Part 1: Do Snowmen Have Butts?
“I know this isn’t the Christmas you imagined,” Carlos’s dad expressed, as they walked towards the front door of his uncle and aunts. Crunching through snow. “But we’re still with family.” Their front door was decorated with a wreath sprinkled with dark brown acorns and red berries; a bright red bow graced the middle; and at the foot of the door, lightly powdered with snowy shoe-prints, a large doormat read “Welcome Home,” in cursive. This wasn’t home to Carlos. Home was with his mom and dad. All of them. Together.
Knock. Knock.
“Heyyy,” his aunt and uncle exclaimed as they opened the door, attacking him with head rubs and cheek kisses. “How was the flight in?” They asked. “Wasn’t too bad,” Carlos’s dad replied stepping through the door with their luggage in hand. “But the traffic here was bad-bad.”
“When it snows like this, all the bad drivers decide to come out,” his uncle chuckled looking at Carlos. Carlos half grinned at his uncle’s poor attempt at a joke.
“Make sure y’all take your shoes off front. We’ll be in the kitchen workin’ on these cookies,” his uncle said walking away from them. The smell of melting chocolate filled the house as Carlos shut the door behind them. Homemade cookies were his favorite. His aunt and mom made the best chocolate chip-oatmeal cookies around — probably because they were the only ones who made chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies. The smell of cookies reminded him of the entire family goofing around, faces smudged with chocolate and raisins.
“We, who?” His aunt side-eyed his uncle.
As Carlos and his dad took off their shoes, jacket and beanies at the doorway, his dad whispered, “Just… just try not to think about her, son. It’ll be ok.” Carlos wiped the wet kiss his aunt planted on his cheek off like a ninja. stealthy and sly. Making sure she didn’t see him. He knew if she caught him, she would take it as a challenge and smother him with kisses to make up for the one he rubbed off. Just the thought of it made him squirm. “I got you,” Carlos exhaled. They made their way to the kitchen.
Depending on where home is, winter time can be the most beautiful time of year. It’s when the magic of the holiday season begins to take shape as snow covered mittens, marshmallows drowned in cups of hot cocoa, and joyful music; the kind of music that makes a person feel like they’re in some kind of winter wonderland. When those recipes of the holiday season begin to simmer the right way, they create the perfect outcome: Christmas. Depending on where home is for Christmas, houses are covered in blankets of snow and sheets of red and green garland; or, a grayish sky covers apartments decorated with plastic snowflakes and Styrofoam snowmen standing on rocky terrain. For Carlos, Christmas was not decorated with winter’s snowflakes at all. It was gray and a bit gloomy, in a small space with his parents. How he liked it.
“Go play with your cousins.” Carlos’s dad shooed him away from the kitchen. Adults never want kids around when they talk to each other. They say we’ll understand when we’re older, they call it “grown-folk business,” but it always sounds like “kids business,” because they smack each other’s arms, while cackling with laughter as they do a little jog.
“They’re out back,” his aunt said, pointing at the backyard with the wooden spoon she used to mix the cookie dough with chocolate chips and raisins. When Carlos was younger, he and his cousin would fight over who would to lick the bowl. Recently, his dad told him he’s too old to be licking cookie dough out a bowl, so he stopped. But before his dad told him to stop, he was the 2X-cookie dough-bowl-licking-champion, and has photos of himself holding empty bowls with a face covered in tan cookie dough bits.
He put his shoes back on and his jacket. “Don’t forget your gloves,” his uncle yelled from the kitchen where his aunt and dad were. “We don’t want you to get frostbite,” his dad said. Snow bites people? Carlos thought. Usually, for Christmas, Carlos and his dad sit around the TV like a Christmas tree, watching NBA games. His mom watches them watching the games, as she sips from her coffee mug rubbing his dad’s head. She seemed to enjoy that. And Carlos enjoyed them all being together.
As Carlos opened the back door and stepped outside, still putting his beanie on —
WHAM!
Wiping snow from his face, he frantically looked around, trying to find where the snow came from. His face looked like Ice King’s: the hair covering his head mirroring a harsh winter storm.
WHAM! WHAM!
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Carlos dropped to the snowy ground in distress, as his cousins fell over in laughter. Revealing themselves to be the snowball culprits. Their bodies left distorted snow angels in the snow as they laughed.
“Cousinnnnnn!” Justin, his cousin — but the family called him Stink — shouted with a front-toothless grin.
“You gotta keep your head on a swivel,” D’Ani said, “it’s the Wild West out here.”
Stink and D’ani are brother and sister. Little brother and big sister. But let Stink tell it, he’s the older brother. When he was a baby walking around with his bow-legs sticking out his diaper, he would beat his chest and yell out in baby talk, “I’m the daddy,” whenever D’Ani was in trouble with their parents. “Daddies don’t walk around with poop in their pants,” their mom would say as the family laughed. Stink looking serious would just flex his little baby chest.
“Wassup y’all,” Carlos said as his cousins helped him to his feet. He shook his body like a dog freshly out of a bath, trying to get the snow off of him. “How y’all been?” The last time Carlos saw them was a few years ago. The entire family was at his grandparents for his mom’s “sober birthday,” which is what people called it. His grandpa told him sober meant clear-headed, so he remembered it as his mom’s clear-headed birthday. The only present she got was a shiny coin that had two i’s on it.
“Better than you by the looks of it,” D’Ani responded with a smirk on her face. “Yeah, better than you,” Stink repeated, still grinning. Carlos didn’t know if they meant better than him because he was layered with icy snow from their snowball attack or because they heard the news of his mom’s head being clogged again.
Carlos stood quietly, kicking around snow.
“How’d y’all make snowballs so good anyway?” Carlos asked, rubbing his forehead, assessing the damage from the snowballs.
“Good?” Stink scoffed, looking at his sister like Carlos had just insulted them. “These snowballs are perfect. I’ve had years of building snowmen for practice.”
“Years?” D’Ani and Carlos said simultaneously, wearing looks of confusion on their faces. “You’re only — ”
“Dog years.” Stink cut them off with his index finger pointing like he was shushing them.
“So you’re a dog now?” D’Ani questioned.
“I guess that’s why they call you stink then,” Carlos added, as he and D’Ani laughed so hard, it looked like they were having “grown-folks business” talk.
Stink’s face was dead serious. His eyebrows furrowing as they laughed. His hand slipped into his coat pocket. When they emerged from his pocket, he flung mini-snowballs — his stink bombs as he liked to call them — that he kept hidden away.
“HA-HA-HA,” he grumbled as he flung his stink bombs. The miniature snowballs bouncing off of Carlos and D’Ani. His breath turned into smoke as it touched the cold air: twisting and turning with the emphasis of each H.
“The stink. It’s on me!” D’Ani pretended she was melting from the stink bombs.
“Okay, foreal-foreal,” Carlos said, still chuckling, “teach me your ways of building a snowman so I can make the perfect snowball.” So I can get y’all back, he thought to himself, wiping snow off the front of his jacket.
“You really don’t know how to make a snowman?” Stink said, surprised.
“Remember.” D’Ani nudged her brother, “He builds rock men where he’s from.’’ They all busted out laughing.
“Okay,” D’Ani said, catching her breath from laughter. “First you gotta roll snow on the snow to make the base of the snowman.”
“Huh?” Carlos scrunched his face.
“Show him Stink.”
Stink picked up a piece of snow, formed it into a ball, and began to roll it like a bowling ball around the field of white. He did this for a minute until he had a big snowy bottom.
“See,” Stink said, proud of his Snowman bottom. “And if you put a little line in it, it looks like a butt,” Stink said, cracking up. Carlos and D’Ani shaking their heads as they smirked.
“Y’all think snowmen know how to twerk?” Stink asked.
“I have this little snowman that dances at home,” Carlos replied.
D’Ani stood there shaking her head.
“C’mon Carlos.” D’Ani’s arms folded into her coat. Her lips trembling. “We ain’t got all day.”
Carlos grabbed a piece of snow and started to form the ball.
Pffft.
The ball of snow crumbled. Carlos grabbed another piece of snow.
Pfffft.
“I think the snow is too soft,” he said.
“That’s why you gotta take your gloves off,” D’Ani said, rolling her eyes.
“But my dad — ”
With his arms folded sitting on his snowman butt like a kung-fu sensei, Stink said, “ it’s the only way.”
So Carlos took his gloves off and began again. grabbing at the powdery snow as it fell through his fingertips like sand. He patted the snow with both hands, forming a ball, and started rolling it. His fingers began to get colder, almost frozen, with each roll of the snow. I think… I think the snows biting me, he thought. His eyes began to widen as he saw the snowball getting bigger and bigger. “Ayeeeeee,” Carlos cheered as the snowball began to take shape as the bottom of a snowman.
“Good job,” D’Ani said. “Now, the same thing. Just make it smaller than that one.”
“And don’t put a line in it,” Stink laughed out. “He can’t have two butts!”
They all laughed as Carlos was rolling up the stomach of his snowman. As he was finishing patting his second snowball, he thought about how his mom and aunt made cookies. He thought about how much fun they had doing it, and how he and his cousins would wrestle to lick the bowl full of cookie dough. Was his mom enjoying Christmas by herself? Carlos wondered. Why isn’t she here teaching him how to make snowmen? He thought about how much we wanted her to get better so they could be together for Christmas. All of them.
