Corpus Christi was our church. Despite our forays into the Pentacostal church on Grand and visits to the Bible-Baptists’ backyard for candy and praise, Corpus was the Catholic church we’d attended for years. The place my mother had worshipped saints while practicing free love before leaving the city; the old brick building on the corner of Main and Prince where each of us had been baptized.
Someone from the church found out we were back in town, poorer than ever, and the parishioners swelled with generosity. They organized and collected, and a few days before Christmas, a nun with a raw face delivered two green garbage bags full of gifts. Steph and I watched as she and a helper lugged the bags upstairs, but hid as the front door was opened. We wanted the gifts, but couldn’t bear the pity. We listened from another room, emerging only as we heard our mother thanking the givers one final time.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like cocoa?” she said, and when they refused, “Well, thank you,” and “Merry Christmas,” no trace of shame in her voice.
Steph and I came out from hiding to find that our mother had locked the bags away in the closet where she stored private things. The closet was in the living room, and took on a new power once the donated gifts were stashed inside.
Unable to resist the closet’s mystique, we took to playing with the lock as we talked. We’d sit on the floor, fingers on the lock, turning it back and forth as we laughed and exchanged stories. We sat there for hours, twirling that lock like a strand of hair.
When we were alone, we tried to pick it. With hairpins, clothes hangers, the caps of pens. Nothing worked. Until I pried the thin silver key from a can of donated Spam and rushed it over to Steph, hoping she’d be impressed, but she only looked at me flat-lipped and said she didn’t think it would work. Still, she took the tiny key into her hand, and when she tried it, the lock popped open.
The Spam key was a rare success for me, but I checked my loopy smile. I needed Steph, after all, more than I needed triumph, so I tucked my pride away and congratulated her on opening the door.
Inside, we found the bags of donated gifts along with the items our mother had managed to purchase on layaway—an assortment of things we had asked for and things others imagined poor children might like. Pushing through the gifts, we tried to decide who would get what. Rachel was the baby, so naturally she’d get the Gloworm. Will would get the tube socks; Anthony, the puzzle; Lisa, the perfumed lotion; and either of us could get the package marked “Girl, Aged 9-12.”