Christmas
Day, damn near.
For
Christmas Day could only begin with the closing of Christmas Eve, and it was
received wisdom that this punctuation between the two days was not the local
church bell’s midnight toll, rung out now hours past, but sleep.
Still,
here she was, quietly protracting the moment and putting off morning for she
knew tomorrow things would change and stay changed until Christmas next had a
chance to spirit its strange magic into her family.
The
tiny fairy-lights on the tree blurred into slack and sparkling lines of light
as she closed her eyes against them, musing upon her Jesus.
Shops. It’s about four o’ clock, busy,
and they’re strolling along with damn near everything bought, finally, and
little Skunk between them with his hands held high holding theirs.
Mother: Why don’t you take him?
For Christ's sake it won’t kill you. Please. Please.
Father: I can’t.
Mother: But look at him
and Skunk off at full stretch of her
arm, obstructing passers-by as he gawks in at a shoe store window, entranced by
its simple Christmas brilliance.
Mother. He’s your son. He’s your son.
It’s Christmas Eve.
and she knows this is no real argument,
that this has been out and settled before, that it’s only the time and the
circumstance as allow her such freedom of pleading. There was no question this
season gave him something but it was not enough, thus instead of hysterical
confrontation, tears, blood even, she received his vague, almost benign
indifference.
Skunk: I’M PEEING! MUMMY I’M PEEING
MYSELF!
She would, as usual, toilet him herself.
She
dipped her smallest finger into the coffee gone cold and winked at her own
distorted face winking back from a blue glass bauble.
Mother: Is that you done? Skunk? Skunk,
are you finished?
He is doing some weird little acrobat
thing with his tiny penis.
Skunk: Yes
and then leaning across and placing his
palm flat on the partition as the door to the adjacent cubicle closes and
locks.
Skunk (exaggerated whisper): Who’s that
Mummy? Who’s that in there? Who’s that? Who’s that?
banging on the panelling with his fist.
Mother: Quiet Skunk, sshhhh now, quiet
placing her finger upon his lips, then
remembering she has yet to wash her hands.
Mother: Come on, get your trousers up
now
then helping him back into his little
coat, and his fingers tangled up in the cord between the mittens.
Skunk: FLUSH! FLUSH! FLUSH IT MUMMY
FLUSH IT FLUSH!
Perhaps
if she didn’t sleep she could postpone Christmas Day indefinitely. Could it
really begin without her? If she stayed awake, would that somehow mean
her husband and little boy had to remain asleep? She thought for a moment that
it must be something to do with Santa Claus and his complex route across the
globe in an insane attempt to gift every child according to good and bad
behaviour, a route that really would take the whole year to plan.
Mother (whispering): Look, he won’t
sleep. He’s so damn excited he can’t sleep. His eh, look at him, his
eyes are popping and he’s breathi-
Father: Okay okay okay okay Jesus.
Right ah... Look, go back in, tell him a story or
Mother: Tell him a story. He he can
barely hear, he’s not going to listen to a story just now, he’s he’s in
a he’s practically in, he’s almost cataleptic.
Father: Just keep, talk to him or
something, as long as he’s not out here, keep him in his bed and I’ll sneak the
presents downstairs. Christ.
Whatever it was that took people at this
time of year, whether goodwill, the Christmas spirit, perhaps a happiness
inspired by the memory of times when things felt better, when other people were
in control and life less complicated, she can see that already starting to
drain from out her husband, leaving a void to slowfill with an unpredictable
and explosive sense of failure and repressed regret. She re-enters Skunk's
bedroom where he’s still agog with Christmas jitters, terrified to sleep in
case he misses some of the promised excitements.
Mother: Skunk.
He is almost throwing a fit of
some sort, his black hair bobbing every which way as
Mother: Skunk you’ve got to get to
sleep. he won’t come if if... Skunk! If you don’t calm down and get under the
covers he might not
At this moment her husband tiptoes
across the landing and his shadow, bulky with the gifts of Santa’s supposed
judgement of her boy and elongated by the hairbreadth of doorlight, crawls
distorted across the wallpaper.
Skunk (hysterical): THERE HE IS MUMMY! I
SEE HIM! THERE HE IS MU-
she claps her hand across the widemouth
laugh he’s trying to force his words through, holds him tightly to herself,
waiting.
A deep laugh comes from the other side
of the door, but the voice does not belong to the man she knows. Then the
shadow leaves the wall and there are footsteps upon the stairs.
Skunk’s body relaxes in her arms, as if
having seen this much he can now get himself to sleep, secure in the knowledge
that Santa Claus is here, and he is not here empty-handed.
She
wondered whether this is how it would transpire, life having panned fully out
and with the end to hand, you arrived before your God with the accumulated
weight of all years’ good and bad behaviour, to be finally assisted in shedding
the load you would no longer need wherever you were going. The loss of pain and
worry and the nondescript days of emptiness that served no purpose beyond
cementing all the others together.
She
puffed her cheeks, blew a sigh out into the tree and watched it move and
settle.
Mother
(head in hands): Oh Jesus. Jesus.
Her
period was now almost three weeks late. How on earth could she tell him she
thought she was pregnant again.
