Christmas Dinner

This story contains themes of emotional abuse.

No, I thought.

No no no no no. I said out loud, quietly, under my breath.

But the smell in the air was unmistakable. I opened the oven and a wave of blackened smoke rolled out.

The smoke detector began its high pitched beeping.

Yeah, I got it, thanks. I muttered to no one in particular. To the smoke detector.

Why didn’t the timer go off? Had I forgotten to set the timer? Who burns a turkey on Christmas day?

I grabbed the sparkly green-and-gold Christmas tea towels and began to frantically swing them back and forth beneath the lunacy-making sound of the smoke detector.

I had been so proud of myself for putting them out, for finding them in the chaos of box-land, as Mason, 4 years old and my middle child, called the cramped rooms of our new home. I had tried to create a small sliver of normalcy and half-hearted Christmas cheer, amidst everything unsettled and needing to be unpacked.

Mama?

My oldest, nine year old Emily , was in the kitchen doorway, her long brown hair looking messy and sweet, a look of real sadness on her face.

Is everything okay?

No baby, things are not okay.

But out loud I said - Hey, sweetie. Do you think you could open a window for me?

I stepped backwards, and my youngest, just learning to walk, had toddled over to me without my noticing. My foot landed on his, hard, and his anxious cry added to the cacophony of the smoke detector, Emily struggling to open the heavy window panes, and Mason who had come up behind her added his plastic firetruck sounds to the din.

I picked up my lovely curly headed little boy. He was getting so big.

Shhh shh shh baby.

I pressed his cheek to mine, and moved us gently back and forth, bending my knees.

It’s okay baby, shhh shh shh.

But he continued to wail, and Mason’s firetruck continued its bleary electronic tirade, and the oven decided to add its gentle beeping to let me know that its door was, in fact, still open.

Emily was crying now too, I could see. The window panes were old and stuck and she was trying bravely for me, but I knew the noise and smell were too much for my tender-hearted oldest. She wasn’t even wiping at the tears, but I could see them collecting at her chin, dropping onto the scratched old kitchen table she was leaning over.

I put the baby down, still crying, and moved past her.

It’s okay hon, let me get that.

I fumbled with the metal latches but they were good and stuck - no one had opened this window in a long, long time.

Here, take the tea towels, and swing them back and forth, like that.

I tried the small windows in the dining room, next to the kitchen. They were also stuck.

I lifted Mason’s firetruck out of his hands and took the batteries out. He pouted in disappointment, but mercifully did not start crying.

There was a small balcony with a glass sliding door off of the living room. I opened it, keeping the ripped screen door shut and locked. This balcony made me nervous.

I’d have to talk to the property manager about the windows, the ripped screen.

I felt my body tighten, thinking of all there was to be done. The boxes piled in every room, the family members to call, the car mechanic appointment to book, the new underwear that was needed, the children’s schools to notify.

I opened the front door into our dimly lit apartment hallway, thinking that maybe it would entice the ghost of Christmas future to visit us, along with dispelling some of the smoke. I touched my face to feel the small smile that had shaped itself there. The ghost of Christmas future.

For a moment, I pictured myself at the head of a grand, shining mahogany dining table, set with white china plates and sterling silver cutlery, candles lit, roses blooming in cut-glass vases, a real towering Christmas tree wrapped in tiny lights in the corner, a pile of gifts shining in their multicoloured wrapping overflowing beneath it. The turkey in my imagination was glistening golden brown, and I stood to carve it at the table like they did in the movies. Perhaps that could be our Christmas future, one day.

But for now, I turned back to our frankly dingy new apartment, with its smell of burnt turkey, and sighed.

The homes I had lived in with my children had never been as grand as the one in my imagination, but they had been better than this. These walls had been spackled in places and not repainted, the floors were scuffed and peeling, there wasn’t much light, the appliances felt like they were older than time itself.

And yet, it was warm. It was a safer home than I had been able to give them in a long time.

There was no backyard here, and the elevator smelled faintly of something rotten, but I didn’t think he would be able to find us. I had taken my little family further away from my husband than I thought I would ever be capable of.

The smoke was lifting.

We had opened our presents that morning in our new living room, on the hand-me-down furniture that had been delivered, beside our tiny plastic tree that I had begged from someone on facebook marketplace for only $5. It was decorated with sweet and messy new homemade ornaments, as, after searching frantically, I discovered that I had accidentally forgotten my collection.

On that cold, rushed afternoon when we finally left, there had been so many boxes I wanted to take with us. We were leaving so much behind, it felt important to bring as many pieces of ourselves as we could fit.

I thought of the handblown little glass baubles my mother gifted me over the years, and how if he found them after we left he would likely smash them, knowing what they meant to me.

I wouldn’t be there anymore though, to clean up the broken shards.

Our presents were wrapped in newspaper, but we kept our tradition of cozy new matching Christmas pajamas, this year with funny-faced little snowmen, (Mason, who loved building snowmen had been particularly delighted) a few used books, some dollar store crafting supplies.

It wasn’t as much as I would have liked to give them, but for the first time in years, we had been without that grindingly ceaseless worry that one of us would say or do something wrong, displease him somehow with a feeling or a need of his having been unanticipated.

I remembered one Christmas years earlier when I had given him a gift I was excited about - a beautifully soft cashmere sweater, in a cranberry colour I thought would be lovely with his dark hair and eyes. But he had raged about it being boring and thoughtless, how I never considered him or what he liked, how I didn’t care about him. He had spilled his coffee on our expensive rug, and then blamed me for it, shouting and storming and slamming doors for what felt like ages.The children and I opened the rest of our gifts in shamed silence afterwards.

This morning, with its quiet sweetness, carols playing on the radio, all of us drinking watery instant-mix hot chocolate and opening our newspaper wrapped presents without caring if we were too loud or smiling the right way, was the best one we’d had in a long time.

Emily appeared in front of me, the quieted baby in her arms. My little mama.

Can we still eat the turkey mama?

I don’t think so, baby. Let’s go check.

Leaving the front door open brought that familiar tightness into my body, but I told myself it would only be for a few minutes.

The turkey was well and truly burnt - the whole top of it completely blackened.

Maybe it's this old oven? I thought.

I looked at Emily, and could see a familiar fear in her eyes. Her father would lose his mind over something like this.

I’m sorry, turkey. I whispered. I hated to waste the life of an animal. Maybe I could still salvage part of it?

And then, surprising myself, I felt a bubbling laughter rising up in me. It was just so, so burnt.

I snorted, letting the relief of laughter rise out of me. Emily looked at my face, then began to giggle. The baby looked at us wide-eyed, and Mason came in demanding to know -

WHAT’S SO FUNNY??

Mama, Emily gasped, Mama burnt the turkey!

Mama burnt the turkey? His voice had an edge to it, disconcertingly like his father’s.

I sat on the floor, and scooped him close to me, still giggling in an uncontrollable release.

Yes baby, I burnt the turkey so badly.

Mama burnt the turkey! He was scream-shouting and laughing now too, all of us in a roly-poly pile on the kitchen floor. We never would have dared, before. Moments like this had been banished for a long time.

I paused, catching my breath and wiping tears from Emily’s face, and mine.

Who wants to go for Chinese food?

Between first and last month’s rent, the damage deposit on the apartment, electricity and hydro payments, groceries, renting the Uhaul and gas for it - the cash I had been secretly stashing for months, and what my brother had been able to lend me was almost gone, but we had enough for a Chinese Christmas dinner.

Emily and Mason cheered. They loved Chinese take-out, and it was another thing that had been not allowed in the house we left behind.

Can we get spring rolls?

And sweet and sour pork?

Yes babies. And fried rice and wonton soup.

I kissed their faces, and we rose into the way our new lives could be.