Christmas Morning

By E.S. Love

TW: Suicide, Suicide Attempts, Mental Illness, Depression

The Christmas I am eight, I find my mother sitting on the kitchen floor, and crying, hugging herself. She is wearing her favorite dress, her legs awkwardly tucked up underneath her. From the doorway where I watch, I can see the dark seams of her stockings running down the backs of her legs. Her high heel shoes have slipped off her feet.

A cold rush of air suddenly rises from the register in the floor, billowing my nightgown out in front of me. I shiver. The kitchen is freezing, but the oven door is left wide open. I wonder if the furnace has broken again. A curious smell lingers.

I step into the kitchen and cautiously kneel down next to my mother.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

She does not answer me. Instead, I hear a soft murmuring sound, like the gurgling of a brook, coming from her throat.

“Are you OK?” I ask. Her eyes beam towards me, unresponsive.

I gently reach out to smooth my mother’s hair away from her forehead. Her skin is hot. I don’t think my father hears the sounds my mother continues to make until they become louder. He bursts into the kitchen.

“Oh, Nora!” he cries, reaching past me to snap the oven off and lifts my mother from off the floor, carrying her in his arms out of the kitchen, through the dining room and out the side door. As he passes by me, I can’t help but think how much my mother looks like a rag doll, her hands stopped up close to her mouth, trying to shove the terrible sounds she is making back into her lipstick smeared face.

I quickly race into the living room to peer outside through our large, picture window. From the corner of my eye, I see my little sister sitting quietly in the middle of the dining room table sucking on a candy cane. I press my forehead against the cold glass. Outside, my father tucks my mother into the back seat of our car. Large fluffy snowflakes are falling - the kind I like to catch on my tongue. My father slams the car door shut. Snow dusts his sweater. He whisks the snow away from his shoulders and opens the driver’s door to slide in behind the steering wheel.

I hear the car engine complain, sputtering, trying to turn over in the cold. Finally, the wipers jump to life, arcing snow from the windshield. My father’s face appears above two white fists gripping the steering wheel. The car begins moving, slowly at first, then slides in short starts and stops down the long, steep, snow-packed driveway towards the main road. It then fishtails, hesitates, and gathers speed, leaving a swirling cloud of snow behind, before disappearing altogether out of sight.

With my fingernail, I slowly etch my name in the frost on the inside of the windowpane. Small ice shavings fall to the floor. I watch them melt and pool, tiny dots of water on the wooden floor.

I wonder how long it will be before my father discovers he has left my sister and me alone in an empty house on Christmas morning.