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Christmas Cookies and the Wig

Calla Gold

    I was a hyperactive five-year-old in the back seat of the dented, oxidized blue Fiat that my mom got in the divorce. Mom’s erratic driving, my new Barbie, and shouted conversation over the engine noise with her friend in front, kept the trip from descending into boredom. They were talking about what color someone’s hair would be this time. I wished my Barbie’s hair could change colors. Then one of them said “wig.”
     “Mommy, what’s a wig?” I said.
    My mom, literate and wanting me to be the same, not only read aloud to me daily, but defined any word I ask her to, even the bad ones. Yay mom.
    She defined wig.
    “Who’s got one?” I ask.
    Truth-telling mom said, “Dottie. But don’t say anything.”
    We arrived to Christmas lights, Jingle Bell Rock, the stuffy smells of fancy holiday foods and the siren call of other kids laughing. Soon I crawled under the desert table with a six-year-old boy-cousin and we stuffed our mouths full of forbidden frosted, sprinkled, and chocolate chip laden Christmas cookies.
    Why do grammas insist that eating a bunch of delicious sugary treats on an empty stomach will make you barf? That’s crazy, right?
    Bursting through the door, late, with shouted hellos, needing lots of help for presents, young daughters, and too-tight layers, was my loud Auntie Dottie. It took me a while to realize that my Auntie Dottie was the ‘Dottie’ of the color-changing wig.
    I crawled out from under the table to see the wig. It rose like a bright red cotton candy hill. A lighthouse beacon announcing that I wasn’t waiting till the “real food” was served, the crumbs all over my nubbly sweater drew her withering gaze. Aunt Dottie was not shy about telling other people’s kids how to behave. Worse, she was a cheek pincher and a noisy, grip-you-hard hugger. You never knew if she’d yell at you or crush the air from your lungs. She advanced on me like a battleship, parting a flotilla of drinks-holding relatives.
    The cheerful hubbub died as a song ended. It was that moment where everyone finished a sentence, took a bite, hugged someone, or looked around distractedly for their missing drink. Even the kids jumping noisily over the couch back ceased their attack. In that moment, desperate to not be told I was a bad girl, I grabbed for something nice to say. Into to quiet, I shouted, “Nice wig Auntie Dottie!”
    An awkward silence ensued. Her eyes widened, her cheeks puffed out, and her arms came up like Frankenstein’s monster as she navigated toward me. I dashed around the table and ducked out the front door into the cold. I avoided my mom and gramma as long as I could.
    Years later I found out that my mom about choked trying not to laugh aloud. Aunt Dottie turned out to have a long memory, or maybe she just enjoyed terrorizing other people’s kids. Though I lived hundreds of miles away from her, Murphy’s Law determined that when things went haywire in my life at the age of ten; I ended up living with her, the two daughters, and her wigs. I’d have preferred just the wigs.

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