Glitter Girl

By Erin Quinn O’Briant

La Vista, California. December, 1996

The elder Sorens had no reason to believe this was their last Christmas with both daughters, at least in this millennium. Colleen and Harold Soren could not imagine such a thing. They really couldn’t imagine it. Unless—horrible thought, get it away—one of the girls were struck by a bus or cancer, some uncontrollable external force. Colleen and Harold limited their dark imaginings to the obvious ways a family could crumble, vehicles with faulty brakes and so forth, so they didn’t see what had already happened to theirs. Their daughters, 21 and 23 years old, didn’t know collapse could happen without divorce.

During future Christmases, Colleen would still trim a three-foot plastic pine with lights; Harold would still suggest they get a real tree this year, but they would decide not to kill a tree unnecessarily; Colleen would still bake a big, salty ham. She would buy gifts for both daughters, Angie and Gloria, and leave one in the top shelf of her closet. Every month, but especially in December, Colleen Soren would contemplate this Christmas, picking over the conversations, the cake, the fight. She would wonder how some piece of the day could have been different, thus creating a different outcome, or if everything that happened had to happen. Colleen and Harold Soren, secular agnostics, would spend several years pondering predestination. They never came to any conclusions, because you have to actually believe in God to believe in predestination—without Him, the theory won’t hang together.

Having brought these two women, their daughters, into the world, and fed and educated and loved them, Harold and Colleen didn’t quite know what to do next. They thought the best thing to do with grown children was to leave them alone, as they had wanted to be left alone at that age. So they lived their lives as they saw fit, and assumed their daughters would do the same, in a friendly, familial sort of way,  and one day Harold and Colleen looked up to find that the younger daughter—the kinder one, the dreamy one, the one they once nicknamed Baby Buddha—had strayed right through the sliding glass doors of a small church housed in a nearby mini-mall.

 

Angie woke up in the dark, as she always did on Christmas morning, even more excited than usual on December 25. Sleepy and warm, she pushed back the quilt, knelt beside the double bed, clasped her hands together, and wished Jesus a heartfelt happy birthday. The words “thy Kingdom come” lingered in her mind, and she worked them into her prayer, asking for strength in doing his work here on Earth. Humming “Happy Birthday” under her breath, she slipped out of her room into the chilly morning, bedroom slippers sliding against the glossy hardwood as she tiptoed down the hall stairs and into the kitchen. She started a pot of coffee and opened The Joy of Cooking; the family’s old copy of the beloved cookbook, originally bound in blue cloth now faded to an aqua-gray, the red marker ribbon tucked in between the pages of her father’s pancake recipe. She turned to Vanilla Layer Cake and scanned the ingredient list. Yes, she had everything she needed, and her sister and parents wouldn’t be awake for at least a couple more hours.

Angie reveled in the cake batter, measuring and whisking, pouring, tasting. She made chocolate frosting, too, while the cake was in the oven. Her parents had refurbished their big, eat-in kitchen the year before; it was well-equipped: slick granite counter tops, an island with a  hidden microwave, a double sink, new wooden cabinets. They even had a red KitchenAid mixer. It was like an advertisement for kitchens. The lights were bright and cozy in the turning-gray dawn, but Angie hardly noticed; her spirit was not in the world of up-to-date appliances. She felt alive all through her body; finally, this day meant true celebration. She’d always loved Christmas. Maybe some part of her had understood how special it was, even before she heard the Word.

She sat at the kitchen table, praying for her family members to welcome Jesus into their lives, as the cake baked. She took the light brown layers out of the stainless steel oven at exactly the right time, and let them cool in the matching refrigerator while she tidied up the kitchen. Angie frosted the cake lovingly, and she was almost finished writing “Jesus Christ” in swirling icing script on the top when Gloria came in.

“Ang, Merry Christmas! I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up like you always do.” Gloria staggered in, tired but happy, wearing pink flannel pajamas with white snowmen printed on them. She rubbed her eyes. “God, it smells good in here.” The sisters hugged, then stepped away from each other. Gloria noticed Angie had a streak of something brown in her blond ponytail.

“Merry Christmas,” Angie sang, smiling hugely.

Gloria looked down at the spatula in Angie’s hand and the cake on the counter. “Hey, you made a cake! What for?”

“It’s just something some people in my church do. To celebrate Christmas. Because, you know, it can be so commercial.” Angie was having some difficulty explaining under Gloria’s puzzled gaze.

“Well, yeah, Christmas is way too commercial, but—why a cake? I don’t get it. I mean, not that I don’t appreciate it, assuming I get some.”

“It’s a birthday cake for Our Lord.”

Gloria looked at Angie quizzically. “Really?”

“That’s what Christmas is, His birthday.”

“Do a lot of people do this?”

“Some do. I just—I don’t know, I just wanted to really celebrate His birth, do something special.”

 Gloria struggled with the concept. “Do you have candles for it? Are you planning to sing?” She stopped herself from asking whether there would be birthday hats, too.

“Yeah, I am. And there’s one candle. I mean, I couldn’t very well put 1,996 candles on it. So I guess one is good.” Angie’s face was earnest.

Resisting the urge to crack a smile, Gloria said, “Right, you would have to have a huge cake for all those candles.” She watched her younger sister as Angie lovingly swirled frosting on the cake. “Ang, Mom is going to freak out. Seriously. The Christian thing makes her feel really pressured.”

As she finished the top of the frosting with a flourish, Angie sighed. “I know. But this is important to me. Maybe she’ll understand that.” She turned back to Gloria. “I wish you could feel as great today as I do. I pray so hard that you all will share my faith. Christmas is completely changed for me since I’ve opened my heart to Jesus. It’s such a meaningful day now. Beyond meaningful.”

Gloria poured herself a cup of coffee, then pulled a carton of half-and-half from the fridge and added a generous amount. Let’s hope this ‘heart to Jesus’ crap is over this time next year. She plopped into a chair at the shiny maple kitchen table and looked up at Angie, who was still standing at the counter. “I promise you, Ang, I love you but I am never going to feel as great as you do on Christmas. I’m happy for you if this is what you want, but I just can’t go for any of it. No offense.”

“None taken.” Angie’s face contradicted her words. She refilled her own coffee cup and took a sip.

“Look, you believe what you want to believe. That’s totally fine. But for me Christmas is a secular holiday.” Gloria mentally rolodexed through her college history classes. “Well, really it’s a pagan holiday, I suppose,” she mused. “A modern-day solstice celebration

or—”

Angie grimaced and set down her cup with a clatter. “It. Is. Not. A pagan. Holiday. This is the anniversary of the birth of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ!”

“Okay, okay! I didn’t mean to upset you.”

The sisters sat in silence, each thinking the other astonishingly obtuse.  Finally, Gloria spoke. “I think we should put the cake away until later and make some pancakes before Mom and Dad get up.”

And they did.

 

That Christmas morning, though, Colleen and Harold were not asleep. They were sitting up in bed discussing their daughters.

“I think I hear them in the kitchen,” Colleen said to her husband. “I guess you know your kids are grown when they let you sleep in on Christmas morning.”

“I guess so,” Harold said absently.

“What’s wrong?”

He stroked the top of the bedspread compulsively, a sure sign he was thinking through a problem. “This Christian thing worries me. Angie seems to be getting more obsessed with it, not less.” 

Colleen sighed and ran a hand through her short, silvering hair.  “I know. It just makes no sense. I don’t know what this is about, what the draw is to this church.” Harold stayed silent, so she continued, “It makes you wonder why we bothered with her education, if she was going to believe this sort of foolishness. This pastor of hers isn’t just a run-of-the-mill Christian, spouting liberation theology or something, he’s a seriously conservative right-winger.  And he’s working on her.”

“Yes. Right.” Harold sighed. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, though. She’s an adult, and she doesn’t listen to our opinion anymore. She thinks we’re heathens.” During the past few months, this had become a predictable conversation.

“Don’t I know it,” his wife answered.

They sat side by side in their king-sized bed, propped against clean cotton pillows, breath unconsciously in sync.

Harold broke the quiet first. “Gloria seems fine, though. This job at Mother Jones is a great start.”

‘It is. I wish she would find a nice girlfriend. Someone to steady her.”

He nodded. “She will. She’s got to settle down eventually.”

The conversation returned to a standstill.

“About Angie. We just have to make it clear,” Colleen eventually said, her voice edgy, “that we won’t tolerate this. We are her parents, not her converts for this preacher. She can believe what she wants, but she can’t flaunt it in our house or expect us to believe the same ridiculous things.”

Harold looked at her, worried. “Do you think that will work? Taking a hard line?”

“I do.” Colleen nodded emphatically. “I absolutely do.”

 

All four Sorens put gifts under the little plastic tree that year. Books, sweaters, desk accessories—the things that say, “I love you, but I didn’t really know what to get.” That afternoon, as the family sat together in the living room, Colleen looked over at her daughters. Gloria and Angie were on the sofa in their pajamas, singing along to The Grinch That Stole Christmas as they had done nearly all their lives, and Colleen thought, “Overall, we did a good job.” She went back in the kitchen to put the ham in the oven.

A few minutes later, Colleen stormed into the living room, face mottled red. She grabbed the remote control and clicked off The Grinch. “Angela Davis Soren,” she yelled, “did you use my new kitchen to make a Goddamn birthday cake for Jesus?”

 

***

Want to read more? GLITTER GIRL will be available on Amazon.com June 15, 2010. Sign up for email updates at www.litbooks.net.