Worship You

Chapter Nine - The Yule Day

The day before Christmas - Christmas Eve to the Christians out there - was raining an icy rain out of a dark gray sky. Cassie and I had been huddled in my car listening in silence to the bits of ice ting ting ting on the hood. Nothing had been right between us since that day her father had caught us together in the cellar. I asked her about it more than once but she wouldn't say a word, not even to refuse to talk. She would just turn her head and look away with a cold expression. Every time I showed concern for her, I was pushing her farther away. So I stopped. And we sat in the car in silence.

I had been waiting for the right moment but it started to look as if that wasn't going to happen so I finally reached across her to the glove compartment and pushed the button that sprung it open. I took a little package out and lay it on her lap.

"Merry Christmas," I said.

Cassie didn't move other than to shift her eyes to the present and stare at it like it was a snake.

"I told you, I don't celebrate Christmas anymore," she said. "I'm thinking of just celebrating the Winter Solstice or Yule like the Wiccans do."

I didn't know what Wiccans were, other than it must have had something to do with the Goddess rock that Cassie kept in her basement retreat.

"I know you don't. But it's a good excuse to give presents so don't be such a drag and open it."

She shifted her eyes at me and her face softened a bit. She didn't smile, but she wasn't made of stone anymore either.

Cassie picked up like she didn't know what to do with it. She handled it with the tips of her fingers, holding it out before her eyes and staring.

The package was wrapped with a ribbon and bow. A woman at the store had done it so it looked really nice. If I had tried to wrap it, it would have looked like somebody in North Korea was mailing a dirty bomb. This looked really good. It should have. They charged extra.

"It's nice," she said. "Did you do this?"

I kept a straight face, nodded my head and said, "Sure."

She looked at me a moment and then she smiled a lopsided grin and said, "Yeah, right, you did." And we laughed a little, the first time we laughed together since that day.

She looked back at my gift. "It seems a shame to ruin it."

"It's just paper."

"It's nice."

"That's why I got them to do it. So you could tear it open."

She looked at me and I thought for a moment she was feeling sorry for me. Which made me feel weird, especially when she said next, "I never had anything like this before."

I didn't believe that. "You never got a present?"

She gave her head a shake and said softly, "Not nice like this."

I was so glad. Not glad that she hadn't had a present. But that this was special. The way she that word 'nice,' it was like the heaviest word you could think of. Nice. She made it carry all sorts of things: Warmth in a house with plenty of heat and light streaming from windows on a cold winter night when you're coming home late and a real mother cooking dinner for you around a table of people who would be glad to see you when you came home. I wanted to make her feel what she meant to me. I wanted to show how I felt. And I thought that maybe she was really getting it, that I really did love her.

I said, "Open it. It's just wrapping paper."

"All right but I'm taking my time. Don't rush me."

And she took a long time, untied the ribbon and carefully wrapped it around her fingers and putting the coil into her purse. Then she slowly lifted the tape loose and took the paper (which was really nice red paper with flecks of gold and with a design stamped into it that you could feel) and folded it and put that into her purse, safe. Then she had the box in her hands and she looked at it. It had the name of the store on it. It was called Satya or Satma, I forget. But it was some hippie store downtown, a store with all sorts of Hindu and pagan jewelry necklaces and things.

I asked her to open it, but she wasn't in a hurry. She didn't turn to me, just looked at the box and her hands lowered until they were resting in her lap. She looked down on the box like it was an answer to a question she had been waiting for. And now she knew.

I told her again to open it.

She shrugged her shoulders violently and I asked her what was wrong.

"Nothing. I'm just having this. Before I look. All right? This is what I want. To have this feeling. I don't want to go further."

I couldn't believe this. What was she saying? That she wanted a box? I was about to say this when she lifted the lid. There was tissue paper inside. She set the lid aside on her thigh carefully so it didn't fall down onto the wet floor mats of the car. And then with a finger she parted the paper and saw it. It was a little silver figure, like the Mother Goddess rock, big hips and chest but it was long and narrow at the waist with long tapering legs stretched out. And on the belly of the figure there was a spiral design that pulled you in. That was for fertility, the woman at the store had told me. The figure hung from a beautiful silver chain. Cassie picked this up with her fingertips and lifted it up until the little silver figure swung back and forth before her face.

She looked at me and said, "It's the Goddess." She looked at the beautiful little figure swinging in space. I said a few things, how I hoped she like it and what the women at the store had told me but she didn't seem to hear. She stared at the figure swinging and then she turned and looked into my eyes. I've never had a feeling like that, Cassie really looking into my eyes.

"This is the best Christmas I ever had," she said.

I was so happy.

Then she kissed me in a way she never had, holding nothing back.

That was the night we made the plan to go to New York City for New Year's Eve.