My Emily Friend Who
Smells Like Pine
A Christmas Glimpse
by Lynn Bukowski c 2006
Emily
Diedra, small girl who smells like pine, like a tree cut fresh that
Daddy shakes and brings through the door on Christmas Eve. Something
like the crisp of the woods—it gets in my nose, the way her head smells
when she’s leaning close to me over a jigsaw puzzle or on the porch
where we are squatting over jacks and trading shiny rocks that we
pretend are from different countries where my Daddy goes.
In
my memory we say prayers and then for the fifth night in a row she
takes a twig of pine needles and wraps a ragged towel around it, gently,
like we tuck in our baby dolls. She puts the towel under her pillow
and tells it something. I never hear what she whispers and I tell her
again, “Mama doesn’t like us to whisper,” but she smiles, just before I
turn the lights off, and promises someday to whisper loud.
In
the dark Emily Diedra tells me a story about her mama with green eyes
and about so many brothers there’s no time to count them. And how they
would all sleep in one bed, some at the top and some at the bottom,
because that way her mama could hug them all at one time from one side,
like bundling up big fluffy pillows. I tell her I think it would be fun
to all sleep in the same bed and I ask about her daddy and if he hugged
them all from the other side and she rolls over and pretends to fall
asleep.
Even
though it’s cold the sun heats up the leaves and they crinkle under our
feet and we step carefully because we’re on an adventure in my special
place in the woods. Emily Diedra sits on a sappy log and wipes the back
of her hand across her face. I think it’s because the chilly in the
air made her nose run, but then I see the drops well up in her eyes and
spill down over her lips. In a tiny voice she says her daddy went away
because he was angry too much and when her mama went to find him, she
never came back. She breathes hard and asks if I still love my daddy
and I laugh and say, “Of course, silly.” Then I stop laughing and tell
her in my best serious voice that Mama says sometimes people have to
learn how to love. When I sit on the sappy log with her I give her my
special friend hug with my arms criss-crossed around her neck.
We
run half way home backwards and some of the way sideways. We trade
shoes and wear them on our hands. We lay down with the leaves and stare
up at the sky so blue and heaven inside the white clouds. I give Emily
Diedra three M & M’s I’ve been saving since yesterday. She
asks me if I think Santa knows where all the foster kids live and if
it’s too selfish to ask for paper doll cut-outs so we can color in their
clothes with crayons.
We
somersault off the rail of the front porch and Emily Diedra runs to
pick up a fallen pine twig. She tells me pine twigs help Santa’s
reindeer find kids who don’t have a Christmas tree because they can
smell the fresh needles and tell Santa to land. I tell her I don’t get
it. But she looks sad and crosses her heart that it’s true because
that’s what her daddy told her a long time ago when they couldn’t get a
tree, and even though Santa didn’t find their house it was true. I tell
her not to worry because we do have a Christmas tree and Mama will make
sure Santa knows Emily Diedra lives in our house now.
When
we go in Mama says, “Didn’t I tell you?” and we get it because we
weren’t supposed to tromp through the mud and sit on sappy logs and we
have leaves dangling from our hair and sweaters. But she smiles with
her lips all tight and gives us hot chocolate anyway.
This
Christmas Eve we tuck our own girls in, one each, with braided
ponytails and red cheeks and pine twigs under their pillows. We sip
coffee and make cookies and laugh about so many years ago waiting for
teeth to fall out and breasts to grow in, for dads to come home and
Santa to land. And when we look at each other, our arms gummy from
cookie dough we split in two bowls, we could be sisters, right? We
could be, she and I back then, born of secrets and dreams, because blood
owns no promise and love is learned. Tonight we can whisper loudly and
laugh at the memories we hold dear, me and her, my Emily friend who
smells like pine.
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