed stuff now anyway, just to see what goes and to where— probably most of it going to the Goodwill who will probably throw it all away anyhow. Mom had a poor person’s attitude about stuff -- as in you don’t throw anything out unless “it’s dipped in shit, set on fire and reminds you of an old husband” -- but she had the means of a rich person so she kept it all organized and neatly stored in carefully labeled plastic bins of many colors thanks to the paid labor of her eldest daughter and partner. The red ones were mostly where the Christmas shit lived, but you had to eyeball the hues in case they might hold Fatty’s Beanie Baby collection or some small fortune in Penney’s sweaters not exactly the style 40 years ago either. Everything left in this house is sentimental to Fatty, even the dust motes I’d guess.
Jimmy’s got to have that fighting show playing on TV just to stupidly flip through the deep red plastic tub where a squad of robot Santas from upstairs will live, maybe for the rest of their lives. “This the one for the short Santas in the entryway or the midgety ones up on the mantle?” If he breaks one of those he knows I will totally lose my shit and cancel his ass.
“Well what the hell does the lid say?” I want to tell him also not to say things like “midgety,” but what good would it do now? What good has it ever done him? Class isn’t in the cards for some. Besides, I don’t exactly have to worry about him embarrassing mom and Fatty in front of the neighbors anymore.
He gets that look: “I don’t KNOW! Someone put all the lids all over the place so I got to be an ESP genius to know what goes where!” It’s just like him to get frustrated over something like lids. I didn’t know him before the car wreck that put him on disability, but I’ll bet he’d get overwhelmed by this shit if his brains weren’t smashed. Wouldn’t you?
“Just calm the fuck down, Jimmy.” I’m not building to a fight so much as not caring. “It doesn't matter anyhow. You think we’re going to be here unpacking all this shit next year? This is Patty’s trouble now. If they fit they fit and they get whatever lid’s at hand.” I say. “Just you better not break anything!” Last year he broke a tiny hedgehog figurine and I had to hear it from the hedgehog and mom for days. Can you imagine mom’s perpetual disappointment and that teeny, shrill little hedgehog voice in your head all day long? You can’t.
“I know! Jesus! This is just the stuffing for the stuff! There’s not even any midget Santas down here! You think I don’t know?” Throwing that angry handful of packing fluff back into the tub like he does calms him right the fuck down. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do that, even if it meant his drain bamage, like he calls it? He sighs his calm into being. “Well then, we going to get on that Nativity?”
That motherfucking Nativity. “Yeah, let’s get it done. I’m telling you right now, though, I’m having a smoke while we’re working outside and I don’t want to hear no ‘ding-dong’ outta you.”
Upstairs, amongst the open maws of so many bins I can’t hardly step foot, Fatty has turned on every damned one of the Santas and lady Santas and elves that do stuff. You hear that weird noise, each of them under whatever “ho ho ho” or “have you been a good little girl?” voice, that together sounds like airplanes landing in my skull? They’ve all got their limits: some move back and forth, like those there on the mantle swinging their candles left and right as if they’re working out. Others bend at the waist or roll their heads around so the little o’s of their mouth look more like singers, I guess. When you first see them you think, “Wow. That’s a lot of Santas! And wow, they all move around!” But after a spell of just staring at them don’t you think they’re not really moving so much as maybe convulsing? Like Monarchs trying to bust out of their cocoons. Back and forth. Up and down. Clickety circles as endless as death.
“Are you leaving?” If Fatty sounds panicky it’s because she is. She freaks out if we go to the damned Hyvee any more.
“We’re knocking down the Nativity.” There’s that little ‘oh’ with her lips too, like she’s wanted to say something back to me. Like maybe she doesn’t want the Nativity to come down yet, but she’s the one who put the house on the market out from under us. She’s more landlord than sister now. “Before it turns cold again or rains. What are you doing up here putting all these things through their paces?”
“When they start caroling it’s like Mom is just in the other room.” This brings a snivel. It’s why Jimmy and I have been trying to keep to the downstairs since the funeral. I know people who have been married for 30 years who didn’t mope half so much when their spouse died. Some never get off the tit, even after that tit’s gone to dust.
“Well…,” but that’s enough for her to understand I mean that mom’s in the next room, tucked into a neat little box on the side table beside the urns—one big one and two small—Fatty picked out and paid for (she can’t not mention that) at the funeral home. I don’t think either of us is too keen on spooning out her ashes. Jimmy can be made to do it. I’m not even sure I want them, but when your sister pays for and then offers you your mom’s ashes you take them and seem like you’ve got a plan in mind for what to do with them so I said “sure” when we were standing there with the dapper funeral man, like I somehow needed to worry about impressing him. Should I have said, “No thank you, mister” and let Fatty have her, because what happens when I die? Is Jimmy going to want my pile of ash plus more? Do “good families” keep piling up containers of their dead? Do they have the money to sprinkle everyone somewhere nice like Hawaii? If I was Hawaiian I’d say fuck no. Don’t go raining down your dead on us. Scatter them in your own fields and yards and alleys like the poor and poor of spirit do. If I could sprinkle myself anywhere I’d just as soon be out back in that pasture for my ever after.
“Take down that mistletoe on your way out.” Now that’s a little bossy. For all her sentimentality, she can’t never let the good stuff linger. Betsy’s new husband Jeff, with his beef jerky breath and moustache booger crumbs, tried to get us to smooch him under the mistletoe after the funeral. Everybody laughed at that because we all know Jeff’s a total pervert, even Betsy. At least I can still jump up to snatch it down, though the scotch tape holds on and droops like a dog tongue. Straight into the trash with something at least.
God, we got bins blocking the door now? “What the fuck is this?” What it is is the dead body of the ceramic Mrs. Santa that lived on the kitchen shelf sitting right on top. Sure, it retained its fake beard, but no motherfucking head. This Mrs. Santa had a fake beard, you see, and was trying to be funny, but now she’s just a headless beard. “What the fuck, Patricia?”
“I put that bin by the door so we can throw away any of the Christmas things that are broken or not worth keeping…”
“But how did this happen? How could you let this happen?!?”
“Oh, you shouldn’t be so hard on your sister,” says headless Mrs. Santa who I could have guessed would take Fatty’s side. “She’s fatter and dumber than most anyone else.” Can you believe this shit?
“It was an accident, Judith,” says Jimmy the man-splainer. Fatty probably did it on purpose. “That’s why it’s in the bin.”
“Schmergens,” Mrs. Santa is going to be like this. “Ask her about the 1776 World Series. Ask her to do naked sit-ups for Jeff.”
Now watch Fatty get up and come hug on me in that dumb little sweater with the pictures of little rubber ducks all over. I knew it. She’s got herself a big paying job and now mom’s money and this is what she wears? She hasn’t showered in a day, as you can tell. This familiar smell coming off her takes me back to when she was a little kid and I was fixing to leave her and mom for probably the last time because I sure knew fucking better than anyone back then. If I was mom, I wouldn’t have been too sad to see me go either. “Okay, Patricia. Ok.” Fatty didn’t like to take baths too much in those days either, as I recall.
I’m a decade and a day older than my sister, so she would’ve been 5 or 6 in my recollections. I left home at 16, so in this memory Fatty must be clinging to 5 as she’s hugging me while I’m screaming with mom. I’m sure it would have been something about Kenny, my 32-year-old boyfriend at the time who ended up in jail just like mom always said he would. Fine. Like everyone always said he would. I dunno, did you only date winners?
Going on disability wasn’t an option at 16. So far as I knew at that time the world had the fucking problem, not me. I needed someone with a place to park my rump. Even if I could have applied for benefits then, Mom wouldn’t have allowed it. We pretended for years it was my hormones. Then for years after that it was just simple Bipolar. I pretended I only heard voices and pretended sometimes I didn’t hear anything, even when the doctor’s broken pencil lead screamed racist jokes at me from across the room. “A white dude, an Asian dude, and a black dude all go to get their dicks tattooed…” I pretended at school; at the grocery store; even with my fucking doctors. I pretended until I almost believed I could weave silence from a thousand endless conversations and cover myself in it and be fine. And maybe Mom was right. The pretending made it almost possible to walk in the world and hold a job where I could at least get away from Kenny.
“You shouldn’t have yelled at your mom,” Mrs. Santa’s grating little chipmunk voice is already daggers. Ignore her. She doesn’t know what life was like with mom. I don’t even know what that life was like, it was so long ago. Can anyone not named Mrs. Santa say they remember their emotions and feelings at 16? Anyone who says they could is a liar or must be some kind of…
“Wizard?” Mrs. Santa that’s unhelpful-like. “Lawnmower?”
“No... shut up. Must be some kind of…” I hate when I can’t remember. “Jimmy, what’s the guy’s name in the movie? He reads all the phone books and knows all the names. Short guy.”
“Tom Cruise?”
“No!” Smack on the arm for dumb. “The shorter one. He’s like a person in real life. He’s the name of the movie for Chrissakes.”
“Brain Man?” Jimmy says without even wondering why I’d need to know. This is why I love Jimmy sometimes. He knows there’s a problem but he accepts it with grace. He’s sometimes helpful.
“Brain Man! That’s the one.” A liar or some kind of Brain Man. That would have bugged me all night.
Jimmy’s munching down on that Slovakian armpit loaf from Aunt Betsy. “I gotta get something to drink before we go out there,” he’s smacking his lips like a monkey. “This is salty as hell.”
“It’s because she has to sit with that dough under her arms for four days, you ingrate!” We can all laugh as though we’re getting along. As if Fatty’s my sister again. Betsy doesn't really call it armpit loaf. But damn. She ought to.
Jimmy can go on outside to open the garage. Does the air feel colder out front? So even though I shut the door, Mrs. Santa’s going to carry on through the mail slot? “Ask her when the ice cream will be made. Ask if there’s fresh frumunda cheese in the ice cream. Ask her how she’s feeling. She’s your sister.” Fucking shut up.
You can hear the street is as quiet as the backyard. Here and there a shadow glides behind a window, but these neighborhoods are like well-lit, immaculate ghost towns after dark.
You can see a half a dozen nativities down this street, but do you think any are the size or quality of mom’s. These are church-sized figures made out of some kind of Italian ceramic. There’s a name for it.
“Ooh, is it a plate of spaghetti?”
“No,” maybe it isn’t ceramic. It’s not some cheap plastic because you can see the real paint peeling off Joseph’s back. “Fiberglass? Isn’t that the boat stuff?”
“Huh?”
“Is fiberglass what boats are made out of?” I can tell Jimmy just wants to be done with this part of things, even though he’s been nothing but sad about the coming move. We’ll never live so nice as this again, Judith.
“How the hell should I know? What do I know about boats you don’t?”
“He’s the reason for the freezin’...”
Reason? “RESIN! They’re made of resin, Jimmy! Italian fucking resin.”
“What’s Italian fucking resin?”
When we stare at each other like a couple of space aliens I always feel like I’m either going to bust out laughing or bust Jimmy upside his head. “I don’t know. Get on the manger stakes, will you?”
Mom made us put the manger up and secure everything in it except free-floating Jesus with foot-long stakes because she just knew someone was going to steal her Nativity. Every year I’d ask mom, “You want me to drive a stake through baby Jesus? He’d better get used to it anyhow.” Mom called me blasphemer and meant it, but sometimes a joke just won’t be stopped. “You’re going to ruin our Christmas tradition,” I’d say back. Look at how when we move between the lights it makes those shadows on Mary’s face. Makes it look real, doesn’t it? Oh this fucking stake!
All the inside Christmas stuff; the Santas, and the Mrs. Santas, and the pigs in mufflers ice skating, that was all for mom and then for us through her. This Nativity, though, it's for the world to see mom had money now and was churchy and fit in this too-fancy neighborhood. “You’re really pulling up stakes now, Jimmy.”
“That supposed to be funny?”
No, I don’t think he gets it either. I’m trying not to think about the future too much, even though that’s never served me well. Hasn’t served Jimmy too well. As I kneel down here in the cold dirt to work on a Wise Man’s feet, I see again how beautiful the Nativity is in the right light. How pretty the little baby looks—like girl-pretty with lipstick and the hint of curly hair.
We have this dance every year about whether we want to leave the light until last because it's easier to see and they put off a little heat, or if it will be easier not to have to keep tripping over the cords. The night feels warm and soft like Jimmy’s shirt. Can you feel what I feel? Can you feel the warm softness coming through the back of Jimmy’s flannel shirt? What do you think Jimmy would do if I tried to kiss him out here, before the bright lights of the Nativity? We’ve had our moments over the years, but they’re so much fewer now I’m always afraid to spend one.
Jimmy pulls away anyhow, picking up a wiseman he holds out like a baby needing a new diaper. “Kinda makes you realize the meaning of Christmas, don’t it?”
“How so?” I say, this last goddamned stake for cow is frozen to the goddamned ground. Goddammit!
“The meaning of family,” Jimmy says, which enrages me.
I fly up and smack him on the arm, forgetting he’s hovering the wiseman above Mary and the cow: “It’s the baby Jesus’ birth date, you fucking ding-dong!” And sure enough, it makes him swing the wiseman down enough that crack! Off flies Mary’s heavenly finger and whap! In the same motion there goes one of cow’s ears. “Jesus, fuck!”
“Moo!” says the fucking cow. At least it isn’t saying anything weird. “Moo moo moo moo…” But then again it won’t fucking shut up either.
“Oh, dats a bad ting a for me,” Mary says. “Ana da poor, poor cow. Sheza not hear so good now.”
“Why are you speaking in a bad Italian accent?” I ask, still reeling from the breakage.
“Whut?” Jimmy says. He knows what he’s done and now he’s standing there like the last of his brains just ran down his leg.
“Eetza da language of love,” Mary says. “But Ima gonna make-a some troubles onna da sinners now. Datsa for sure!” Without her heavenly finger, her hand looks like a fist. The overall effect, with just one small loss, is to make her downcast eyes and slightly open mouth transform from a look of awe to a look of retribution.
“Pretty sure that’s French,” I say. “Jimmy, you ass hat!”
“I’m sorry, Judith. Really I am. But you hit me so hard on the arm it was all I could do to keep from dropping him.” One piece, a thousand pieces, what the fuck does it matter? They’ll all live in my head now. Still, his apology hits me like a Christmas miracle that missed its big day. Jimmy doesn't typically apologize.
“This is so fucked.” Between you and Mrs. Santa and Father Guido Sarducci and the cow all either chastising me for swearing in front of the baby Jesus I can’t hear my own gears. I stuff the finger and ear into my pocket, hoping-but-not-expecting to smother the sound. My hand hits my cigarette pack. There must be thousands and thousands of dollars of Christmas stuff up there. Jimmy can’t help but wonder how our lives coulda-woulda-shoulda if mom had given us some more of that at different low points instead of scooping up one more shelf full of skiing hedgehog figurines or elfs fiddling with dolls. But most times I know Mom was right, we would have pissed it away like always. We can’t be trusted. We’re not responsible people. We burn through everything like salt through ice.
Christmas redeemed the year for Mom, so why not pour it on, I guess. Why not create a tide of redemption that could maybe sweep us all up? I have been to whole shops that didn’t have half Mom’s inventory. No idea where it’ll end up, but at least she left something behind. “Don’t break any more stuff, Jimmy! Jesus!”
“He’s-a-too young to talk.”
“I’m going out back to have another smoke. And not one fucking word about it.” I wag a finger at him before I realize it isn’t my own finger. “Not one!”
I’ll miss the being alone I found in the dark behind a huge house in a ridiculously well-off neighborhood. Alone but with my people so close by: Jimmy, Fatty, Mom. I want to miss my mother that way, but I can’t be sure if the drugs or my lived-in life keeps blocking the path. I’ll bet you’ll get to be my age and realize that thing you thought, where there’d always be time, would go on like…
“Milkshakes?”
“Moo!”
“No, shut up now. Oh for fuck’s sake.” What’s the word for when something goes on forever? Infinity?
“Bulimia? Gingivitis?”
You’d have infinite time to fix things. To improve yourself. To get right.
“You just like the little bambino God make me so pregnant with. But he leave-a out da sex, remember? No a-sex for pretty, little Mary. Just make-a the baby in the straw. Everybody else have the sex, but Mary get the baby...”
You think time is like the dark highway across an empty field at night, just over the horizon. The cars whooshing by, and you’re going to go somewhere one day too. You believe in the coming change and the infinite patience of change; that change waits for you like you keep waiting for the change.
“That baby and you gonna resurrect! Then mama and baby, they gonna be together again in heaven on earth.”
I got bad news for you, Mary. In all those resurrection stories, the mom doesn’t come back.
Darren DeFrain is the author of the novel The Salt Palace, story collection Inside & Out, and is at work on a postpunk history of Kansas with colleague Fran Connor for KU Press. He is a Stanford Innovation Fellow and recent NEH recipient for his work on the Vizling Project.