Christmas arguments are the most tender arguments. Vanessa wants a plastic tree, because their vacuum cleaner is dying and it can't stand to suck up millions of little pine needles. Lin wants a real tree, because Lin is Lin. Vidya doesn't care. Sebastian is four. Bet you can't guess who won.
We take the Subway to a Christmas tree farm on a night when the snowflakes are large and puffy as popcorn. The place is in Brooklyn, a few neighborhoods away from Lin's parent's house. Sebastian brings a notepad and a pencil. He wants to conduct an experiment to discover if evergreens are ever green, at all. Something about light and refraction and how Christmas trees are every color but green. I have no clue what he's trying to prove, but I don't do my science homework, so I shouldn't be talking. Did I mention that people stare?
No? Well, they stare.
They stare at the king of Broadway and his family plus one. They stare at Lin's unshaven goatee and at the gorilla glue in Vanessa's hairspray. They stare at the wiggly baby teeth in Sebastian's mouth. And me.
Even the workers at the Christmas tree farm stare at us. A man with a green mohawk jogs over to help us the moment we step foot into the farm. Bet he's cracked his wallet outside the Richard Rogers. After an eternity of deliberation, we choose a fat evergreen with bark that matches the dining room table. Lin breaks off a branch of pine that could pass as a mistletoe and holds it above Vanessa's head as the worker loads the tree onto his truck.
And they kiss. And kiss. And kiss. Sebastian holds his notepad over his heart. I draw a daisy in the snow with my boot.
We decorate the tree that weekend. Lin and Vanessa bring out boxes of Christmas decorations from the closet-- the same closet that is the tooth fairy's piggy bank, Santa's work shop, and the Easter Bunny's incubator.
Don't say it.
All day, the three of them sift through the boxes and pull out ridiculous ornaments, holiday edition Disney figurines and arts and crafts projects from Sebastian's daycare. I help string on the Christmas lights. When the tree is ornamented and Christmas-lighted and ruffled with garland, Lin holds Sebastian on his shoulder and he places the star on top.
That evening while Lin goes Christmas shopping and Vanessa cooks dinner, she makes Sebastian and I hot cocoa and puts a bowl of candy canes on the coffee table. Sebastian turns on the television. One of those claymation Christmas movies is playing: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Sebastian and I sit on the floor and lean against the couch. He blows on his hot cocoa as Rudolph and Herbie and Yukon Cornelius explore the Island of Misfit Toys.
"I would adopt the misfit toys and play with them until they broke," he says.
"No, you wouldn't," I say.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't break them."
"I mean you wouldn't adopt the misfit toys."
He sets his mug on the table and pouts at the screen. "Yes I would."
"No, you wouldn't. You'd buy a shiny new train set, and a freshly stitched teddy bear, and a mechanical dinosaur that roars when you press a button."
"I would prefer a Charlie in the box over a Jack in the box any day."
I don't challenge him. In case you forgot, he's four. He's got mugfulls of Christmas spirit in him. On the screen, the misfit toys sing about the most wonderful day of the year. Outside, it starts to snow. Something sizzles in the kitchen. I hold the mug to my mouth for a moment without drinking. The steam evaporates when it hits my face. The hot cocoa burns the roof of my mouth when I take a sip. Sebastian snatches the mug from my hands and sets it on the table. "You have to blow on it first," he says.
I watch the brown liquid ripple when I blow. Sebastian unwraps a candy cane. "Viddie, what's Hope House?"
The hot cocoa wavers for a moment after I stop blowing. Sebastian struggles to rip the plastic off the end of the candy cane. I watch him for a moment, then shift my gaze to the TV to watch A Dolly For Sue say how do you do. "What?"
"What's Hope House?"
"How do you know that word?" I ask.
He rolls the plastic into a ball and flicks it across the coffee table. "Dad and Mom said that Hope House was your home before you came here."
"It wasn't my home," I say.
He sucks the end of his candy cane. "What's Hope House?"
"A bad, bad place."
"And you lived there?"
"For three years."
He turns for a moment to listen to watch Rudolph's nose blink. "Why?"
I dip my finger in the hot chocolate. Scalding hot. "It's a boring story," I tell him.
The end of Sebastian's candy cane is sharpened into a spear that glistens with saliva. "I got time," he says.
"Conjugate this: I fly in Santa's sleigh, you fly in Santa's sleigh, he she it flies—"
"Dad says you're my foster sister, but you're not really my sister, are you?"
I give up on the hot cocoa. Taking another sip suddenly seems too treacherous. "Nope."
"You look different than us. Why?"
"Because I'm from a different part of the world than you."
"Hope House?" He asks.
I'm about to tell him that Hope House is a different type of world, not a different part of it. But he wouldn't understand. I scoot on my knees to the bookshelf and pull out the atlas. Sebastian uses that book to trace road maps. Lin dots sharpie on locations he wants Hamilton to tour. I scoot back to the couch, WHOMP the atlas onto the table and flip to the world map.
"See this?" I point to New York. "This is where we are now. See this?" I slide my finger to Puerto Rico. Sebastian leans closer to watch. I feel his breath on my hand. "That's where your dad is from."
It takes awhile, because even though the map is two dimensional, invisible barriers prolong the journey. The Atlantic ocean stretching on and on, temptations of stopping in Europe, orphans in Turkey, wars in Syria, the boarder between Iran and Afghanistan, and the trail of skull bones my finger leaves behind as it slides across the map.
"Right here--" I stop with my finger in the general area of Rohiwol. "This is where I'm from. Pakistan."
Sebastian's mouth is full of candy cane. "Far, far away."
"Yep."
He watches the television. "Did you ever go there?"
"I lived there until I was three."
The movie reflects on his eyeballs. "And you came here?"
"I'm here now, aren't I?"
"Why did you leave?"
"There are more opportunities here in New York, like jobs and colleges."
"Yeah?" He says. His mind is somewhere else.
I scoot back to the bookshelf and slide the atlas between a dictionary and a collection of Garfield comics. "Watch the movie."
My throat feels raw after clawing out all those secrets. Sebastian is a better listener than any counselor I've ever seen, and his attention was split between me and Rudolph's blinking red nose. I go to scoot back to the couch, and that's when I see him: Lin, on his computer at the kitchen table. Has he been there the whole time? I catch his eye, and he smiles. Not a Lin smile, but a weak smile, like I told some offensive joke that he felt obligated to laugh at.
He sips his own mug of hot cocoa and mouths to me: good job.
I slide in next to Sebastian as the abominable snowman terrorizes Rudolph's family. He bites the end of his candy cane and horribly butchers the word abominable when he tells me that no reindeer deserves that terror. I wonder how Rudolph felt. Must have been hard to live in a place where he was constantly reminded that he was different.
Oh. Wait.
YOU ARE READING
SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda
Fanfiction"Sometimes I think the universe sets certain people out into the world like gifts meant for others, people whose purpose is to save someone else. That's how I think of families. And if the universe couldn't do me that favor, couldn't put someone on...
