Free The Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank Page B

day,” Camille said.
    In the brain, off the tongue. I was terrified. I also realized if this punch was forcing them all to tell the raw naked truth, it appeared that only Barbara and Andrew had nothing to hide.
    “Are you running around on me, George?” Lynette asked.
    “I’m a man, aren’t I?” George turned to Cleland. “I learned it all from you, Pops. It took me three marriages and watching how indifferently you treat Mom to figure this out. You don’t have to love women for them to give you babies.”
    “Really?” Lynette said.
    “Yeah, really !” George said.
    “You’re a disgrace and a coldhearted…I won’t use the word with the ladies present,” Cleland said to George. “But I think you know what I mean. Do you know what an embarrassment you are?”
    “Me? Me a disgrace? I make five times the money you do! What have you ever accomplished in your life?”
    Lynette stood up. “You don’t love me, George? Well, I’ve got news for you, Georgie. Merry Christmas! Teddie ain’t yours!”
    “What? What? Daddy’s not my daddy?” Teddie started kicking the table and everything rattled and rattled.
    The wind picked up, howling as it had last evening, and it seemed to me that the walls were undulating in anger and disgust.
    “It doesn’t matter if he’s your biological daddy, hon,” Camille said. “You’re just like him anyway.”
    “Yeah? Well, my daddy says the reason Andrew doesn’t have a daddy is that you’re a man-hater. Uncle Grayson left you because you wouldn’t stop shopping! And the reason Andrew is so stupid is because you’re on drugs all the time.”
    “My mama is not on drugs and I am not stupid!” Andrew said, bursting into a geyser of very impressive tears. “How do you think life is for me? I can build the Chrysler building out of a box of LEGOs, but I can’t read the directions right to build a simple fort! Then, in class…kids laugh at me when it’s my turn to read, but I can recite almost word for word what I hear…sometimes I think I want to just die. Just die.”
    “You don’t mean that, Andrew,” Camille said. “Please don’t say that.”
    “Moron! Moron! Fat little moron!” Teddie said in a most obnoxious singsong.
    “Shut up!” Camille said.
    Lynette grabbed Teddie’s arm to quiet her. I beganto panic. What in the world was happening? This was terrible! They were saying such loathsome things that they would never forgive one another! Pearl was absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong! With the toe of my shoe I pressed the buzzer under the rug at my place to bring her from the kitchen. Barbara had a buzzer, too, but perhaps she was too upset to use it. On top of it all, the windows were beginning to rattle, and I swanny to heaven, I thought this time they would shatter and come crashing to the floor for certain!
    “Aren’t we a lovely family?” Camille said. She turned to Teddie. “Let me tell you something, you sassy little urchin of unknown origins, my son Andrew is not a moron. You are. And my husband never left me over money.”
    Where was Pearl?
    “I think…” I said.
    “What?” they all said at once.
    “I think y’all better stop all this hateful talk, right this very second, or you all will regret it later.”
    Pearl appeared, and as you might guess, she snapped her fingers in the air. A sudden silence occurred. Everyone seemed to lose their voices and the desire to fight. Except for Barbara and Andrew, my family had once again proven that they were an odious lot. Were they in some hypnotic state? Undoubtedly! Was this progress? I didn’t think so.
    Pearl placed a tureen on the sideboard and took away everyone’s soup plates. She returned and began to ladle out the she-crab soup.
    “How’s it going?” she whispered to me when she came to my side.
    “You know perfectly well…Pearl? What are you doing? This is the worst Christmas of my entire life. Please! Make this stop!”
    I was hopping mad. Worse, although Pearl knew how angry I