Belief Is A Thing
Belief Is A Thing
Going In Style
December 10, 2020
Bertha’s Beautiful Holiday Awakening
Bertha Amalfitano desperately needs cash for Christmas. She is home from beauty school even though she didn’t in fact have to go away to beauty school this semester because of COVID-19 protocols. Those restrictions made it a tough few months at beauty school, forcing Bertha to practice her beauty techniques alone at home on mannequins, her cat, her dog, and on herself in front of the mirror.
Still, Bertha perseveres.
But now the St. Martin Adolphus Beauty School and Music Academy is on Christmas break and Bertha needs to rake in a little dough for Christmas presents and for the second semester which will be measurably more difficult, what with the mannequins being replaced by corpses and what not.
Bertha applies for a job at a restaurant but it only offers takeout because of the pandemic so they don’t need any help so instead of a job Bertha goes home only with a bag of fries and a touch of sympathy.
The carwash isn’t hiring either but, because it’s Christmas, they do offer Bertha a free carwash even though she doesn’t have a car which she still gladly accepts and soon regrets.
Wet, clean, and scarred, Bertha then tries to get hired by the police department and even brings her own gun thinking this will help.
It doesn’t.
Bertha spends three days in jail which gives her plenty of time to think about her life choices and about an idea she’d been sketching out for months on how to revolutionize the beauty care industry by bypassing makeup and hair products for what Bertha tells the lady in the jail cell next to hers is something called “A Total Face and Head Replacement.”
“How does one replace someone’s face and head?” Bertha’s fellow jailbird asks.
“I’m still working on that,” Bertha says.
After her three days and nights in the clink Bertha is allowed to go home. She asks for her gun back but is denied and instead she is given a shovel because for her entire three days behind bars it has been snowing.
“Is that why you never gave me any food?” Bertha asks the cops.
“No,” they tell her. “We were just trying to kill you.”
“Harrumph!” Bertha snaps back and grabs her shovel and steps into the Arctic abyss and begins shoveling.
After months of cutting her own hair, putting lipstick on the dog, slapping nail polish on mannequins, and doing thousands of nude pushups, Bertha’s arms, shoulders, legs, neck, back, and molars are freakishly powerful though she has maintained her girlish figure. And so Bertha attacks the snow like her father’s cousins taught her to tame plate after plate of spaghetti during all those summers in Palermo and she feverishly cuts a path through the mountain of snow, like a hot curling iron through rancid oleo.
Bertha does what the snowplows, snow blowers, shovels, and prayers could not and the snow on the sidewalk disappears and the pavement reemerges and all the townspeople rejoice and follow her. The police helicopter takes to the air and shouts encouragement and directions, diverting the determined Bertha onto the town’s main streets, side streets, alleys, and secret pathways as a parade of townsfolk trail her, finally able to dig out their cars and children and go to the grocery store, the bowling alley and, well, that’s about it because it’s still a pandemic but still, it’s glorious.
“Bertha saved Christmas!” They sing and dance by the hundreds. “Bertha saved Christmas!” And Bertha barely hears them, still shoveling away with bionic madness until, by sunset, every sidewalk and street in town is clear and Bertha reaches her own home and collapses in exhaustion.
“Will anyone shovel my sidewalk?” Bertha asks the women, men, animals, and children who have been trailing her and feeding her wine and kale to keep her going.
“Fuck you, Bertha!” The townspeople laugh and squeal but when Bertha threatens to put all the snow back they stop mocking her and quickly clear her walk.
Then they get a throne and carry Bertha Amalfitano to her front door and, like George Bailey on Christmas Eve, all her neighbors come pouring in showering her with cash, RC Cola, and cigarettes as the dog and cat and mannequins dance with joy and Bertha weeps with appreciation.
One neighbor, an always annoying guy named Dashiell Pink, enters Bertha’s house without wearing a mask and someone shoots him. Other than that it is a memorable night of triumph and joy.
Bertha now has more than enough money not only for her second semester of beauty school and presents for all her friends and family but also for the blue Cadillac the fortune cookie promised her the night of her junior prom, years ago.
Bertha Amalfitano buys toys, sweaters, dildos, cereal, and all sorts of more delightful Christmas presents for her friends and family and, even though they cannot gather together for Christmas, it’s one of the best holidays ever.
Sadly, the St. Martin Adolphus Beauty School and Music Academy is forced to close in January when a burst pipe floods the building, destroying all the mannequins and electric sitars.
Still, Bertha perseveres. She puts the dog and cat and her favorite mannequin into the Cadillac and drives north. There is always snow somewhere, she knows. And hair. And beauty awaiting an awakening. --TK
Thursday, December 10, 2020