Chapter 10
For Christmas, Emily’s mother gave her usual gift: another pearl on Emily’s Add-a-Pearl necklace.
Housed in a green velvet box, the chain was a delicate gold thread with seventeen pearls gathered in a thin line.
Emily gave her mother slippers. They didn’t have a tree.
Emily’s mother had seen little point; she had to work her shift at the hospital later that day and Emily’s father had arranged for Emily to go with his family to church in the evening.
Emily fastened the necklace carefully and touched the pearls where they lay against her red dress, just below her collarbone and above the swell of her breasts.
“When you were born, I couldn’t believe the hospital let me leave with you,” Emily’s mother said.
Emily kept her fingers still against the necklace.
She didn’t dare move, in case that might make her mother stop speaking.
Emily’s half sisters had come home from the hospital wearing the same special outfit: a white hand-knitted sweater and a white cap topped with a pompom.
Emily had seen pictures. She didn’t know what she had worn, or how much she had weighed, or the exact minute she was born.
“It felt like I was stealing you,” her mother said.
“Like an alarm would go off. Now look at you. All grown up.”
This didn’t feel true yet was said with finality, as though Emily were a completed project. Emily knew that her mother meant this as a compliment, so she thanked her.
In the church lobby, Emily’s father asked someone to take a photo of them.
“My whole family,” he said, smiling at Emily and her half sisters, also dressed in red.
Courtney, the younger one, smiled back, but Sara-Lynn, who had a solo to perform that night with the choir, looked pale.
They all stood together, pleasant and stiff, until the flash went off.
Emily’s father promised that when he got the film developed, he’d make copies for her.
Denise told Emily how glad she was that Emily could join them, that she had grown into quite the mature young lady.
She asked if Emily was interested in babysitting the girls from time to time and Emily said that she was.
When Sara-Lynn wasn’t looking, Emily’s father opened his loose suit jacket to reveal a small bouquet of flowers and winked at Emily.
The little girls filed ahead to find seats as Emily whispered to her father and stepmother that she didn’t get anything special for Sara-Lynn’s solo, just a regular Christmas present, but Denise said not to worry: the flowers were from all of them.
There was a reading from the book of Luke.
Emily listened as the angel appeared to shepherds in the field and frightened them.
“But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.’?” Emily felt warm and happy, seated between her father and her youngest sister.
She could smell the hidden roses in her father’s jacket.
Sara-Lynn stood. Denise squeezed Sara-Lynn’s hand before the girl made her way with quick steps to the front.
The choir began to sing. Emily braced herself as she recognized the song.
She hadn’t known the solo would be “O Holy Night” and was upset that such a difficult piece had been given to a child: the exposure of the long phrases, that octave jump.
But Sara-Lynn’s voice was clear and starry, and Emily felt like one of the shepherds, surrounded by a dark plain.
She saw her father’s face as he watched his daughter sing—his rapt pride—and Emily understood that while she was a welcome guest, this was another way of being an outsider.
When the solo was over, Emily whispered to her father that she didn’t feel well.
She slipped out to the lobby, where a long table bearing punch and cookies awaited the congregants.
Here, the pastor’s voice was muffled by closed doors; she couldn’t distinguish the words.
On a small table sat a black rotary phone.
Gen picked up. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Are you okay?”
The receiver was wet with Emily’s tears. They slid down her wrist. “Yes.”
“Why don’t you tell me where you are,” Gen said, “and I’ll come get you.”
Nella made Coca-Cola ham and mac ’n’ cheese.
The frozen Tater Tots were baked until they were crisp, their insides steaming.
Dessert was chocolate box cake topped with frosting that Gen made from scratch.
They watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and laughed at how the stop-action puppets moved their heads like owls.
Nella gave Emily an afghan crocheted in Emily’s favorite colors and Gen gave her a wrapped box slightly larger than a shoebox.
Emily hadn’t gotten gifts for them because she hadn’t expected to receive anything, but when she tried, haltingly, to explain this, she was told to be quiet and eat more cake.
She unwrapped Gen’s gift while Nella went to make tea.
It was a diorama, its box polished wood, showing a mountain made from thick, layered paper that had been soaked, molded, and dried.
In front of the mountain stood a tree made from twist ties painted brown, its branches delicate. One branch held a red apple.
“It’s Mount Olympus,” Gen said. “I wanted to make something ancient Greek-y, to show a myth, but all the stories seemed kind of messed up so I thought this was best.”
“You’ve been reading Ovid. You should try the lyrics instead.” The love poetry, Emily almost added.
“Hmm,” Gen said.
“I can’t believe you made this.”
“It’s a hobby.”
“You’ve made others? Are you going to show me?”
“Sometime,” Gen said, “when it’s not Christmas. Do you like it?”
“I really, really like it.”
Gen asked if she wanted to stay the night and when Emily said yes, Gen looked awkward and asked whether sharing her room was okay. “There are two twin beds. I mean, we have other bedrooms, but the house is old and drafty and my room gets good heat.”
In the dark of Gen’s room, in their separate beds, they lay silently awake.
Emily thought about the diorama. She kept returning to the tree with its one apple.
Gen had been reading the lyrics, Emily realized.
There was a fragment of a poem about an apple that hung too high for anyone to reach.
The poem had been written, Emily remembered, by a woman.
It had been written by a woman who loved women.
Her face grew hot. She was glad it was dark.
“Gen?”
“Yes?”
Emily decided the apple didn’t mean anything—or at least she was afraid that Gen would say that it didn’t. She abandoned her question and said instead, “Who is the slipper and who is the shoe?”
“I’m the shoe.”
Gen believed she was the shoe because she wanted to be resilient, but Emily knew better. Gen was a softness that Emily could slide right into.
Gen said, “Will you tell me what happened tonight?”
Emily shifted in bed so that she was looking into Gen’s face even though she couldn’t actually see it in the solid dark.
She told Gen about the pearl necklace; the roses; the song; the shepherds; the large, shining red planet of the punch bowl in the empty church lobby. Emily said, “I want to be somebody.”
“You are somebody.”
“I want to be somebody people pay attention to.”
“ I pay attention,” Gen said.