If she were here on Flatbush Avenue, Madame Auguste would have bought a gift for everyone in our class. I wish I could buy a present for everyone in our class. I know that Pouchon would have liked the electric train set. Thérèse would have liked a sewing machine, which looked too big to be a toy. I kept thinking of all the students in my class and what toys they would have liked until I made a game of it while winding talking dolls, watching train sets go around sharp bends on narrow tracks, and listening to sirens on small police cars left out to tempt buyers.

When everyone, including Moy, had gathered quite a few packages, Papa asked me what kind of present we should get for Tante Rose. I thought of the perfect gift. We went to a small photo studio owned by a Haitian man on Flatbush Avenue and took a family photo that we would not only send to Tante Rose but to Granmè Melina and Granpè Nozial as well.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24

Franck invited us to go to Christmas Eve Mass with him at Saint Jerome’s. The Mass was in Creole. There were so many Haitians in the church that if not for the cold, I would have thought we were at a Mass with Tante Rose in Port-au-Prince.

I thought of Thérèse playing the part of Mary in the Nativity play in Beau Jour. The whole village would gather to watch the play.

For many of the parents, this would be one of the few moments when they would see their children’s book learning at work. I think this is one of the reasons Madame Auguste held the pageant in the first place—Madame Auguste who, like Tante Rose, had lived in Beau Jour as a child and had gone to the city for schooling, but had returned to open the school because she was the first person in her family to have learned to read and write.

At Saint Jerome’s, Haiti did not seem so far away. I felt that if I reached out and touched anyone at the Mass, I could be back in Haiti again, as though every person there was carrying a piece of Haiti with them in the warmth of their skin, beneath their winter coats.

LATER

Before we went to sleep, Moy surprised us by bringing out his tap tap fanal. He had undone it in Beau Jour and put it with his clothes and reconstructed it again last night, keeping it hidden until now.

Papa had not seen a fanal in a long time. Moy hung the fanal from the kitchen entrance like a plant. We all looked up at it as though it was the star of Bethlehem.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 25

The first thing we did when we got up this morning was call Tante Rose to wish her Jwaye Nowèl.