PROLOGUE

Gar oo chugar. There was and there was not. My name is Seta Loon. I came to this world through the blue grace of my parents, George and Araxie Loon, and the concise desperation of my grandmother, Casard. It was Casard who named me Seta, after her mother; my father gave me Loon. By these gifts of name I became my grandmother's shiny hope, her Armenian girl, the one to hold her legacy of Turkish massacres and nights on the road of death, a legacy of the shame she suffered at the banks of the Euphrates River. I became Loon: daughter of my father, an American, odar: outsider.

I was raised in the town of Memorial, ten miles from the capital of the Constitution State of Connecticut. Here, among the factories, my grandparents laid their roots: in a place where a person could have one opinion in the morning and another in the evening and dismiss them both by saying, "It's a funny thing."

The Memorial I knew contained Main Street, with Connecticut National Bank on one end and, some three miles farther on toward the highway, Jimmy's Smoke Shop, where the best-selling items were Camels and Bazooka gum. Between the bank and Jimmy's there was downtown, and to the south and west, the park, and beyond the park, nearly to the reservoir, our house.

My parents, George and Araxie, were both raised in Memorial, though the first time they met was after they had left town for higher education — my father to Massachusetts, my mother to central state — then returned home. They met at the assessor's office, where my mother worked and where my father, an aspiring real estate broker, transacted his business. They courted briefly and married, beginning their new life in an old place, even though my mother had spent a summer in Europe, and so, dreamed of grand boulevards and rose-windowed cathedrals and palaces with high gilded ceilings. She chose George Loon and stayed.

My parents were married three years when they began having children: first my brother, Van, then me, and last, Melanie. We three entered this world believing as our father did that we were the lucky ones, for we had been privileged with the most beautiful mother, a mother whose troubled soul only heightened her outward beauty. Her black swath hair, her deep pooled eyes, the lethargic ease with which Momma made even the smallest gesture seem infinite. Countless mornings I stood beside her at her vanity, while the wand of her lipstick slowly, painfully described the O of her mouth.

Momma's beauty had, at its core, an aspect of departure, which promised that nothing about her would ever become mundane. From the time we were toddlers, Van, Melanie and I scrambled to catch the brim of our mother's affection, for any moment she was likely to clutch a child to her breast, and gasping, as if the lost had been found, she would kiss and kiss me — sometimes it was me, sometimes Van or Melanie — a thousand times behind the ear, as I stood before her still as stone, praying her kisses would never end, and of course, knowing they would.

I grew up with my father, a willow of a man — benevolent, fair — whose gangly limbs reminded me always of roots. In his large, capable hands I believed he had once formed a cup, and in this cup gathered the troth of his charms for the satisfaction of my mother. By turns Momma studied that cup, peering over its rim with wide luminous eyes. Dipping her finger inside, she burrowed to the bottom, where she found that part of George Loon which was most essential. Gazing into his happy, unsuspecting face, she replied, "Well, yes! All right."

Before I knew anything much I knew that by marrying my father, my mother had committed a terrible betrayal of her community and that my grandmother, in particular, deeply resented my mother's abdication. The Armenians, most of whom lived northeast of town in proximity to St. Stephen's Armenian Apostolic Church, did not think much of marrying odars. And while my generation sprang up alongside shopping malls and fast food emporiums, Memorial's Armenians shunned change, preferring to keep within their own crowded, Persian-carpeted rooms, in which they spoke the old language, ate old-country food and married their kind.

Van, Melanie and I were part of this community. Our grandmother, Casard, was a pillar in the church. Even so, we were treated like distant relations. Our hair was light, while Armenian hair was black; our limbs, lanky, like our father's, while Armenians were petite and compact. At school we kept to one friend maybe two, while the Armenians moved in packs, the girls dressed like tiny mothers in old-fashioned crocheted vests and long black braids tied back with plastic balls. It was the girls who vexed me, peering from under their thick lashes and dark brows at my light, wavy odar hair. However much my hair would darken with each passing year, it would never be blue-black like Momma's or theirs.

The part of me that was Armenian belonged to Grandma Casard. She taught me that the half that was hers made me special. In me, was the first Christian nation on earth, a nation where God himself had settled Noah's ark. In me, was the mountain Ararat and the songs of the poets and scholars and the soul of every Armenian slayed by the Romans up through the Young Ottoman Turks.

Our Armenia was gone, Casard said, and tucking me close beside her, showed me her empty right palm as proof. As she taught me I taught others: See my fingers, they are Turkey, and Russia is my thumb. And my wrist? Persia. The flat of my palm is the plain of Anatolia, and each line a river, and the rises, mountains and hills. And if asked, Where is this Armenia? Casard taught me to spit in my hand and answer, Gunantz. Gone.

Momma's betrayal was not the first in our family. Before Momma ever thought to marry an odar, Grandma Casard had committed a betrayal, which, though she spoke of it only twice in her life, nevertheless bound our family in a miasmic web of shame.

I learned of Casard's betrayal when I was just forty days old. Before the baptismal font of St. Stephen's Armenian Apostolic Church, my grandmother presented me with my name and the Der Hyre priest made me a Christian. Then, as the ceremony concluded, according to Momma, Casard took me from my parents and brought me to the farthest pew, where she whispered the tale she had been saving for many years.

Gar oo chugar, she began. There was and there was not.

There was, in the spring of 1915, a group of zealots, the Young Ottoman Turks, who set out across historic Armenia to purge the land of the Armenian race. Casard was nine years old. Her father and brother were murdered, and she and her mother, Seta the first, forced on a death march into the Mesopotamian desert of Der el Zor. They marched eight days until, finally, they reached the Euphrates River, and it was there, at the river's bank, that the wretched betrayal occurred, leaving Seta, the first, dead, and young Casard, having lost everything, losing one thing more: her name.

The parts of us lost in childhood — innocence, wonder, youth — we are apt to value most. Casard valued her name. And to this end she waited some forty years, and when at last, on the day of my christening, she whispered her story to me, she wept. Peering into my empty soul, she asked me to find the name she had lost.

"Se-ta, Se-ta," she sang. "You."

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER FOUR

The murky details of our grandmother's past Van, Melanie and I made into stories.

Casard was older than the redwoods in California.

Casard was not born, she was cut from her mother's belly by a Turkish soldier.

Casard spent her first six months living under a bush by the side of the road; the villagers passing along the Street of Death kept her alive.

Casard propped her legs on a chair on account of the clots, large as figs, passing through her veins.

Casard's mother, the first Seta, flew to heaven, an angel-bird, and became holy.

Van, Melanie and I clung to these tales because they were our way of capturing what was incomprehensible about our grandmother. We spent hours idly wondering if Casard ever slept (we never actually saw her sleep); if she had something to do with the lemon tree out back (since even we knew that lemons do not normally grow in Connecticut); and if, when she took down her bun, her secret hair fell to her ankles, or just to her knees.

The rest of Casard's story I learned on my own. Inside the sanctuary of her house, my grandmother taught me her truths. In Armenian, it was food, greetings, songs, days of the week. In English she taught me atrocity, Indignities and Turk, her word for butchers and thieves. She told me there was no such thing as an Armenian swear; if you wanted filth, you talked Turk. It was not until I became an adult that I actually met a Turk, and, looking into his eyes was surprised to find just another person, no more, no less.

Had my grandmother been alive then, she would no doubt have refused to believe that I, Seta, her Armenian girl, could ever allow myself to become friends with a Turk. For Casard, some things were just not possible. It was not possible to forgive the Turks for attempting and nearly succeeded in wiping out our own. It was not possible to forgive the Turks for refusing to admit their crimes — even the Germans did that. Nor was it possible to live a day without the painful reminder of atrocity; and so, fueled by anger, devote one's life to building a new Armenia, in which Armenian language, food, education, and, the final caveat, Armenian marriage was preserved. For this, too: it was not possible that an Armenian girl like Momma could ever find happiness with an odar husband.

The war my grandmother waged against my father was fought with petty measures and indirect slights; its battlefield and prize were the children's souls. Casard taught us Armenian; Dad countered with his family crest. Casard served Armenian food and taught us old country ways; Dad obliged by hauling out the box of photographs from his army trunk in the basement and showing us the picture of his parents — a diminutive woman standing beside a tall, willowy man on the front porch of a white clapboard house. Theodore and Bette Loon died within six months of each other, while Dad was away at college. Heart trouble, Dad said. Each time I heard him say this, I solemnly nodded, as if I knew just what he meant.

A musty photograph and a world of dreams: these were my father's gifts. At night, he tucked me into bed and asked me to make him a good dream. "Start me off," I barked gleefully; and tipping back his head and closing his eyes, he would find a picture: "I see a white beach, turquoise water, a gray whale and a gull."

"Okay," I said, nodding purposefully, as I rolled my face into the pillow. In the morning, I told him my dream.

Memory will play tricks on you; I cannot recall an incident in which my father, a gentleman, directed one harsh word at Casard. When harsh words were required, Momma was the one to say them. Casard needled and ridiculed Dad, but everyone knew she was just trying to provoke Momma, who had done the unthinkable by growing up and abandoning her. Dad was the reminder, the excuse.

These two women in my life, from whom I learned most everything, engaged in daily dramas over such matters as the proper doneness of a roast, the price of shirts, and their favorite subject, church. Casard wanted us raised in the Armenian Apostolic church, while Dad and Momma agreed we were Americans first. When Melanie was born, two years after me, my parents and Casard compromised and had her baptized twice, once with the Armenians and once with the Episcopalians. From that day on we alternated our Sundays between the two churches.

I told myself that we were not the first family to fight over divided backgrounds — a fight so fierce, more than once it drove Van, Melanie and me into hiding in the small, unfinished attic over the garage. The first time was when we were eleven, nine and seven, and like most of the children we knew, we often spent entire afternoons in the backyard playing a spirited game of war. The hemlocks were our jungle, the mason wall our bunkers, and the slate patio our prison in which we took turns playing American POWs held by the Viet Cong. Armed with rolls of dynamite caps, a One Man Army plastic rifle, scores of pinecone grenades, two canvas camouflage hats and Dad's steel canteen, we exploded, pillaged and blew sky-high. Then, when our limbs became heavy and our minds dull, we trooped back into the house, wholly unprepared for the war therein.

Casard and Momma were in the kitchen, yelling. They were shouting over one another and we could just hear bits: Momma saying, "Over and over we try ..." While Casard thundered, "Araxie, I'm not through with you. Now you, listen to me!"

We stood in our coats in the foyer, our hands and faces smeared with dirt. Van, the oldest, tugged on my sleeve and we bolted upstairs, Melanie in tow. At the landing, Van opened the linen closet and yanked on the cord hanging from the square attic door in the ceiling. The hatch opened and down tumbled a flight of folding stairs, which we quickly climbed up.

Perhaps our hearts were already guilty, having spent the better part of an afternoon maiming and pillaging made-up soldiers, but whatever the reason, that afternoon we took flight to the farthest reaches of the house, spurred on by the truly horrifying conviction that we, the children, were the cause of the real war in our house.

We did not speak to one another in the dark, musty attic room. Like the adults in our lives, we were unaccustomed to thoughtful analysis or explanations; we knew, simply, how to react. Sitting in a circle in the dark, Indian-style on the rough, cool attic boards, we gazed into one another's frightened eyes, and it was Melanie, the baby, who first pressed her palms to her ears. Soon we all had our ears cupped, as we began to chant faster and faster, "We're not bad, We're not bad, We're not bad," while downstairs in the kitchen, Momma and Casard raged.

I told myself we were not the only family to fight, then forswear resolution by celebrating every religious holiday in sets of two: two Christmases, two Ash Wednesdays, two Palm Sundays, two Easters.

But the truth was we were not like the other families I knew, and in my ninth year I had to give up any contrary illusions.

It was December and Momma and Casard could not agree on whether to celebrate Christmas with the rest of America, or wait until January sixth, when the pure Armenians celebrated in accordance to their ancient calendar. In the end, it was decided that we would do both.

Dad announced the news at dinner.

"When do we open presents?" Van shrewdly asked.

Momma and Dad exchanged looks, then Momma said, "How about one gift each, on Christmas Eve, then the rest we'll save for Armenian Christmas.

"No way," Van said. "That's two whole weeks after all our friends. No way."

"Think of it like this," Dad countered, his face tell-tale red, "Two Christmas mean we're twice as lucky."

"Bull," Van burst, and was promptly dismissed from the table.

Behind Dad's good intentions we all knew the truth: that instead of twice as lucky, we were only half: half lucky and half unlucky. And during the long two weeks of Christmas, I wondered which part was which.

On December twenty-fourth, we attended the midnight Episcopal service. Dad dropped us off in front and drove behind the church to park. We entered the stone sanctuary, decked with giant wreaths and red velvet bows. A deacon handed me a program and a thin white taper in a paper holder. The candle was for midnight, when the congregation would pass the flame from the altar through the pews, and inside the illumined church we would sing Silent Night.

That Christmas Eve when I was nine marked the first time I was entrusted with my own private candle. I remember quite well. I was always on the lookout for signs that I was moving up from childhood, and the privilege of a candle struck me as a special achievement. Holding the candle aloft, I walked down the aisle, smiling at the grown-ups and making serious faces at the children my age. Van poked me from behind, "Come on, Seta, hurry up."

We sat in front, until Dad came in from the parking lot and took his usual seat in one of the back pews. Momma waved, encouraging him to come forward, but Dad just shrugged and waved back. Finally, Momma stood and smiling wearily at the congregates seated near to us, said, "Come on, troops. Let's go."

Van, Momma and Melanie started back, but I lagged behind, reluctant to give up my good seat in front. Fathers, coming in from the parking lot, passed by me, shaking off their camel hair coats. It seemed they were richer than we, and I found myself eyeing their families with envy. The mothers, sitting alongside the children, wore nubby woolen suits with white gloves, gold brooches and pearls. Most astonishing were the mink stoles that the women had draped across their shoulders, the minks' heads clipped to their tails. The splendor of the women made me uncomfortable and lonesome, so I slipped into the aisle and headed back to my family. As I approached our back row, I found myself wishing that Momma would wear a snazzy mink, instead of just a plain beige scarf.

I was still fretting over Momma's simple clothes when three elderly ladies in pillbox hats and black mesh veils sat down in the pew in front of us. Van, already bored, rolled his program in a tight cone and tried wedging it into the mouth of one of the ladies' minks. The mink's glass eyes seemed to focus as Van pushed the red Christmas program between its jaws, where it hung like a large bone from the animal's mouth.

Melanie, next to me, began to giggle into her palms. She was behaving like a stupid child, employing her recent and most annoying habit of imitating my every move. I put on a red dress, she had to wear a red skirt. I paraded up the aisle with my candle, Melanie followed behind me, clutching her hands as if she, too, had her own candle. When, after finishing my prayer, I bent back my head so my hair brushed the tips of my shoulders like elegant mink fur, Melanie threw back her head like a spastic, rolling her eyes with delight. I turned and pinched her leg, whereupon Melanie slapped me on the arm.

Momma, seated next to Dad, was gazing overhead, at the huge iron and wood candelabras hanging from the vast ceiling, a peevish look on her face. When Melanie hit me, Momma's eyes snapped back to earth. She frowned at the Episcopalians, then turned on me.

"Stop that," she said.

"Momma," I cried, "I'm not doing anything."

But Momma shook her head. As if reading my envious mind, she pointed her chin at the old ladies with the minks. Looking at me with piercing eyes, she said, "Hmm?"

My cheeks burned. "Sorry," I said, not really knowing why.

Momma squeezed my hand and nodded. Under her breath, she murmured, "Holiday Christians."

It was not until a week after New Year's Eve that Momma became excited, our real Christmas celebration commenced, and I began to believe we were about to have our luck. That year, Armenian Christmas fell on a Wednesday, and Momma surprised us all by letting us skip school. For breakfast, she made fresh orange juice and omelets with bacon and warm hatsig rolls. Dad put Armenian carols on the stereo and we opened our gifts beside the tree.

When all the presents had been admired, Momma led Van, Melanie and me upstairs to her room. Opening her closet, Momma reached in back to the shelf where the box with her wedding dress was kept — the box Melanie and I were forbidden to touch until it was our turn to marry — and pulled out surprise packages containing new coats and shoes. The last box Momma gave to me. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a white fur muff. "Careful," Momma warned, and by this I was meant to understand that newness quickly spoiled.

We rode to the Armenian church in Dad's Buick, afraid to shift in our new clothes. Melanie, coveting my white muff, refused to take her eyes from it until I agreed to let her hold it for one block.

At the church, Dad pulled to the curb, and we saw Casard standing in front, shivering in the snow.

"I told her to meet us inside!" Momma said, climbing out of the car. "She never listens. Not once." Momma grabbed Melanie's hand and nearly dragged her up the walk while Van and I lagged behind, mortified that Momma and Casard would go at it in front of the whole church.

"Mayrig, what do you think you're doing?" Momma said.

Casard watched Dad's car disappear down the road. "I should have sent him to the bakery," was all Casard said, and she turned and climbed the stairs.

While Dad was parking, the service began without him, the Der Hyre marching up the aisle in a turquoise cape and matching sequined mitre. Two deacons followed the Der Hyre, one with a strand of bells and the other with a lantern of incense. In front of the blue velvet curtain hiding the altar, the Der Hyre recited the classical Armenian service that had been said for over sixteen hundred years.

Melanie, Van and I understood the words for we, Christ, and God. We droned on, regardless, pouncing on Amen. When the backs of our knees became numb from standing, Casard and Momma entertained us with pertinent facts. Momma whispered to Van that the Der Hyre, originally from Lebanon, was capable of speaking seven languages. Van passed this on. Nine? I asked, leaning forward in the pew. Momma shook her head and flashed seven fingers. Then, as the velvet curtain was pulled back and the splendor of the altar revealed, Momma announced that next year the Archbishop from New York was planning to stay with Casard when he visited our church. Casard pointed her chin at the altar and nodded.

I pictured the Archbishop in his black robes and hood, sitting at Casard's kitchen table. I pictured him asleep in Momma's bed wearing his gilded robe and tall hat. He would lie on his back as though in a coffin, his jeweled slippers hanging over the end of Momma's girlhood bed. Across the hall Casard would pretend to sleep, her long secret hair loosened from its combs, her eyes blinking into the night, careful of sounds.

The organ struck a chord and there was no more time to dream, for we all were meant to rise. Casard, singing the Armenian lyrics in my ear, moved her finger across the page of the hymnal, and I followed along, humming, the organ striking one minor chord after another, the voices of Casard's people filling the holy space like a universal moan.

Casard put her arm around me and I entered the cloud of her Wind Song perfume. My grandmother's smell made me miss her, which was odd since I only smelled her when she was very close. I peered over at Momma, who was petting Melanie's hair. Momma and Casard loved us best when we were in their church, and it was hard not to prefer the place where we received the most affection. At the end of the hymn, Casard whispered in my ear, "You're my little bachig," Armenian for kiss. I beamed up at her: yes I was hers, yes I was sweet as a kiss. Lucky, too. Momma glanced over at us and, for an instant, I thought she might scold me as she had on Christmas Eve, but this time, she smiled, and all I had to do was stand in my new clothes and let the affection I mistook as Armenian wash my soul.

The service was nearly over when I noticed Dad standing apart at the end of our pew. He had come in late from parking the car and so had to find a seat at the end. His high sandy head bobbed like a buoy among the sea of black ones, but he seemed unaware of his difference. He followed along in the Armenian prayer book as if he were one of them, as if he fluently understood. When the Der Hyre removed his mitre with a holy lace handkerchief, Dad nodded. I watched him carefully, my eye moving from his face to the dark faces surrounding him; it troubled me to find Dad so tall and fair.

As we departed the sanctuary, a kindly man in a drab suit handed each of us a cellophane packet of flat holy bread called maas, which was meant to be given to family members who were unable to attend church. When I reached the door, I kissed my maas and placed it on my tongue. As it dissolved into the hollow of my stomach, I made a wish: I wished that I was pure Armenian.

The congregation flowed from the church into the basement, decorated with two small wreaths. Van and Momma led the way, while Casard and I brought up the rear. It did not really seem like Christmas, except that everyone was hugging, including the men. Strangers I had never seen before grabbed my mother and shook my father's hand, as if they had just returned from a long trip.

There was a peculiar sadness in the eyes of the adults gathered around me and in my own childish way, I believed that their sadness had something to do with our family and the fact that my father was an odar. Because of him, I, too, was apart: half Seta, half Loon, when all I wanted was to be included among the women, to have their full red lips and brown pool eyes trained on me. Oh, to have them cluck their tongues at my sorrow, open the window on my grace and hoot at my mischief, dark and funny as their own.

That Christmas morning I noticed for the first time that the Armenians were beautiful, while the Episcopalians were just pretty. Momma had called the Episcopalians "Holiday Christians," and Dad countered by calling the Armenians "The Tribe." Momma said the difference was that Armenians never went in for showy, but I knew she was wrong. Showy was in their genes, beginning with their prominent noses that arched from their faces like flying buttresses. Among the ladies, even the poorest carried herself with a certain dignity that seemed to say: I have suffered but I am me. I stood next to Casard as the women spoke to one another in the old language, their mouths opening wide as if they needed to make their words especially large.

Casard led Van, Melanie and me through the knitted circles of elders, showing us off to the old ladies who held our faces and to the men who pinched our cheeks until they hurt. We belonged to her, the mother of the church, we were Casard's. This meant something to the members, and because it was Christmas they made a special effort to greet us. The elders bent down and offered us wide, wide smiles, never mentioning the full-blood we lacked, nor the language, nor the atrocities of which only they knew. The elders patted our hair, and nodded with pleasure at Casard.

"Beautiful little ones."

"And smart?"

Casard smiled and bowed her head. For a moment I forgot that I was different. Painting a foolish grin on my face, I played to my audience, while inside my heart pounded, as though, by smiling, I was telling fibs.

When it was time to leave, Casard waved to us from the parking lot, even though we were heading directly to her house. "Bye-bye," she said.

"Good-bye, Grandma," we called back, "Good-bye."

We piled into the Buick. Dad checked behind him to see that we were tucked in before pulling from the curb. Only then, as we drove away, did our grins fade. Rubbing my cheeks, sore from smiling, I glanced behind me — Momma did too — out the rear window at the church, wondering what it was we were missing, what had been left.

Wholeness, I am told, comes from within, but that Christmas when I was nine, as we drove in silence from the church to Cousins Bakery, I thought that wholeness was everywhere but inside us. At the bakery Dad picked up Casard's rye bread and rolls, and no one said a word about the hollow ache inside our bellies.

No one said a word each time Casard attacked my parent's marriage the way a moth attacks wool: making little holes here and there, so that the damage becomes apparent only after it is done.

By the time we reached Casard's house, Poppee and her family had arrived and we were all supposed to be joyous and happy. Casard had set the table with Christmas napkins and plates, colored bowls, silver trays and crystal serving dishes filled with pickles, beans, scallions and radishes; roasted lamb and beef, dolma, kibbeh, bodyjohn pie, green beans, mushrooms and pilaf.

The adults oohed and ahhed at the splendor of the feast. Auntie Vart commented on the centerpiece made from pine cones, boughs and red ribbon, but Casard wrinkled her nose and waved away the praise. Seated at the head of the table, Casard studied the family gathered about her: there was Momma and Dad and we three kids; Poppee and Great Uncle Alex and their daughters, Auntie Sarah and Auntie Vart, and their husbands and children. While Casard surveyed her guests, I observed that Uncle Eddy's brother from Russia, seated across from me, was, at that moment, picking his bulbous nose. Momma saw me staring and fluttered her fingers in front of my face.

Casard waved for Great Uncle Alex to say the prayer. Great Uncle Alex bowed his head and mumbled something in Armenian; Van, Melanie and I caught up in time to say Amen.

The women removed the aluminum foil from the platters and served the men, the children, and finally themselves. Everyone knew that Casard was a great cook and we heaped food onto our plates as if we would never eat again.

We picked up our forks and were about to eat, when Momma noticed that Casard's plate was still empty, her hands balled into fists on either side of the plate.

"What Mayrig? What can I get you," Momma asked.

Casard shook her head at a spot in the center of the table.

"Something from the kitchen, Mayrig? Salt-pepper? You need salt and pepper?"

Casard pursed her lips and, with her chin, pointed at the reindeer shakers on the table. She bowed her head.

Everyone tried to find the one thing Casard lacked, so we could all start eating.

"What?" Momma exclaimed, "Mayrig, are you sick?"

"Was only thinking to myself," Casard mumbled, her chin resting on her chest as though she were dozing. Suddenly, her head bobbed up and she stared at Dad's neck. She smiled, squinting, as though straining to see him.

"What," Momma said, crossing her arms. "What now?"

"It's nothing," Casard assured, waving at us to begin eating.

We picked up our forks once again — everyone except Momma — but as we took our first bite, Casard turned to Van, who was seated on her right, and whispered loud enough so everyone could hear, "I was just thinking to myself, your father must be disappointed we don't serve none of that Episcopalian jello salad."

Dad's fist hit the table and the ice in our water glasses chimed.

Casard, startled by the noise, looked up. "Don't you worry, Araxie," she said. "I know what those Cath-o-lics like. I see them at the store, buying. Next time," and Casard tapped the side of her head, "Next time, Mayrig remembers. We'll serve 'em Jell-O right on the table like it was food."

Momma straightened the silver beside her plate. There was not a sound in the room. She took in air, then under her breath she said very quietly, "Enough."

Dad combed his fingers through his hair, his face flushed with anger. "You had to spoil it, didn't you?" he said to Casard, his lips pressed as though he were about to cry. "Couldn't leave it be, not one holiday."

Uncle Eddy cleared his throat, "Hey George, you catch the Knicks last night?"

Momma gave Uncle Eddy a look that left him with his mouth hanging open.

"This is supposed to be Christmas," Momma said to the fork at the side of her plate. "In other families." Momma lifted her glass from the table and without drinking set it down. She seemed to be concentrating on maintaining her breathing, as though it required great effort just to keep the air moving in and out.

"There's a draft in here," Casard announced. "Seta, go check the door."

"No," Momma said, cutting the air with a finger. "You keep Seta out of this. You're always trying to put her in the middle. There's no draft and you know it."

"On my shoulders, Araxie, I feel blowing." But instead of looking at Momma, Casard gazed pleadingly at me.

"There's no draft," Momma repeated, her voice loud and firm. She pointed her finger to keep me in my chair.

Casard bit her lip and looked at me, but I averted her gaze. Staring at my plate, all of a sudden my face burned and my eyes filled with tears. Overcome by shame, I covered my face with my napkin. When I looked up again, I expected to find everyone watching me, but they all had their eyes glued on Casard, who had begun rubbing her arms in an effort to warm them, and on Momma, who was concentrating on breathing.

We were not a quiet family, and we certainly never shirked a good fight. But the schism that had grown between Momma and Casard, the thing involving Dad and, I now understood, me, was too deep to discuss. It lurked behind the women's dramatic battles and heavy silences. Until that moment, I never knew whose side to be on, Momma and Dad's, or Casard's, since both sides were me. But sitting there, I made a decision.

"Momma," I whispered. Both women looked at me, and when I lifted my eyes to meet Momma's gaze, she inhaled sharply and raised her brows. Then, as though granted permission, she pushed back her chair and headed for the stairs.

She returned with Casard's sweater. "Put it on," Momma said, dropping the sweater in her mother's lap.

Momma took her place at the table and turning to Uncle Eddy, the harmless, declared, "Eddy, I want you to know: My husband does not eat Jell-O salad."

Van says I remember that Christmas because I was finally old enough to see both halves: Seta and Loon, and not because they were not obvious before. Later, as we drove home in Dad's new Buick, Momma finally let go of the sorrow she was holding. It came slowly at first, then in a great gush of air.

My father steered with one hand and wrapped his free arm around her shoulder. She murmured something to him, something about "So alone." Then she started to sob, while in the backseat Melanie, Van and I bit our lips and braced ourselves.

Dad glanced at the road, then back at Momma and whispered something we could not hear. A moment passed. Momma's shoulders coughed up and down, she burrowed her face into Dad's wool coat.

At the next stop light, he threw the car into Park and kissed her. Again and again, then deeply. He went on kissing her, despite the headlights behind us and then the horns, despite Van, Melanie and me watching from the backseat. We heard the horns but more shocking was this kiss, like some miracle. We did not know what to do, except hold our breath and grab hands, while the light changed twice more.

The light turned a third time before Dad finally let go of Momma and, putting the Buick back into gear, drove us through the snowy, silent streets of Memorial, home. Dad was turning the car into our driveway, when Momma peered into the backseat to find Van, Melanie and me, still stunned by that kiss, still pressing hands.

And if someone says Christmas, this is what I see: the look of surprise in my mother's eyes, as if we were her bonus presents, wrapped in muffs and coats and ribbons, as if we were for her from him and brand new.

* * excerpted from Rise the Euphrates, by Carol Edgarian

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