Everything but Christmas
Claire and Jacob Reeves running into a boutique
It was 1985, and there was a thin layer of snow starting to accumulate on the long unkept grass surrounding the shopping center. Yet, this didn’t deter shoppers. People walked swiftly from their cars to the stores, holding their coats shut and carrying Christmas lists in their hands. Jacob and Claire Reeves were looking for one last thing for their daughters, Miranda, who was eight, and Jennie, who was six. They were looking for a Cabbage Patch card set to go with the dolls they had already bought, and every store seemed to be out of them. Then Claire found the set in a small boutique near the back of the shopping center. “Here they are,” she said. Jacob dropped a few chocolate stocking stuffers into the basket. “How about these?” Claire looked at him, smiled, and said, “Okay, but no more.” That’s it. Christmas shopping was finally complete. They carried the bags to the car, put them in the back seat, and got in.
When the car was warmed up, Jacob pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards home. He took the ramp to the freeway and picked up speed to merge. A large trailer was coming behind them, so he pressed the gas pedal to get in front of it. He didn’t see a smaller car zipping from lane to lane. Claire, as the more observant one, said “Honey, there’s a car!” pointing toward the lane. Jacob turned his head. “Oh, shit!” He hit the brakes hard. The car missed them by inches, and the gifts flew across the back seat. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Jacob let out a breath, “Phew, that was a little close.” Claire put her hand on his shoulder, “too close! Let’s get home.” They had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief, when another car came up behind them too fast. The driver tried to stop, but the tires caught a slick patch and the car slammed into the back of the Reeves stopped car, pushing them forward into traffic. Jacob had no time to turn the wheel before their car hit the back of the trailer where the accident would prove to be catastrophic.
At home, Miranda and Jennie were asleep after a day of playing with their pets and making a fort out of whatever blankets and chairs they could drag together. Grandma Jan was watching them that night. The house was quiet when the phone rang. Jan woke up the girls and said,
“Get your shoes on.”
She didn’t explain much. That left Miranda and Jennie feeling uneasy. Jan drove them to the hospital through the snow, slower than she usually drove. When they walked inside, Miranda saw nurses moving fast and heard sirens outside. Jan told the girls to sit while she went to the front desk.
“I need help,” she said to the first nurse she saw. “My daughter and son-in-law were in an accident. Please help.” Miranda and Jennie were so tired they curled up on the waiting room chairs.
Just as Miranda started to close her eyes, she heard her grandmother make a sound she had never heard from any adult before. Jan almost fell, and someone walking nearby helped her into a wheelchair. The girls sat alone, not knowing what had happened but knew it was bad. A few minutes later, Jan came back.
“Your mom and dad were in a bad accident, my sweethearts, and they aren’t coming back,” she said. Jennie asked in a low tone, “Did they die?” Jan didn’t answer with words. She only nodded as tears began to flow heavily down her face then the girls knew their mom and dad wouldn’t be going home with them.
During that time, family and friends from across the country filled the Reeves home. Some relatives Miranda and Jennie had never met arrived with gifts for the girls and condolences for Jan. “You probably don’t remember me,” one woman said, kneeling in front of Miranda, “but I knew your mom when she was your age.” Miranda only nodded because she didn’t know what else to do. The visitors kept coming until the day of the funeral. Grandma Jan told the girls in a low voice, “That’s how you know they were loved,” while wiping away tears. Reeve’s funeral was held on a Sunday morning, and Jacob and Claire were buried side by side.
At that time, Miranda and Jennie needed a home, and Grandma Jan became their sole caretaker. She had always been their favorite kind of grandmother, the one who spoiled them with gifts, took them shopping, baked with them, and let them help in the garden. Now, she was responsible for school registrations, homework, lunches, laundry, meals, errands, and the girls’ four pets, Petey and Crimson, their dogs, Smokey, their cat, and Tiny, Miranda’s guinea pig.
Jan filled out school papers, packed lunches, cooked dinner, washed clothes, and took care of four animals while still grieving her own daughter. Some mornings she looked worn out before the day even started.
“Grandma, are you sick?” Jennie asked once. Jan smiled very quickly and said, “No, baby, I’m just tired.”
One afternoon, on her way to pick the girls up from school, the dogs pushed their way through the front door. Jan managed to get Crimson back, but Petey ran. When she reached for his leash, she slipped on a crack on the stone walkway. She heard something tear and later found out she had broken her ankle. After that, moving around the house on crutches, she finally told Miranda and Jennie, “I don’t have the energy your mom and dad had. I tried so hard, but I can’t do this alone anymore.” “Are we going away?” Miranda asked. Jan covered her mouth and nodded. The girls cried and clung to her, not really understanding what it meant. They understood the next day when Aunt Kathy and Uncle Joseph came to take them away.
Aunt Kathy was Jan’s younger sister. She didn’t have children, and from the beginning it felt like she had no interest in the girls either. On their first night in her house, she pointed toward the animals and said, “You two are in charge of them. Don’t forget.” Then she closed the door before either girl could ask a question. Uncle Joseph was rarely home but when he was, Crimson and Petey barked constantly. He drank a lot and sat around for long periods of the day without talking and watched Miranda and Jennie in a way that made Miranda uncomfortable. In those first days, Miranda decided when he was around, she would keep and extra close eye on Jennie.
Miranda started third grade, and Jennie started first grade at a new school. At home, they learned to depend on each other. Miranda was the older one, so she tried to be strong for Jennie, especially at night when Jennie cried. Before bed, Miranda would look out at the stars and whisper, “Please bring us new parents to love.” She said it more than once, it felt like every night for a long while. Nothing changed. Kathy stayed in charge, and Joseph stayed mostly away, which was sometimes better than when he was home.
“Why do you stay home, and where does Uncle Joseph go all the time?” Jennie asked one afternoon. Kathy’s voice sharpened. “Don’t worry about that. Worry about your pets and stop asking dumb questions.” Then she left the room before either girl could respond. Miranda learned that questions in that house only made life harder. Her pets became the only companions she could truly count on until strange things began happening to them.
One day after school, Miranda walked in and looked through the window and saw her cat outside. Frantic, she stood up and asked, “Who let Smokey out?” “What?” Jennie said, running to the window. Smokey was climbing on an old wooden gate connected to the neighbor’s home when Miranda heard the neighbor’s dog begin to bark. “Smokey, no!” Miranda yelled, pounding on the glass. Rattled by the dog, Smokey tried to get back into her own yard, but the dog quickly pushed against the gate with its front legs, and Smokey lost her balance. She fell to the ground on the wrong side of the gate, where the dog bit into her like a chew toy. Miranda couldn’t see what was happening, but she could hear Smokey screeching. “Help her!” Jennie screamed. Miranda could only yell, throw rocks across the gate, and pound on it with her hand to get the neighbor’s attention. By then it was too late and they would bury Smokey in a grassy patch in their backyard. Miranda cried about Smokey for months and was angry that her aunt didn’t comfort her the way her mother and grandmother would have.
Crimson, their pit bull, barked at the neighbor’s dog every day. Eventually, this led Kathy to chain Crimson on the opposite end of the yard. It was only supposed to be temporary, but the girls realized that temporary sometimes meant permanent. Then, one day after school, Miranda came home to find her guinea pig, Tiny, missing. She looked everywhere but couldn’t find him. She asked Jennie, “Have you seen Tiny? I can’t find him.” Jennie said, “Nope.” Then Miranda asked Kathy, who said, “Oh, yeah. I found him, and he was dead. I didn’t want him to smell up the house, so I threw him out.” Miranda felt dismayed and angry at Kathy. She was confused because she knew her guinea pig had been perfectly healthy before she went to school that day. “It’s not fair!” Miranda said. She slammed the door behind her, fell onto her bed, and began to cry.
Once, when Jennie and Miranda got home, the two girls waited in front of the house for Aunt Kathy to arrive. The strange part was that Kathy didn’t work, so she was usually home. As they looked through the front window, they saw their dog Petey jolt and fall to the floor, foaming at the mouth. Jennie and Miranda began yelling, “No! No! Petey!” They tried their hardest to break down the door, but they were still too small. Unable to get inside as their dog lay lifeless, they began to cry and hug each other. When their aunt finally got home, they demanded that she open the door. “Hurry up! Open the door! Open the door!” Miranda said, but it was too late. Petey was already gone. They buried him in the backyard. After just a single year, Crimson also died, maybe from old age, though both girls believed it was from a broken heart. She had been taken away from her family and forced to be chained alone in the backyard by Kathy and Joseph.
After all of their loss, Miranda and Jennie did the best they could and adapted because they had to. They found friends in the neighborhood, including a girl across the street named Lavender. The first time Lavender came outside, she brought sugar cookies and shared them with everyone playing nearby. “My mom made too many,” Lavender said, holding out the plate. “Do you want one?” Miranda decided to try it. “Thanks.” Lavender had cats too, but hers stayed inside, safe from the neighborhood dogs. Miranda and Jennie went to her house often. It was peaceful for the girls to be at Lavender’s home, and she had a wonderful mom and dad. As Miranda got older, she learned to disguise her true emotions from the outside. Christmas was the one part she couldn’t fake very well. When people asked what they were doing for the holiday, the girls gave the answer they had practiced every year “Our family is going away on vacation for Christmas.” It wasn’t true. “Do we have to say that again?” Jennie asked one year. Miranda looked at the floor and said, “It’s easier.” They didn’t celebrate because Christmas brought back memories of the night their parents left and never came home. Kathy and Joseph never seemed to mind. Most years, they went away without the girls and came back after Christmas with no gifts and no apology.
The years flew by very quick, and the girls had to grow up faster than most. At school, Miranda started getting teased in physical education. Other girls asked why she didn’t wear a bra and laughed like it was common knowledge. Miranda didn’t know this knowledge and no one at home had explained what was happening to her body, or what she was supposed to do about it. After school, she found Lavender and asked, “What do you know about wearing a bra?” Lavender told her what her mother had explained about bras, periods, and being careful around boys. Miranda listened closely. She wasn’t shocked that Kathy had never told her any of it, but nonetheless it hurt in a way she couldn’t explain at the time.
Miranda finally decided to ask Kathy for help. “Can you buy me a bra, Aunt Kathy?” she asked. Kathy’s face hardened. “Why don’t you get a job and buy your own bra?” Then she scolded Miranda about how expensive it was to feed her and Jennie and continued until Miranda started crying and ran into her room. The next afternoon, Jan surprised her. When Miranda came home from school, a bra was waiting on her bed. Jan didn’t explain how to wear it, but Miranda figured it out with Lavender’s help. From then on, whatever Miranda learned, she taught Jennie, so her sister wouldn’t have to face the same things alone.
At seventeen years old, Miranda finally moved out. It was a feeling of relief at first but quickly turned into sadness because Jennie was still living in the home, left to manage the house on her own. Before long, Jennie turned sixteen and moved in with her best friend’s family. Years passed without a call or visit from Kathy or Joseph, but by then, their silence felt typical.
Later, Miranda found one holiday she could still enjoy, which was Halloween. This holiday didn’t push her to be cheerful in the same way Christmas had. Halloween had its own special place in Miranda’s heart with tailored costumes, music, candy, and memories of her parents dressed as clowns each year. The photos Miranda kept of her parents laughing said a thousand words in the stories people still told her.
She went to parties with Lavender and Andy, another close friend, and at one of those parties she met Glenn. He was funny without trying too hard. He made her laugh, and that mattered. Over time, laughter became the safest part of their relationship.
It was December and Glenn asked if she wanted to visit his family in northern California for Christmas. Miranda said yes before she had time to think, then quickly felt panic as the plans became real. By the time she wanted to back out, the rental car had been reserved, and the hotel had been booked, so she told herself she could manage for just one Christmas.
At Glenn’s family home, the gift exchange started after dinner. His mother put a gift bag in Miranda’s hands, and the room seemed to get smaller around her. She thought of another Christmas, and the night her parents never came home. Her chest tightened so she went outside into the cold and tried to work her way through by concentrating on her breathing, but the feeling lingered. After a few minutes, she had enough of the pretending and decided to leave the party. Miranda drove back through the snow to her hotel room immediately calling Jennie.
The sisters talked late into the night, sharing every memory they could remember and exchanging stories family members had told them throughout the years. “Do you remember Mom dancing with us in the kitchen?” Miranda asked. Jennie laughed loudly. “With that baking spatula like it was a microphone?” “Yes,” Miranda said. “And Dad pretending he hated Christmas music because it played throughout the year but then sang louder than everyone else” Jennie wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweater. “I forgot about that.” The two stayed on the phone, trading memories of their parents back and forth like they were trying to rebuild and relive them. Miranda remembered her mother’s humor, her father’s sweet tooth, and the unconditional devotion both parents had for the girls. The love their parents shared was always the true spirit and the miracle that Christmas brought to the girls before they had to let go of them.
Hearing those memories from Jennie helped in a way Miranda hadn’t expected. For Miranda, the grief didn’t leave but it felt like less of a burden. By the time she returned to her hotel room, she was exhausted and calmer than she had been all night. She fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down.
Just as soon as she woke up the next morning, Miranda spoke to Glenn. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay last night,” she said. She proceeded to explain her loss to Glenn about the difficulties she experienced around Christmas each year. Glenn listened intently with no judgement then asked if she would be open to seeing a therapist? Miranda looked down at her hands, then agreed. “I think that’s a good idea!” She laughed, wiping the tears from her own eyes, and Glenn laughed with her.
Thank you for reading Everything But Christmas
