29. Ghosts From Christmases Passed
29
GHOSTS FROM CHRISTMASES PASSED
Dahlia
Montclair, New Jersey
The Past
I ’m not sure whether to be impressed by Alejandro’s handling of my family’s chaos or concerned. Either he can handle them so well because he has the patience and temperament to do so or he’s secretly a lunatic like the rest of them and I need to get out while I can.
Tio’s absence is noted throughout the evening as the constant flurry of aunts, uncles, cousins, and other nosy relatives pass over the threshold. Luckily enough for Karina, our family mostly forgets about Rogelio the moment Alejandro smiles and introduces himself. He’s a bit of an anomaly here. I’ve never brought a boy home, not since high school, and that fuck up was so bad I ended up getting an abortion junior year.
Every time another cousin or pushy uncle pulls him aside for a “don’t break her heart or we’ll kill you” talk, my heart leaps into my throat. Anxiety builds and at any moment, I expect Alejandro to decide this isn’t worth the trouble. I wait for him to grab his coat and leave and I brace myself for the impact but it never happens. The talks always end in laughter and smiles, an exchange of language and culture as they ramble on in Spanish and fight over which country produces the best salsa music.
As the evening begins to wind down, I busy myself with clearing the plates in the dining room and Brent comes to help. At the very least, his parents made sure to house train him.
“It was a good idea.”
I look over but he doesn’t meet my gaze as he speaks.
“Bringing your boyfriend and his family. Kay’s been stressed out about the holidays because of her parents, but everyone’s been too distracted to notice.”
I take a moment to gather my thoughts before responding. “I hadn’t even thought of it like that.”
“Well, unintentional or not, it worked.” He clears a plate of leftovers into the large aluminum pan I’m using for garbage and adds it to my pile. “I haven’t known what to do with her these last few weeks. She’s inconsolable. Nothing works.”
“Her parents are getting divorced, Brent. How should she be?”
“I’d prefer it if she cried. Threw things, had tantrums, screamed. Instead, she just ices everyone out. It’s like she’s using her parents’ divorce as an excuse to destroy our relationship. This isn’t a marriage anymore, Dee. We’re strangers who live in the same house.”
We carry on a while in silence because I don’t know what to say. Or better yet, how to say it.
Karina grew up in an idyllic household where her parents never allowed their children to see behind their happy family fa?ade. Tio Rogelio was wrong for cheating but I can’t say my surprise went bone deep. They stayed together as long as they did out of obligation with the pressures of culture and religion beating down on their shoulders. For as long as I’ve been alive, I can’t remember the last time they were truly happy. Maybe content, satisfied. Resigned to their fate. The complete opposite of the tumultuous hell storm that was my parents’ relationship. When I was little and the whole family still lived in New York, I used to spend all my time in either Lyss’s house or with my aunt and uncle.
I resented my parents for not being more like them. Paula and Rogelio created a home and a family. It wasn’t perfect but it was stable, warm, and loving. A safe place for their children to grow and flourish whereas my parents couldn’t be bothered to take my feelings into consideration. I wouldn’t say it was intentional so much as it was careless but I think their carelessness stung more. Their lack of awareness and concern for the people, or person, around them: me.
Paula and Rogelio divorcing is shattering the illusion of what family and marriage is supposed to be. Karina has built her entire life around the fantasy of having the same marriage, the same family life as her parents. A mom and dad who are married and live in a nice home with their children who go to private school and have soccer games. The kind of family that goes to church on Sundays and takes vacations to Florida every summer.
Brent was born into a very privileged life and family whereas Karina watched her parents struggle and build together. Their experiences, and by extension their perspectives on what marriage and love should be, couldn’t be more different. Karina’s dream of the perfect family kept her going through years of hardship and financial struggle. And now her father has broken his vows and absolutely obliterated the reality his daughter once lived in.
Of course, she’s feeling cynical. Of course she’s trying to implode in her own marriage. She doesn’t believe in anything anymore.
I wish I could explain that to Brent but I don’t know how.
“Maybe therapy?” I try suggesting.
“Therapy implies talking which she refuses to do. She hasn’t even cried, not a single tear. Sometimes I catch her sitting alone in the shower with the water running. Gasping, heaving, as if she’s trying to force it out of her. But the tears never come.” He drags his hand down the length of his face. Exhaustion causes deep creases to form around his mouth and black and blue crescents to form under his sleepless eyes. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”
I open my mouth to respond, but my aunt sticks her head through the doorway.
“Brent, I’ve been looking for you! Something happened to the TV.”
“Go,” I tell him. “I’ll bring the dishes to the kitchen.”
He attempts a smile but manages a curt nod instead. He follows my aunt to the living room and I carry the dishes back to the kitchen. As I start to load the dishwasher, I notice the light on the back patio is on and am about to flip the switch when I notice movement. It’s too cold for any of the kids to be playing in the yard so I grab a sweater hanging by the patio door and step outside. I’m about to call out for my cousins when the lights on the opposite end of the patio flicker to life, my presence having triggered the sensors.
I look over and Karina and Diego are sitting on the swinging bench, both completely oblivious to my presence. Diego has his back to me, body angled to face Karina as she stares out into the backyard. Judging by their coats and Karina’s red face, they must’ve been sitting out here for a while.
I can’t hear what they’re saying. Diego whispers, and Karina murmurs in a hushed tone. His hand reaches across the back of the bench and rests on her shoulder. I know I have no business standing here, watching, listening, but I can’t leave either. Shock and instinct has me rooted in place.
Diego is very tender with her. At times she seems to lose her patience—not at him directly, but she snaps just the same, providing heated, rapid answers to his questions. She spirals into a long-winded tangent and she waves her hands around frantically. He takes hold of her wrists but she doesn’t notice; she’s too deep in her rant to care. I watch as he removes his gloves and puts them on her, giving them a firm tug so they won’t fall off. As soon as he lets go, Karina is back to her wild gesturing and he sits there and listens without interruption. At one point he cups the side of her face, cheeks red from the cold, and she leans in for a beat before pulling away.
It happens in slow motion. Karina gasps, takes a sharp, shaky intake of breath, and her shoulders collapse. Her brows furrow and her face crumbles and in that moment, I know a lifetime’s worth of tears have finally broken free.
Without making a sound, I walk back into the house and shut the door behind me.
I linger in the kitchen for a while before mustering up the courage to join the rest of the party.
By now, most of the house has cleared out save a few stragglers collecting their coats and their children. They kiss Tia Paula goodbye at the door and I help my cousin Evan get my grandparents into the car. He lives closest to them and despite my aunt’s insistence, Abuelo doesn’t want to sleepover tonight. He says it’s because he forgot my grandmother’s blood pressure medicine in the bathroom cabinet but really, I just think he can’t stand to be in this house after what my uncle did. My aunt tries putting up a fight and since I’d rather not freeze my ass off in her driveway, I head back inside.
Alejandro’s in the living room watching TV. I come up behind him and place my hand on his shoulder but when he turns around, a baby’s rattle swings in my direction.
I duck just in time before it hits my cheek. “Whoa!”
“Sorry.” He smooths his hand down the baby’s arm and catches the rattle before she can swing at me again. “If I try taking it away, she starts screaming.”
“Whose kid is that?”
He shrugs as he adjusts her against his chest. “I don’t know. I was helping Brent with the VHS player and I felt a tug on my pants. She wouldn’t stop crying until I picked her up.”
I reach out and tuck the baby’s hair behind her ears so I can see her face more clearly. “This is Emilce’s daughter, Mia. Karina told me she just started crawling last night. Apparently, she likes to wreak havoc.”
“She’s very sweet.” Mia reaches up to grab his face and he kisses her cheek instead. “She just wanted to be held.”
It’s easy to forget Alejandro and Diego are related sometimes. They’re so outwardly different; Diego’s fun, easy-going persona often at odds with Alejandro’s more reserved, parental way of being. But they’re both deeply empathetic and nurturing.
Diego can make anyone feel safe enough to experience vulnerability and Alejandro can make anyone feel protected enough to be vulnerable.
Karina must’ve cried her heart out on the patio with Diego, meanwhile Mia rests her head on Alejandro’s chest and drifts off into deep sleep.
He smiles as if surprised to watch Mia’s eyes fall close. He looks up at me and I shake my head.
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“I don’t have any ideas.”
“And you won’t have any until after this uterus turns thirty.”
“Will we?” he asks earnestly. “One day?”
“You sound very eager.”
“Not eager. Longing ,” he replies quietly. “I know I’m older than you so it’s different for me. And it’s all right—I can wait. I don’t mind the waiting.”
Mia shifts and he holds her like glass, one arm supporting the weight of her little body and his free hand cradling her head against his chest.
“But I want this—I had this. A mother and a father in a big house with siblings and too many relatives.”
“Alex…” I wring my hands, unsure of what to say. “Karina had this. Not me. I…sometimes I think I want it but other times, I wonder if I only want it because I didn’t have it.”
“I know.”
“And I’d like to think that one day, I will get married. I’ll have children and a family and a home.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“What? No?—”
“I can feel you pulling away from me. Wait, please. Let me finish,” he says. “I know most of it is my fault and I know that no matter how many times I tell you it isn’t you, that the problem is something else, it won’t change how you feel. I can’t promise it’ll be better tomorrow or the day after but I can tell you it’s something I have to work through. And I would never risk us or our happiness if something more important, like our lives or our safety, wasn’t at stake.
“If this is just a rough patch, than I’m here. I’ll work through it with you and we can wait out the storm together. But…if you aren’t happy…if this isn’t something you want any more then you have to tell me. Because this is the future I want but only if you’re going to be in it.”
I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “You got all that from holding a random baby?”
“Jesus!”
I spin around, and Emilce rushes into the room with a baby carrier.
“I swear to God, I blink and she’s gone. Where was she hiding?”
“Right here. She fell asleep.”
Alejandro helps Emilce put Mia into her carrier. Brent enters the room with a handful of wires in his hand and Lettie close behind, carrying a dusty box she must’ve brought down from the attic.
“All right, I think I can get the VHS to work.”
Lettie excitedly holds up the box. “We have home movies!”
Oh God…not the home movies.
On cue, Karina and Diego enter the room. “You went up into the attic?”
“Oh, I didn’t, this is vintage Jacques Fath.” She juts her chin in Brent’s direction. “He did.”
“Since you went missing for the last hour.” Brent’s words are tinged with irritation. “Where were you?”
She smooths a hand over her hair, melting the snowflakes caught in the dark strands. “I took a walk.”
His gaze flickers to Diego standing behind her but Diego barrels into the room, keen on distracting everyone. “I don’t think any of us are drunk enough to watch home videos. Someone get the rum and a couple of tumblers?—”
Karina turns on her heels. “There’s coquito in the fridge.”
I make to go after her but Brent beats me to it. My aunt walks in and notices the VHS is working which stalls my plans to go investigate. “Oh, you found them!”
She and Lettie sit on the rug and unpack the tapes. They line them up in rows on the coffee table until my aunt finds the one she was looking for. “This is from the first Christmas we spent at Marcia’s.”
“Tia, please?” I shift uncomfortably. “Do we have to?”
“Afraid we’ll find something in the family archive?” Alejandro asks. “Any deep, dark secrets you want to tell me now?”
“Yes. I’m actually a brunette.”
Alejandro surprises me. Laugher tumbles from his lips so freely and without restraint that I’m compelled to look at Diego, the two of us exchanging looks in light of his brother’s suspicious behavior. Or maybe it isn’t suspicious. Maybe Alejandro so rarely experiences joy that when he does, it comes as a shock to all of us.
I can’t help but wonder what life would be like— who he would be—if things were different. The thought makes me ache in places I didn’t know could feel pain.
The television sparks to life with a twinkle and a glisten and Tia Paula clasps her hands. “It works!”
“The VHS player that’s older than me?” Karina re-enters the room with a tray of plastic cups and Brent is close behind, expression taut but otherwise blank.
“I need to go get the photo albums!”
My aunt leaps to her feet and runs upstairs. Karina hands out coquito and Alejandro drags me over to the sofa, forcing me to sit and watch so I can get into the Christmas spirit.
Twinkling lights and red and gold ornaments come into view as the camera moves down the length of the tree from angel topper to velvet skirt. Dozens of neatly wrapped gifts are stuffed under the tree, some of them small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand and others big enough to fit a toddler. The camera pans out and the rest of the apartment comes into view.
Twenty-years and nothing has changed. The apartment at Marcia’s looks the same as it did in my childhood. Old but loved and warm.
At that point, we had been living there for almost a year and it was our first Christmas there. There are scuffs on the walls and floors, picture frames filled with smiling people, and little knick-knacks on the tables. The couch is covered in plastic, the coffee table with doilies, and wrapping paper litters the floor. An old television with an antenna sticking out from the top is muted in the background while Christmas music plays on a radio which twenty years ago, looks older than I am now. As the camera moves, I catch a glimpse of the news channel NY1 and the date at the bottom—it’s Christmas day of 2003.
“Gabriela, por acá.”
“Oh!”
The camera spins around and a man sits on a love seat with his head bowed and his shoulders slumped forward. Whatever he’s holding is hidden by the coffee table but before he can lift it, the camera person is distracted by a hurricane coming from the right.
“Titi loooook !”
A little Karina appears in the frame, dainty and starry-eyed, giving the camera a bloody, gummy grin. Both her front teeth are missing.
“ Look it finally fell ooooooout !” she exclaims.
The woman behind the camera laughs. “Go wash your mouth out first. No, Kay! Don’t be gross!”
Karina makes funny faces at the camera, still grinning as she shows off the missing tooth.
“Karina!” a second woman comes into view and shoves a towel in her mouth. “One day, I’m going to show this to your future husband and he’s going to think you’re being disgusting.”
Brent’s nose scrunches up. “It is kind of gross.”
“Is not!” Karina protests. “I was little, I had just turned seven here!”
Diego merely smiles, content to watch in silence.
“Who’s filming?” Lettie asks.
My throat tightens. “My mom.”
Suddenly, the camera whips around to the man on the love seat. “You two have been awfully quiet…what are you doing over there?”
Soft giggling emerges from behind the coffee table and the man looks up, casting a wayward glance at Mom behind the camera. Something about the way his eyes meet mine, through the lens of a camera twenty years in the future, hits me like a bolt of lightning. His eyes are exactly like mine.
Papi.
“What are you doing here?” Mom asks teasingly.
I was a beautiful baby—chubby, rosy-cheeked, with wide expressive eyes and a heart-shaped mouth. Here, I’m a three-year-old toddler with curls tucked under an oversized Santa hat. When Papi lifts me up for the camera to see, everyone sighs and gasps, Lettie poking at my legs from where she’s seated on the floor and Diego gives a playful tug on my hair. Karina chuckles while Brent fills everyone’s cups with more coquito and even though I manage a smile, my attention never leaves the screen.
“I’ve never seen your dad before. You look just like him,” Brent comments.
“It’s the Rosario nose.” Karina drags her finger down the slope of her slim, pointed nose. “Family trait. Hard to miss.”
“Dee, I mean this in the most respectful way possible. But your dad is kind of?—”
Diego whacks Lettie with a pillow. “Don’t. Even.”
Papi smooths his hand over my head so the top of the Santa hat falls where it’s supposed to. I lift my little hands to cradle my face and smile widely for the camera.
“Stand up, preciosa, I want to see the PJs,” Mom says.
I get up and smooth my hands over the velvet Christmas gift sewn onto the front of my long sleeve shirt. “Mi Papi me dijo que mi abuelita me regaló estos y que?—”
“Dahlia, English, please.” The camera tilts slightly as my mother addresses my father on the couch. “Gael, they don’t understand her at nursery school. You have to start speaking English in the house more.”
Gael says something I can’t pick up on and Gabriela replies, “I don’t care . Practice!”
“So you do know how to speak Spanish.” Diego ruffles my hair from behind. “I knew you were holding out on us.”
“Your little voice was so cute!” Karina sighs. “Why can’t you be little again?”
“Aren’t you guys less than four years apart?” Alejandro points out.
“Yes. But she was the perfect baby doll. She used to let me dress her up in anything—even an old rice bag!”
“Now I know the root of all your language problems.” Lettie rubs her chin playfully. “This video right here. You were poisoned at a young age! We simply must convert you back.”
“She used to speak so well!” Karina says in my defense. “Then in school it kind of faded. It happens.”
At this point, I’ve tuned them all out. I pick up the remote and raise the volume, leaning forward on the sofa as if being closer to the television might bring me closer to the memory itself.
The camera gets set down momentarily while Gabriela and Gael speak in hushed tones. Meanwhile, little me runs over to the Christmas tree and starts wrapping tinsel and ribbons around myself. Karina comes into view and starts helping me by converting leftover wrapping paper into a skirt which she uses string to tie around my waist.
“Look, we made a dress!” Karina exclaims.
She runs over and picks up the camera.
“Karina, be careful with that!”
Brent leans over to kiss his wife’s cheek and it doesn’t evade my notice how Diego abruptly looks away and Karina shrinks in on herself, uncomfortable with his affection.
Little me runs across the room but trips and falls. Immediately, I start crying and somewhere out of view of the camera, my arms extend to the person approaching.
“What happened? Is she okay?” Mom says in the background.
The camera gets snatched away from Karina and she whines in protest while it’s propped up someplace high she can’t reach. Luckily for the rest of us as we can finally see what’s going on.
Papi picks me up and I burrow into his side. He murmurs in my ear and kisses my cheek before sitting down on the couch where Mom rolls her eyes but there’s a touch of playfulness to it.
“Gael, she didn’t break a bone.”
Papi wipes the tears from my cheeks and kisses the top of my head. “?Estás bien?” he asks. “Tienes que tener más cuidado, princesa, sino te vas a lastimar.”
I watch as a three-year-old me gets onto her knees and kisses his cheek while he holds her, careful to avoid any invisible injuries. The little girl in the video first pretends it’s her foot then her knee. Then her chin and her arm. Gael makes sure to kiss each injury while Gabriela watches on, tickling under her neck while the three of them laugh.
Finally, Karina jumps in front of the camera again. “Everyone look, I made up a dance!”
This time the laughter comes from here and not the television. Karina gets up to demonstrate for everyone the dance being shown in the video but she almost trips and Brent has to jump up to catch her.
“Look what I got!”
Tia Paula returns with a half a dozen photo albums in her arms. She lays them out on the coffee table and hands them out like birthday cake at a party.
“When I was around fifteen, I had to drop out of ninth grade. Once my younger siblings were old enough I moved to San Juan where my Godparents owned a restaurant. I worked as a waitress for a few years while I finished school.” She opens one of the albums and starts to flip through. “It’s how I met Karina’s father. I wanted to enroll in nursing school and Rogelio was a student working in the admissions office.”
Alejandro smiles. “My parents met at university.”
“Did they?” Tia Paula smiles in return. “Where?”
“In New York. My father was a year older and leading freshman orientation…”
At some point, their voices all fade to the background. I flip through the album from my parents’ college years and don’t see a young couple falling in love. I see one future stolen and the other one cut short. Suddenly, I can’t stand to be in this room anymore, surrounded by home videos and old photos. I get up to leave and head straight for the hall hoping to make a clean escape.
“Hey,” Lettie turns. “Where are you going?”
“To get napkins…” I mutter but I doubt she hears me.
I doubt anyone does.