Chapter Seventeen:

Every year my Mother hides the Christmas gifts in her closet, and since that’s where she hides the TV, it was kind of easy to snoop. Come on, I had to! They were right there in front of me. At first I told myself I shouldn’t, but then I got bored with watching reruns of the Brady Bunch, and I told myself that I would only look at one gift, which then turned into two and then three and then I was like “What the hell?” So I opened all of them, including my sister’s, and then my father’s and all the rest.
Kneeling down, I grabbed one of my gifts from under the tree. I knew it to be a pair of boots. Mother always signs the presents from Santa despite the fact that I stopped believing in the old geezer years ago when Anna and I had set up a tent one year in the living room right next to the Christmas tree so we wouldn’t miss our chance of seeing Santa and I only caught my father.
Blinking in disbelief, I whispered “Where’s Santa?” Stunned that I was up, he quickly said that Santa had just left the presents at the door and had asked him to put them under the tree, and that I should go back to bed because Santa was still watching from the sky.
At that moment in time something clicked inside my small head. I always thought it was kind of suspicious that father insisted that we leave a shot of whiskey instead of milk. When I’d questioned my father about this, his excuse was that Santa needed to warm up a little and the whiskey would help him do that. If that’s the case, I asked him, why couldn’t we just leave him a cup of coffee? Father just shook his head and said that the coffee would be cold before Santa arrived at our apartment, considering all the other cities Santa had to get to before reaching Chicago. And I always wondered how Santa was able to bring out presents since we don’t have a chimney. It now all made sense: the whispering from my friends on the playground that our parents were Santa, how my cousin Jody would make fun of me when ever I told her what Santa had brought me.
Sliding back inside the tent, I whispered back to my father “Well, you could have at least given him the shot of whiskey.”
**
Anna came into the living room while I was fingering my presents.
“What are you doing? You have to wait for Mom and Dad before you open up any of your presents.”
“I know dumbass, I am only looking.”
“Did you make coffee?”
“No, you go make the damn coffee.”
She stomped out of the room. I heard Anna in the kitchen. I started to clear the tables and make some room for the opening of our presents.
With the coffee made, my parents emerged looking like two zombies with coffee cups in their hands. They took their seats on the couch, side by side. I handed one to my father. It was from my mother. I already knew what it was since I snooped into all the gifts.
“It’s a tie,” I announced.
My mother glared at me.
“Oops,” had I said that out loud?
“Did you snoop this year?” demanded my mother.
“No, it is just obvious from the shape of box.” I said defensively.
“You better not have snooped Gianna. You really ruin the spirit of Christmas Day when you snoop.”
“Whatever,” I said, “You should find a better place to hide the presents than in your closet.”
“You did snoop! Didn’t you?”
“Enough,” my father said, “Stop your bickering. I had enough drama last night. I don’t need it this morning.”
My father held up the tie. It was navy blue with bits of red specks. He loved ties, but not just any type. They had to be silk. He had at least fifty ties - all different colors - hanging in his closet. Some had stripes, some paisley, and others with checks. He wore a different tie to work each day, and of course he always got one for Christmas.
“Nice tie, dear.” he said to my mother and gave her a kiss on the lips.
“Gross!” I said as I turned my head away.
Anna was opening up one of her gifts; it was going to be an electric typewriter. This time I kept my mouth shut.
You’d think my mother would have gotten me the typewriter, since I’m the one in high-school and required to type out all my papers. But, my mother doesn’t think that way. She has high hopes that Anna is going to follow in my father’s footsteps and be an intellectual genius. They felt because her grades were always better than mine that she shows more academic promise. Anna always received A’s in her English classes and grammatically, seems to have a better grasp of the English language. They like to point out that Anna’s English papers were never riddled with red ink marks from her teachers, like mine. However, I like to bring up the fact that recently she had stolen one of my eighth grade English papers, Honey Bees, and copied it verbatim and the only thing she changed was the grammar. She got an A on my paper, where I had gotten a C-.
When I pointed out this blatant plagiarism of my paper, bringing into evidence the original paper dated a year ago, all my parents said was that Anna had the smarts to correct my grammatically incorrect paper and get an ‘A’ on it. It was unbelievable how my parents thought. They condoned her stealing with praise after I had done the research for the damn paper!
I looked over at my mother. She was unwrapping one of her gifts from my father. I had no clue what it was since I never have been able to find where he hides his gifts.
It turned out that my father had gotten my mother a fancy wooden box. I sat there on the living room floor looking at her as she open her gift. So intense, like a little kid, she ripped at the paper, giving my father little sideways glances. My mother collects boxes, and like my father and his obsession with ties, my mother gets a different box each year. Big or small doesn’t matter; she has loads of them around the apartment. I of course have opened all of them. That’s where I found her copy of On the Road. It was in one of her boxes with a necklace.
Most of her boxes just had odd bits and pieces of things in them. Like one with a couple of teeth, and another one with a ribbon and some lace. I never told my mother that I snooped in them but then again it is not like she hides them from anyone. It was like they had a secret code to them and only she knew what the bits of things meant. I wondered what she was going to put in her new box this year as I started to open one of my gifts, which I already knew were books.
On the top, my mother had placed a book on how to improve your vocabulary. I shuffled through the rest of them. There was one on grammar, one on spelling, and another one on word usages. I glanced over at my mother.
“Here,” I said, passing them over to her. “Santa made a mistake this year and gave me one of your presents. The first one can help you find better words to express yourself when you are angry with me instead of having to use curse-words.”
“Very funny missy. You better keep them for yourself because you are starting to have the same problem.” She said with a laugh. At least she laughed, I thought. Let’s see if she has the same sense of humor on the day my grades arrive.