Christmas went all through our two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. It was one of my mother’s House Rules. She hung felt stockings inside the front door and lined the hallway with quilled-paper Santas, candy canes, and dolls. Our artificial tree bulged outward from one corner of the living room, its not-quite-forest-green branches weighted ridiculously with lights and tinsel and garland and ornaments. There was plastic mistletoe above the entrance to the kitchen, which doubled as the studio where my mother built a gingerbread house every year. I would stand aside and watch her make her elaborate designs—a lighthouse, a nineteenth-century train station, a whole town of one-story cookie homes—until I was about twelve, old enough to handle a pastry bag and pipe frosting onto sugar-cone Christmas trees after my homework was done. My mother displayed each house on the coffee table until December 26th; then my sister and I, with help from Miss Peggy’s girls and a few other neighbors, gleefully smashed it and ate the rubble.
We lived in the projects of East New York. When I was growing up, in the eighties and nineties, the neighborhood seemed battered, unsteady on its feet, as though it had just been jumped by a gang made up of municipal bankruptcy, crack cocaine, and despair. Self-protection grew especially difficult at Christmastime, which the cops called “feeding time.” Holdups and beat-downs were at their height. I suppose it was because so many of our neighbors were hungry for the Christmas cheer of rustling shopping bags, with their promise of Game Boys, Discmans, Girbaud jeans, and Avirex jackets. When there was no money for a bag of your own, the sight and sound of those bags hurt. Trips home from the supermarket or the subway meant the possibility of being robbed of whatever I was wearing or carrying, or at least getting beat up for having nothing good to steal.
If you asked my mother, those trips also presented an opportunity for the gang—you know, the same one that had jumped the neighborhood—to sneak into our apartment, into the minds and mouths of my dad, my sister, and me. Maybe even the dog. Our front door, she decided, would be the border between that damn gang and inside. She held it tighter than the D.M.Z., tighter than new church shoes. To keep things that way, there were the House Rules: Girl Scouts every Saturday, Mass every Sunday, school with the Sisters of St. Vincent Pallotti during the week; there was no slang, no slamming doors (in fact, no closing of doors, period, unless you were getting dressed, in the shower, or on the toilet), no fighting, and no Prince, ever. And Christmas had to start with the wreath on the front door.
We got what I called the candy-cane wreath in 1981, when I was five years old. It was a gift from my aunt, who collected Coca-Cola memorabilia, and therefore loved any combination of red and white. The wreath was plastic, with molded holly and ivy and needles that glittered like my Barbie doll’s shoes. I was the only one in the family who liked it. Still, it was nicer than the other decorations on our floor. Our neighbors festooned their doors with scary white Santas, or with the three even scarier Wise Men bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. Spray paint on the windows by the elevator spelled out “Merry Xmas to All.”
Everybody who came to visit complimented Mom on the wreath—Mom’s best girlfriend, Miss Connie, from the building next door, and Miss Daisy, who said seeing the wreath made her feel like she was coming to a fancy house in a white neighborhood, not the mirror layout of her apartment across the hall. Maybe that’s why she always stayed so long, each time she stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar, two cups of flour, two eggs, milk, a stick of butter, and a cake pan. Even Miss Peggy said it looked nice when she dropped her two daughters off to play with me while she “went to the store.” The whole neighborhood knew she was going to buy drugs. Even the cops knew. Miss Peggy had been slowly turning yellow and losing teeth for as long as I could remember. Plus, her husband got caught smuggling chickens out of a Met Food under his stolen peacoat. Only crackheads did that sort of thing; everyone else just took cash.
The praise wasn’t enough to keep Mom, Dad, and my sister from hating that wreath. Passionately. By the time I was in third grade, the holly berries had started to fall off and the color had faded to the point where I hated it, too. But Christmas had to start at the front door, and that candy-cane wreath was all we had, until the year I turned sixteen.
It was early December of 1992 when Mom brought the new wreath home. She and Miss Connie had just returned from one of their excursions to the art-supply store; they shared a love of defensive crafting. The wreath looked like a prisoner of war, hooded in a garbage bag, so big that my mother had to put the extra leaf into the kitchen table to support it. Then she took it out. This wreath was alive, made of real pine. I could smell it. My mother opened a smaller shopping bag, with “Fabric Bonanza” written on it. It was filled with glitter, tiny cardboard boxes wrapped in shiny paper, sprays of baby’s breath, miniature bells and French horns, ribbons of green, red, and gold—everything she needed to transform this new wreath into a proper harbinger of our Christmas. She sat down at the table with her glue gun and set to work, moving with a spider’s care and efficiency. She finished shortly before my father got home, then sent me out to the trash chute with the old candy-cane wreath.
That night, my dad walked through the door with a smile I hadn’t seen since early 1987, when the Giants won the Super Bowl just months after the Mets took the World Series. “Heyyyyy,” I remember him saying. Miss Daisy couldn’t contain herself; within the hour, she stopped by for some flour, milk, and eggs (no sugar; she was frying chicken), then returned later with her cousin in tow. When Miss Peggy showed up, she stood in jaundiced awe. Connie took pictures. I gushed about it over the phone to my sister, who was serving on a naval vessel near the port of Jebel Ali, and she got even more excited for her Christmas visit. The weird family in the apartment to the right and the drug dealer and his girlfriend in the apartment to the left never said anything to us, but I could hear them talking about the wreath. Someone had been stabbed in the building next door, and the boys who lurked in the lobby selling nickel bags had just stomped someone, but in the weeks after the new wreath came there seemed to be peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.
One evening about a week before Christmas, the wreath disappeared. The rest of the decorations were up by that point, and my mother had started construction on her gingerbread house, a federal-style number with Greek columns and a portico. My father came home and said, “You took it down, huh? Something wrong?”
“What?” my mother said.
“The wreath.”
“Rufus, what are you—the wreath!”
I poked my head out of my bedroom to see her, shocked into quiet, holding the door open with her foot. My father had unzipped his coat but was still wearing his watch cap, rolled up and cocked to the side, the way it usually was when we got an eviction notice or needed to walk all the way to the Pathmark in Starrett City for the lower grocery prices. My mother looked like a TV cop assessing a crime scene. My father and sister began asking questions.
“What the hell happened?”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
“Did someone steal it?”
“Of course someone stole it.”
“Didn’t you hear anything? Did anybody hear anything?”
“Who the hell steals a Christmas wreath?”
My mother never said a word. She locked the front door and turned to me, her dark, tired eyes hardened to scuffed stone. “Get my cigarettes,” she said. As she saw it, the border had been breached and the city was invading our home.
I don’t know who told Miss Daisy. She showed up with her cousin and Miss Peggy to offer their condolences and get the scoop. They all smoked at the kitchen table while my mother made a pot of coffee and told them what she knew. Dad, by that point, had removed his coat and deposited himself on the living-room couch. He agreed that the theft was a damn shame, just a goddam shame, and turned on the television.
The ladies at the table caucused in hushed voices. I eavesdropped as I emptied ashtrays and refilled mugs. They thought the dealer next door had something to do with it. “You mark my words,” Miss Daisy said. Miss Peggy mm-hmm’d in agreement. Mom said nothing. After some time—“Wheel of Fortune” had ended and “Family Matters” was starting—the ladies left and my mother called her best friend. Miss Connie agreed with Miss Daisy; it probably was the drug dealer or his girlfriend, but she wouldn’t put anything past Miss Peggy, either.
I missed the arrival of the third wreath. It came on a Tuesday, when I had to stay late at school for an honor-society meeting, so when I entered the kitchen my mother was already hunched back over the gingerbread house. “Come look,” she said, nodding toward the living room.
The candy-cane wreath had had a plastic ribbon that we’d replaced with a strip of fabric from my sister’s confirmation-party dress. The stolen wreath had had a ribbon of red polyester. This newest wreath stood propped against the coffee table so that its velveteen ribbons stuck out like two defiant feet. Christmas lights glittered off the silver bells and trumpets hot-glued to its perimeter—a silent fanfare. Stray tinsel strands rippled on an unfelt breeze. It was desperately beautiful.
“You got a new one,” I said, already fearing for this wreath. It was shiny and daring, looking for trouble. Our Christmas had already been beat up once. I didn’t think it could take being jacked again.
“It’s not as nice,” Mom said. “They were out of the French horns.” She loved the French horns. “But they’re going to have to fight for this one.” She had that cop look in her eyes again. “Get my cigarettes, and a hanger,” she said. “One of the really thick ones, like in ‘Mommie Dearest.’ ” We had only one of those. It was old and sagging from many years of supporting my father’s winter coat. “Yeah, that’s the ticket,” she said, smiling around the cigarette.
My sister, who had been lying low in the back bedroom, was given the job of untwisting and straightening the hanger. I was dispatched to mark two spots on the front door, three inches above and three inches below the peephole. My mother got my grandfather’s toolbox, pulled out the drill, and dug around for the appropriate bit.
“Can we really drill through the door?” I asked.
“Where’s the awl?” she said.
“Won’t we get in trouble with Housing?” That’s what we called our landlord, the New York City Housing Authority.
“Is Housing going to make me another wreath?”
I kept the dog out of the way while my mother hammered and drilled. I was used to her taking charge like that. She’d told us that we should learn never to wait on a man.
She made the starter holes first. The sound of the hammer punching through steel ricocheted down the hallway like gunshots. No, firecrackers—nothing sounded like gunshots. Each hole took a few minutes. When the drilling was finished, my mother started humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”
She looped the straightened hanger around the top of the wreath and wriggled the two ends through the holes in the door, twisting them closed on the other side. Then she concealed the wire with a stocking and hung two large jingle bells over it for a merry alarm system.
“How’s that?” she said.
“Looks really nice, Mom,” I said.
When my father got back that night, he said, “Hey! You got another one!”
“Get off your ass and help your father with his coat,” Mom said.
“You don’t think they’ll take it? They’ll take it.”
Mom turned off the music. Dad knew the House Rules; he shouldn’t have asked, and her face told him so. I explained to him about the wire.
“We live in the projects,” Mom said. “I will not live with the projects.”
“You think pinning the wreath to the door will fix that?”
“What else am I supposed to do, Rufus?”
My father sighed, his wide shoulders drooping as he took off his cap and embraced my mother. Quietly, so as not to disturb them, I reached around in the closet to find a new hanger for my father’s coat. Mom called my name from Dad’s arms. “Michele! Bring me Daddy’s shaving kit. It’s in the bathroom.”
My mother plucked the newest pack of razor blades from the slot next to the nail clippers and went to the front door.
“What are you doing now?” I said.
“You see my cigarettes? Never mind, I’ll be done in a minute.”
She began tucking Dad’s razor blades into the fronds of the Christmas wreath. Her fingers moved quickly, deftly, as though she were pinning a hem. She used the entire package, and when she was done not a single blade glinted in the hallway lights. “They’ve got to really want this one,” I remember her saying, and then she kissed my cheek.
I made a big pot of coffee, enough for Miss Connie and Miss Daisy, who would be by soon enough, probably with Miss Peggy. “I’ll leave the door open,” my mother told Miss Connie on the phone. “I don’t want you to get cut.”
For the next few weeks, every time I entered or left the apartment, I checked the floor for blood. There were a few stains on the door, sometimes a streak, other times a fingerprint, but it was always gone by the next day. Maybe my mother cleaned it. One or two times, we heard the bells on the inside of the door jingle. Eventually, even they stopped.
