Chapter 14 #2
Leila made her way toward me, and I welcomed her with open arms when she was near. She had two cups in her hand, so I took one and kept the free arm around her. The spiked cocoa was steaming hot, and despite me just now drinking a beer, I took a sip from it.
“The girls in bed?” I asked.
“Yep, and sleep too. They were not trying to have Santa sprinkle pepper in their eyes.”
We shared a laugh. Poor Ava had been terrified of the pepper since Aunt Pat told her that if she wasn’t asleep, Santa would put it in their eyes to burn them as punishment.
“Okay, let’s play some games,” my mom suggested. “Pat and I agreed to start with Hummed Carols.”
“Come on, mama,” Miranda complained and everyone besides Leila knew why. Despite her having two kids and growing up in a family that was big on the holidays, she was horrible with the songs.
“Oh, hush up, girl.” Aunt Pat waved her off. “We put a bunch of songs in here.” She sat a mug on the bar that surrounded the fire pit. “Oldest child will start then we will go clockwise from there.”
“Oh, you hate me.” Miranda whined because she was indeed the oldest.
“I’ll help you, baby.” Chris grinned then kissed the side of her face.
“No, you won’t son-in-law,” my aunt playfully snapped. “Pick a song, little girl.”
She stomped her foot like a child but went to grab a song from the cup.
She unfolded it and judging by the smile, I figured she got something easy, but after she began to hum, I wasn’t so sure.
We could only hum the lyrics. We couldn’t give hints or talk because it was against the rules.
When she realized that none of us were going to guess it, she barked the answer to the song while tossing her paper at her sister who was cackling loudly at the reveal.
“I’m sorry, Ran, I don’t know what that was, but it damn sure wasn’t ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’,” my dad laughed.
“Whatever,” she mumbled. “Go, Chris.”
He reached and got his song then began humming the tune which everyone got pretty quickly, as we did with everyone else until it got around to Miranda again. She threw another tantrum, so we moved on to the next game which was Christmas Charades.
Mel studied her paper before she began, “It’s like rain, but frozen and has a color…”
“Snow.” I answered quickly so she tossed that card and moved on to the next one.
“Auntie Trina overloads this in her house…”
“Garland!” The group shouted in unison and laughed.
Even the other team.
“Oh, bump all of you!”
“Okay, daddy this is the first thing that I got you when I got my job at Macy’s,” Mel faced her dad. “It has a picture of us inside and you keep it on your desk year round.”
“Snow globe.”
“Yep.” Mel beamed, proud that her father never put the Christmas themed gift away.
That was time for our team, so the others stepped up with Kayla being the one they’d chosen to act out the Charade.
“Okay, people do these melodies during this time of year,” she started. “Isaiah just showed us a group of Black men that were going around doing it on Cliqued.”
“Christmas carols,” Aunt Pat answered. “They just showed me and all I could think was those men were about to rob those people.”
We all shared a laugh.
“Aight, this animal helps pull the thing Santa gets around on…”
“Reindeer!” my mom shouted.
“Yeah, but he has a name that happens to be the mascot for another holiday.”
“Blitzen!” Aunt Pat yelled and Kayla gave her a look.
“Auntie, which other holiday would Blitzen be for?”
“I don’t know. I’m guessing, hell.”
“Donner,” my mother shouted.
“Mama…” Kayla groaned.
“Comet?”
“Bro.” Kayla palmed her face as the timer went off. “I think you’ve all had too much spiked cocoa.”
“It’s cupid,” I chuckled.
“Ohhhh,” they all voiced.
“We forgot about Valentine’s Day!” Aunt Pat shouted.
We played two more rounds before calling it quits. Some of them had started to complain about it being cold, so while they all headed inside, I stayed behind to put the fire out and Leila hung back to help me clean up.
“Tonight was fun,” Leila said as we made our way inside.
“Yeah, it was.”
“Your aunt is hilarious too,” she grinned. “She’s really the life of the party.”
“Facts. Aunt Pat is always a good time.”
“Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I’ve been starving myself so I can eat all of the food that I know y’all are about to hook up. I have been thinking about that turkey since your dad mentioned deep frying it.”
I laughed. “He’ll be up before the kids fooling with that turkey.”
“Oh, I doubt he beats Ava up.” She giggled. “That girl has an internal alarm that goes off at four in the morning, and she fully expects us all to get up at that same time to open presents.”
“Are you staying with me tonight?”
“Is that even really a question?” she smiled. “I couldn’t imagine waking up any other way on Christmas morning.”
“Then let’s pray that spirit off of baby girl tonight,” I teased. “I’m going to need at least until six for the plans I have for you tonight.”
Her smile stretched wider.
“Father, I’ve seen what you’ve done for others,” she joked and we shared a laugh before heading inside.