When a Bell Rings

Dad was drunk- we all had ways of dealing with that kind of car wreck. Tommy lit bottle rockets in the backyard. They whisteled up the mountainside, leaving tracks and little pink sticks in the crabgrass.
Sally braided. Her hair. Mine. Mom's, while she re-read last Sunday's post.
She braided the carpet tassles, the pull cords on the dusty blinds, even her ragdoll's yellow yarn hair (some of the plaits pulled away from the head entirely, surrounding her in a little nest).
I carved the words "not" and "working" on eigther side of dad's srying soap bar with the end of my toothbrush. Then I filled his briefcase with the cat's pancake-like litterings, scooped dog shit up in a brown lunch bag and smeared it all over his sock drawer. These were the best Christmas gifts I could give him- ones that I really meant.
Mom started sniffling between the screeing sounds of Tommy's barade. Sally strung the doll's hair on the tree and tried and failed to throw her bald little body on the top point like some sad angel. She lay there, somewhere near the middle, on her side. The shiny tree looked like it was swallowing her, the lights made her look like she was on fire.

Dad was drooling on the kitchen table. I pulled the warming bottle from his outstretched hand, thenpadded back to my parents bathroom in my new slippers and refilled his Old Spice bottle with whiskey.

The whole town thought he was a drunk. Now they'd know he was one. He'd loose his job, and then maybe Mom would brave the stick shift of the station wagon, pack us kids up, and go. A three inch metal lever was all we needed to get us out and away. I wondered if he's miss us. "The whore" and his "nasty little fuckers". I wondered, if we left in the night if he'd sit alone in the pile of ribbons and wrapping paper and regret.