Barbie Boy

The Christmas tree lights stab; slow then fast then slow, like they’re arguing over how hard to gut me. Each stab smacks another color across my face: red, then green, then red.

My cousin, she sits cross-legged under the sagging tree. Marlboro smoke chokes the air. Wrapping paper clings to her frilled pink socks, her OshKosh jeans, and the wet Schlitz spot stamped into the carpet by my uncle’s boot.

Wham! blasts too loud “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart” the stereo wobbling like it’s drunk.

My cousin, she attacks the gift, shredding it like she’s scared of what’ll happen if she stops. Each rip gets answered by another stab of the tree lights. Another lungful of my uncle’s Marlboro smoke drifting over me like a punishment I earned long before tonight. Then the box appears.

The Barbie box.

Pink so bright it looks radioactive. Frozen smile and blonde mane. The lights stab again, and Barbie’s plastic face lights up like it knows exactly what I am, and came here to see it…

My grandma claps. My aunt snaps a Polaroid. Metallic red and green wrapping paper everywhere. Pretty in that painful way broken ornaments can be.

Grandma’s house at Christmas was always fun.

That’s what I used to tell myself.

My uncle, he leans over me, ash stuck to his shirt and stale Schlitz heat soaked in his breath. A Marlboro dangles from his mouth, the ash stretched long like it’s waiting to break off on my head. He elbows me hard and rattles something inside my ribs.

“Oooohhh,” he slurs. His eyes shine that mean shine, you know, the one bullies get right before they land the hit; mean, but also searching. “I think that Barbie was meant for Vince.”

The lights stab green, then red, then red, then red.

Heat climbs under my skin, sharp and fast, like a sunburn in December. Wrong. My knee crosses neatly over the other; quiet, soft, and automatic. I uncross it too fast, like I caught myself doing something I shouldn’t. His smirk twitches like he clocked it anyway.

My uncle, he explodes into laughter; too loud, too heavy, and sloshing beer over his fingers as he wheezes. He drags off his Marlboro, and the ember flares red. His laugh snaps into a hacking cough that rattles the ornaments. Ash rains down his shirt. He keeps laughing anyway, laughing through the choke, proud of the wreckage he makes.

My stomach flips, and metal hits my tongue. Sweat beads under my sweater, turning the cheap acrylic into sticky skin I can’t peel off. My pulse throbs in my throat, and my hands freeze. The whole room tilts left, then right, like I’m in a snow globe.

I don’t know where to look.

At the Barbie?

At my aunt’s Polaroid?

At my uncle’s smirk that feels like a hand on the back of my neck?

The lights stab again, and I feel peeled open, nerves exposed, like every secret I haven’t learned the words for is suddenly projected across my face in green and red.

My cousin pulls the Barbie to her chest.

Wham! hits the chorus again.

My uncle, he guzzles the rest of his Schlitz and cracks open another, the fizz loud and sloppy. He lights a fresh Marlboro. Smoke coils toward me like he’s shaping a noose one loop at a time.

And then my grandma, smiling at the Barbie, she says it. Soft, absentminded, but almost cutting: “Your uncle loved Barbies at her age. Such a delicate boy he was.”

The words hit him like a thrown bottle. He freezes, just long enough to let the truth show, before snapping his grin back into place, too wide, too tight, and aimed right at me like a blade.

I crack a smile like broken snow-globe glass. No one notices. Or maybe they do?

The lights stab again. Red and red and red.

Hard, exposing, and surgical. Laughter stomps through my chest like Santa on the roof. I yank my sweater collar up over my mouth, over my cheeks, and almost covering my eyes. Hiding what’s left of my face the way a kid shields a new bruise from whatever caused it.

But the lights won’t stop.

Stab and red and stab and red.

Each stab claws me back into view, refusing to let me disappear. Refusing to let me shrink.

Refusing to let me be safe, or small, or gone.