CHAPTER 9

“Mamà! Mótina! Mótina! Stop! Can we please have a Christmas tree?!” begged Cecilia, tapping my mother’s knee insistently as though this would make the car stop.

“You a’ready had one in de school. How many you need?”

Cecilia needed a pair of blunt scissors with which to make four-leaf clover looking snowflakes and that was about how much our mother was going to invest in anyone’s commercialized American Christmas for that year.

“One for at home just once in our lives! Please!”

“You a’ready had one, you don’ remember?”

My mother kept a mental list of all that was already done once in anyone’s lifetime. Repetition to her was superfluous; it was even more abominable; it was a waste.

“No!” wailed Cecilia, who never lied.

Cecilia had been too young. I still remembered our mother in her shaggy fur coat, Cecilia and I used to pretend we were brown bears in it, and an axe, chopping down a pine tree in New Hampshire and dragging it back to the car on the outskirts of a highway. Its tip swished in the snow like a dragon tail. I distinctly recall this detail because I was worried that the trail would scare away the forest fighters. I was commissioned to walk ahead, and warn them if I saw anybody coming, because the forest, our mother warned us, was full of criminals.

“Well, me, I remember. De needles, dey fall an’ make a mess. Dey block my vacuum cleaner, de sac is a’ways full. De wood, wha’ we do wit’ it after? We have no chimney in Flor’da!” What she seemed to be getting at was, “No.”

Cecilia sobbed, stating that we never got to have anything. For a split second, I saw my mother’s eyes in the rear-view mirror guiltily staring ahead, and not quite at the road. She took Cecilia more seriously than she did me. Cecilia was easier to please.

As soon as we got home, my mother slid open the linen closet and stamped her foot.

“Here! An’ don’ bother me no more!”

She tossed Cecilia and I a Christmas tree about eight inches high. It was actually a napkin-holder someone at church had given to her, that she had been saving as a gift for someone else. It was composed of two side by side flat wooden Christmas trees, painted picnic table green. The inside, where napkins were supposed to stand, was bare unvarnished pine wood, with visible knots to vouch for the once outstretched branches. Cecilia beamed with joy.

“You. Wha’ you say?” my mother threatened me.

I was regularly starting to have what she called, “dat look o’er my face”.

“Thank you very much, Mommy,” I recited, feeling the look accentuating.

Cecilia and I hesitated where to place it. The dinner table elevated our tree to an appropriate height, but on it, it really looked like a napkin-holder. My mother’s record player was out of the question, it might scratch. The floor was problematic; it accentuated the puny size, and gave one the impression the napkin-holder had fallen off the table. Anyone walking by would pick it up and put it back on the table. I finally suggested “Fool’s Stool”, which I sensed I had outgrown. Cecilia positioned our Christmas tree on top of it. I wound my bathrobe around the base. I knew no needles would fall, but it made the composition look fuller. My mother took a picture.