We stared down at Him in horror, the tiny Infant with the shattered foot and the severed head. The legs of His manger lay under our dinner table, and a round chunk of bone china carved to resemble a tightly-curled fist had made it to the edge of our living room. The Baby Jesus’s broken body spread out in all directions, and we had to be careful not to step on any shards as we crept nearer. My older sister Trish was the first to snap out of her stupor, making a sudden dash for the broom closet, muttering “before Dad wakes up and freaks.” My younger sister Diana, who had been the unintentional vessel of the Christ Child’s wild ride, puzzled silently over the pieces as if they were bird entrails or dried bones, holding the clues to an uncertain future.
“The Christmas we killed the Baby Jesus”—that’s what Trish and I would call it later, to lighten our memory of that awful weekend. It would be years before we knew the reason Diana found so little humor in our joke. Once, I even saw her start crying, and asked, “What? You’re still beating yourself up about that gaudy old Nativity set?”
I don’t normally find meaning in sentimental objects or sacred images. The Nativity set meant little more to me than an expression of my dad’s preference for extravagant Baroque art, and, perhaps, also his image of the perfect family—one in which everybody prayed the rosary together every day and never let a harsh word escape their lips. When Dad got misty-eyed talking about the mystery of the Incarnation, or the saints, or the martyrs, or the slaughter of the “Holy Innocents” (whose feast day was coming up, and for which we would probably have to sing that “Coventry Carol” song in addition to the Christmas music on Sunday), I felt almost abnormal for lacking the characteristic Zawadzki response of tearful awe and reverence. It only gave me another reason to run for the nearest liquor store.
And that was precisely what I had done after we returned home from Midnight Mass around one o’clock that fateful Christmas Eve. First I waited for my parents to go to bed, of course, which they did straight away. None of us was feeling very well. The heavy incense that filled the Church on these occasions always made my mother nauseous. For my father, it was the hard work and preparation of the past few months that made him sick with anxiety, culminating in a weekend when he had to spend more than thirty hours playing the organ and directing the choir.
For my sisters and myself, it was mostly the choir.
The median age of the group was seventy, and they might have sounded something like a heavenly choir, if you expected Heaven to be mostly populated by very old people. There were only three men among twenty women, and more than half of those women deserved a court order to stay far away from the upper reaches of the treble staff. On Sundays, people lent their voices to the hymns in a vain effort to cover up these terrible voices, but on Christmas Eve they listened quietly, stopping by after Mass to shower the choir with praise and compliments. If you went to Saint Michael’s even once in a while, you knew it was at least partly because of the presence of three additions to its soprano and alto ranks.
After rescuing the parishioners of Saint Michael’s from another chalkboard-scratching rendition of “O Holy Night,” those three temporary choir members, pressed into service by Ted Zawadzki, Music Director and Doting Father, traditionally came home to spend the next couple hours recovering from their tour of duty with cheap alcohol.
It was more than just an opportunity to commiserate over our shared misfortune at having to spend yet another holiday surrounded by tone-deaf old ladies. We saw Christmas Eve as our chance to catch up on all that had happened the previous months. Trish was always busy with law school, and was now planning her wedding. Diana was attending a Catholic college back east and only came home a few times a year. We saw this time together, precious and rare as it was, as our opportunity to unburden our hearts about the guys that broke them, the friends that drove us crazy, and the professors/employers we couldn’t seem to please. All the while, we renewed our implicit promise to kick all their asses and avenge each other, in spirit if not in actuality.
But by tradition we aired our musical grievances first.
“I wanted to shake them,” said Trish. “There were these two ladies in front of me who just kept holding out the last note of every song, and at one point I wanted to take them by the bony shoulders and shake them, and shout, The cutoff means you’re actually supposed to stop singing!”
“They were a train wreck, as usual,” Diana agreed. But I could see she was already getting tired of our annual variation on the old theme. “I’ve been thinking, though,” she began, “we should maybe give ‘em a break. I mean, some of those ladies are ninety. And they do it out of the kindness of their hearts.”
“Oh, yes, they certainly are kind,” Trish said. “I’m just saying that there are some choir members who ought to consider being selfish once in a while, and maybe enjoy their Christmas at home, sipping egg nog and watching It’s A Wonderful Life.”
“Dad is a saint,” I said, “putting up with them year after year.”
“Well, I’m no saint,” Trish informed us. “And I’m not doing it anymore. Next year, you guys are on your own.”
“Oh, come off it,” I said. “You say that every year, and you completely forget how important it is to Dad.”
And it was. Even Trish had to see the way he smiled at us from the piano or the conductor’s stand, like he was on a special cloud nine reserved for men with daughters. He loved having us there to perform sweet, angelic renditions of Christmas carols, especially the beautiful John Rutter arrangements he couldn’t trust his septuagenarians with.
“I’m serious,” Trish insisted. “I couldn’t sing with you guys next year if I wanted to. Do you realize that this time next year, I’ll be married? I will probably be spending next Christmas with the in-laws in Michigan.”
“Hope you freeze out there,” I said under my breath.
“And just think,” she continued, “the following year, Sam and I might already have a baby, which means I’ll have to quit doing all this choir stuff completely. I’m not going to Midnight Mass with a baby, am I?”
I rolled my eyes at her, then peered down into my glass.
Diana rose. “I have to use the bathroom.”
“You guys think I’m kidding, but mark my words,” Trish shouted after her, “I am retiring from the Zawadzki trio the very first chance I get!”
Diana shrugged and continued on her way to the toilet. I knew she’d been feeling nauseous and had a heavy period. Earlier in the day I’d seen the pads pile up in the trash bin, and had thought to myself: Damn, somebody needs to teach that girl how to use a tampon, and possibly remind her they will not take your virginity.
Diana had had this thing about virginity, ever since she was in junior high. That was when her classmates had started having sex, and Diana had asserted her integrity by buying a silver ring with the engraving True Love Waits. I always had faith in Diana. She hadn’t grown up quite as silly and sheltered and innocent as we had. There was some hope for her that she would go out into the world more prepared for dealing with other people, and more ready to accept the painful realities of life.
When she returned from the bathroom, she looked as though she was already getting a good lesson in that. Her face was almost green. She sat down next to me and I gave her a quick hug. I was glad she was back; very little had happened in her absence, apart from the excellent progress Trish was making on her rum.
“I know you guys think I’m selfish,” Trish said after emptying it.
“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything,” said Diana, “but yes, I do think you’re being kind of selfish. Angie’s right—it’s important to Dad. It makes him happy. Hasn’t he tried his whole life to make us happy?”
“But you’re wrong there,” said Trish. “We’re the ones who have tried all our lives to make him happy.”
Trish always had a lot of faith in her logic, especially with an empty glass in her hand.
Suddenly I saw her eyes start to glisten.
“Okay, Trish,” I said, taking the glass from her and facing her dead-on. “What’s going on?”
“It’s just that…” Trish hesitated a second. “Sam doesn’t want to get married in the Church.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why not?”
“What’s wrong with getting married in a church?” Diana asked.
“THE Church,” Trish snapped. “He doesn’t want to get married in the Catholic Church.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I told her. “Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t know anything about it,” she explained. “Because he says he’ll be intensely uncomfortable with all the prayers and the standing and the kneeling, and he doesn’t agree with the vows.”
“What about the vows?” Diana asked. “I mean, can he at least agree to love you and honor you and all that?”
“There’s more to the vows than that,” Trish said. “There’s the promise to accept children lovingly from God and raise them according to Christ’s teachings. Meaning we’d have to baptize them and put them in Catholic school and all that.”
“Well, you want kids, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yeah, but not fifteen kids like some Catholic families I know. We’re planning on keeping it to one or two. Maybe even taking a couple of years to just be married and have fun.
“But it’s more than that. Sam really doesn’t want to raise our kids Catholic. It’s something we’ve been arguing about lately. He says being Catholic messed me up big. I guess I have to agree somewhat. He wants our kids to be freethinkers, to be open-minded.”
“Funny,” said Diana, “I’ve only seen him a few times, and I guess I never thought to ask what religion he is.”
“He’s Samism,” I joked. “He has a following of fifty thousand believers across the globe, and four major holidays per calendar year.”
“Shut up, Angie,” said Trish. “To answer your question, Diana, he’s a nonbeliever.”
“Atheist” was something of a bad word in our household, though hardly an alien concept for me. I made no secret of the fact that I was a “nonbeliever,” even if I wouldn’t have chosen that exact word. But somehow, my parents had found the enormous inner strength to feed their hope that I might someday come around. I had to admire their persistence, and in recent years had backed off from arguing with them over dogmas and Bible stories.
“Mom and Dad were under the impression he’s Catholic,” I informed Trish.
Trish smirked. “Well, you know what they say. ‘Innocence is bliss.’”
“The saying is ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ and a good thing too,” I said. “Innocence is such a sorry state when you think about it. So temporary, so hopelessly fragile. Ignorance is stronger stuff—much more permanent and harder to conceal.”
“Sam’s parents are Catholic, aren’t they?” Diana asked, still trying to put together the mystery that was her future brother-in-law.
“You’re right. They are,” Trish confirmed. “But they’re a little different. Didn’t you hear them at dinner yesterday? No, that’s right, you missed the all-important Meeting of the In-Laws. Where were you, anyway?”
“Doctor’s appointment,” Diana said. “I took the bus and didn’t get home ‘til eight.”
“That’s right. Oh, man. You should have seen the expression on Dad’s face when Sam’s parents started talking about organizing a campaign to get Catholics to stop voting against gay marriage. Dad looked positively ashen. He did nothing but play the piano for the rest of the night. Very rude. I wish you had been here to help him mingle. He always gets so funny about social situations.”
“I’m sorry,” Diana said.
“Well, look, I think you’re worrying about this way too much,” I said. “And frankly I’m surprised that Sam is too. He’s a lawyer. He ought to be good at finding ways around these kinds of promises.”
“Oh my god, you think he’s some kind of callous liar just because he practices law, don’t you?” she snapped. “He practices family law, and he says he’s seen things like this break up marriages all the time.”
“Okay, so how do you feel about it?” asked Diana, settling down in her seat on the couch at last. “Because if you really wanted to get married in the Church, he would go along with it, wouldn’t he?”
Trish sighed. “That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t. I don’t know if I believe in any of it anymore.”
“Okay, so you’re not getting married in the Church. Diana and I don’t care. It’s just Mom and Dad,” I said.
“I haven’t said for sure. I don’t know yet. I think I’m gonna work on Sam a bit harder. Maybe he’ll give in when I explain to him how expensive it would be for us to pay for everything on our own. Mom and Dad have given us so much money for it. I can’t do this to them.”
A few tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I’m selfish, aren’t I?” she asked us. “I’m a selfish, ungrateful person. I know you’re thinking it.”
Diana and I looked at each other, too stunned to respond.
“I can’t help it,” Trish continued. “It turns you selfish, don’t you see? Life turns you selfish.”
She held out her glass to me, and I reluctantly poured out an inch or two of rum, which she swallowed hungrily. So I poured her a bit more, and offered some to Diana, too, but she shook her head no. All she’d had tonight was Coke.
Trish sat back down on the couch with a crumpled expression, her nose all red and her eyebrows knotted.
“I can never pay them back,” she said finally. “All my life they give me food, clothing, medicine, love, shelter, toys, books, computers, a car, and expensive Catholic schools. They buy me a thousand dollar wedding dress, and help me with my law school loans. And all I could think about since I turned fifteen was how much I wanted to get away—from school, from Church, from curfews, from them.”
“You’re being hard on yourself,” I said.
“Am I?” Trish asked. “Sam says I have a lot of Catholic guilt. I don’t know, maybe that’s it. It really all comes down to this—that the only thing they ever wanted from me was to go to church and be a good Catholic, the way they raised me. And, hell, maybe even give them a grandchild or two that they could take to church with them on Sundays. That’s the only thing they ever wanted. And it’s the only thing I can’t give them.”
After a silence, I admitted, “I’ve never worried about that.” And as Trish looked up at me in all her existential agony, for a moment, I wished that I had. Maybe this was one of those things that only oldest children experience—something that went along with being the forever favorite.
Clearly, I was mistaken, because Diana crossed the living room to the couch where Trish was seated, and, sitting down beside her, put a hand around her shoulders and said, “I have.”
Trish stiffened. This was something she automatically did whenever anyone touched her, since we were teenagers. But after a second she relaxed and leaned her head gratefully on Diana’s shoulder. That was the kind of person Diana was, always comforting us as though we were the younger sisters.
Hearing footsteps, I grabbed the rum bottle from the coffee table and threw it under the couch. A half second later the hallway door opened, revealing my mother in her nightgown and slippers.
“Aren’t you girls going to bed?” she asked.
“In a minute,” Trish said quickly.
Seeing Trish wiping tears from her eyes, Mom became alarmed. “What’s the matter?” her voice raised suddenly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Diana. “We’re okay.”
“What are you crying about, Patricia?”
“It’s nothing,” said Trish.
Mom took a deep breath; she knew better than to push it with Trish. “All right then, go to bed,” she said. “We made up the trundle for you. We set it up in Angela’s room.”
“Okay,” said Trish.
“Okay,” Mom repeated, beating a slow retreat back down the hall.
Once Mom was again out of hearing range, Trish turned to Diana. Holding up her partially-full glass, she asked, “You want the rest of this?”
“No, thanks,” Diana said.
“It’s pretty sweet rum; you should try it. And don’t give me that innocent, ‘I’m-still-underage’ look—I know you’ve been drinking since you turned eighteen. I think I personally gave you your first shot of tequila. Don’t you like rum?”
Diana shrugged.
“Leave her be,” I said. “If she doesn’t want to catch our disease, more power to her.”
“It’s not that,” Diana protested.
“Hey, it’s okay,” said Trish. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I’m actually kinda proud of what a good girl you are. At least one of us turned out right.”
“Speak for yourself,” I laughed. My sister Trish had had plenty of opportunities for getting into trouble, but I had no boyfriend, and my only vice was speaking a little too openly with my parents about my beliefs, or lack thereof.
“It’s not like that at all,” Diana said. I could tell she was becoming uncomfortable. “We should really get to bed,” she said, rising from the couch.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said.
I’m no mind reader, but I knew what “Fine” was code for: “Something so massive that my head is about to explode, but there is very little anybody can do about it.” It was one of those things that brought home to me how much younger Diana was than Trish and me. We were approaching thirty while Diana was still a teenager for at least another few months.
She just needed a little push.
“I just remembered, your twentieth birthday’s coming up,” I said. “We should go somewhere. Take a trip, just the three of us.”
She nodded.
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked.
“It’s just that you guys think I’m this ‘good girl’ and everything, but you don’t know the reality. I’m no stranger to the fear of disappointing Mom and Dad. In fact, I’m probably worse than you and Trish put together.”
Trish laughed and asked, “You? The girl who got straight As in high school, then turned down Stanford for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel College? You couldn’t disappoint Dad if you tried.”
Then there was an awkward silence in which I swear I could hear the wheels in Trish’s head start their slow, squeaky turning.
“Ohmygod,” Trish said, blending the three words into one slang Trinity, “You lost your virginity, didn’t you? You finally lost it!”
Diana blushed and blinked her eyes, but didn’t give us any other sign of assent.
Still, it was enough for Trish.
“You did, didn’t you? You had sex!” she nearly shouted.
“Can you shut the hell up?” I said, glancing at the hall door. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Sorry,” Trish whispered. “I just can’t believe it. My baby sister! Who were you with? How was it?”
“Awful,” said Diana, looking away.
“What do you mean? That it was painful? It’s just the first time—”
“She said it was awful, Trish; she doesn’t want to talk about it,” I snapped.
“He hasn’t called me,” Diana clarified.
“Well, you know how it is. Three day rule and everything,” Trish said. “How long has it been?”
“A month.”
“A month?” Trish looked at me. “Do you wanna kill this guy, or should I?”
“Trish, leave it be,” I said.
“What’s his name?” Trish asked. “And where does he live?”
“He lives in my dorm,” said Diana. “His name is Eric.”
“I need a last name,” said Trish.
“Trish,” I admonished.
“How dare he!” Trish pouted.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Diana said, crestfallen. “We didn’t use protection.”
Trish threw up her hands in a gesture that somehow included me. “This is all our fault,” she said. “You and me, Angie. We should have had the talk with her.”
“What?” I laughed.
“You think Mom was going to do it? She didn’t do it with us.”
“She talked to me,” Diana said. “It’s not her fault I was so stupid. I got a prescription for the pill from the doctor on campus weeks ago. It’s just that Eric didn’t use a condom. He was so manipulative. I can’t believe I fell for him; I can’t believe I let him do that. You’re supposed to use a backup method.” Her voice was unsteady, her chest rising sharply. “I’m just so angry at him. And angry at myself.”
Trish put an arm around her, repaying Diana’s earlier gesture. “I know. That’s awful, and I’m sorry. But you lucked out, you know? At least you can be sure you’re not pregnant.”
Diana looked like somebody who was mortified at having her secret found out. It was kind of personal territory, but that mountain of pads in the bathroom wasn’t getting past anybody.
“Think how bad it would be if you were pregnant,” Trish said. “How upsetting that would have been for Mom and Dad… What a disruption of their lives that would be. How they’d suffer. Dad would probably have a heart attack. You know his blood pressure has been rising.”
“It’s true,” I said. “He’s been getting upset more, overreacting about little things. With St. Michael’s possibly going bankrupt, he’s had a lot of stress on his mind. Maybe it’s middle age. I don’t know. But lately it seems like everything frustrates him.”
“Like everything he believed in is falling apart?” suggested Trish.
I shrugged, while Diana stared at a point somewhere on the carpet in front of her.
“Yeah. Well, it’s a good thing you’re not pregnant,” I told Diana. “Of course, you still should be more careful. You could have gotten an STD. You don’t know what this guy has.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. It was totally stupid.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Trish told her. “Just be more careful next time. We don’t want to see you hurt, okay?”
“I will.”
“And neither do Mom or Dad.”
“Okay,” Diana said, her words becoming clipped and abrupt.
Then she stood up and walked away from us. I gave Trish a warning glance not to say anything; Diana looked like she needed some fresh air. She brought her glass to the sink and rinsed it, then offered to carry the empty rum bottle to the trash. She wasn’t outside more than a second before she returned for her coat and scarf, complaining how cold it was.
What happened next happened quickly, but I will never forget it.
Diana threw the scarf around her neck just as she passed the Nativity set displayed on top of Dad’s piano in the den. At that moment the Christ Child, installed in his china manger only hours earlier, reached out and grabbed Diana’s scarf, then rode it in a graceful arc down to the tile floor.
He was a shooting star, a flash of innocence swept up in a second and dashed into pieces.
Before Trish and I had gotten it all cleaned up, Mom had already arrived at the crash site. She was followed by Dad, who wrung his hands in despair over the loss of that most important of Nativity figures. Apparently the Holy Family trio in that collection had been the last gift he’d received from his mother before she died. Since Grandma had died when we were kids, we had no recollection of her role in the Nativity set. Anyway, it was a scene of devastation in our den that night, Dad shouting You girls don’t care…you just don’t care about anything, and angrily stuffing Nativity pieces into boxes, presumably never to waste them on his unappreciative daughters again. And Mom running around after him, begging him to calm down, telling him not to let it spoil his Christmas.
In all the commotion, nobody noticed Diana slip out the front door. Dad had packed the last box away when Trish turned to me and whispered, “Did you see where Diana went?”
I found her outside by our old stone pine tree, her shoulders shaking and her hair sticking to her wet face.
I put an arm around her and said, “It’s okay. He’ll get over it. It’s just a china doll.”
“I know,” Diana said, wiping her cheek with her palm. “But that’s just it. I want to be able to talk to him about things, and I can’t. Because if this is how Dad gets about little things, how am I supposed to trust him with the big things that are going on in my life? The things I believe, the mistakes I’ve made? How can I even let him know who I really am?”
Even then, it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe I didn’t know who she really was, or what was going on. Because all I could say was, “I just can’t believe he could overreact this much. It’s a china doll, and he’s carrying on like he lost a child.”
It was Diana who lost a child that Christmas Eve. But Dad and Mom and Trish and I lost something, too. By allowing us to keep our fragile innocence, Diana had deprived us of something even more valuable—the chance to show courage in the face of change, to prove the strength of our love for her. We lost the chance to know someone new, as well as the chance to know Diana in all her full potential.
And what of our potential?
Dad eventually brought out the Nativity set again, and the following year he found a replacement for his Christ Child through eBay. Trish and Sam had their church wedding, and Diana and I lead the hymns. At Communion time we sang “For the Beauty of the Earth,” another of my Dad’s favorite John Rutter arrangements.
And Diana didn’t have a baby. She went back to school and got her degree in Theology, which made our parents very proud.
This was the norm from which our lives would never have cause to depart, so long as everything we talked about remained buried at the bottom of the trash can, with all the pieces of the Baby Jesus.
