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Mary had her baby on the twenty-third, two days before Christmas, and she named him Nicolas. She didn’t come back to us after the delivery, but the staff of Life House packed her room and moved her belongings to the sister house, Life Ways. She is parenting her baby, and her sudden disappearance from us makes the holiday feel subdued. For some reason, her having her baby makes us all anxious for our own to come, or maybe it’s just getting close to the end of the year. We are all getting ready for a new chapter in our stories.
Christmas day comes with snow. White, billowing snow. This is the snow that Christmas cards are made of, and when I make my way down the stairs into the front lounge, there is a fire crackling in the fireplace. The room is empty, but the tree in the corner twinkles and sparkles, all the little silver icicles catching the lights and flashing. I stand in the door for the longest time, my hand on the mound of my stomach. I had my twenty-week checkup yesterday, and Little Miss is definitely a Miss, and she is halfway done. I saw toes and fingers and think I counted them all. She is going to be beautiful. I just know it. One of those little fists pushes against my hand, and I give her a little push back. “High-five, baby.”
“Merry Christmas,” a new girl says, with a pudgy little-girl face set atop her pudgy little-girl body. She is red and rosy cheeked with a small, shy voice that squeaks out of her. My face melts into a smile.
“Merry Christmas, Shelly? Is that right?”
She nods with enthusiasm. “And you’re Alison,” she says without a question. “I know everybody’s names, I’m really good with names.” She smiles, and I think she doesn’t belong here; she belongs in a little-girl prep school.
“That’s cool.”
“When are you due?”
“In May,” I say, touching the little plastic icicles, letting my fingers trail through them, remembering the day we all put the tree up. “How about you?” I can’t gauge because of the way she is built; she may be five months or she may just be chubby.
“I’m June. I’m so glad I won’t be pregnant during August. My sister had her kid in September last year, and she was miserable all through the summer. She was all swelled up and puffy and just couldn’t hardly stand the heat. She couldn’t get naked enough.” She laughs, and I smile at her, the little chatterbox. What life has she lived to make her who she is? I wonder, like I wonder about everyone I meet.
“Well, that’s good that you’re June then.” I start to angle back out the door, not really sure I can handle this much energy yet today.
“My folks are going to come today,” she says, and I stop in my tracks.
“Your parents are coming here?”
“Sure. Probably after lunch, but still. It will be good to see them.” She smiles.
“That’s nice.”
“They just didn’t want everybody at school knowing I was knocked up, you know, so they brought me here until the baby comes. I mean, everybody knows, right? People aren’t stupid. But they’re telling everybody I’m spending the year with my Aunt in Vermont. I mean really, I’m gonna get back and people are going to be like, ‘How was Vermont?’ and I’ll be all like, ‘Oh you know, it was Vermonty.’ I’ve never even been to Vermont.” She laughs at her own little joke, and I realize that she isn’t just young—she is a different species. “So my boyfriend, he’s seventeen, the captain of the football team, and we were going to just run away so we could be together and keep the baby, but his parents were all like, ‘Whoa, you have a scholarship and you are going to college, damn, she’s only fourteen,’ and whatever, so we decided maybe we shouldn’t do that. Then my parents were like, ‘We’ll just say you went to your aunt’s for the year and nobody will know,’ but like, everybody totally knows. I told my girlfriend Mona, and she told . . . well, she told everybody.”
“Wow,” I say. I am at a loss after all those words and the meanings of it all. “Sounds like quite a story.”
“Well, I’m just so glad that this place had room for me. I don’t even know my Aunt Claudette, and I’m sure that would have totally sucked. And everybody here has been so nice to me. It’s like family.”
“So you’re fourteen?” I confirm.
“Yeah. But I’ll be fifteen next month, and everybody says I’m mature for my age.” I wonder if they are only talking about her breasts, which definitely seem mature, because this little girl seems very much like she should still be coloring with crayons.
“That’s good.” I give up trying to get out of the room because Cici and Beatrice have joined us, and I just can’t quite bear to tear myself away from this little whirlwind. Cici gives me a squeeze and a “Merry Christmas,” and Beatrice goes over to the fireplace, stretching out her hand to the heat. Cici is ready to pop. Her whole face seems more broad than it did just yesterday, but mostly her pretty little ski-slope nose. She is wearing sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt, and she looks like an elf with her short hair and rosy cheeks.
“How you feeling?” I ask her. She had to let her job go last week when her ankles started swelling and she couldn’t stand for long.
“Like a tick,” she says, but she is grinning.
“Oh my God. Look at you. When are you due?” Shelly asks.
“Not till February, actually.” She smiles at Shelly, not her normal “I don’t know you, so get away from me” smile, but her “Oh you’re harmless, you can stay” smile. Nobody in the room thinks there is any chance Cici will make it all the way to February.
The intercom breaks, and “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” begins to crackle through it. We laugh and sing along where we know the words, exaggerating the lisp of missing front teeth.
“Ladies, Ladies, Ladies,” Janice says, pushing through the door with a bag over her shoulder. She is dressed all in red, and where I thought Cici looked like an elf, I have to reevaluate, because Little Janice, even in her customary high heels still doesn’t top the tape at five feet.
We hug all around, and it is warm and cozy in the lounge. The rest of the girls are making their way down, and I’m sure the music is piping through the whole building and everybody’s intercom is surely hopping with “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” by now.
“I’m so pleased to see you all here with me today. This is a special day, and I want you to think about the gift you are preparing to send into the world. Your child is just like the Baby Jesus, coming from a humble start, but each and every one of your babies will have the opportunity to go out into the world and do great things. You’ve chosen to give this gift, and for that you will be blessed in your lives. You have made an honorable and righteous choice.” She emphasizes the word choice, and many of us may be tempted to groan, because if she isn’t praying, she is preaching the power of choice. “I don’t know what choices you made that brought you to us.” There is some laughter, because clearly we all know what choice brought us here. “But I feel honored to know each and every one of you. You are amazing people. Amazing women. Strong and resilient. When you leave us, after you have given your gift, I want you to go into the world and do great things.”
Cici reaches out and takes my hand, and when I look over at her, I see that she is crying, and I realize that, like me, these are words that no parent ever said to her. Nobody ever believed she was meant for great things; nobody ever let her believe in the possibility of doing something amazing. I squeeze her hand, and even though we make fun, a little, of Janice and her Godliness, I am grateful, too, that finally somebody has said these words to us, these words that we should all have grown up hearing. I look around the room and realize that others are crying, sniffling, hiding their tears in lowered lashes. We will all be different people when we leave this building. I look at Shelly and wonder if she will be the only one among us who will walk out of this building relatively unchanged. Perhaps she has heard these words, alone amongst us all. She is smiling, looking at the twinkling fire, perhaps thinking of what we will eat for lunch.