An Empty Box

Third Place, teens' stories

Tashi Swierkosz |

12/18/2008 - 12/16/08

In a small, suburban area near Moscow, Russia, a little girl gazed out of her bedroom window. She watched the snow roll over the hilltops and caress the air as it fell from the cotton-ball-shaped clouds drifting in the sky.

Apart from the little white flakes blowing in the wind, the sky was gray. Second by second, the sky began to darken. The sun was soon to go to rest, and the moon would rise to watch over the Earth on this Christmas Eve.

She lifted her petite, delicate hands off the windowsill and shuffled her way across the maze of clothes that she was forced to call her room. She climbed onto the mattress that lay on her floor and grabbed an empty shoe box. It had been keeping the door from swinging open.

The gusts of wind that traveled up and down the hallway swung the door open. The little girl pressed her body against the door as she shoved yet another box, filled with old family photo albums, in front of the worn-down door.

She made her way around the piles of junk that had gathered in her room. She bent down, digging through the pile that stood right in front of her feet. The girl finally found the gold wrapping paper. She scrunched it up in her hands, traveled back to her mattress, and wrapped the shoe box with the metallic paper.

Her fingers pried their way under the lid as she slowly lifted it up. She sat it down beside her and carefully grabbed the box. She started blowing into it until she was sure that the box couldn't take any more.

A smile crept across her face as she carefully placed the box under her pillow, making sure that no one in her small family would find her father's present.

It had been going on for a while now. The endless nights, the timeless tears, and the remorseful days. Every night she would hear her parents shouting and crying. She would even hear loud thuds. She felt the vibrations on the floor of her room. It scared her and made her feel like she was completely alone. Sometimes, the girl would dream about her father coming after her, after he dealt with her mother. She was too young and innocent to realize the seriousness of the situation she called her life. Through all of this pain, she still loved her family.

Before all of the fights began, she would hear her family speaking of how little money they had and wondering how they were going to survive. Her father would always say he would get a job, but the only job he was interested in being was a professional stay-at-home drunk and slacker. Her mother would spend all day, and sometimes all night, in the city standing on the street corners in revealing outfits trying to make enough money so that her family could survive one more day.

Every night, the girl hoped that all this madness would stop. She was certain that, on this Christmas Day, her life would change forever.

She closed her eyes and sank into her mattress, indulging in dreams of a fat man in red.

She woke up the next morning and pranced out of bed, quickly
snatching the gold shoe box from under the mattress.

She swung the door open and walked down the hallway until she came into the living area. She could see her mother cutting up fruit on the grubby kitchen counters.

She turned to the circular table, where she could see her father reading the daily newspaper, sipping on a bottle of whiskey.

"Daddy!" she shouted, running up to him and giving him a large hug. "I got you a present!" as she joyfully handed him the box with a smile twice the length of a football field reaching across her cheeks.

Her father took the box and ripped it open. His lifeless hazel eyes seemed to rise from the dead for a moment when he was opening his one and only present.

His smile turned into a deep frown as he lifted the lid.

The box was empty, so he threw it to the ground, ripping it with the soles of his large shoes. The little girl was devastated that her father could throw her present to the ground, like it meant nothing.

"What the hell?!?!" he shouted, his voice rising to a level that seemed like it could break all the glass in the entire city and bust all the light bulbs in the streets of Moscow. "Why is it empty?!?!"

The tone of his voice scared his daughter. She wanted to run away and dig herself a hole in the fresh snow and never come out. Instead, she explained to him, "No daddy!!! I blew kisses in the box and you threw them away!" She was beginning to weep as she could feel her heart coming out of her throat.

Her father didn't want to hear any of this. He pounded his right hand on the photograph of their family, and, with a bang, it broke into several pieces.

Her mother ran up and got a tight grip on her husband's hand, urging him to calm down. The girl's mother embraced him, holding him still as the girl began to hear the sounds of weeping that came out of her father's throat.

She had never seen her father like this; it seemed like it was a dream. The father she loved so much had emotion and feelings!

Nevertheless, the girl didn't know why he was crying and why her mother was hugging him so hard. She thought they might be tears of joy.

It seemed as if her wish had come true. This Christmas would change her life forever. She had always felt like there was a brick wall separating her from her father, but on this Christmas Day, the snow and the wind had knocked it down. She uttered the words, "I love you."

After what seemed like a millennium, they sat down by the warm, crackling fire as the girl and her mother listened to the man in their lives explain why he always seemed to be dead and lifeless and why he did the things he did. It turned out his father had been abusive.

Her father promised to change. The girl and his wife told him that whatever he needed they would give him, and they would be there for him.

The girl's life was never perfect, but it filled her heart with joy, knowing that she had made a difference in her father's life. Money couldn't change anything; it was something as simple as blowing kisses into an empty shoe box and filling it with so much love. That day the girl experienced the true meaning of the holidays — love, caring, and hope.