Can you remember before you knew Christmas in December?
Tumbling from a holly tree. Some dream from one who never slept. The cousin of mine who never needed a ribbon of rest. Or any a box about to sleep–. Or so it seemed to me. Me: one forever in want of rest and sleep and more, eight hours or more. I could count to eight somehow without a tally, in my head, knew! Kidding, couldn’t count that high, not back then or knew when to wear a watch, yet she, the sleepless one, always knew when berries ripe.
She poked me. “Berries? What you fool. Blueberries stopped makin’ before school took back-in.” Wait wait, she said. “Ohhhh, blackberries.” No no, she tried to interrupt. “Blackberries, we stopped messin’ with, after you-know got bit!”
“Stupid,” she started back. “Stupid, silly, and no Xmas for you.”
The rest of us sore out of sense. Barely awake, I was unbridled and prickly the theme idling, you see me addled, before knew what coffee was (tea only for supper for kiddos).
“Holly berries. For Christmas, Xmas like it says at the store come Halloween.” (This was years ago, only one vendor put out ghoulish candies before Turkey; we only had one store back then and there, and more than our eyes could fill.)
Oh.
“Come on. Come on, let’s go.”
And off we would– That’s how it always went, and foolish us arguing enough to draw blood with scratches, the wiles of rurals– too young to? Where’s Santy Klausse? “I’ll pack your fanny,” said she back to us. “Come along, you. Y’all don’t be messin’ with me, my berries….”
We’d follow like lice on poor hygiene, only to learn later (what worthy of another pen stroke to paper), lice like proud-clean as much as po’-clean, but not poor and dirty in the same laundry, if you follow. Cousin was drawing blood by this time, in such a hurry already festooning in her mind, the boughs of fa-la-la-la back at the grandparents’. No wonder she became a florist. Should’ve charged us back then I reckon, but she made out OK. Got floral outlets today in St. George, St. Stephen, Hell Hole (full of saints by another name), all always in need of a greenery’s flourish despite the poverty still in some places full of… Life! More than from a single-color pine, holly this time its season red.
“I can always tell time by my grands,” overheard Grandmother gabbing on the phone before the mid-day meal of dinner. More of our noise. Screaming: biscuits, fried chicken, collards, always rice, swee’tea, the last of peach cobbler, a memory of summer break and we couldn’t tell time. It tasted like Christmas, Southern-style in eighty-degree glare, green grass in autumn proper, pricked fingers pulling apart blood-stained biscuits, healing with their lard grease what the dog didn’t lick. Not one fighting over shoves or shoes, gifts for a second of no squabble.
INSTANT NOODLES 