Object No. 35 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Jim Shepard, has ended. Original price: donated. Final price: $15.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now. This object was part of a collection curated for Significant Objects by Paola Antonelli; the story was co-published on Core77.com.]

When I was little I’d ask my mother what I was getting for my birthday. I’d ask like the morning of my birthday. It always pissed her off because my birthday was December 27^th.

“Look under that tree,” she’d tell me. “You want to know what you’re getting for your birthday? Go look under that Christmas tree.”

When I got older I stopped asking. Then this last December when I’d been home a year she said “I got you something for your birthday.”

“I’m still not getting a job,” I said.

“Why are you so miserable to me?” she asked.

“So what is it?” I asked her a little while later. She went into her room and came back with a little package wrapped in candy cane paper. I tore off the wrapping and I’m standing there with a little box of Clone Wars collectible cards in my hand.

“You always liked Star Waters,” she said. One time in school a teacher asked what my mother’s first language was and I told him she didn’t have one.

“I’m thirty-three years old,” I told her.

“That means you can’t like cards?” she said. “That means you can’t enjoy anything any more?”

Everybody on the front of the box had a weapon. “That was nice of you to get me the cards,” I told her.

“You can’t be grateful for one thing?” she wanted to know.

“That was nice of you to get me the cards,” I told her. Later on I wrote the same thing down, and stuck it on the refrigerator.