“Seriously?”
“You know Aunt Em would want us to go to church on Christmas.”
Our mother had described herself as spiritual, not religious. Her brother, Henry, wasn’t interested in anything he couldn’t touch, see, or smell. Em had never pushed her own regular church attendance on us girls. But once a year, she took us all with her to the white clapboard church by the highway where her friend played the piano, Toni and I in our best school sneakers, Henry in his one good suit, the one he’d been married and probably would be buried in.
“We’re not Catholic,” Toni said.
I glanced at the entrance, the tall double doors with green wreaths and bows, the stone arch crowned by a woman with her arms open wide. “I don’t think they’ll card us,” I teased.
So we went into the half-filled church. I sat next to Toni on the hard wooden pew. It felt strange: the unfamiliar rituals, the smell of wax and incense, the lilting accents—Irish, African, and French—all around. The stained glass windows, the statues around the altar, were nothing like the church back home. But it was familiar, too—the gray-haired women in Christmas sweaters, the scrubbed, fidgety children, the solemn-faced men. The story they read, the one from Luke, I recognized that and the carols rolling from the organ. Toni sang beside me, loudly and out of tune. Her knee bumped mine. Our shoulders pressed together. Warm. Connected.
A surge of joy came over me, like the rush of angels’ wings.
—
Christmas dinner for half the neighborhood,” Sam had said.
They crowded the Clerys’ modest apartment, a couple with two toddlers, an elderly nun, a man with dreadlocks who worked at the shop. I counted three aunts, four uncles including Gerry-the-cabbie, two handfuls of cousins (Or the children of cousins?Below a certain age, I couldn’t tell the generations apart), and a baby. There was lots of chatting and drinking and passing plates of food. The TV crackled with pop carols and a streaming yule log, adding to the noise. The smells—turkey and Brussel sprouts, beer and bodies—pervaded the close, warm space.
Anything less like Christmas in Kansas was hard to imagine.
Toni was laughing, throwing herself into a competitive card game with Sam’s brother and sisters. I wasn’t sure of the rules, but exploding kittens were involved. Under the table, the orange cat groomed itself, apparently unconcerned.
Gerry, the cab driver, knocked a cigarette from the pack in his pocket.
“No smoking in the house,” Janette said. “You know the rules.”
“Your husband smoked.”
“Right. And now he’s dead.”
My gaze flew to Sam. His crooked mouth lifted on one side.
“Rest his soul,” Gerry said. He raised his glass. “To Martin.”
The chorus ran around the table. “To Martin.” “My brother.” “Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.”
They all drank. The baby knocked over a water glass, prompting a flurry of napkins and exclamations.
“Sorry, Aunt Jan,” the young mother said, blotting the tablecloth.
“No problem, darling.”
Grace peeled off an orange section for the baby, who promptly flung it to the cat under the table.
“And when is one of you lot going to give my sister a grandchild?” an older woman asked, with a look around at the Clerys.
“I’m going to uni, Aunt Nora,” Grace said.
Fiadh crossed her arms. “Don’t look at me. I’m not wanting crotch fruit yet.”
“Sam?”
“Sorry, love.” He winked. “I always use protection.”
“Gerry, you light up that fag in this house, and I’ll put it out on your forehead,” Janette said.
The doorbell rang.
