Betty finishes wrapping. It is a gray December mid-morning. Lincoln is at school and One-Two somewhere scouring junkyards for antique sinks with which to replace the cracked porcelain in the Windsor. She ties the last bow and places the boxes under the tree One-Two has set up in the corner. She thinks maybe they are right about her gifts; since Simon’s release, she has given them less of herself, and these presents, sitting like bright brutes under the tree, are her way of making up for emotional selfishness. One-Two and Lincoln’s tentative analyses may be more accurate than they know.

Their first Christmases in the city were poor ones. They couldn’t afford new boots or jackets, much less had time for a tree. Instead, she bundled the kids up after they came home from school and walked out among the rich shoppers downtown. They forwent the bus and, with Lester and Simon trading the girls from back to back, they walked and ran downtown where they listened to music and Betty dispensed nickels for cider and hot chocolate.

They sat on benches and chatted with strangers. Betty made faces at passing dogs, which even made Simon laugh. It wasn’t just their family, maybe the times were different. People talked to one another, women nodding into each other’s shopping bags and the men stood with their hands in their pockets, calling one another “buddy.”

Betty and the kids didn’t care that everyone around them seemed to have more, that these white people bought present after present, giddy with excess. They weren’t jealous or resentful. Their family had less, that’s all, and they weren’t the only ones. Being poor was a fact, and at that time, not a shameful one. They had enough, and that was enough. No way could Betty afford twenty-five-dollar sneakers, red swoosh or no. For a kid who’s just going to grow out of them anyway? She would have laughed at the idea.

Simon and Lester would start throwing snow at the girls, who shrieked and ran. They sounded scared but the looks they cast over their snowy shoulders were full of delight. They chased one another around and around the bench. Now it would be unseemly, rude, but at the time the shoppers stepped deftly out of the way and let the children have at it.