Read Online Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay - Free Book Online Page A

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    But whenever Ellen reaches out for James, he’s ready with some excuse. He’s ticklish; her hands are too cold; he’s tired; he wants to be left alone. She tries to remind herself that, for James, beingtouched was often an act of anger, a slap, a shove, a beating. The artificial tree was a bright moment in all that. Perhaps , Ellen thinks, I’m the one who’s acting selfishly. I have so many good memories of my childhood, who am I to deny him this? It might even draw all of us together in a way no live tree could. James and his parents can remember better times, and the children and I will become part of that memory .
    â€œIt’s okay about the tree,” Ellen says before she realizes he is sleeping. He begins to snore, a light, musical sound that seems to come from somewhere far away.
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    The next day, the children sit at the kitchen table stringing popcorn and cranberries for the artificial tree. Ellen is busy stuffing the goose, one from her sister Miriam’s flock, that they’re having for Christmas dinner. Amy cuts a star out of cardboard, paints it gold, sprinkles it with glitter. She has braided her hair clumsily with red and green ribbons; Bert, not to be outdone, knots a piece of ribbon into his own short hair. The decorations are laid out on the counter: clothespin soldiers, yarn dolls, candy wrapped in tinfoil. Drying on a cookie sheet are stars made of salt-and-flour dough. The color of the dough is light gray, almost blue. Later, they’ll paint the stars red and gold, purple and green, even though Mary-Margaret says there are no such things as purple and green stars.
    She sits in a chair by the kitchen window, a red flannel scarf wrapped around her neck, sucking on horehound candies. A granny-square afghan covers her knees. Periodically, she sighs. Mary-Margaret is always catching a cold, but Ellen has never known her to have one. She doesn’t want to help Ellen fix Christmas dinner. She doesn’t want to make Christmas decorations. She doesn’t want to watch the game with Fritz and James in the living room. Now and then, she’ll turn to comment on whatever it isEllen is doing. Mama always beat her eggs up two-handed , she says, or Mama checked her cakes with a knife, not a fork . Mary-Margaret’s mother, Ann, has been dead for many years; still, they are having Christmas dinner tonight, on Christmas Eve, because that’s the way Ann did it.
    Mary-Margaret gets up to part the curtains and peer out at the yard. “Snow,” she says, the way someone else might say death or grief . Perhaps she is remembering Christmas with her mother and father and brothers and sister, all of whom are dead, except Salome. Salome is spending Christmas Eve at the rectory with the Ladies of the Altar Society. The Society sews the church linens, launders them, grows flowers for the altar, makes quilts for the missions, organizes bake sales, vacuums and dusts the church once a month. For a slice of ham and a dollop of instant potatoes, Father Bork will buy another year of hard labor, Ellen thinks. But then she is ashamed: it is Christmas Eve. She apologizes silently as she ties the drumsticks of the goose together with thread, rubs the skin with margarine.
    â€œIt’s too early to put in that goose,” Mary-Margaret says, sniffling.
    â€œDo you think so?” Ellen says, keeping her voice level as she sticks it in the oven. She’s known how to cook a goose since she was ten and her mother slipped in the barn, breaking both her wrists. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and the next day Ellen and Julia and Heidi cooked the meal as Mom directed them from her chair, her wrists held in place by heavy splints.
    â€œMama made goose so it would fall off the bone.”
    â€œHow many geese did you keep?” Ellen asks to distract her.
    â€œOh, two, three dozen. Nasty things. Mean. Ate up the lawn. In spring, you’d step off the porch into