Crack
creative nonfiction by Tatiana DeJesus
It’s Christmas time when I crack the TV. My father sits on the couch. Trying to fill his days with mindless television.
“Have you seen this one?” he asks, gesturing to the screen, playing some show I’d never imagine him watching.
I don’t respond, my eyes are trained on the archway between the dining room and the living room. I’m waiting for my brother to come up from the basement.
So, as I hear him shift on the couch, I already know what he’s going to ask next.
“How are you doing in school?”
“I’m on break,” I state, my voice monotone and a bit sharp. Talking to him about school or work makes him feel bad.
“Oh,” he responds, dead air filling the space between us before he finally settles back into the couch.
I’m mad at him but honestly, he hasn’t done anything to deserve it. Not that I can remember. I’m just angry. The emotion feels strange next to the smell of Christmas pine and mess of storage boxes my brother drops at my feet. They’re full of lights, ornaments and childhood crafts.
“Hey, Justus,” I say as my brother turns on his heels to leave since his delivery task is over with.
He turns his head to look at me. Eyebrows raised in a silent question.
I point to the boxes on my feet, a small smile somewhat settling on my face. “Well?” I ask.
He stands there, waiting for me to finish my unspoken question.
“Are you going to help?”
“Do I have to?” he asks, finishing his turn.
The question makes me pause for a moment before I shake my head, followed with a quiet and brief, “No, its fine. Thanks, Justus.”
“Are you decorating the tree?” I hear my father ask me from the couch. I don’t answer him. Instead, I look at the boxes. My eyes search for the Christmas lights stored away within.
My mother told me last year that she had always wanted a tree that was uniform, and color coordinated. Red, white and gold are what I remember being the colors she commented on. This Christmas I had gone to buy some new white lights, and gold and white Christmas bulbs. They are likely on the armchair near me. I start to gather what is needed to make my mother’s vision come to life.
I pull out all the white lights we had in storage and sit on the floor by the surge protector. One by one I plug them in, looking to see how many cooperate with me. I’m not sure what it is, but all I can think about was Christmas before.
The ghost of Christmas past traps me in memories of my childhood. I watch as the small girl wakes multiple times from her own excitement, anxiously watching the clock to give her permission to wait by the tree.
I also see that little girl’s father walk in the front door, looking bone tired from his night at work. The excited little girl didn’t understand that the only thing Daddy wanted to do was change out of his scrubs and make himself breakfast. She didn’t know he had been picking up shifts for the past couple of weeks to make up for the holiday pay he missed by requesting Christmas night off.
All that little girl saw was her favorite person to wait on the couch with and watch classic Christmas movies until Mummy and her little brother woke up.
Even as she got a little bit older – and the man who tiredly entered the house Christmas morning spent most of the year at odds with her – that girl knew Christmas called for a cease-fire.
And she saw him as the man who bought the Christmas tree that she wanted despite knowing it would be too big for their house. He was the guy she’d listen to tell stories about his own Christmases when he was a kid while they watched Rudolph. They didn’t argue about her failing progress reports, missed homework assignments, or the fact that she didn’t practice the violin quite as much he would like. On Christmas, he wanted to spend time with his family and create good memories. And he appreciated seeing her smile and laugh and wanted to hear her stories about her life.
“Aren’t you going to use the colored lights?” my Father asks pulling me out of my memories. A knot appears in my stomach. And suddenly I really don’t want to hear him talk or answer his questions.
It takes an exuberant amount of energy to move my head from side to side and stand up from the floor. The pile of working lights at my feet while the broken ones remain tangled in the box.
“Why?” he asks.
I walk past him and grab the new lights I bought. He’s silent while I try to space the lights out enough that they cover the tree. And I appreciate that he seemed to finally be understanding that I just wanted to get this over with, so I could disappear into my room for the night and forget that he’s wasting away on the couch.
It’s pretty hard to get the lights to sit where I want them to – motor ticks have my hands tremoring and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m exceptionally angry or because my heart is aching to go back to when Christmas meant something to us. That little girl didn’t know that Daddy wasn’t going to cope well when Abuela died. She didn’t know that instead of working through the grief and the loss, he was going to turn towards old habits. There wasn’t any way for her to know that she would eventually have to go visit him in jail and speak to him through a window on a phone. And that little girl didn’t know she wouldn’t want to do it.
That little girl didn’t know Daddy managed to kick his drug addiction aside once before. She didn’t know that this time it would knock him flat on his ass. She was clueless about the fact she’d have to look down into his pit of depression and realize he didn’t even a game plan on how to claw his way back out.
I want to be that little girl again.
“What are you doing?” he asks as I walk away from the tree and made my way towards the TV he was watching.
My hand is searching for the power switch as my eyes stay on the tree. I answer absentmindedly, “I just need it to be dark to see if these lights are where I want them.”
“You can see just fine,” he tells me in a tone that catches me off guard. It didn’t suggest that he’s making a statement or an observation.
Somehow, he gets it in his head that he can pull out his dad voice and I’ll back off. And over what? Just a few moments of scripted drama from the show on screen? A show he doesn’t even care about?
“It’ll just be a second,” is what I come back with. I’m not asking either.
He doesn’t like that.
“I’m watching TV.”
“I need to see the lights.”
“You can see the lights.”
“It’s not dark enough.”
“It’s fine.”
“The TV is too bright.”
“Well, you’re going to have to wait then.”
“You can wait a for a few sec-” he had gotten off the couch at some point as I press the button to make the screen go dark. My shoulder crashes against the screen hard enough to make the entertainment system fly towards the wall. The screen suddenly turns back on blinding me for a second. Before I really process anything else happening, I run upstairs. A new crack is left from where my shoulder connects with the screen.
While I’m crying in my room, I can’t help but go over the events in my head – I’m turning them over endlessly trying to make sense of them.
The room is normally illuminated by natural light.
It’s why I prefer to decorate the tree when it’s dark out.
I need the room to be dark, so I space out the lights correctly on the tree.
It occurs to me, this is the first year I’m not going to have any help making the tree presentable.
The light I associate with my mom come Christmas time has left her eyes some time ago. Justus doesn’t really seem to care one way or the other if the tree is dressed and neither of them understand what’s so important about it to me.
In the future, I’ll wish I could remember the layout of the living room. Because then I could understand how I went from standing near the TV to being shoved into it. And I’ll wish I could remember if I had even gotten a chance to look at how the lights were strung-up before I ran. And I’ll question if the tree looked the way I wanted it.
Instead, all I’ll remember is the smell of the tree. I’ll remember the sight of the decorations on the floor and the shifting presence of my dad on the couch. And every time I get up to turn the TV off, I’ll pause. And for a moment I’ll wonder what it felt like to crack the screen.
“Have you seen this one?” he asks, gesturing to the screen, playing some show I’d never imagine him watching.
I don’t respond, my eyes are trained on the archway between the dining room and the living room. I’m waiting for my brother to come up from the basement.
So, as I hear him shift on the couch, I already know what he’s going to ask next.
“How are you doing in school?”
“I’m on break,” I state, my voice monotone and a bit sharp. Talking to him about school or work makes him feel bad.
“Oh,” he responds, dead air filling the space between us before he finally settles back into the couch.
I’m mad at him but honestly, he hasn’t done anything to deserve it. Not that I can remember. I’m just angry. The emotion feels strange next to the smell of Christmas pine and mess of storage boxes my brother drops at my feet. They’re full of lights, ornaments and childhood crafts.
“Hey, Justus,” I say as my brother turns on his heels to leave since his delivery task is over with.
He turns his head to look at me. Eyebrows raised in a silent question.
I point to the boxes on my feet, a small smile somewhat settling on my face. “Well?” I ask.
He stands there, waiting for me to finish my unspoken question.
“Are you going to help?”
“Do I have to?” he asks, finishing his turn.
The question makes me pause for a moment before I shake my head, followed with a quiet and brief, “No, its fine. Thanks, Justus.”
“Are you decorating the tree?” I hear my father ask me from the couch. I don’t answer him. Instead, I look at the boxes. My eyes search for the Christmas lights stored away within.
My mother told me last year that she had always wanted a tree that was uniform, and color coordinated. Red, white and gold are what I remember being the colors she commented on. This Christmas I had gone to buy some new white lights, and gold and white Christmas bulbs. They are likely on the armchair near me. I start to gather what is needed to make my mother’s vision come to life.
I pull out all the white lights we had in storage and sit on the floor by the surge protector. One by one I plug them in, looking to see how many cooperate with me. I’m not sure what it is, but all I can think about was Christmas before.
The ghost of Christmas past traps me in memories of my childhood. I watch as the small girl wakes multiple times from her own excitement, anxiously watching the clock to give her permission to wait by the tree.
I also see that little girl’s father walk in the front door, looking bone tired from his night at work. The excited little girl didn’t understand that the only thing Daddy wanted to do was change out of his scrubs and make himself breakfast. She didn’t know he had been picking up shifts for the past couple of weeks to make up for the holiday pay he missed by requesting Christmas night off.
All that little girl saw was her favorite person to wait on the couch with and watch classic Christmas movies until Mummy and her little brother woke up.
Even as she got a little bit older – and the man who tiredly entered the house Christmas morning spent most of the year at odds with her – that girl knew Christmas called for a cease-fire.
And she saw him as the man who bought the Christmas tree that she wanted despite knowing it would be too big for their house. He was the guy she’d listen to tell stories about his own Christmases when he was a kid while they watched Rudolph. They didn’t argue about her failing progress reports, missed homework assignments, or the fact that she didn’t practice the violin quite as much he would like. On Christmas, he wanted to spend time with his family and create good memories. And he appreciated seeing her smile and laugh and wanted to hear her stories about her life.
“Aren’t you going to use the colored lights?” my Father asks pulling me out of my memories. A knot appears in my stomach. And suddenly I really don’t want to hear him talk or answer his questions.
It takes an exuberant amount of energy to move my head from side to side and stand up from the floor. The pile of working lights at my feet while the broken ones remain tangled in the box.
“Why?” he asks.
I walk past him and grab the new lights I bought. He’s silent while I try to space the lights out enough that they cover the tree. And I appreciate that he seemed to finally be understanding that I just wanted to get this over with, so I could disappear into my room for the night and forget that he’s wasting away on the couch.
It’s pretty hard to get the lights to sit where I want them to – motor ticks have my hands tremoring and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m exceptionally angry or because my heart is aching to go back to when Christmas meant something to us. That little girl didn’t know that Daddy wasn’t going to cope well when Abuela died. She didn’t know that instead of working through the grief and the loss, he was going to turn towards old habits. There wasn’t any way for her to know that she would eventually have to go visit him in jail and speak to him through a window on a phone. And that little girl didn’t know she wouldn’t want to do it.
That little girl didn’t know Daddy managed to kick his drug addiction aside once before. She didn’t know that this time it would knock him flat on his ass. She was clueless about the fact she’d have to look down into his pit of depression and realize he didn’t even a game plan on how to claw his way back out.
I want to be that little girl again.
“What are you doing?” he asks as I walk away from the tree and made my way towards the TV he was watching.
My hand is searching for the power switch as my eyes stay on the tree. I answer absentmindedly, “I just need it to be dark to see if these lights are where I want them.”
“You can see just fine,” he tells me in a tone that catches me off guard. It didn’t suggest that he’s making a statement or an observation.
Somehow, he gets it in his head that he can pull out his dad voice and I’ll back off. And over what? Just a few moments of scripted drama from the show on screen? A show he doesn’t even care about?
“It’ll just be a second,” is what I come back with. I’m not asking either.
He doesn’t like that.
“I’m watching TV.”
“I need to see the lights.”
“You can see the lights.”
“It’s not dark enough.”
“It’s fine.”
“The TV is too bright.”
“Well, you’re going to have to wait then.”
“You can wait a for a few sec-” he had gotten off the couch at some point as I press the button to make the screen go dark. My shoulder crashes against the screen hard enough to make the entertainment system fly towards the wall. The screen suddenly turns back on blinding me for a second. Before I really process anything else happening, I run upstairs. A new crack is left from where my shoulder connects with the screen.
While I’m crying in my room, I can’t help but go over the events in my head – I’m turning them over endlessly trying to make sense of them.
The room is normally illuminated by natural light.
It’s why I prefer to decorate the tree when it’s dark out.
I need the room to be dark, so I space out the lights correctly on the tree.
It occurs to me, this is the first year I’m not going to have any help making the tree presentable.
The light I associate with my mom come Christmas time has left her eyes some time ago. Justus doesn’t really seem to care one way or the other if the tree is dressed and neither of them understand what’s so important about it to me.
In the future, I’ll wish I could remember the layout of the living room. Because then I could understand how I went from standing near the TV to being shoved into it. And I’ll wish I could remember if I had even gotten a chance to look at how the lights were strung-up before I ran. And I’ll question if the tree looked the way I wanted it.
Instead, all I’ll remember is the smell of the tree. I’ll remember the sight of the decorations on the floor and the shifting presence of my dad on the couch. And every time I get up to turn the TV off, I’ll pause. And for a moment I’ll wonder what it felt like to crack the screen.
About the writer
Tatiana DeJesus is a 21 years old undergraduate from Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently studying at Emmanuel College and working towards a BS in Neuroscience. Writing has always been a passion for her and serves as a creative outlet from the technical aspects associated with STEM. Tatiana plans on continuing to pursue her passion in writing and be able to tell her stories to people.
Instagram: @zaenaesson |