About My Sisters (30 page)

“Does anyone want more potatoes?” Déja asks. “Because I'm just about done in the kitchen now.”

“Enough food,” my mother says. “It's definitely time for presents. Let the festivities begin.”

We all straggle toward the living room, climbing over the boxes on the floor, and trying to find a place to sit. This apartment is clearly too small for a gift exchange of this magnitude.

“Okay,” Déja says. “I'm going to hand them out one at a time.”

Predictably, this sparks a debate. Some of the opinions offered are that it will take too long that way, Déja should let Blaze help her, everybody should get a pile of his or her gifts and then unwrap them one at a time, and that it should just be a giant free-for-all.

“No!” Déja says. “This is the way I'm going to do it. And I
am
doing it, so everybody just be quiet.”

Déja seems as if she is on the verge of a major meltdown, so we all capitulate. Blaze eyes her warily. In this group, Blaze is the only one who gets really rattled when Déja gets upset. This is not to say that we don't care, but Déja's breakdowns, when they happen, are usually caused by physical concerns. When she's overtired, hungry, or has cramps (the biggest culprit), she gets weepy and starts slamming doors. Her outbursts are dramatic but short-lived, and almost always mitigated by food, sleep, or analgesics. It's when she gets quiet and doesn't talk, rare occurrences, that we worry about her. Blaze, however, can't stand it when she's distressed in any way for any reason and always rushes to her aid. Danny doesn't deal with Déja's tears too well, either, come to think of it. He's hovering around the edge of the living room now, looking a little edgy himself.

Déja gives Blaze the first gift, a DVD he's been wanting from her and Danny. Maya insists that Blaze gets her gift next, which is a set of movie-watching accoutrements (red-and-white-striped containers, soda glasses, and microwave popcorn) and a six-pack of Coca-Cola (a forbidden beverage in our house). Blaze is surprised, but very happy.

“Well,” he says, and casts a loving gaze at the Coke, “
this
is unusual, isn't it?”

Déja hands out more gifts. Lavander gets, and likes, her wishing stones. Maya receives a heated massaging seat cover for her car. Danny gets a Buddha-in-a-box and a travel mug. My mother gets a yoga mat and a bracelet. Bo gets skin cream and an herbal dietary supplement. My father gets a fleece vest. This is only the first round. It's going smoothly until Déja opens my father's gift to her which is a pair of silver hoop earrings.

“I could just see those on you,” my father tells her.

“How could you see these on me?” Déja says. “I don't wear earrings. I've never worn earrings, I don't even have pierced ears.”

“You wear earrings,” my father says.

“I don't wear earrings, Daddy!” And that's it, the tears start flowing. “I need a break,” Déja sobs, and heads to her room. Blaze follows her with a Coke in hand.

“You can take them back,” my father calls after her. My mother sighs. Maya looks over at Danny.

“What's the matter with your girlfriend today, Danny?” she asks him.

Danny shrugs in that gesture universal to all men who are asked what ails their women. “I don't fuckin' know,” he sighs.

“These would look good on me,” Lavander says, holding the hoops next to her ears. “I'll take them.”

“Dad,” I say, “I find it interesting that you got Déja earrings considering that you wouldn't even let me get my ears pierced back in the day.”

“What?” he says. “Oh yes, but that was different, you were a little girl then.”

“Eighteen,” I tell him. “I had to wait until I moved out to get my ears pierced.”

“That's not true,” he says.

“It's just interesting,” I say, “how things change.”

“Go get her,” my mother tells my father. Dutifully, my father gets up and goes into Déja's room. “And don't make it worse!” my mother calls after him. The sound of Blaze's CD fills the brief silence that follows, with Anita Baker singing “Just Because.”

“This one's for me,” Maya says.

“This CD was such a good idea,” my mother says. “Wasn't it, Debra? Well, wasn't it?”

“Yes, Mom. Yes, it was.”

My father comes back out and resumes his seat. “She has cramps,” he announces to the group at large and gets a collective “Aah” in response. This is another great divide between me and my sisters. I'd rather eat dirt than discuss the state of my uterus with my family, but Déja and Lavander aren't at all hesitant to broadcast this kind of information in all its particulars. Maya is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. As for my father, he's spent a lifetime picking up feminine hygiene products on the way home and delivering Midol to the various workplaces of his daughters. In my entire life, I've never met a man who was as comfortable discussing PMS and sanitary napkins.

Déja comes out of her room sniffling. “Let's get on with this,” she says, and starts tossing gifts around. When we get to the gifts from my parents, there is much confusion. It seems they mislabeled several gifts. They start arguing over who gets what and accusing each other of being incompetent. In the meantime, Lavander gives me her gift.

“I just want you to know that I put the most thought into
yours,” she says. And it's true, this is the most thoughtful gift she's ever given me. It's a framed enlargement of a photograph my father took of the two of us at Disneyland thirteen years ago. We are sitting side by side with Blaze's stroller between us, legs crossed, chins in hands, staring in opposite directions. Captured in a moment of complete synchronicity, our body language and the expressions on our faces are identical. How much longer? What's next? This is what I hear the two of us thinking when I look at the photo.

“I love this,” I tell her, and show it around.

“A thousand words,” my father says.

“This one's worth two thousand,” I tell him.

Despite the fact that everyone has opened at least three gifts each at this point, the pile on the floor has hardly receded at all. Déja is starting to tire again. Instead of opening our gifts in an orderly fashion, we've now started trying things on and asking each other, “Do you
really
like what I got you or are you just saying you do?”

“He
llo
,” Déja says. “We've got a way to go here. Pay attention.” She speeds it up, handing out packages two at a time and not waiting for reactions before redistributing.

“You
are
a wee bit ratty today,” my mother tells her. “You know that, right?”

“Excuse me, I'm in pain,” Déja says, opening her gift from Danny, which is an electric back massager. “Oh, good,” she says, “I think I'm going to try this out right now.”

“Um, while you're all admiring your gifts, I'd like to take a moment and point out what
I've
received so far,” Bo says. “There seems to be a theme.” All eyes turn to him. “Yes,” he says, “I've got, let's see, a love voodoo doll, some herbal diet formula, and, um, itch cream. Are you all trying to tell me something?”

The room erupts with raucous laughter. Once again, my
brother has rendered us speechless and rolling. Lavander and my mother wipe tears from their eyes.

“Give him ours, please,” my mother manages to tell my father when she can take a breath. “Poor thing.” My father hands Bo a box and he opens it eagerly to reveal a very handsome gray turtleneck.

“This is great,” Bo says. “I've been needing one of these.” He holds it against himself and everyone agrees that it looks wonderful.

“Um, there's a bit of a problem with that turtleneck,” my mother says.

“No, there isn't, it's terrific,” Bo says.

“Well, actually, it's Danny's gift,” my mother says. “We put the wrong name on the box.”

“We did?” my father asks. “No, you did. I told you—”

“Here you go, Dan,” Bo says, handing it over.

“Cool,” Danny says. “Thanks a lot.”

“Give him mine,” I tell Déja. “It's this one.”

My gift to Bo is a set of cereal bowls with a milk pitcher and sugar bowl, all decorated with Toucan Sam and Tony the Tiger. I thought it was cute and kitschy when I bought it, but as he opens it now and gives it a look of stunned incomprehension, I just feel bad.

“I think you made a mistake, Debra,” my mother says. “What is that?”

“No,
you
made a mistake,” I tell her. “At least I didn't give him somebody else's gift.”

My mother starts to argue with me, but Bo interrupts us with his laughter. “Jeez, Deb, I just don't know what to make of this,” he says. “I think I'll save it for the swinging bachelor pad I'm going to have.”

“Well, I'm sorry,” I tell him. “I thought it was cute.”

Blaze comes back into the room and reaches for another Coke as the last song on his CD begins. It's Sade, singing “By Your Side.”

“No more Coke,” I tell him. “You'll be bouncing off the walls.”

Blaze ignores me, and tells Lavander, “This is your song.”

“Oh, is it?” she says, and her eyes fill with tears. “He's so sweet. Always by my side.”

Déja scrambles through strewn wrapping paper and tinsel on the floor, searching for more gifts. “I think that's it,” she says, finding none. “Somebody else needs to clean this up now.”

Bo gets up to make more coffee and the rest of us start cleaning up the apartment. Danny provides several trash bags for the leavings. It's not even one o'clock yet and everyone looks totally exhausted.

“And that's it—over,” my mother says as the last piece of gift wrap is thrown out. “Like it never happened. Such is the transitory nature of things.”

“Almost time to eat again,” my father says.

“I bought stuff for dinner,” Maya says, “so we don't have to search around for food like we did last year. So you can all come over to my house to eat later.”

“Great,” my father says. “What shall we do until then? Maybe we should just hang out here.”

“No!” says Déja. “I mean, it's not necessary for us to all stay here. We've done this venue. Time for a shift.”

“We don't have to spend every second of the day together, do we?” I ask. “Can't we split up and regroup later?”

“But why?” my father asks.

“Let's go to my house,” Lavander says. “We can play some cards or something and then we'll go over to Maya and Debra's for dinner.”

“Perfect,” Déja says. “And why don't you all head out, like
now,
and then we'll follow, okay?”

As Déja hustles us toward the door, it occurs to me that I like getting kicked out of her house. To state it a little more clearly, I like that she
has
a house to kick me out of. I like the fact that we are visiting her, that she made breakfast, that she's got a tree and a boyfriend she loves. I like that she makes dinner for our brother in her house and worries about him when he comes home late or seems lonely. I like that she goes swimming with Maya in her pool three days a week and brings Blaze here on the weekends. I like that she has a place I could come to anytime for any reason.

And it's not just Déja I feel this way about. I realize that this is the first year that both she and Lavander have had their own places. Lavander's house has been open this year, too. She has been hosting some of these family events instead of leaving them early to go somewhere else, which was always her modus operandi in the past. I am as comfortable in Lavander's house as I am in Déja's.

I suppose what it really comes down to is that I like the fact that my sisters are catching up to where I feel I've always been, in the land of the grown-ups, and I like having the company here as I head into the second half of my life.

“Okay, Blaze is coming with me,” Lavander says as she gathers her packages and prepares to leave. “Just give me a minute to get my house together before you all come over, will you? And can you find some poker chips to bring over? I don't have any.” She calls out for Blaze. “Honey, come help me carry my stuff to the car, please.”

Once again, Blaze obliges.

“How does she do it?” I ask Maya as I watch Blaze lumber down to her car all loaded up with candles and shopping bags. “And he doesn't even drop anything.”

Maya and I decide to go home and drop off all our things before we head over to Lavander's house. And there are the
poker chips, of course. We're going to have to find some of those, too. I go into Déja's room to say good-bye to her. She's lying facedown on her bed and Danny is running the massager up and down her back.

“See you in a bit,” I tell her.

“Mmpf,” she says from the folds of her pillow.

“Are you all right?” I ask her.

Déja lifts her head and turns toward me. “You know the voice of the teacher on
Charlie Brown,
” she asks me. “You know how it goes ‘waa waaa waa waa'? Well, that's how everybody sounds to me today. Just incredibly irritating. Know what I mean?”

“I can dig it,” I tell her.

 

It's quiet in the car without Blaze in the back complaining about how his legs are too long to be squashed into the backseat. Our copy of his CD is playing in here, though, with the song he chose for Danny, Nelly's “Hot in Herre,” coming through the speakers.

“This is such a weird collection of songs,” I tell Maya. “I mean, one wouldn't really think to put João Gilberto, Tom Petty, and Outkast on the same CD, but somehow it works.”

“They actually sound pretty good all together,” Maya says. “Even if it is a bit of a wacky combination.”

“Well, that's all of us, isn't it?” I ask her. “We're a wacky combination, but one that works. You just wouldn't want to listen to it or be around it all the time.”