My Thanksgiving
by Mia Thermopolis
6:45 a.m.
Roused by the sound of my mother vomiting. She is well into her third month of pregnancy now. According to her obstetrician, all the throwing up should stop in the next trimester. I can't wait. I have been marking the days off on
my 'N Sync calendar. (I don't really like 'N Sync. At host, not that much. My best friend Lilly bought me the calendar
as a joke. Except that one guy really is pretty cute.)
7:45 a.m.
Mr. Gianini, my new stepfather, knocks on my door. Only now I am supposed to call him Frank. This is very difficult
to remember due to the fact that at school, where he is my second period Algebra teacher, I am supposed to call him Mr. Gianini. So I just don't call him anything (to his face).
It's time to get up, Mr. Gianini says. We are having Thanksgiving at his parents' house on Long Island. We have to leave now if we are going to beat the traffic.
8:45 a.m.
There is no traffic this early on Thanksgiving Day. We arrive at Mr. G's parents' house in Sagaponack three hours early.
Mrs. Gianini (Mr. Gianini's mother, not my mother. My mother is still Helen Thermopolis because she is fairly well-known as a painter under that name, and also because she does not believe in the cult of the patriarchy) is still
in curlers. She looks very surprised. This might not only be because we arrived so early, but also because no sooner had my mother entered the house than she was forced to run for the bathroom with her hand pressed over her mouth, on account of the smell of the roasting turkey. I am hoping this means that my future half-brother or sister is a vegetarian, since the smell of meat cooking used to make my mother hungry, not nauseated.
My mother already informed me in the car on the way over from Manhattan that Mr. Gianini's parents are very old-fashioned and are used to enjoying a conventional Thanksgiving meal. She does not think that they will appreciate hearing my traditional Thanksgiving speech about how the Pilgrims were guilty of committing mass genocide by giving their new Native American friends blankets filled with the smallpox virus, and that it is reprehensible that we, as a country, annually celebrate this rape and destruction of an entire culture.
Instead, my mother said, I should discuss more neutral topics, such as the weather.
I asked if it was all right if I discussed the astonishingly high rate of attendance at the Reykjavik opera house in Iceland (over ninety-eight per cent of the country's population has seen Tosca at least once).
My mother sighed and said, 'If you must,' which I take to be a sign that she is beginning to tire of hearing about Iceland.
Well, I am sorry, but I find Iceland extremely fascinating and I will not rest until I have visited the ice hotel.
9:45 a.m. — 11:45 a.m.
I watch theMacy's Thanksgiving Day parade with Mr Gianini Senior in what he calls the rec room.
They don't have rec rooms in Manhattan.
Just lobbies.
Remembering my mother's warning, I refrain from repeating another one of my traditional holiday rants — that
the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is a gross example of American capitalism run amok. I mean, using cute animal-shaped balloons to lure children into begging their parents to buy them products that they don't need and
the manufacturing of which is contributing to the destruction of our planet?
I am sorry, but that is just sick.
Besides, at one point during the broadcast I caught sight of Lilly standing in the crowd outside Office Max on Broadway and Thirty-Seventh, her video camera clutched to her slightly squished-in face (so much like a pug) as a float carrying Miss America and William Shatner of Star Trek fame passed by. So I know Lilly is going to take care of denouncing Macy's on the next episode of her public access television show, Lilly Tells It Like It Is (every Friday night
at nine, Manhattan cable channel 67).
12:00 p.m.
Mr. Gianini Junior's sister arrives with her husband, their two kids and the pumpkin pies. The kids, who are my age, are twins — a boy, Nathan, and a girl, Claire. I know right away that Claire and I are not going to get along, because when we are introduced she looks me up and down the way the cheerleaders do in the hallway at school and goes, in a very snotty voice, 'You're the one who's supposed to be a princess?' And while I am perfectly aware that at five foot nine inches tall, with no visible breasts, feet the size of snowshoes, and hair that sits in a tuft on my head like the end
of a cotton bud, I am the biggest freak in the freshman class of Albert Einstein High School For Boys (made coeducational circa 1975), I do not appreciate being reminded of it by girls who do not even bother finding out that beneath this mutant facade beats the heart of a person who is only striving, just like everybody else in this world, to find self-actualization.
Not that I even care what Mr. Gianini's niece Claire thinks of me. I mean, she is wearing a pony-skin miniskirt. And
it is not even imitation pony-skin. She must know that a horse had to die just so she could have that skirt, but she obviously doesn't care.
Now Claire has pulled out her mobile phone and gone out on to the deck where the reception is best (even though it
is thirty degrees outside, she apparently doesn't mind. She has that pony-skin to keep her warm, after all). She keeps looking in at me through the sliding glass doors and laughing as she talks on her phone.
I don't care. At least I am not wearing the skin of a murdered equine. Nathan - who is dressed in baggy jeans and has
a pager, in addition to a lot of gold jewellery - asks his grandfather if he can change the channel. So instead of traditional Thanksgiving viewing options, such as football or the Lifetime channel's made-for-TV movie marathon,