Just North of Whoville

by Turiskylie, Joyce

  “Celia! Wait! Wait!”

  The cab drove away and Alex frantically tried to pick his belongings up off the street. A few moments later, he ran back inside.

  “Look” he said as he dumped an armful of stuff on my sofa. “You’ve got to fix this. I swear to you on my mother’s head---if you fix this, I’ll find a way to let you take over the lease. You can talk to her…”

  “Forget it, Alex.”

  Suddenly Tanya ran up the stairs and pushed her way passed us carrying Alex’s laptop in her hands. Alex yelled at her to stop, but she walked over to my window and opened it with the strength of ten men.

  “Tanya. Not my computer. Please. Let’s talk about this.”

  She didn’t even bat an eye as she tossed it out the window. Then she calmly walked past us, but stopped to address me.

  “By the way, I’m sure the management company will love to hear all about you.”

  “All about who?” Nate said as he stood in the doorway.

  “Nate! Buddy. What’s up?” Alex asked in his acting voice. Although what scene that one was from, I had no idea.

  “I stopped by to let you know that the roofers are having some problems… What’s going on here?” he asked as he looked around at the bunch of us. “And whose stuff is that outside?”

  “I threw his things out the window. Because he’s a cheating, lying little rat. And she’s been living here illegally for the past year. I’ll be sure to let your boss know about your little girlfriend,” she threw in as an added bonus as she finally walked out and slammed the door to her apartment downstairs.

  “Shit,” Alex suddenly remembered. “My cell phone!” he cried out and ran out the door.

  “You’ve been living here?” Nate seemed utterly confused.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not his girlfriend. I’m a friend of his girlfriend. Not Tanya. The blond at the party. I’m sorry.”

  “Where are my keys? Where are my fucking keys?” Alex asked as he ran back in and frantically searched the room.

  “Hey! Alex!” Nate said as he grabbed him by the arm. “You’ve been subletting this place? How could you screw me over like that?”

  “Well,” Alex fumbled as he tried to catch up. “How could you kiss my girlfriend?”

  “She’s not your girlfriend!” Nate practically screamed.

  “Look, I don’t know what qualifies as girlfriend in your book, but we’ve been living here together and…”

  “Alex. Stop it,” I declared.

  “Dorrie,” Alex leaned in quietly. “Let me handle this. I’ll get you this apartment and you’ll help me with Celia.”

  “No, Alex. I won’t.”

  “Okay, check this out,” Alex said to Nate as he picked up the Ted’s Ribs and Chicken shirt off the chair and pulled it over his head. “See. This is my shirt. It’s here. I’m here. I think that should clear things up,” he said as I heard a woman’s yell and what sounded like a bag of golf clubs hitting the pavement. Alex winced. But didn’t move. Instead, he begged.

  “Nate. Buddy. Com’on. This is my home.”

  “It’s not your home,” I stood up. “Well, it was; but currently it’s my home and I’ve lived here for the past year. You’ve been counting on my desperation for weeks and I’m not lying for you anymore.”

  “Look,” Nate said, more exasperated than anything, “who lives here?”

  “I do,” we both said at the exact same time. Suddenly, the ceiling gave way. Plaster, timber, debris and everything but the kitchen sink came crashing into the room----including the little Spanish guy who lifted a sheet of drywall off his chest and shook off the dust. A few other Spanish guys looked down from the gaping hole in my roof.

  “All right,” Alex conceded. “She lives here. I’m going to a hotel,” he said as he grabbed a few of his clothes off the sofa and walked out.

  “Oh my god,” I said as I knelt down next to the maintenance man. “Are you okay?”

  “Okay, mami,” he said as I reached out to help him up.

  Within a few minutes, Nate got into an ambulance with the maintenance man. One of the paramedics told me that the roofer had a few bruises and a broken rib, but would be fine.

  Left alone, I began trying to clean up the mess on the floor. I put on my boots, my face mask and work gloves. I even put on my coat. With only half a roof over my head, it was freezing in there. At least no worries about catching a cold---I already had one.

  Just then, it started to snow. It was now snowing in my apartment. Finally, I did what fifty percent of New Yorkers would have done.

  I opened an umbrella.

  As the roofers scrambled to put a makeshift tarp over the giant, gaping hole, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out of there. I knew where I had to go.

  Christmas was totally pimped out at Shenanigans that night as I walked into the club in my big coat, hat and snow boots. Some guy in a red mesh shirt and a Santa cap tried to grind up against me as I pushed my way thru a crowd dancing to a song about somebody’s mom cooking chicken and collard greens for Christmas dinner. I reached the garland-wrapped staircase and began to climb the stairs. There she was behind the bar. She was wrapped in more garland than the staircase and had about five pounds of mistletoe braided into her hair.

  “Dorrie! Why did I have this fucking feeling you were going to show up?” Dr. Prince said as she poured a line of martinis.

  “They wouldn’t take my insurance,”

  She sighed. A pretty big sigh.

  “Here,” she said as she pulled a drink up from under the bar and shoved it towards me. “Drink this. It’s a mistake.”

  “A mistake,” I got nervous. “What it is?”

  “It’s a rum and coke! That’s what’s in the glass, Dorrie. A rum and coke.”

  This was as close to medication as she’d prescribed. So I took a sip.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Dorrie, you can’t be following me here every time you have a problem.”

  “I’m sorry! Please don’t be mad at me. Everybody’s mad at me. But I’m not a bad person. I’m just not successful.”

  “Meera, I’m not mad at you. But you’re fucking frustrating sometimes.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But my whole world just collapsed. And my ceiling. Everything. It’s all over. I’m getting kicked out of my apartment. My best friend hates me. And Nate hates me. He’s going to lose his job and it’s all my fault. And I’m going to be homeless and I lost my job last week and I told that elf kid that he was gay and now he hates me, too. I’m just a horrible person and I’m stuck here for Christmas because my family thinks I’m a screw-up and I’m so tired of this Christmas shit. It’s been going on for two months. When will it be over? I just want it to be over.”

  “Okay, relax. Take a deep breath,” she said as she adjusted her garland over her cleavage. “First of all, you’ve only got two more days of Christmas. Second, you can’t blame all of this stuff on the Christmas Season.”

  “Oh, stop defending it. It stinks. You know, not everyone has family who lives nearby. And not everyone has a loved one to kiss under the mistletoe. Or children to watch opening their gifts on Christmas morning. Or a bunch of friends to go caroling with. And everywhere I go, for the past two months, all I hear is Christmas music and it’s this constant reminder that if I’m not busy roasting chestnuts or sleigh riding then I’m a shitty, terrible person. And I don’t have time! There’s no time! I wouldn’t mind going sleigh riding, but where do you even find a sleigh? I don’t know. Does that make me a shitty person? I have to work and I have laundry to do and a litter box to clean and everything around me keeps poking me in the head and telling me that I have to do all this stuff and I have to be happy about it and have a fucking Merry Christmas. There’s nothing to be happy or merry about in my life right now. What is there that’s good in my life?”

  “Well,” she said with a snicker, “you’ve got your health.”

  Sudd
enly I laughed, too. I don’t know why. But it seemed like a small bit of relief.

  “Look,” she tried to explain, “the holidays aren’t about doing all that stuff. I’ve never been sleigh riding in my life---does that keep me from enjoying Christmas? No. And yeah, I know it’s tough being single with no family around. It’s lonely. It makes you reevaluate your life. And that’s what you’ve been doing the past few weeks. That’s good. And okay, you lost your job. But you hated that job. And yeah, you might lose the apartment---but you’ve been hiding in that broken-down shithole for almost a year. Maybe this all happened for a reason. And maybe, unconsciously, you wanted it to happen.”

  “I wanted everyone to hate me?”

  “No. But I think you wanted to tell them the truth. Therapy is all about moving forward, Dorrie. And you haven’t been able to move forward because of all this baggage you’ve been living with. So---now you’re hands are free. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Only I don’t have a job or any money. Where am I going to go?”

  “Look on the bright side---no one starts eviction proceedings during the holidays,” she smiled as she jumped off her barstool and made sure her short skirt was hiked up to the proper level.

  “Look---I may have given you a wrong impression,” she said as she went back behind the bar. “I haven’t always loved Christmas. When I was a kid, my parents couldn’t afford presents. I was one of those kids that got the donated toys for underprivileged kids. You think I ever got what I wanted? I was lucky to get a doll that wasn’t white. Had so many white babies I looked like an illegal nanny. When I was twelve my dad was shot in a bodega on Christmas Eve. Went out to buy some fucking oranges to put in our stockings. Got killed by some crackhead over fifty bucks in a cash register and a forty of malt liquor. That was a shitty Christmas.”

  “I’m so sorry,” was all I could say.

  “Yeah,” she smiled sadly. “It’s okay. It’s always been a tough time for me. But I try to think of it as a celebration of his life. He was a great guy. Fucking loved Christmas. So I try to take that love he had, and spread it around. It’s my way of keeping him with me.”

  “That’s really beautiful,” I started to cry with a mixture of sad and happy tears. “I guess that’s why I’m here right now. Because you gave a bit of that to me. I really have been trying, you know.”

  “I know,” she laughed. “Here’s my cell number,” she wrote down on a bar napkin. “Give me a call in a few days. After Christmas. We’ll talk. No co-pay. Just two girls. Okay?”

  “Are you sure that’s appropriate?”

  “Dorrie---who else is going to listen to you whine?”

  “No one,” I said as I hung my head down in my rum and coke.

  “Look, the whole world is going to stop for the next two days. So I want you to stop, too. Stop beating yourself up and relax. You’re a dreamer. That’s a good thing. Some kids want a bicycle, or a video game or just a Latina doll. You wanted a horse. You dream big, Dorrie. That’s pretty special. You need to stop thinking of it as a bad thing. Stop fighting your dreams. You wouldn’t have them if you didn’t really believe they could come true. Let me show you something,” she said as she opened the locket around her neck.

  Inside, was a photo of her proud papa dressed up as Santa with a young Dr. Prince on his lap.

  “That’s my father,” she smiled. “We didn’t do the whole Santa thing in my family. We always knew that Santa was Daddy. He was a pretty good Santa, too. And even though he’s gone now, I will never stop believing in him.”

  “Wow,” was all I could say. “Why didn’t you tell me this our first session?”

  “What? You think I’m gonna pour out my guts to a stranger? What do I look like? Poetry Night?”

  18

  Christmas has a way of sneaking up on you. One day it’s seven weeks away, and then suddenly, it’s Christmas Eve.

  I never even managed a single Christmas card.

  While talking to Dr. Prince (and the prescription rum and coke) certainly helped, I realized I needed to take back the reins of my life if I was ever going to get that mythical horse.

  I needed to get out of the tarp-covered house to take a walk and think things out. There had to be a happy ending for me somewhere. As I walked past all the shops and their holiday displays, I knew I needed to bring some of that holiday cheer into my life. So when I turned the corner and saw a small parking lot selling off the last of the season’s Christmas trees, I knew what I had to do.

  Today was probably the last day for these poor little guys to find a home. Charlie Brown Christmas music played over the speakers, adding to the poignancy of what would be these trees’ Last Christmas Ever. Happily, there were a few other last-minute shoppers browsing the few remaining selections. All the trees looked pretty sturdy and happy and wagging their tails. But they say you don’t pick a tree, the tree picks you.

  As I walked down the thinning aisle of pine, I waited for one of the remaining trees to magically pop out and select me as the person who would take them home, give them water, and decorate them in silver and gold. But my eye kept wandering off to the side. To a pile of cast-off branches and too-short-for-sale pine roping that had been stacked up along the wire fence. I could feel my eyes getting moist as I walked over to get a closer look.

  Oh. There was a poor tree in there. The most pathetic Christmas tree ever. It wasn’t even for sale. Poor little mangled tree. It tried so hard to grow strong and tall. And it looked like it was ready, so it got chopped down and shipped to Manhattan. It was supposed to make good and become a Christmas tree. But somehow it had failed. No one wanted it. A homeless, broken tree in heap of trash.

  The one thing that Christmas trees all over the world wanted to be would never come true for this little guy.

  “See anything you like?” a man wearing an ear-flap hat and work gloves asked.

  “How much for that tree over there?”

  “This one?” he said as he held up a proud and sturdy pine.

  “No,” I pointed to the fence. “That one over there.”

  “Those are just some old branches, lady.”

  “No. There’s a tree in there.”

  He walked over and inspected the pile of the dead. “You mean this old piece of…” he said as he held up the scraggly-looking tree.

  “Please,” I stopped him. “Don’t talk about the tree in front of the tree. It’s just…I know I sound a little crazy, but I have this thing about Christmas trees. They might have feelings. We don’t know,” I said, as if the world were of wonders and new discoveries. “So how much is he?”

  “Well…you can just take it, if you really want it,” he backed off a bit.

  “Oh thank you,” I said as I dug my tree out of the rubbish. “Merry Christmas!” I made sure to add.

  I didn’t worry that my little guy would leave a trail of pine needles all the way up the stairs leading right to my apartment door. Any private detective could see that. I may lose everything, but I was going to have Christmas tree, damnit.

  I pulled out a box of Christmas decorations from under the bed, frightening Heidi in the process. Poor cat. With all the craziness of the roof and the houseguest, she’d barely even let me pet her the past two months. I knew she probably needed a kitty shrink, but before the Christmas season she used to come out a lot. We’d play together with a rubber mouse on a string. We used to curl up in front of the TV and watch old episodes of PBS shows I picked up at the library. Every so often, I’d open a can of tuna; she’d hear the can pop and start meowing like crazy before I could get the tuna onto a plate.