“Get up!” my brother hissed, and I must have been asleep because I couldn’t move fast enough for Gary—he banged the bottom of my top bunk impatiently, using his feet for ramrods, bouncing me two or three inches up in the air. “It’s time! What are you doing up there? Get up!!”
Foot dangling down, cold air, reaching for the top of the oak panel on the bunk bed’s footboard—very dark downstairs, obviously some mistake. The fire was out and the back of the fireplace—I was afraid of that. I scrambled back up to the bedroom and started to climb up into bed.
“You weren’t supposed to go down yet.”
“Oh.”
“Go wake up Mom and Dad!” he told me sharply, as in how dumb can you get?
“YOU GO RIGHT BACK TO BED!” That was my answer.
Two or three days ago, they let me stay up to watch a Christmas Special on TV. Something about a Little Girl In A Yellow Dress, which was the title. And it was supposed to be fun to watch, but I was terrified. Started off with the girl falling asleep in front of her fireplace and dreaming and then waking up and seeing the bricks in the back wall of the fireplace suddenly disappeared. And she went through the hole and found a road and ended up in what looked like a bank of dirty-looked gray clouds. Clouds! And cold—because of course she didn’t think of taking her coat. Then she came to crossroads, deep ruts of roads leading in every direction, and she somehow picked the one leading her to the North Pole. Presto! The front wall of the house she saw fell off revealing all the rooms inside. That’s when I stopped watching, it was too horrible.
“Don’t you want to watch anymore?”
“Okay.” But I kept my eyes mostly closed.
“Hey! Don’t you wanna see this?”
“Okay.” Eyes closed tighter.
“Mom will send you to bed if you can’t keep your eyes open.”
Eyes open—looking at the insides of my hands.
Little Girl In A Yellow Dress—horrible—chimney opening up— I wished they had on Jack Benny. Terrifying, Gary and monster movies and everything. If people were gonna walk through fireplaces and get lost in square-cut snowbanks and not use doors but magically make the whole front of a house disappear, I didn’t want to see what else would happen, I didn’t care where they were going.
Gary likes to make me open my eyes at the worst moments, we’re watching and the music sounds like something bad is about to happen—
“I can’t watch!”
“What a sissy!”
“Tell me when it’s over.”
And (I know because I caught him doing this) he turns the sound off, I wait and wait, he says it’s okay now and I open my eyes at the bloodiest second when the monster appears. He thinks it’s funny.
Well, I was nodding off again, maybe to sleep again when I got thumped from below again. “It’s time!” Gary urged. “Go get Mom and Dad up.”
How gullible can you get? But maybe it was time. Maybe we didn’t have to wait for the sun to come up. I climbed down and went down the hall again, stood by Mom and Dad’s bedroom door listening. No sound at all.
“Mommy? Mommy? Is it time yet?”
“Go back to bed!” Dad growled, and I scurried back for my bunk.
“No, it’s not,” I told my brother.
“Well, I thought it was.”
I was just getting sleepy and wondering what I’d get and trying to remember what I got last year and what “Sugar Plum Fairies” look like—
“It’s time!” Gary was kicking my bed again.
“No, it isn’t.” I hadn’t been back to sleep yet so I knew.
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Go get Mom and Dad.”
“You go. Leave me alone.”
“But, it’s time. Don’t you want to open your presents?”
I didn’t say anything more, and he didn’t say anything more—the liar. He wouldn’t get out of bed, so I knew he was lying. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, either, waiting for him to kick me from below again. I had to lie there wondering what time it really was, glancing down at the bottom of the shade to see if I could see the first rays of the sun. Then I’d know for sure. Had to lie there and wait and go on thinking.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Go ask Mom what time it is.”
“I don’t want to.”
“It might be time. Sometimes they forget to get up.”
“What?”
“Just ask Mom what time it is.”
I stayed put another minute thinking this over, and then figured if I was still awake, Mom would probably be still awake so it couldn’t hurt to ask, could it? Gullible all over again, but I was getting extremely anxious, thinking I’d never sleep now anyway.
Sometimes they forget to get up. Wow! We can’t let that happen.
“Mom? What time is it?”
“Young man, do you want a spanking?”
“No.”
“Then go back to bed!”
“Gary won’t let me sleep.”
It isn’t kind to get your older brother yelled at on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t know Mom was that mad or that Dad was already out of bed and headed for us, did I?
Desperately trying to sleep. Were there some gifts under the tree when I went downstairs? Extra ones? Bigger ones? Had Santa Claus come and gone already and we didn’t hear him on the roof?
“You get up too early and you won’t give him a chance—there won’t be anything there for you,” was Lewis’s reasoning, with a superior smirk on his face.
What did I get last year? What was it? Oh, it’s what Gary got and I play with.
A gas station! A gas station with an elevator—more fun driving the car into the open elevator shaft—bang! And pulling it out upside down at the bottom, then trying to work the handle up and down. More fun trying to cram fingers, toys, anything into the gas station’s window—no people-size door to the place except painted on! —Then driving the cars through the swinging garage doors and wondering what was going on after you closed it. More fun—
Oh! There was nothing to think about that wasn’t exciting! I might as well give up. I had to think of a way to sneak down again, an excuse if I got caught. We could sneak down—
“Gary?” He was snoring. “Gary!” I whispered as loud as I could. Then I reached down around and hit him with my pillow. “Gary, is it time yet? I think it’s time!”
—