The air tastes like electricity. Stairs are no obstacle; I take them four at a time. If Mom saw, she would be furious. Dad would pretend to be furious, too, but he’d secretly be proud of my stair-leaping prowess. I am the best Stair Jumper in the house.
Downstairs, the scene couldn’t be more perfect. Pine needles. Tin ornaments. Bulbs straining to give off light without catching fire. Dozens of neatly-wrapped gifts.
Except Debra is there, too. She’s up. She’s awake. Debra. The girl who eats salt in the morning and spits it at people the rest of the day. The girl who chews gerbils. The girl whose eyes melt happiness. The worst sister. Debra.
“You slept late.”
She’s nuts. It’s 5:37am. Not even Dad gets up at this hour. “It’s still early. Why are you up already?”
“It’s Christmas.” She doesn’t look at me when she talks. Instead, she’s absently examining blood on the walls only she can see. At least, that’s what I assume she’s looking at. She probably sees blood everywhere she looks. Debra gestures at the presents. “Don’t touch any of them until they get up.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you down here?”
“Just to look, okay?”
“Just to look. Sure you are.”
None of the cats will come within ten feet of her.
The packages beneath the tree are papered in red and gold and silver, some adorned with red bows, others carefully stacked in what I can only assume are sets of related goodies. Gift one, gift two, gift three, all of a piece. Maybe a car parts set for Dad. He likes car parts. He has seven mufflers, none of them made for the Dodge Dart that’s been in the garage for seventeen years and counting. Mom hates it. Dad claims he needs them for something, but I think he secretly delights in making her crazy. Once, he bought a panda costume and wore it around the house for four days. He didn’t shower the entire time and refused to talk to anyone.
Dad enjoys stuff like that.
Mom doesn’t. Mom’s towels have her initials on them. She gets into fights over parking spaces. She never looks waitresses in the eye. Only she could have wrapped those gifts so perfectly.
Though there are dozens of them, including one box for each cat and a large box that’s for all the guinea pigs collectively — guinea pigs don’t show enough appreciation for presents, Mom says, so they only get a group gift — I’m still able to spot the one I’m looking for. It radiates something. It pulls at me with a gravity that belongs in deep space. I have to have it. I need to have it.
“Don’t touch them!” Debra ruins everything. “I’ll tell Mom.”
“So tell her.”
“She’ll be mad.”
“She’s always mad.”
My logic is airtight enough to give even Debra pause, though not for long. She briefly makes eye contact, then looks away again as if it never happened.
“If you touch it,” she says to something on the other side of the room only she can see, “I’ll cut off your fingers with Dad’s pliers. I’ll do it while you sleep, so I’ll be able to get at least one off before you try and stop me.”
She probably would. It’s hard to say with her. Sometimes she says things just to say them, like the time with that Vietnam vet at Waffle House — Dad ended up having to fight him — and sometimes she actually does them. Grandma Larry knows that all too well. So I don’t know if this is a Waffle House threat or a Grandma Larry threat.
“I’m not touching it. I was going to wait for them to get up,” I lie.
“You lie.”
“No I don’t,” I lie again.
“I’ll start with the small fingers.”
“They’re called pinkies.”
“They’ll be compost.”
So I’ll wait. It’s no big deal. I can be patient. I once waited four hours in line to meet Sir Sebastian Enoch, the inventor of the Singing Plates, my favorite modern invention because who doesn’t want plates to sing? Well, Mom doesn’t. But other than her, I have to assume Singing Plates are popular throughout the world. I bet they’re big in the Netherlands.
Waiting will be no big deal.
Except the package is humming. It really is. It’s humming.
“Look,” I tell the being that inhabits my sister, “I have to open it now. It could be dangerous if I don’t.”
“Fingggg, gers.”
“Fine, I’ll go ask Mom and Dad.”
“Not Dad. Ask Mom.”
I bolt up the stairs, this time just one per stride because up is harder than down, but I’m still fast. Maybe it’s a new record for me. I should start logging my stair times. A separate column for up and down, maybe. I can color code it so my best times are shown in blue and the worst are in red. I can post copies at the top and bottom of the stairs and if no one can beat my times, that would make me the best Stair Goer in the house. Maybe of all time. I don’t know anyone who is better at stairs than me.
Mom and Dad’s bedroom is at the end of the hall, next to the bathroom on account of Dad has to pee all the time. The door is closed. I knock. No answer. I knock again, this time with authority. A pile of gravel on the other side of the door speaks.
“What?”
“It’s Christmas.”
“I know.”
“Let’s all have Christmas breakfast together.”
A pause, then, “You just want to open your present.”
I don’t want to push it any further, because in a few minutes the gravel will be Mom, so I go back downstairs.
Debra is still down there. This time, she has one of the cats cornered. Its ears lay flat on its head. I don’t know which cat it is. Trixie, maybe. Or Olga. Yes, I think it’s Olga. It looks like a Russian cat. Trixie is Dutch, and this cat is clearly Russian.
“Mom said—“
Footsteps in the hall upstairs. Then coming down. I see the slippers first. Pink. Fuzzy. Adorned with gold stars. It’s Dad.
His eyes are a fog. I can tell his brain isn’t working yet. He shuffles to the kitchen and fumbles around until a machine drips out some coffee, then he shuffles back into the living room, a little less fog clouding his head.
“Merry Christmas,” he says.
“Merry Christmas, Dad.”
“Go ahead. before she gets down. I know you want to.” His smile is simple and kind.
I’m already starting to shake with excitement when Debra chimes in: “Mom’s not here yet. She’ll be mad.”
“She’s always mad,” Dad says.
“If he touches it…” she says before trailing off.
“Go ahead,” Dad tells me.
If there was an unwrapping competition I would be the best. I can unwrap anything and I can do it so fast. I once unwrapped three birthday gifts in under forty seconds and I could even tell what each gift was before I opened it simply from how it felt. It’s just this ability I have. I should start logging my unwrapping times. Separate columns for birthdays and Christmases. Color coding to show my best and worst. I can post copies on the fridge so everyone can see I’m the best Gift Unwrapper in the house. Maybe of all time.
The paper is already flying. I am a master at this. It takes me eight seconds. Eight seconds.
And there it is, exactly as I envisioned it: A Brazilian Ultra Beef PE (Performance Edition) prosthetic butt, complete with Bluetooth functionality, an embedded mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, gyroscope-driven cheek balancing, and a companion app to control all the butt’s features, from sitting to twerking to pooping (poop sold separately).
This is the greatest moment of my life.
“Do you like it?” Dad asks.
“This is the greatest moment of my life.”
“It’s disgusting!” You know who’s saying this. What’s the point of sisters, anyway? I don’t acknowledge her. I’m too enthralled by my Brazilian Ultra Beef PE prosthetic butt.
“You worked hard this year, kiddo,” Dad says. “You deserve it. And don’t tell mom, but, look.” He gestures to another, smaller package. “That goes with it.”
I’m already crying. I know it makes me seem like a kid to cry, but I can’t help it. I already know what the other package is. It’s the poop. They got me the poop, too.
I’ve never been this happy.
A voice grinds down the stairs like sand in your teeth. “Did he open it?”
“Yeah,” Dad calls up.
“Does he like it?”
He looks at me. I nod. “He likes it,” he calls up.
“Make sure it’s put away when I get down there. I don’t want to see it.”
“It’s only a butt,” Dad says. “You have one, too.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
Dad shrugs. He knows better than to argue. It’s true that Mom has always disliked butts. Dad says it’s a phobia from when she was a child. The kids in gym class used to sit on her. She never got over it.
“Go ahead,” he tells me. “Try it on.”
With the Brazilian Ultra Beef PE prosthetic butt, I’ll be able to twerk with over one hundred bounces per minute. I’ll be able to poop with more than two hundred pounds of pressure, allowing me to break plaster and, if all goes well, shatter toilet bowls in every fast food place from here to Lexington. I can finally fit into those limited edition Shaquille O’Neil jeans I got for Easter. I can probably even sneak into R-rated movies at the cinema, since no one will recognize me when I’m wearing my new butt.
This is what Christmas is for. It’s for magic.
Christmas is a time for family; for togetherness; for love and joy and for reminding ourselves, even for just a moment, that kindness and generosity is a better way than cruelty and greed. It’s a light in the dark. Warmth in the cold. A day when dreams come true.
Debra will eventually light someone on fire but will be released on a technicality, after which she’ll marry an actor and adopt children from Indonesia; Mom will be arrested after telling an elderly man who parked in “her” spot that he should go back to his country, right before hitting him with her vanilla latte and calling him something I’m not allowed to repeat; and Dad will one day be crushed by a cascade of mufflers falling from a shelf in the garage, around fourteen of them in all, none of them for his immobile Dodge Dart.
And as for me?
I’ll always have my Brazilian Ultra Beef PE prosthetic butt with gyroscope-driven cheek balancing and embedded Wi-Fi.
