The Bloody Stump of Christmas Past

The Emergency Room seems to factor into most of our family Christmases. John was always at the forefront. I never got to take the trip (no one asked, and I never offered). The second one was in Florida, on Christmas Eve, late, when he was too drunk and too depressed and basically shoved a booze bottle into his forehead. The first one, the one I remember more clearly, occurred on Christmas Day in Thornwood, when I was 10 years old, and he was 17 going on 18. Taking place in the evening time, in the darkness of Christmas night, just after our family Christmas with the Queens faction of my mother’s sister’s family was approaching its usual, drunken and roughed up end. Full of about 5 kinds of meats (no exaggeration of number), a veritable three courses of meats encompassing just about every end of the Croatian culinary experience – coastal Dalmatian (grilled meats), inland Slav (stuffed cabbage) and northern Austro-Hungarian (Kiseli Kupus (Kabasi w/ Sauerkraut), all of which I am now well versed at preparing, like pulling a rotten tooth from my mother’s wifely traditions (“I don’t KNOW how much; a little bit! We didn’t measure these things)...

Hours sitting at the dining room table, my father’s big jug of wine passed around for all (I still refer to your regular sized bottle of wine as a “skinny bottle”, since it didn’t seem the norm to me at all), along with very possible cocktails (scotch and soda mostly – highballs as my mother and her sister referred to them, for most everyone throughout the day. I would always volunteer to make drinks for the men, which still seems to be one of my favourite things to do with myself. I was even allowed one myself, once I was probably, say, eight years old? I can’t imagine it being before that, but watered down wine was always on the menu for me in our house. I knew then I loved the cocktail, for the amber coloured bubbly sounds it made when I mixed it up good (usually with a silverware knife), for the ritualistic measuring out of a shot glass, or a “jigger” which is a word I still use at parties at which I get strange looks from slack jawed contemporaries who, in their slightly inebriated haze, probably take it for another, less appropriate word. The men usually got 2 jiggers for each cocktail, the women 1 or 1.5 (My mother was a 1.5). I was allowed one, but with more ice and more soda and a shorter glass (they did try to dissuade me in their ways, but I say with glee to no avail).

My uncle would get drunk slowly, just like my dad and the rest of us – there is nothing like the heavy onset of all day drinking coupled with that much meat and food in your belly, and the hours at the table talking, endlessly about the old country, politics and religion of course (but as no one sitting at that table had more than a high school degree (but for my father who had two years studying to be an electrician at Youngstown University in Ohio); in fact, my other uncle I believe dropped out by something like the 3rd grade. My dad would just get “happy” as he called it – I can remember literally on one hand the number of times he got too loud and too aggressive around my mom. She simply told him he was too drunk and he fell asleep on the couch. Literally --- one hand. He was the most joyful drunk ever, when he let it rip on holidays, nights when we decided amongst ourselves that we were eating a big meal and celebrating…something. When money really got tight and he got laid off from his last “real job” around the age of 63 or 64, he brought home something sweet to eat and a bottle of something – but not for himself to drown in or grovel about. It was for us all to share, for him to tell us “we’ll be fine, let’s enjoy what we have now”. Sometimes my brother, father and I would get drinking, later on when I was in high school, and my mom in her half Ukrainian tea totler way would be annoyed and not in the mood. She’d watch TV in the room and come out occasionally – stories and loud laughter and her view of the bottle disappearing would bring on a typical “that’s disgusting” or “you bunch of piacs (Croatian for drunks…she still calls me Pianica sometimes (“little drunk girl”). But we’d laugh at her, and 7 times out of 10 she’d end up out with us taking part, to her own very stubborn chagrin.

So the drink would take hold on this Christmas Day, 1985. My uncle was not a happy drunk like my dad. He was not the nicest of men and certainly a very rough father to have. In summer times, out back in the pool or on the massive hill we had, my uncle’s pass out at some point, and/or wake up to threaten my cousin Stephen with “the belt” (the “shtap”). He would often utilize it, as Stephen was a fat kid who was a terror from the get go. No surprise there. He and my brother turned from little terrors to angry teenagers, refusing to smile for any picture imaginable. There is one of myself and my brother John outside, in the cold, all bundled up, ripping apart our shoddily put together gingerbread house and stuffing it into our mouths (my mother had the good knowledge to tell us to do so outside), and I’m far too busy inserting a north facing wall of gingerbread into my mouth to notice my brother’s middle finger posing for the camera --- stuck in front of my face – While he stuffs his own face. He was never one to say no to sweets, even when his older brother duties to be my asshole required him. On this Christmas, it wasn’t much different than the others with the 5 courses of meat meals, the wine, the highball measuring, my pretty red velvet dress, the constant fires burning in every fireplace we had, the loud and raucous conversations overlapping in a way only another southern or eastern European can understand – I have had good southern girls and WASPS alike look slightly perturbed at myself and family members talking with each other, thinking we were yelling or arguing or upset with each other. When that, my repressed northern friends, is how we talk. In some of my brother’s darker days, we’d argue and argue his worst fears and accusations about us out, taking sides, screaming, crying occasionally, throwing things, and it would be worked out. Then was never any “uncomfortable silence”. To this day I like making myself known about everything I can, since that feeling feels like, I don’t know, the opposite of “home”. It’s not something I ever want to get used to. Throw me down a flight of stairs, but don’t ignore me. I’m lost. Our way seems perfectly civilized to me.

After our dinnertime trek was done, and the desserts and coffee also went down the pipes, when my dad and uncle usually were left at the table talking, my dad always gathering up his crumbs with his hands into a neat little pile, which I of course do, since it feels like a nice gesture, even if you’re not the one cleaning up the holiday mess, and the sound of the dishwasher quietly burbling like a faraway brook underground, vibrating in our massive bellies, our heads cloudy and in need of naps. Evening would come, we would say our goodbyes, and they’d be on their way, down from Westchester to Astoria, often in my uncle’s work van, which had no seats in the back, so my cousins would be bumped and tossed about, like dogs on a road trip, all the way down the insane city highways, since my uncle was an insane city driver. Before this occurred, up from the dark and dysfunctional basement where the boys congregated, came my brother and male cousin. Drunk? Slightly…suffering from aggression, most definite sexual frustration and familial holiday discontent? Definitely. Stephen was careless, and slammed the basement door behind him, right onto my brother’s middle finger (I know, it’s poetic justice of some “fuck you” sort). My brother was not one to quiet his voice when in anger, pain or some combination of the two. The scream was booming, and almost wavy in it levels of pain registering in his finger, rest of body and mind. It was all a crazy haze of half drunken, debauched adults and kids running around, the women grabbing every first aid apprentice and/or ingredient they could (my mom most likely; my aunt was not good in a crisis, whereas I think my mom got off on the sight of blood – a challenge and a call to her motherly duty like no other) and attempted to wrap it up.

Well, my most definitely drunk dad drove my brother to the ER and soon enough he was back, properly bandaged and still, yet more subtly, angry. There was some talk of Stephen doing it on purpose, since he seemed to love destruction and aggression, but I think everyone just chocked it up to a dysfunctional familial Christmas moment. I can’t remember how much longer they stayed, but surely we ate and drank more, and sat a bit more by the fire, or at least, I’d like to hope we all did. It didn’t ruin the memory of that day for me. You’d have to ask John about his memory of that Christmas. For all I know, he could stem every dissatisfaction in his life from that finger bang in the doorway moment. As usual, they piled in the van and drove, sputtering loudly and concurrently down our tall, steep driveway as we all –always- stood outside and waved at them, our dogs running around free as they always cared to be, while my aunt’s family did the same from inside the van. We would even walk about halfway down the driveway sometimes – each of the adults getting in last words of sarcasm and laughter at each other’s expense. As they drove off down Virginia Lane, the final note in this battalion of a symphony would include their honking the horn over and over as they left our sight. We would do the same if leaving their house, and in both cases, the patriarch driving would still be drunk, my mother and aunt often commenting weeks later on the telephone phrase like “I don’t know how he got us home” or “I can’t believe he drove like that”, their voices half bothered by the inappropriateness of that action and half turned on by the danger of their drunken adventure. Nothing like putting your family’s life at risk to close out a holiday, is there? The exhaust heard in between the trees in the distant street, as my brother waved goodbye, the smoke of cold Christmas night emanating from his mouth, and his plump, white bandaged middle finger, waving and wishing a fuck you to all, and to all a fucking goodnight.

~ M. Lucia