Am I going to hell?

“Am I going to hell?” I wearily asked my older sister.

“Probably.” She smiled.

That is how that Easter began or ended, honestly it is kind of a blur. But it was a valid question.

My sister was newly married and anxious to be hosting, eager to please her new in-laws, while playing peace keeper between our own parents and their plus ones.

So when she found out there was a house party near the college campus it seemed like a good way to shake off some anxiety. It wasn’t really her husbands “scene,” so she invited me. To say that there was anything remarkable about this party would be a lie. It was an average midwestern home, a split level. As she had driven, it was agreed she would have one drink but I was free to consume whatever.

My sister joined most of the women who were upstairs, where it was quieter, tamer. I headed downstairs, where to my pleasant surprise, was the majority of the school’s men’s lacrosse team. It didn’t take long to make new friends…and of course I wanted to play a drinking game.

The last thing I remember is my sister coaxing me off the bar, while I trashed talk the “big men,” who had forfeited our drinking game. I reassured my sister that I was “finnnnnnne.” She agreed, as I was marshalled to her yellow beetle. It was technically Easter and I was starting it in style.

“Don’t drive so fast! Oh my god this is my song, turn up the volume! I am hungry! Lets get white castle! Oh man I don’t feel so good!” I rambled on.

“DO. NOT. BARF. IN. MY. CAR.” She said sternly.

I hiccupped and she rolled down the windows to rid the car of the toxic smell. But suddenly it felt like we were the Millennium Falcon, the world was moving too fast and I shrieked at her to pull over.

She pulled over as quickly as she could and I got out of the car before I began retching up all the alcohol. It was like the scene from the exorcist, and of course when I was finally able to look up, I was on a church lawn. The bright marquee reading “Easter Morning Egg Hunt 9:00 am.” I could picture the little girls in their Sunday best, with lacey socks looking for eggs and finding my vomit.

I walked back to the car, and my sister asked “better?”

“Yeah, I am fine.”

I was fine enough that I repeated the performance all over my sisters front lawn, and then declared that I was starving.

My new brother-in-law's (who I hardly knew and didn’t quite like) face was filled with sheer terror, when he saw my very intoxicated state. It didn’t help when my sister asked him to go get the big pot out of the kitchen.

“But I am hungry.” I protested as my sister removed my muddy boots and told me repeatedly that the pot was right next to the couch.

They retreated to their bedroom upstairs. I was sick once more in that super conveniently placed pot, but then I laid there wide awake and starving. I crept into the kitchen, there was plate with cookies on the counter. I had what I thought was a few, and satiated I curled back up on the couch, finally falling asleep.

The late night meant the entire house had a really late start, but it was clanging in the kitchen woke me.

“Who ate all the cookies?!” My sister asked.

“I had a few.” I called from the living room.

“A few!” My sister said thrusting the nearly empty plate by my face.

She gagged and recoiled as she noticed the pot left near me was not empty.

“Is that my good pot?”

“I don’t know.”

“That IS my good pot. I need that to cook today.” Her pitch getting increasingly higher.

“Good morning,” said my unsuspecting brother-in-law who like me would learn that day that there were “pots” and there were “good pots.” It was lesson learned the hard way.

The morning flew by, and with the pot of sick discarded, my sister went to fussing over details. She panicked when she realized her front lawn was also scarred from the night before. She asked my brother-in-law to get the garden hose, how she thought this would work was beyond me. Dutifully he attempted and returned crestfallen.

“I tried, but there are chunks...”

She cut him off “Stop talking. I don’t want to know.”

Our mother showed up first, she was already drunk and verbally abusing her date. He seemed sweet enough, albeit practically mute. Mom went straight for the bottle of wine.

My sisters in-laws showed up next. My sister went around offering drinks and appetizers trying to be the perfect hostess.

“What’s all over your grass?” My sisters father in law asked. My brother in law shot him a glance and the subject was dropped.

Last to show up was my father with my stepmother, who my mother hated with a passion. Before they had arrived, she had asked loudly to my sisters horror, "is he bringing the homewrecker?"

“What’s in your grass?” my dad asked.

“I will tell you later.” I mouthed.

The dinner table was cramped both physically and as the adults traded verbal jabs at one another. Not only did my mother detest my stepmother, she had also taken issue with my sisters mother in law. The bottle of wine she had already downed wasn’t helping. The insults became less and less veiled.

The meal wasn’t done quite as my sister had wanted as she was down two pot.. the good one which she deemed beyond cleaning and the other one which was missing its lid.

Conversation was redirected, the weather brought up repeatedly, but the straw that broke the camels back was the innocent question that came out of nowhere, “is there any desert?”

With tears in her eyes from the disaster that had been that day and any hope of a good impression my sister said “I did make cookies…”

“But I ate them all.” My brother-in-law interjected, while squeezing my sister’s hand under the table. I guess he isn't so bad I thought.

My sister grabbed the wine and began to drink liberally, and by the time everyone was leaving she called out “watch out for the vomit in the yard!”