"LORETTA! COME HERE! WHAT ARE ALL THESE LITTLE THINGS UP HERE?"
My stepfather was a very tough, resilient man. Not much scared or confounded him. That Christmas night, those...those...things in the living room made him call out for help.
Mom sat up in bed and instantly felt a sense of dread. The sound of his voice, the confusion, the intonation, the slight hint of something off - not quite fear, but definitely a sense of unease - in his speech made her nervous.
"What are you talking about?" she called back without throwing back a cover, or sticking a limb out of bed. She was afraid of what awaited her, what greeted my stepfather when he walked in the door that Christmas night after visiting his family.
"THESE THINGS," he called back. "ALL KINDS OF LITTLE THINGS. THEY'RE UNDER THE TREE. WHAT ARE THEY?"
Immediately, Mom's palms began to sweat, and she got a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
A neighbor had been having trouble with rats. Had they found their way into our house and begun to nest in our Christmas tree?
We'd had trouble in the past with birds falling through the chimney, crashing into the house in a blind, sooty panic and flying wildly in a desperate attempt to get out. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it was a mess - broken picture frames, children screaming, and bird poop everywhere. When birds are suddenly and unexpectedly placed in captivity, they get nervous, and when they get nervous, they poop like crazy. One time, our cat Mindy caught a pigeon that came into the house and killed it. Then, to honor Mom (whom she saw as the house alpha cat), Mindy walked up to her with the still twitching bird in her jaw, offering her the first bite. Mom, understandably, freaked out. Mindy, unsure why Mom turned down such a generous gift, dropped the bird at the foot of her bed and left. Mom, standing and screaming on her nightstand until my grandmother, hearing the fracas through the floor, came upstairs from her flat and removed the dead bird, picking it up with her bare hands, grumbling about how it was "just a dead bird." Mom gave Mindy away a few weeks later.
Could it be a bunch of dead birds under the tree?
"Are they moving?" she asked hesitantly.
"NO, THEY AREN'T," he called back, still confused, but the sense of dread seemed to be leaving his voice. He was now just curious about he mysterious creatures. "THEY'RE JUST SITTING THERE."
This made her feel a little better, but not by much.
"Are they breathing?" she asked as she cringed.
"I DON'T THINK SO...THEY'RE JUST...JUST...SITTING THERE!" he called back, then added, "WHAT ARE THEY?"
His voice was now pleading, with a twinge of irritation.
Mom braced herself for a scene of Christmas carnage. She flung off the covers, took a deep breath, and walked slowly down the hall.
The lights of the Christmas tree cast an eerie glow on the walls of the living room and dining room. She didn't see my stepdad at first...had he passed out? Was he tossing the unknown creatures, those things off the top porch? Doing something else unspeakable with them? To them?
When she stepped into the dining room, he was standing by the buffet table with his back turned to her. Before she could speak, he turned around, and thrust his left hand toward her. Sitting in the palm of her hand was one of the mysterious things.
"THIS!" he exclaimed, extending his hand. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?"
Mom screamed, jumped back then, with stunned silence, really looked at the creature that made my normally cool headed stepfather cry out in the night.
 |
| There were so many of them...the horror...the horror.... |
That Christmas, my sister and I received a total of 12 stuffed Garfield dolls, which was one of that season's hot toys. Mom had given us a couple. So had Daddy. And our cousins. And a friend from school. We had so many that were able to give a few away and still have a bunch leftover. We lined them up under the tree before going to bed that night, a fuzzy little Garfield regimen standing guard over all the opened and the few remaining unopened gifts.
The only person who didn't know who or what Garfield was, it turns out, was my stepdad.
"Oh...okay...what's a Garfield?" he asked, wiping sweat from his brow after Mom told him they were stuffed toys.
"Ask the kids...when they wake up," she said angrily. "You damn fool...."
She turned on her heel and, murmuring under her breath about how he "scared the hell out of her," went back to bed.
"Merry Christmas?" he said, his voice trailing in the air.
"Yeah, right," she mumbled under her breath along with a few other choice obsenities.
Garfield just smiled.
Tomorrow: A dog with "cancer of the ass" frolics in a Christmas wonderland.
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