Benjamin Brindise
When cousin Jimmy took his mom’s cane and refused to give it back if she didn’t complete the swap, I knew we crossed a thin line of some kind. She sat tucked into the corner of the couch, extended family unfolding from her sides like a broken accordion and stared at him open-eyed.
The Christmas tree was adorned with the red ribbons my grandmother left for us when she passed. Bags of presents and cards lined the base of it, each labeled with a nuclear family’s name. “Gratte Family. Balkner’s. Fields’.”
“James, give me back my cane. I can’t get up without it.”
“I know. But, Ma, it’s a million dollars.”
When we started White Elephant, there had been fifteen presents like every year. In them were waffle irons taken off the shelves of discount stores, repackaged air fryers from years before, or odd finds for a laugh like a clearly haunted doll someone found at an Amvets.
At the end of the first round, we noticed there were sixteen.
“Whose is that?” Silence.
“Let Cindy open it.”
Cindy, my seven-year-old niece pranced from behind an armchair, risen from a pile of wrapping paper. Her half-moon smile shone on her face for the first few rips, but soon she looked up at everyone with disappointment.
“What? This isn’t a toy!”
It was a million dollars tightly packed in plastic wrap. From the outside, it looked like all the denominations were $100 bills. Tucked in one of the upper layers so we could clearly read it was a small white card. It said “This is a million dollars. You’re welcome.”
“Is that…real?” Uncle Rob piped up from behind his Sam Adams.
“What am I going to do with a million dollars?” Cindy asked.
And then it started.
“I swap with Cindy,” Samantha called from a corner. Sam went first and so she was first to steal.
“Samantha! I don’t think this is really…” her mother tried.
“I steal from Sam,” John said. He popped up from the armchair and snatched the plastic-wrapped cash from Sam’s hands. He had a smug look on his face.
“John, are you serious? You know about my student loans. I could really use that.”
“Yeah? I got bills, too. I paid my loans. You can figure yours out.”
It went on like that for three rounds. People sat gripping their Target gift cards until they began to bend.
“But I was finally going to get that face work!”
“That was going to be a new bedroom for your cousin. Your own cousin.”
The room began to take on heat. No one on the couch could sit still anymore. People elbowed each other and banged knees between cussing someone out.
“There’s no shame in this family is there?”
“I will split this with whoever steals it from me last.”
People’s hands lingered on the square of money when it was taken from them. Each person less willing to let it go than the one before them.
“That would cover Brian’s treatment, Denise. You know we don’t have insurance.”
“That’s not how the rules work. Look, I’m googling it right now.”
Until finally Jimmy tried to steal from his own mother, and she said no.
“Enough of this. Enough. No one’s even opened this to see if it’s real. And if it is real, we should just split it evenly among everyone. What a blessing that would be. Each family would have the best Christmas of their lives. Now everyone cut it out and let’s see if we even have a reason to be excited.”
That’s when Jimmy snatched her cane. He held it above his head like she was a smaller kid who couldn’t reach.
“Give me the money, Ma.”
“Your grandmother would be so disappointed.”
Everyone watched to see what would happen. For a long time it felt like everyone forgot how to breathe. Even me.
I thought about standing up and stopping him. It wasn’t right, treating his mother like that. But before I could put two thoughts together Jimmy snatched the money from her like it was a piece of eggshell in a hot pan and ran out of the house.
We never saw him again. He sends postcards sometimes from warm, pretty places and lets us know he’s doing just fine.
Benjamin Brindise is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. He’s the author of Secret Anniversaries (Ghost City Press, 2019) and others. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Peatsmoke Journal, The Blue Mountain Review, and The Marathon Literary Review, among others. He is a teaching artist who has worked with organizations including the Just Buffalo Literary Center & Eat Off Art. Find more of his work at benjaminbrindise.com. Facebook/IG: @benjaminbrindiseauthor Twitter/X: @benbrindise BlueSky: @benbrindise.bsky.social
Featured photo by RDNE Stock project (Pexels)
