Three Pieces
Maggie Nerz Iribarne
We arrived by carriage late afternoon Christmas Eve. I followed Beatrice to the living room where her parents and younger sister sat before the fire.
“Hughe!” They all stood at once, bestowing a torrent of warm greetings, pats on the back, and offers of food and drink.
That night, Bea and her father sang in duet, “Good King Wenceslas,” their voices smooth and delicious, like the toffee candies her mother had made.
“Next year you can sing my part!” Bea’s father winked.
Christmas day passed dreamily, as I sipped on the many drinks they offered, and I fell in and out of sleep while enjoying the scent and presence of the woman I loved.
Late in the day, Bea’s father pulled me aside and said, “It’s time for men’s work.”
I obediently followed him out the back door where he pointed to a horse-drawn sleigh. He cracked a whip and we glided through the snowy acres of their farm to a clearing in the woods.
“Now you’ll slaughter the pig.”
A pig meandered into view, nosing along the pristine patch of snow.
I started to run but he grabbed me from the back, put the knife in my hands.
“You will do this now. You must.”
I returned to the house covered in pig’s blood, disoriented and crying.
The women encircled me, held me.
“You’ve slayed the pig! You’ve slayed the pig!” they sang softly.
Bea led me upstairs, undressed and bathed me, caressing my shuddering body.
She performed this impropriety without flinching.
“I want to go home,” I said wearily.
“You are home,” she said, drying my tears. “You’re part of this now, forever.”
She held my wet head to her bosom and did not let go.
Tradition
The ornament was made from a hollowed-out egg, its outsides lavishly painted and glittered. Inside, on a cloud-like cushion of cotton, stood a tiny St Nicholas holding a golden cross. It was my mother’s only treasure.
“If you break the egg ornament, you’ll spoil Christmas!” she repeated, year after year.
Spoiling happened to milk, causing odor, foul taste. Spoiling was very powerful. The idea of spoiling Christmas intrigued me. How could I spoil a holiday that had already been spoiled forever by my father’s sudden death five years before? How could I spoil a holiday that, aside from the egg ornament, was already dreary at best? I lay awake each night of December, imagining even greyer light, colder rooms, emptier cupboards, my mother endlessly crying in a corner, all because I, skinny, nob-kneed Harry Watson, broke the egg ornament. It was terrifying, tantalizing.
I loved the egg ornament, truly, yet I could no longer control myself. I headed downstairs early Christmas morning, my feet treading the cold wooden planks. I approached the pathetic, weak pine branches propped in the corner of the front room. I reached for the egg. I held it in the palm of my hand, adoring it one last time before closing my fingers around its oval body and crushing it to bits.
That Christmas proceeded like every other one of my life: prayer, song, church, a small piece of buttered and sugared white bread and a strong cup of tea. My mother’s soft tears of grief. She did not say a word about the egg ornament. She did not notice its absence. Strange, something that had been given so much power, never mentioned again. Perhaps the importance of the egg ornament was as fake as a baby savior. Perhaps my mother never thought I was important enough to spoil anything.
The Egg Ornament
The Christmas after my father left, my mother went shopping and brought home one hundred nutcrackers. She removed all the books and other decorations on the living room shelves and lined them up in rows. I hated seeing the china birds and paperbacks disappear, replaced by the cringing wooden men.
The nutcrackers’ eyes followed me.
I tested them, shifted left and right. Their gaze tracked my agile form.
I asked my brother, who had the other father, the one who died, if he noticed it too.
“Go back to the counselor!” he said.
I squeezed my eyes shut each time I passed through the living room.
I heard a whisper, then two whispers, then a cacophony of whispers.
Joshua. Josh. Joshuaaaaaaaa, JOSHUA!
I kept my earbuds in, music on full blast.
Christmas morning, I turned away from the shelves, tried to focus on my few gifts. Nutcracker eyes drilled into my back.
At breakfast I found one standing beside my chair, tugging on the table cloth.
“Please don’t touch my decorations!” my mother said, lifting the wayward statue. “They’re worth a fortune.”
The offending nutcracker smiled a greedy little smile.
New Year’s day, I offered to help my mother pack them up in boxes.
“We’ll keep them in your room,” she said.
“My room?”
“You’ve got the best room,” the brother with the other father said.
By dinner time the boxes towered up the wall opposing my bed.
I stayed up as late as I could, snuck into my room through a cracked door, undressed and slipped into bed. Ugly January snow fell steadily out the window. I prayed there’d be no snow day, so I could escape to school. I prayed I’d find my father, move in with him someday.
I pressed my eyes shut, turned away.
It was no use. The nutcracker gaze pushed through tissue paper and cardboard, their stiff smiles gnawing into my dreams.
Cringey
Maggie Nerz Iribarne is 54, lives in Syracuse, NY, writes about witches, cleaning ladies, priests/nuns, the very very old, struggling teachers, neighborhood ghosts, and other things. She keeps a portfolio of her published work at https://www.maggienerziribarne.com.