How to Alienate a Jury
California Lawyer, April 1999
By Jan Weeks
In every trial, the jurors are an attorney’s best friends—or at least they should be. But trials can be long and arduous, and sometimes the importance of this critical relationship gets lost. Like a rebuffed friend, a jury can tune you out, or even worse, take an active dislike to you and your client. Poll any jury and you’ll find that there were times when awards were minimized or verdicts swayed just because the jury didn’t like an attorney. Too many lawyers have suffered the wrath of bored, frustrated jurors who would choose the dentist’s chair over listening to one more word about their client. And just as there are ways to lose a friendship, there are things you do that lose a jury.
Waste the Jurors' Time
The O. J. Simpson case taught lawyers a valuable lesson in wasting the jury’s time. “Compare the difference between Simpson’s case and Kaczynski’s case,” says Mark Ginalski, staff counsel for CGU, an insurance company in San Francisco. The prosecutors spent six months on the Simpson matter. The Kaczynski prosecutors offered a plea bargain two and a half weeks into the trial. “The lesson learned was that you move in, present your evidence, and get out,” says Ginalski.
Unfortunately, lawyers find many ways to waste a jury’s time. “Jurors are alienated by a lawyer who is ill-prepared or doesn’t have command of the intricacies of the case,” says Laurence H. Steffan, a sole practitioner in Mill Valley. Jurors are likely to begin mentally drawing up their grocery lists if your documents are unorganized. “Shuffling aimlessly through a stack of papers convinces the jury that you don’t know what you’re doing,” says Steffan. Rambling through opening statements and closing arguments will do the same.
Endless repetition of the same facts is another way to make a juror reconsider the relationship you are hoping to develop. Make your point once, possibly twice, then drop it. If the jurors don’t understand what you’re saying or aren’t swayed to your side, you won’t change the situation by recapitulating your case ad infinitum.
Cop an Attitude
When combative lawyers show disrespect to judges, opposing counsel, or witnesses, they risk alienating a jury. Jurors see themselves as performing a dignified service; any behavior that belittles them or others is offensive. As Atticus Finch points out in To Kill a Mockingbird, the courts are one place where everyone is equal. Any behavior that seeks to lessen that equality affects a jury negatively.
Mark O. Hiepler, a partner at Hiepler & Hiepler in Oxnard, found out that a natural reaction of his once alienated at least one juror. “An opposition witness was committing out-and-out perjury on direct exam,” he says. “I knew he was lying, and I sat there shaking my head and mouthing ‘liar, liar’ to myself.” The jury handed Hiepler a verdict of $89.3 million but had some words of advice. When he spoke with the jurors later, one said, “We knew he was lying. We didn’t need to see you saying that. It was disrespectful to the witness.”
Charles Trudrung Taylor, a partner at Lang Richert & Patch in Fresno who specializes in employment law, was representing a victim of illegal wiretapping. Several sheriff’s deputies had recorded his client, an undersheriff, without the client’s knowledge. Taylor had a strong case that showed the deputies involved in the wiretapping were motivated by politics and not by a suspicion of criminal activity. He was further helped by opposing counsels’ attitudes. As Taylor made his case, they repeatedly rolled their eyes, whispered, and joked among themselves.
“The jurors told me afterward that they really didn’t like the behavior of the opposing side and were concerned enough to mention it to me,” says Taylor. “They also said they appreciated the fact that I was respectful and polite to opposing counsel and witnesses.”
A lawyer must be on especially good behavior when there is a clear power distinction between the lawyer and the witness. A lawyer who shows contempt for a witness who is traditionally seen as weak, such as a child, a grieving widow, or an elderly person, invokes jurors’ natural affinity for the underdog.
Jane Barrett, a partner with Preston Gates & Ellis in Los Angeles, sees the same dynamic at work when male attorneys treat female attorneys with contempt. “Jurors don’t like male attorneys being aggressive or personal with women attorneys. Once, an attorney mentioned how big my diamond ring was, trying to imply that I was wealthy and therefore not someone to be taken seriously. After the trial, the jurors told me they really didn’t like that.” (Barrett conceded liability for her client in the case, but the jury’s award was even less than what the defendant had argued for.)
Barrett believes this rule applies equally to a seasoned attorney who is up against a novice. “You shouldn’t belittle others. If you’re up against a lawyer who’s not very good, the worst thing you can do is show your contempt. Even though eye-rolling or saying, ‘Oh, god!’ are natural reactions, directing them at opposing counsel makes the jury feel sorry for them.”
Show Your Temper
A close cousin of arrogance is anger. “When you’re angry, you’re not thinking,” says Barrett. “Your anger is a very negative thing. It’s never good.”
San Francisco lawyer Angela M. Alioto learned this the hard way. “When attorneys bicker with opposing counsel or the judge, it shows a lack of civility, not to mention a lack of intelligence,” says Alioto. “I think the hardest lesson I ever learned was during a recent trial when I made my arguments directly to opposing counsel. It really bothered one of the jurors, and I shouldn’t have done it.” Alioto lost the case, and it is now before the Ninth Circuit.
Laurie Orange, a principal in the firm of Duckor Spradling & Metzger in San Diego, says that she began a five-week trial involving a real property transfer by cross examining a witness more zealously than the jury liked. “The jurors were initially turned off,” she says. They told her afterward that it took a while for them to “get comfortable” with her. By the end, says Orange, “they had had a chance to see me as a person and realized I was only trying to win the case for my client. This taught me that attorneys should be very professional in their courtroom behavior.” Orange eventually won the case.
Talk Down to Them
Talking down to the jury or to witnesses is another favorite way to irritate a jury. Oxnard attorney Hiepler has seen jurors seethe when opposition counsel says something like, “Now, Doctor, you and I understand what you’re talking about, but can you just explain it to the jury?”
Presenting a case clearly, however, should never be confused with talking down to a witness, especially when dealing with people whose first language is not English. When a witness whose grasp of the language is shaky asks for a question to be repeated, some attorneys use the same words instead of seeking to clarify the witness’s understanding. When this happens, the jury may disregard the testimony altogether, because they think the witness was confused and may not have answered the question properly. Instead, the attorney should rephrase the question, using simpler words.
Act Like a Showoff
The opposite of talking down to people is pedantry. Convoluted sentence structure, double and triple negatives, and excessive legal jargon confuse not only the witness but also those impaneled. As one lawyer puts it, “Eschew obfuscation.”
Disregard Jurors’ Values
Attorneys may come into conflict with jurors’ belief systems. San Francisco attorney Marq Bautista recalls seeing the shock on a juror’s face when he used “God” in a phrase to denote exasperation, and the juror seemingly interpreted the remark as blasphemy. Bautista knew immediately that he’d committed a “sin” and backpedaled furiously to repair the damage.
Likewise, when a plaintiff demands too much for damages, a red flag goes up in a juror’s mind. San Francisco attorney Thomas J. Williams once asked for excessive damages at his client’s urging and learned a hard lesson. He represented a woman who brought a malpractice suit against a podiatrist who had treated her for an injured toe, part of which later had to be removed. “I thought $75,000 was a fair jury award,” Williams said, “but she wanted $145,000.” The jury felt that amount was extreme and viewed his client as wanting to profit excessively from her misfortune. Rather than decreasing the award to a more reasonable sum, the jury found against his client. Later one of the jurors told Williams, “We knew then that nothing would make her happy.”
Break Your Promises
Failing to prove the points made in opening statements negatively affects jurors. The jury is left with the impression that the attorney hadn’t prepared properly, or that there’s some uncertainty regarding the merits of the case.
Look Incompetent
If you really want to alienate jurors, don’t forget to follow the tried-and-true method of asking questions that you don’t know the answers to.
San Diego attorney Orange tells of an opposing counsel who once, on cross-examination, accused a witness of having ulterior motives in testifying. When the witness denied this, the attorney said, “So what’s the reason you’re here?” The witness proceeded to shred the credibility of the attorney’s client by giving specific evidence that hadn’t previously come out, proving that sarcasm combined with ignorance of the witness’s potential answer and/or character can lose the case.
A Car Crash Saved Me
Natural Health, December 2002
by Jan Weeks
On April 7, 1998, the day before I turned 51, my life changed irrevocably. A teenage girl in a pickup truck crashed into my minivan and totaled it. My seat belt kept me from going through the windshield, but the force of the collision shoved my van’s engine back almost two feet, bruising my legs and feet and shortening my left leg almost an inch. The air bag, which had struck me in the face, left me with a concussion. The force of the accident had also torn muscles and ligaments in my chest and back, and separated my collarbone from my left shoulder, damaging the joint. I later learned that I’d suffered whiplash, too.
An ambulance driver delivered me from the accident scene to the only clinic in this remote corner of Colorado, even though there was no doctor on duty. The clinic staff offered a diagnosis but no treatment and sent me home. Little did I know that, after several months, I would consider the accident a blessing in disguise.
INCREDIBLE PAIN
The pain began in earnest a couple of days after the accident, when the numbing effects of adrenaline wore off. My neck felt as though concrete blocks had been piled on my head, compressing my spine. I could barely lift my left arm without screaming. Getting out of bed to go to the bathroom was a major undertaking.
I tried to continue my job teaching seventh and eighth grade English classes, but along with the rest of my pain, I had terrible headaches. And I couldn’t remember simple words like “noun,” “book,” and “lunchroom.” I’ve always been an excellent speller, but now half the words I wrote on the board were misspelled.
After a horrible week of this, I returned to the clinic. A doctor was available just one or two days a month, so I had to see a physician’s assistant instead. He didn’t know how to ease my pain other than to write me a prescription for drugs. When I told him how much I hated to take painkillers, he said there were a number of alternative therapies that could help me. He offered to write me prescriptions for them so my insurance company would cover the cost, and I gratefully accepted his offer. The first ones he wrote were for massage therapy and chiropractic. (Author's note: Colorado doesn't require a prescription for chiropractic care. This was the editor's error.)
Because I knew I couldn’t return to work in this kind of pain, I took the next two weeks off and arranged to teach half-time for the remaining weeks of the school year.
A CHANCE AT HEALING
During my first visit to the massage therapist, she gently touched me to evaluate the state of my muscles and even this light touch was agonizingly painful. Then she very cautiously began to massage the areas that weren’t so badly damaged. As I felt my body relaxing, I realized that she could bring me some relief and I decided to continue treatments twice a week.
Shortly afterward I saw a chiropractor who was also an applied kinesiologist, which meant that he used muscle testing to diagnose problems in my nervous, lymphatic, and skeletal systems. At my first session and at each one after that, he had me lie on a mechanical table that repeatedly stretched my body taut and then released the tension. After this repetitive motion had relaxed me (which, oddly enough, it did), he would perform various chiropractic adjustments.
Because some pain still lingered, the physician’s assistant gave me a prescription for some more therapy—Trager, a form of bodywork in which a therapist teaches you how to move without pain. I had two or three sessions a week with a Trager therapist, during which he would manipulate my limbs and torso, and I would feel as if each part of my body was being rocked in a cradle. As I relaxed into the movements, I would enter a blissful meditative state. The feeling of relaxation would last for an hour or more after a session, and when I got home I would usually nap or lie back in a rocking chair.
As my treatments progressed, I had good days and bad days. But in only three months, without drugs, I went from being barely able to move my arms and legs to carrying groceries and sleeping through the night.
And I experienced an unexpected side effect from my massage and bodywork treatments: I cried at every session, not just from the physical pain but also from emotional wounds I’d been harboring for many years. Somehow the physical work these practitioners were doing was able to bring emotional healing as well. I felt an enormous sense of relief after every session.
A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
It’s been four years since the wreck. Sometimes I have minor pain in my shoulder joint, but nothing that can’t be relieved by ice packs and aspirin. I occasionally visit a chiropractor or a massage therapist, but only for maintenance.
Looking back, I can see that the accident brought me good things as well as bad. For many years I had accumulated injuries, major and minor, physical and mental. But without the impetus of the accident, I wouldn’t have recognized that old damage, and I wouldn’t have met the wonderful healers who made me whole again.
Sidebar: My tips for easing pain:
KEEP AN OPEN MIND. I took a chance on therapies I’d never tried before and discovered powerful relief.
MAKE NEW PARTNERSHIPS. I developed close relationships with my health care practitioners, which I think aided my success.
ADDRESS THE CAUSE OF PAIN. I refused painkillers because I wanted to fix the cause of my pain rather than just mask my symptoms.
 Castle Creek Challenge
A good day in the hot sun of the badlands
Midwest Fly Fishing, July/August 1998
By Jan Weeks
It was a hot afternoon in the Black Hills, traditionally a time to lie on the bank in the shade of the willows and wait for the cool of evening and for rising trout. But here I was with my client, a fly angler from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, making my way up Castle Creek below Deerfield Reservoir, netting brookies every few yards.
Castle Creek had been almost an afterthought. We’d spent the morning on Spring Creek, a tailwater fishery below Sheridan lake in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Kevin Johnson had caught and released about 45 trout—browns, ’bows and brookies—in the five hours we’d spent wending our way through pools, riffles and flats to the face of the dam.
Spring Creek, less than 10 miles from Rapid City, is one of the most popular trout streams in the Hills, and as more and more anglers arrived, the less the trout were interested in taking what we presented.
So we headed farther into the Hills, following the road to Deerfield Reservoir west from Hill City, heading off across Slate Prairie road, finally pulling into the parking lot for the Kinney Canyon walk-in area. I cautioned Kevin not to expect too much in the way of fish.
“It’s about 90 degrees right now. They’re probably all hanging under the banks, taking naps,” I said.
Now here I have to say that this guy’s one of the best fishermen I’ve had the pleasure to meet. Eighty percent of my clients are relative novices or rank beginners, and I spend 90 percent of my time teaching them the basics of fly casting, releasing Renegades from willows and acting as tour guide and chauffeur. Johnson was a guide’s dream. Total concentration brought him fish after fish, in places where others would have thrown down their rods in disgust.
Deep pools sparkled below fallen logs. Swift currents swirled under banks of overhanging grasses that sheltered 12- to 28-inchers. Shallow riffles raced from bend to bend, chattering out of wide flats. Castle Creek was in great form.
Johnson tied on a dark nymph, a Hare’s Ear-looking critter, black and hairy. He cast upstream and let it drift in under the bank. In seconds he had his first trout. The fishing got better from there on.
We slowly worked our way toward the face of the dam. Kevin was wading through a small riffle and I was following several yards behind on shore. Suddenly he exclaimed, “What’s this?”
He bent over something in the water. A brook trout was trapped in a green mesh, yards of netting tangled around a fallen log. Kevin lifted the mess out of the water and tried to release the fish, but it was too enmeshed to be freed easily. I had to resort to my pocket knife to liberate it. As I examined the fish, I knew it would not survive. It must have been ensnared several months earlier. It had been trapped in such a way that one gill was wide open and the other unable to function. Its spine was twisted and it had grown at least an inch in girth since becoming trapped. The deformity gave a new meaning to the phrase “hour-glass figure.”
I gently held the fish in the current, hoping that it would straighten and swim away, but when I took my hands away it only spun in the current. After several attempts, I killed the brook trout quickly and put the fish and the netting in my vest.
Later, I turned the fish and the netting over to a South Dakota conservation officer. I learned that the netting had been used in bank stabilization three years before and was supposed to biodegrade after six months.
Kevin and I continued up the stream, he catching and I netting and releasing. After three hours, he quit.
“I’m done,” he said. “I’m not fishing; I’m just casting.” This was after 30 or so brookies had been caught. We’d covered about a mile and a half of stream and the westering sun sent shadows streaking across the meadow flowers and hip-high grass. As we followed the service road back to the parking area, I reflected on the changes that had taken place on this two-mile stretch of spring-creek tailwater since I’d fished it twelve years before.
My first trip up Castle Creek had been in an old, red Chevy truck, before the stream was designated a walk-in area. It was a popular place for bait fishers who used treble hooks and sat in lawn chairs. In recent times, the walk to the stream has discouraged a lot of bait fishers and most of the anglers I see are catch-and-release fly anglers.
Castle Creek now has a good population of wild brook and brown trout. In the past, the fishery had been put-and-take because the outlet valves on Deerfield Dam froze every winter and only a trickle of water escaped. In addition, each August through October the Bureau of Reclamation released thousands of cubic feet of water to lower the reservoir for the winter, effectively washing away brown trout spawning redds.
In the yellowing afternoon light, a trout swirled and rose to suck in a giant caddisfly, its brilliant red sides momentarily coloring the water. We paused a moment in admiration.
“This is really a great stream,” Kevin sighed.
I explained how the Bureau of Reclamation, the Game, Fish and Parks Department, the Rapid Valley Irrigation District, the City of Rapid City, the U. S. Forest Service and the Black Hills Fly Fishers had combined money, time, and skills to make Castle Creek into the fine fishery it is today. Getting those entities to work together has been a major diplomatic feat.
The flow in Lower Castle Creek varies from a summer average of 45 cubic feet per second to from 8 to 15 cfs in the winter. The spawning beds of the brown trout and the season’s crop of new trout are protected, and the water in the creek changes little in temperature and freezes only during prolonged sub-zero weather. In the future, the Game, Fish and Parks Department plans to conduct creel surveys and fish counts to determine if special regulations on Castle Creek would be beneficial.
As we sat on the tailgate of the truck and stripped off our waders, both Kevin and I were elated with the afternoon on Castle Creek.
“This is one place I’ll sure fish again,” Kevin said. “It just doesn’t get any better.”
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Jan weeks is a guide/rod builder/fly tier who until recently lived in Lead, S.D. This is her first article for Midwest Fly Fishing.
 Lessons in Becoming an Outdoor Woman
Deadwood Magazine, May/June 1996
By Jan Weeks
Many, many years ago at the dawn of time, I did things. Outdoor things.
I went to Camp Fire Girls camp, climbed trees, and fell into creeks. I built tree houses and dug caves in the summer of my contentment.
Of course, I was only ten, and what does a kid know about being happy? The early teen years brought daily swim fests with friends vying to see who could spend the most hours in the local pool.
I still had a bicycle in those days, but even though we lived more than a mile from school, I hoofed it, along with the rest of the neighborhood. That was before we started busing kids six blocks and then wondering why they’re all couch potatoes.
I enjoyed being outdoors. I didn’t worry about sun damage or bad hair or looking cute.
But then I grew up. Suddenly all I wanted to do was sit in the shade and look at guys. They didn’t do much looking back, but hope springs eternal. I lost the prune-potatoes look and chlorinated hairdo and quit riding my bike. Only kids do that stuff.
Fifteen years later I met my husband, Larry. And five years after that fateful first date, he finally convinced me I’d like fishing. Larry, you understand, works only to support his hunting and fishing habits. You may think that’s a joke. Trust me, it’s not.
My first foray into the world of fish came during a sojourn in southern New Mexico. On a perfectly good lazy morning, Larry decided we should go fishing at Black Canyon. I popped open my Daiwa Mini-spin and put the rod together. Larry courteously added a snelled hook and worm to my line and showed me how to cast.
“I’ve never caught a fish in my life,” I insisted. “Not even at one of those pay-by-the-inch places that guarantee a catch.”
“Just throw the worm over there and let it drift down into that pool,” he instructed.
Wowser! A monster trout, all of six inches long, smacked the bait and, as I recoiled in fear, I accidentally set the hook. Suddenly I had the fight of my life on my hands. I struggled for at least 30 seconds before I landed the behemoth. As soon as I had him over land, I dropped the rod and lunged toward my catch.
“No! No!” Larry shouted. “Keep the rod tip up!”
Too late. My very first fish flopped back into the sparkling waters of the stream to vanish with an impertinent flip of his tail.
But Larry, bless his heart (or his Welsh stubbornness), didn’t give up. My next lesson was in shotgunning.
“No way! Un-uh. Those things knock you on your kiester,” I said as he tried to fit the over-and-under Rueger to my shoulder. “You go first.”
“Look,” he said scornfully. “There’s absolutely no danger. And the kick’s not bad.”
He raised the gun to his shoulder, touched the trigger and fell on the ground, shaking his head to clear it, as the massive blast reverberated in the clear Colorado air.
“So tell me again how much fun this is,” I commented while lifting him to his feet.
Big game hunting came next. We drove to his uncle’s ranch near Wall and proceeded to set up camp. Larry handed me a rifle weighing nigh on to 40 pounds, pointed to the bottom of a 500-foot deep canyon and said, “Go down there and if you see a deer, shoot it. We’ll walk the rim and see what you flush out.”
“What’s a deer look like?” I wondered as I scrambled through scrub juniper and cactus.
It was a moot point. By the time I’d scuffed and skidded to the bottom, Larry and the other four guys were yelling, “Come on back! We’ve filled our tags!”
I won’t even mention the tent blowing down in the morning gale. Or my learning to parasail as I turned sideways in the truck bed and the breeze caught in my oversized coveralls.
Then Larry taught me to fly fish at Dumont Pond near Rochford. After a six-pack of Miller Lite, I wasn’t doing too badly. I’d caught 15 wild rosebushes (or the same one 15 times) and Mocha, our Lab, learned to sit very still as soon as she heard the line whistle through the air.
By now you may be wondering if we’re still married. Yes. And I’ve become much, much better at everything except shotgunning. I now own a fly shop, guide fishermen, give fly-fishing seminars and modestly duck my head when people refer to me as the local “expert” in fly-fishing. I bag a prairie deer every year and what’s more, have learned to skin, bone and butcher it. (Learned to cook it, too!) I’m on the board of directors for Outdoor Women of South Dakota and instruct flytying and flycasting at that group’s workshop sponsored by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks every September.
I don’t have to worry about prune-toes (I have hip waders now) or bad hair (Camille does a great bob) any more. If I think about it, I slather on SPF25 when I go outdoors. I walk the dogs every morning and thank Mother Nature for her bounty. I took a scuba diving lesson and have ambitions to fly fish in New Zealand and Patagonia. Hang gliding is even looking interesting.
It’s been a long learning process, but thanks to Larry (and the fact he can whip me three falls out of four and make me go), I’ve gained many skills and hours of pleasure in the great outdoors.
But I’d still like to own a knit shop.
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 1926 Vacation in Hills Exciting to Young Girl
Deadwood Magazine, July/August 1997
By Jan Weeks
Shortly before her death last year, Jean Adams Fiser of Lead shared with her daughter memories about her first experiences in the “wild West” during a 1926 trip to the Black Hills.
The family traveled west from their home in Iowa to Montana and South Dakota.
Although she was only five at the time, the adventure of traveling so far from home, and the sights she saw remained vivid memories for Jean for 70 years.
There were no interstates and few paved highways in the 1920s. Only a few people were daring enough to venture any distance from home on summer vacations. Motels were non-existent; camping was the only viable alternative to hotels or rooming houses.
Jean’s handyman father added sideboards to the running boards of their Dodge touring car to carry a tent. To hold bedding and camping gear, he built a chest with a top that folded out to make a table.
The Adams family stopped in downtown Spearfish to watch a powwow. The Indians were dancing in the center of the Fifth and Illinois Streets intersection, near a stone monument commemorating the founding of the town. Jean was wide-eyed at her first encounter with “real Indians.”
My father photographed the dancers. For a fee I could have my picture taken with an Indian chief in full regalia. The interpreter said it was Crazy Horse, but since that was after Crazy Horse died, I don’t know who it really was. I stood next to the chief and one of the feathers on his war bonnet kept blowing against my hair. I was absolutely petrified. I was sure I would be scalped.
Continuing on into Deadwood, Jean’s family found a campground near the present-day rodeo grounds. Tents were pitched atop wooden platforms and campers set up cots inside the tents. Jean remembered climbing up to Mount Moriah where her father took photos of downtown Deadwood.
A tour of the Badlands on their return trip was another memorable event for the little girl. “We went across the Pine Ridge Reservation,” Jean recalled.
My father tried to drive across a little ditch, thinking the car would span it.
Instead, the front wheels dropped in and there we sat. Dad went to get men to help him lift the car enough to put logs under the front end while the Indian women, dressed in long skirts and traditional blouses, stood around the car and giggled at our predicament.
The early part of the century was a time of transition. This area was still part of the old West, but new ideas and new times were coming. As I look back, I feel fortunate I was able to see the ‘old’ West where civilization hadn’t yet quite arrived.
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 Journey into Christmas
Grit, November 29, 1998
A short story by Jan Weeks
“Mom! Justin’s tearing all my wrapping paper!”
“Am not! It’s my paper, anyway!”
“Is not! Mom!”
Marilyn Beck leaned her forehead against the cool exterior of the refrigerator, fighting back tears of anger and frustration. Her stomach lurched in a way that had become uncomfortably familiar in the last few weeks. Her thudding temples signaled another miserable evening.
The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas sent Justin, Jamie, and Joelle into and orgy of arguments, accusations and occasional fistfights. Cries of “Gimme” and “I wanna” overrode carols. They turned from children into hyperactive fiends who drove Marilyn crazy. After a full day’s work, she was too tired to read stories or spend time making decorations. Why couldn’t they understand everything was different now? There weren’t enough hours in the day for her to be breadwinner, housekeeper, and mother. Surely they could make some effort to help her, instead of constantly quarreling.
This season was even worse than other years because they were experiencing an unusually cold winter, and so far, not even a flurry of snow. The day before Christmas and no snow. Heavy clouds hung low and the dampness settled into her bones. For days the ominous atmosphere had refused to release its winter burden. Yellow-brown grass and bare trees shivered against chill eddies of breeze, longing for the covering snow. Fifteen years of white Christmases loomed in her mind, mocking her.
Marilyn tried to concentrate on the spiritual side of the holiday, but she sank deeper into depression as the sound of life-and-death struggles bellowed from the boys’ room. Ever since Joel died, nothing was right. She’d tried to keep holidays the same, but sometimes she felt like she was suffering from terminal exhaustion. She couldn’t keep up with the demands of raising three children and performing all the usual rituals, too. They changed their minds hourly on what they wanted Santa to bring and barraged their mother with complaints about the lack of snow, as if she could make it appear on demand.
“Mom! Joelle’s trying to peek!”
The sound of a slap cut through the ruckus. Joelle’s shriek of rage and pain filled the house. Marilyn’s control snapped. Storming into the boys’ room, she grabbed 6-year-old Joelle by the arm.
“Get out! Get out! I’ve had enough!” she screamed. She pushed the terrified child into the hallway.
“And you two! I’m sick and tired of you!” she screamed. “I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear you! Just leave me alone!” She slammed the door, blocking out the stunned faces of the boys. Joelle cringed against the wall, folding into herself as Marilyn ran to her own bedroom.
Marilyn kicked the door shut and threw herself across the king-sized bed, sobbing and beating the mattress with clenched fists. Months of loneliness and hurt poured out. A part of her listened appalled as her wails of despair rose higher and louder.
Stop it! You’re scaring the children! The thought flickered through her mind.
Who cares? They deserve it! I’m so sick of this! God just let me die! her mind screamed back.
Finally her body rebelled against the tension and she collapsed into semi-consciousness, the terror of those uncontrolled minutes submerged in full sleep.
The children clustered silently before the closed door, shock and fright marring their young faces. They had never seen their mother like this before. Sure, she yelled a lot, but all moms did that. It was one of the things moms did. But this was different. She acted like she hated them.
They slowly withdrew from the frightful stillness trapped in their mother’s bedroom. Justin put a hand on each of the younger children’s shoulders and guided them down the hallway into the living room. He was 11, weighed down by the burden of being the man in the family, especially now that Mom had gone so far away from them. Silently they sat on the couch, eyeing each other warily. Joelle broke the silence.
“Is she gonna go away like Daddy did?”
“Course not,” Jamie snorted. “Dad’s dead. Mom’s not dead, and she’s not gonna die!” He spoke emphatically, more to convince himself than to reassure his little sister. He had never admitted to anyone that sometimes, when he woke in the night, he crept through the darkness to stand at his mother’s bedside, his heart beating painfully as he held his breath while he waited for her to move or breathe or do something to prove that she hadn’t died, too. Only after hearing her soft sigh or seeing the shadow-shape of her shoulder move on indrawn breath did he go back to bed. Yes, she was still there, protecting them against Death.
Joelle wasn’t convinced. She’d only been 3 when Daddy died, and she wasn’t sure what dead meant, except that Daddy went to sleep in a fancy box and he wouldn’t wake up when she called to him, and when she asked her mother, “Why doesn’t Daddy wake up?” her mother only held her tighter and cried some more. Sometimes, she thought dead meant being away on a trip, and one day Daddy’d come back and swing her high and say, “How’s my best girl?” It sure was a long trip, though.
Jamie spoke again. “How come she did that, Justin? Mom’s never been that mad before. What’d we do?” He was genuinely puzzled. He didn’t remember doing anything different today. Except he didn’t usually hit his sister, at least not that hard. Guilt overwhelmed him, undefined but still real.
“I don’t know,” Justin answered. “Maybe she’s just tired.” If he got cranky when he was tired, maybe Mom could do the same thing. He pondered the thought for a moment. It was weird to think of his mother as a person like him. It made him uncomfortable.
“Will she still be tired when she comes out?” Joelle’s lower lip trembled and a tear slipped down her cheek.
“Naw. Maybe she’ll take a nap and feel better.” Justin glanced around the cluttered living room. There must be some way he could hold them together, draw them away from the hurt and confusion caused by their mother’s outburst.
His face lit up. “Hey, you guys wanna surprise Mom?”
“Yeah!” Joelle exclaimed.
“What can we do?” Jamie demanded. He wanted a real surprise, not a jump from a closet or a dime-store bath set, but magic that would fix everything.
“Well, we could clean the house for her,” Justin replied.
“The whole house?” Jamie looked dubious; Joelle was uncomprehending.
“Not the whole house,” Justin said, “but most of it anyway. Lookit all the mess in here. Joelle, there’s your cereal bowl still on the coffee table. And Jamie your PJs are still on the couch.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, you got your Hot Wheels all over the floor!” Indignant 8, refusing the entire blame.
“I know, I’m gonna pick ’em up. C’mon. Let’s see how much we can get done before she wakes up. Let’s have a contest! I’ll keep score.”
He whirled into action and the others followed. “Point for you, Jamie! Here’s one for me! Two for Joelle!”
Muffling their excitement, they scurried through the house. Clothes were flung into laundry hampers, toys whisked off to bedroom boxes. Dishes disappeared into the dishwasher. Dust vanished into old flannel shirts, leaving the scent of polish mingled with that of the Christmas tree.
And finally they were finished, but Mom still hadn’t come out.
Now what? Justin didn’t dare let the little ones, so proud of their accomplishments, fall back into their fear. He racked his brain for some kind of plan.
“Did you guys see what Mom was doing before . . . before . . . .” His voice trailed off.
Jamie picked at a hangnail. Joelle said, “Making cookies.”
Justin took a deep breath. “We could finish ’em.”
Joelle and Jamie gaped at him. Cook with Mom, sure. But without her? Unthinkable.
“Sure,” Justin said. “They’re all mixed up. She even started to roll them out. All we have to do is cut them and bake them.” His confidence lured them into the kitchen, to poke gingerly at the molasses-spiced dough, to finger shiny cutters and gaze longingly at smooth steel trays. Justin picked up the recipe card and read it slowly, aloud, to make sure he understood the directions.
“Joelle, here. You grease the cookie sheets.” He handed her a paper towel laden with shortening. “Jamie, you roll the dough out about this thick.” He measured with his forefinger and thumb. “I’ll set the oven.”
Soon the rhythm of the rolling pin was replaced by the soft whoosh of stars and Santa shapes pressed into brown-sugar sweetness. The children filled tray after tray, fed them carefully into the oven and watched anxiously for that perfect moment call “done.” They worked quietly, intent on achieving perfection, united in the desire to perform the right spell, the exact movements, that would bring their mother back to them.
Marilyn woke, sluggish, exhausted from her tantrum. The awfulness of what she’d said to the children made her want to burrow back into the pillow and never leave her room, but the silence puzzled her. Images of runaways and other disasters flooded her thoughts as she leapt from the bed and opened the bedroom door.
Soft murmurings pulled her down the darkening hall and into the twilit living room. She blinked. Surely the room hadn’t looked this way three hours ago. The sweet aroma of baking lured her toward the kitchen. The children didn’t hear her slippered approach.
Plates overflowed with steaming cookies. The dishwasher hummed quietly through its rinse cycle. Joelle crouched, holding the dustpan for Jamie to sweep crumbs and leavings into. Justin wiped the last traces of baking from the counter.
Marilyn’s eyes misted and she swallowed hard. They were so young, so alone without her. How could she have marred their Christmas with her anger? Tiptoeing to the tree, she bent and plugged in the lights, magically transforming the murk into a wonder of fairy lights and shining tinsel.
“Hey!”
Three delighted children stopped short in the doorway, their faces shining red, blue, green in the dusk.
“Mom! Hey! Did you see what we did?” Three voices chorused for attention. Six eyes sparkled. Desperation replaced by certainty. Three sets of fingers reached out touching, stroking, loving Mom, who had come back.
Marilyn gathered them close, loving them back, afraid to speak for the lump in her throat.
“C’mon, Mom!” Butterfly touches guided her through upholstered obstacles, flung wide the door, led her out into Christmas Eve, where winter-white flowers blossomed coldly on hair, cheeks and lashes.
“Hey, Mom! It’s snowing!”
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