Page 30 of A Little Christmas! Johnny
“Uncle John, don’t you mean girlfriend? Boys aren’t allowed to have boyfriends. Auntie Erica says it’s wrong and that people who do wrong get punished.”
My heart feels like someone injected it with lead at the fact that my family is teaching them this bullshit so young. I shouldn’t be surprised. I think if we had been church going folks, my parents would have found a way to send me to one of those conversion camps when I came out in high school.
Jess starts tearing into him, but I hush them quickly. A sixteen-year-old doesn’t need to be mad that an eight-year-old is merely repeating what the adults in his life have told him.
“I know what your grandparents and my sister think about it,” I tell them and put the shrimp into a ramekin to sit while I do up the scallops. After adding more butter and garlic to the pan, I continue. “Sometimes girls love boys and boys love girls. That’s what most people see all of the time because that’s how babies come about. I know your parents told you all where babies come from, right?”
I really hope it’s the case with all of them. I know Suzy knows because she just had to tell me after a kid in her kindergarten class spilled the beans on that one. Since she has speech issues, she gets picked on a lot and I want her to tell me every detail of school when she sees me so that I can try to help boost her confidence even if her parents won’t do anything about the bullying.
“Dad told us,” one of the other boys says. God, they all sound the same on the phone. Pete’s genes are too fucking strong with the boys. “He also told us when we’re older he will show us how to make girls like us better. I don’t want them to like me better though. I just want to hang out with my friends.”
Okay, so it doesn’t surprise me that manwhore Pete is trying to get his six and eight-year-old sons to follow in his footsteps despite them being in elementary school. Sighing, I flip the scallops and launch into an overly simplified explanation of how sexuality is an individual thing that isn’t a choice.
“Well, some people don’t follow the girls and boys only liking each other path because they don’t really feel that it fits them,” I say, pouring the scallops into the same ramekin with the shrimp and popping it into the oven to keep warm. The last thing that goes on is the water for the noodles. Everything is ready except the pasta, and I will put that on when Dexter texts me that he’s leaving the store.
“For example, I am an adult boy who likes other boys my own age. Some girls like girls and some people, like your cousin Jess don’t feel like they are a boy or a girl so they like whoever they decide to like. Some people even like both boys and girls.”
“You can like both?!” one of the boys exclaims. I want to say it’s Jeremiah, Suzy’s older brother from another of her mother’s relationships. He’s about ten years old and a good kid. His father ran out on them while he was still in utero. The child support payments aren’t exactly small which I think is why Petecontinues to string her along despite still officially being with the boys’ mother.
“Yes, Jeremiah. You can like both. Or none. There’s no set rules when it comes to love except that you aren’t supposed to hurt the people you love. As long as everyone in a relationship are either all adults or kids that are the same age, it shouldn’t matter who is a boy or who is a girl.”
The next few minutes, I’m answering questions while my own heart is breaking that no one was there for me to tell me this when I had questions. I want to be sure my niblings – blood related or not, they're all mine at this point – are going to be decent human beings when it comes to love and relationships. They won’t grow up like me, scared to love and be loved.
After Jess ends the call, saying their father was calling them for dinner, I set the table, trying to get back on task. That call brought up a lot of feelings I want to keep buried. I’ve mostly succeeded in shutting them away again by the time my phone pings with my text alert.
Daddy:
leaving now.
I have about fifteen minutes to finish getting ready for Daddy’s Christmas surprise. I drop in the noodles and run upstairs to get changed and for one last check of the bedroom. Santa already granted my Christmas wish, so I want to be a little more naughty... in the fun way of course. Daddy is going to lose his shit when he sees this.
I can’t wait.
24
DEXTER
Christmas is understandably not typically a happy time of the year for me anymore. When I was a kid, it was the best thing in my life. I was my parents’ Christmas miracle as they liked to say. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and did the math that I realized what they meant since my birthday is in the beginning of October. Oh man, I would give anything to go back to having them teasing me about how red I used to turn because of it.
It’s been six years since they passed away, and the holidays just aren’t the same. It’s like all of the light got sucked out of the world when I had to put Mom and Dad in the ground. I usually lock myself away on Christmas. It’s the one day of the year that I need distractions, but the world doesn’t let me have that because everything closes. The world shuts down so that families can be together, but all it does is remind me of what I lost.
This year is different. For the first time since the accident, I have found myself not getting annoyed at the constant barrage of that Mariah Carey song. Instead, I laugh when I hear it, thanks to Johnny’s awful attempts to sing along to it every time it comes on the radio. To be honest, I have been excited seeing the joy on my boy’s face for the last few weeks as the holiday gotcloser. I genuinely love seeing him light up at every mention of Santa and the magic of Christmas. He even somehow managed to get me to watch a few of those cheesy prince meets small town girl movies on Netflix the other day.
Ma would have liked my boy. Dad, too. She would have been right there with him in the kitchen, whipping up all of the recipes from the social media posts and dancing to pop hits from her high school years. Dad would have talked cars with him till the Pirates bring home another Pennant. He would read up on everything to do with tinkering, but the man literally hammered nails into his own hand and knocked himself out with a screwdriver while assembling a bookshelf from IKEA. There is a reason why I call someone when tools are required. I take after my father.
Pulling into the driveway, I notice that there are colored lights in my front window and a wreath on the door that weren’t there when I left for work this morning. I’m glad Johnny and I talked about decorations and such earlier in the week. At least ten of the boxes that came from his storage unit contain nothing but Christmas decorations. My boy loves the holiday, but he promised to keep it low key this year for me. Honestly, as long as it doesn’t look like the North Pole exploded in my home, I really am not going to care. As long as he’s happy.
Stepping through the front door takes me back to better times. Well, better than the last five years. I don’t think anything is going to top this year based on what I’m seeing. Not only did he put lights in the window and a wreath on the door, but there is an honest to God real pine tree in my living room draped in lights and ornaments of every possible shape and size. Most of them look homemade – like the kinds of things kids make in their art classes to give to their parents. Underneath the tree, there is a miniature train set, complete with a village that I am pretty sure is the city of Wrenshaw made out of Legos.
On the railing to the stairs, white lights and red garland are wrapped around it to make it look like a candy cane spiraling up to the bedrooms. There are decorations everywhere I look, but I know this isn’t everything he brought with him. And some of it has to be new. The stockings are definitely new because I don’t have one anymore. I only ever had the one that Ma made for me. I didn’t replace anything that was lost that day. Aside from the photo albums and heirlooms, I left everything else to get sold at the estate sale. Part of me regrets giving up my childhood home, but I would have drowned in the memories.
The music is blasting from the kitchen, so there’s a pretty decent chance that Johnny didn’t hear me come in. I kick off my shoes and go to put them on the shoe rack, but there are fuzzy slippers where my shoes normally go. I swap them out with my shoes and see a card tucked inside the right slipper.
Dexter,
I know Christmas will be hard for you, but I hope I can help make this year brighter even if it’s just by being your silly boy. When things get HARD, I promise I’m here to help.
If you decide to play along, there is a matching robe for you hanging on the back of the closet door where you are supposed to hang your coat. The dining chairs are not coat racks tonight.
