Yule Log by Celyn Salow

Yule Log By Celyn Salow Marine layer, rolling over Bay Area hills so green they are named after a city in Ireland. I sit next to my sister Beth in my mother’s wheezy Tempo, white tights on my legs, red velvet dress collecting every speck of lint in the car. I rub the velvet nap to watch it darken and lighten, think myself merry, over the river and through the woods. My mother and step-father talk in the front seat. I can hear only hard-pressed esses and tees, the rumble of Marv’s deep voice. We cross the coastal pass through Castro Valley, Hayward, into Oakland. Green hills give way to grey-block cities, a glimmer of depressed Bay water, the color of exhaust. My step-grandparent’s house, cluttered almost beyond habitation. A few feral kittens with rheumy eyes scatter when my mother pulls out armfuls of crackling boxes from car trunk, red and green ribbons trailing brighter than anything on the broken street. Grandma Mary greets us in her blue velvet house robe, calls come-in, come-in, we-gots the tea ready! in her lilting Portuguese accent. Marv galumphs ahead, makes beeline for the kitchen. He has no children of his own, and my sister and I are beloved baubles to his parents. Grandma Mary already has Sprite poured into Flintstone jelly jars. Silver bubbles rise. I press my ear close, listen to the chatter of carbonation, and choose the Betty jar. Beth accepts the capering Dino cup with a Zen far beyond her six years. Spiced cider brews, steam uncurling from a sticky crock pot on the kitchen counter. We cannot fully enter the living room, filled with ramparts of boxes that are crammed with Oskar food processors and novelty rotary phones. Spoils of Marv’s compulsive shopping. A plump tree shrugs in one corner between green couch and towers of newspapers. Boughs drip with tinsel, red garlands, plastic holly. Capering Santas and fat, multi-colored bulbs among pine needles. Electric candles bubble and shimmer with amber light. My mother nods nice, nice, lovely! and steers Beth and me back into the kitchen, which is the cleanest room in the house despite a straw pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Grownups slope in kitchen chairs, and I clamber up on Grandpa Louis’s lap. He pats my back and taps the floor with his cane to some internal rhythm. Mary gives me a box of animal crackers. I tug at the cloth string and listen to her tell stories of relatives back in Portugal. “Tomas and Ines seyz hello. Dey haz three boys bout the girlses ages. Wish they could come here, ey?” She laughs, warm as dawn. “My sister Leslee’s kids are a little bit older than them,” my mother says, pointing with one long finger between Beth and me. “Down in Bellflower with my mother this morning.” “How dey father?” Mary asks, pushing a plate of store-bought sweets toward her two silent men. They ruminate on Italian wedding cookies. “It was my Christmas this year,” Mom says, and I notice that she does not lean back in her chair as the others do. She remains upright, slim-waisted. “Part of the agreement. We trade off Easter and Christmas. One or the other. Last Christmas was his. Robert’s.” “He miss them, den.” Mary nods, but smiles and slaps the Formica with two fat hands. “Dey get to be here with us! Did Santa come for you? You are good girls.” I nod, and Beth echoes while meditatively chewing on a half gorilla. Aged nine, and I have not believed in Santa for over a year now. I appreciate the elaborate melodrama that adults pull in order to lend the holiday its magic. Play along, grin and wave at mall Santas wandering about in sketchy polyester suits. “He come here, too! You know that?” Mary rises and hurries into the living room. I hear her toddle over a rolled rug and pull out packages from beneath the tree. “Here! Here dey come!” We tear into the presents. Green-checked paper flying. Pull out identical afghan blankets of soft amethyst and violet yarn. Zig-zag patterns, up and down. Mary beams, and I know she made them with the turquoise knitting needles she keeps tucked in a basket atop the refrigerator. I stroke my new afghan, poke my fingers through gaps in the acrylic fibers. My name stitched in spidery black thread on one corner. I wrap the afghan over my shoulders like an embrace. Our visit stretches toward dark; we had already opened gifts back at home in Livermore, and I am aware of a new DuckTales video game cartridge sitting on my bed. I linger in Mary’s hug, rocking from one foot to the other as we say goodbye. Look forward to summer, when I can wander in the labyrinth of her ratty back yard, following silver snail tracks and chasing the next generation of spindly kittens. We blow kisses out the window as we head back inland. My mother relinquishes Beth and me for New Year’s, and we head north to Placerville in our father’s rattling white truck with a spider’s thread crack across the windshield. December-fallow fields flat in early winter dark, “Just You and I” languid on the radio. Papa and I sing a duet as Beth’s head bobs against his bony shoulder, and within two hours we bounce up his unpaved driveway. Rain lashes the windows and I smell wet grasses in the wild dark. “Going to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s tomorrow,” Papa says, carrying Beth upstairs like a sack of groceries. “Gotta unwrap your presents there, too. Santa came last week. You cousin Katie was there.” I hear silent rebuke. Gray morning at my grandparents’ house. A strong-shouldered colonial rearing among ponderosa pines that sough in fatigued winter sunlight, silking along green needles. We go in the kitchen door, and my grandmother looks up from the table where her cigarette perches on a yellow glass ashtray like a familiar. “Hello sugars!” She coughs her tobacco-rough laugh and pulls me into a tight hug. I rock from foot to foot as I had with Mary. Beth launches herself into Grandma Lorre’s arms. “Santa was here, in the living room. Come in!” We pass through dim rooms, heel-falls echoing among shadows. Plastic pine garlands circle bowls of walnuts and oranges, red felt tablecloths, unburnt candles tall on mantelpieces. The tree gleams with white lights and the precision of factory-tied red velvet bows. We exclaim over plastic dinosaurs, a planetarium set. Two plushie cats, one pink and one yellow. I glance over a volume of The Babysitter’s Club that I already own. Pretend that I don’t. My grandfather, all pot belly in a white undershirt, sits with legs spread on the couch and watches as Beth and I open gifts. A baleful Claus. Beth follows Grandma Lorre into the kitchen while Papa flakes out on the couch and picks his beard. Limbs long and eyes vague, like he was already at the egg nog. I pile my presents, cat tucked under my arm, and wander into the dining room in search of walnuts. Crack a few. Halve almonds with my teeth to feel the silky side with my tongue. Unpeel Cutie oranges and triumph in an unbroken spiral of pith and skin. My grandfather stands staring at me from the brick hearth, the fireplace large enough for me to walk into and stand. He points in at an oak log as thick as his torso, and though I cannot see his eyes clear past the glare in his bifocals, his mouth slashes grim within his beard. “Christmas isn’t Christmas if it isn’t on Christmas Day,” he says, shaking a finger at the wood. “You know what that is? It’s a Yule Log We wanted to light it when all of the grandkids were here. But were all the grandkids here? No. You were at your mother’s, being selfish. Christmas wasn’t Christmas, and it isn’t today, either.” I sit, mouth dry, walnut shell tumbling from my fingers. “Come here.” I rise, no other thought in my head but to obey my elders. Walk to stand next to my grandfather on the hearth. “See it?” I follow his finger down past the chain link cinder screen, to the log lying above cold ashes. Smell pine kindling from brass scuttle, gingerbread floating in from the kitchen. My grandmother slapping out dough on the tin- top table. “Worthless,” he hisses, shaking his finger down at the log. “No point in lighting a fire it if it isn’t Christmas Day, understand?” I nod, hollow, sick, feeling selfish and worthless as the log in a cold fireplace, large enough to swallow me whole. .

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