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Author’s Note: This is just a little bit of a freestyle short story of mine on a meshing of some childhood memories.
Christmas lights twinkling, jolly tunes in the background. Voices of laughter turn to hushed tones of anger. There’s tension hidden beneath the surface wrapped like the Christmas presents under the tree. An angel sat atop the tree, I wondered what she must think of us, her golden curls and blue eyes, so unlike mine. My brother’s new girlfriend asks if I like cheerleaders. “Not really” I answered, as she went on about her glory days with a flick of her hair.
There were board games with plastic monkeys being launched into a tree, and chocolate houses that we made. Mexican food wafting from the kitchen enticing you with its spices. We’d sit around the table and I’d anxiously jump at the chance to hear about my siblings and their mystical lives away from home. Yet they’d tease me relentlessly and I cried when they went, leaving me to dinners spent alone, waiting for my parents return.
“I’ll go far away” I said, referring to the distance of where I’d study for college. The distance not relevant to academics but rather to how my mother only seemed to cook when my siblings came home from college. So I rationalized that the further I went away for college, the more of my mother’s cooking I’d get when I came home.
Tired, my mother would put down her purse, take off her suit jacket and head to bed. The TV flickered as I tried to snuggle in next to her to catch the latest on the Discovery Channel. Yet my father who showered me with attention that I would turn from.”Come sit on my lap” he’d say, until I got so big that he had to pretend like I wasn’t hurting him with my bony butt.
I’d watch as my father would blow smoke circles with his pipe, inhale, exhale and a cloud of smoke. He’d do it for my amusement, I’d stick around even though after I’d leave our kitchen, the sickly sweet tobacco aroma would cling to my clothes.
My mother’s cancer sticks though I was never a fan of. I’d feel trapped in a death-box when she’d drive and smoke, one arm casually out the window, flicking embers of her problems and regrets out to the road. Until the cigarette would burn down she’d toss it, and I’d worry if some passing car would catch fire.
It was as if with each next one she wanted so desperately to smother herself in nicotine to make things disappear. Harsh words as we drove, each glowing minute on the dashboard didn’t go by fast enough. I stared at the vents and answered “yes” appropriately, tears eminent, but didn’t flinch, “Are you listening?”.
Later she’d ask what she did to deserve this, an ungrateful daughter like me. When I didn’t wear the hideous clearance clothes that I’d hide at the bottom of my drawers. The hand-me-downs I had grown up with. Was it so wrong that I wanted to fit in; tired of outdated over-sized sweaters and funky colored jeans. Like other little kids I longed for the toys on TV commercials and remember kicking a big red ball and running to the next base.
I stuck out like a sore thumb, my skin tan enough to pass as Hispanic but my eyes were traitorous to my Asian heritage. ‘Chinese girl’ they’d call me, yet I argued I was in fact only part Japanese. “Same thing!” the children would reply, but when I came home to recount my woes, my parents taught me to be proud that I was different. That I’d been so exposed to cultures, to the adult world.
Board meetings and spinning around in my mother’s executive chair at her big desk, there were always tables of suit-clad men and women. There were trips to the courthouse, where my father knew every security guard by name. “Is that your daughter Mr. Garcia?” he’d smile and chat, while I hid behind my papa, a little girl with ponytails, and big chubby cheeks. Sometimes I wonder where she’s gone.
Christmas lights twinkling, jolly tunes in the background. Voices of laughter turn to hushed tones of anger. There’s tension hidden beneath the surface wrapped like the Christmas presents under the tree. An angel sat atop the tree, I wondered what she must think of us, her golden curls and blue eyes, so unlike mine. My brother’s new girlfriend asks if I like cheerleaders. “Not really” I answered, as she went on about her glory days with a flick of her hair.
There were board games with plastic monkeys being launched into a tree, and chocolate houses that we made. Mexican food wafting from the kitchen enticing you with its spices. We’d sit around the table and I’d anxiously jump at the chance to hear about my siblings and their mystical lives away from home. Yet they’d tease me relentlessly and I cried when they went, leaving me to dinners spent alone, waiting for my parents return.
“I’ll go far away” I said, referring to the distance of where I’d study for college. The distance not relevant to academics but rather to how my mother only seemed to cook when my siblings came home from college. So I rationalized that the further I went away for college, the more of my mother’s cooking I’d get when I came home.
Tired, my mother would put down her purse, take off her suit jacket and head to bed. The TV flickered as I tried to snuggle in next to her to catch the latest on the Discovery Channel. Yet my father who showered me with attention that I would turn from.”Come sit on my lap” he’d say, until I got so big that he had to pretend like I wasn’t hurting him with my bony butt.
I’d watch as my father would blow smoke circles with his pipe, inhale, exhale and a cloud of smoke. He’d do it for my amusement, I’d stick around even though after I’d leave our kitchen, the sickly sweet tobacco aroma would cling to my clothes.
My mother’s cancer sticks though I was never a fan of. I’d feel trapped in a death-box when she’d drive and smoke, one arm casually out the window, flicking embers of her problems and regrets out to the road. Until the cigarette would burn down she’d toss it, and I’d worry if some passing car would catch fire.
It was as if with each next one she wanted so desperately to smother herself in nicotine to make things disappear. Harsh words as we drove, each glowing minute on the dashboard didn’t go by fast enough. I stared at the vents and answered “yes” appropriately, tears eminent, but didn’t flinch, “Are you listening?”.
Later she’d ask what she did to deserve this, an ungrateful daughter like me. When I didn’t wear the hideous clearance clothes that I’d hide at the bottom of my drawers. The hand-me-downs I had grown up with. Was it so wrong that I wanted to fit in; tired of outdated over-sized sweaters and funky colored jeans. Like other little kids I longed for the toys on TV commercials and remember kicking a big red ball and running to the next base.
I stuck out like a sore thumb, my skin tan enough to pass as Hispanic but my eyes were traitorous to my Asian heritage. ‘Chinese girl’ they’d call me, yet I argued I was in fact only part Japanese. “Same thing!” the children would reply, but when I came home to recount my woes, my parents taught me to be proud that I was different. That I’d been so exposed to cultures, to the adult world.
Board meetings and spinning around in my mother’s executive chair at her big desk, there were always tables of suit-clad men and women. There were trips to the courthouse, where my father knew every security guard by name. “Is that your daughter Mr. Garcia?” he’d smile and chat, while I hid behind my papa, a little girl with ponytails, and big chubby cheeks. Sometimes I wonder where she’s gone.
