The Window Grandma Opened on Christmas Eve

Eleven angels

Grandma woke up when the kids started whispering, and she was delighted to see them. She made Tanner bring her the plate, and she ate her Christmas ham right there in the recliner with Lily on the arm of the chair, and declared it the best ham she ever had.

Then Lily got her shoebox.

She went around my tiny living room and handed out the clothespin angels one at a time. Uncle Kevin. Aunt Missy. Tanner, who is fourteen and too cool for everything, said “Thanks, Lil,” and put his in his shirt pocket so the head stuck out, and wore it there the rest of the night.

Kevin’s kids had brought their gifts from the exchange, and they made Lily open one, a craft kit with beads and string. She sat on the floor and made Grandma a bracelet that did not fit over her hand, and Grandma wore it anyway, halfway up her fingers, like a ring.

At ten o’clock there were still four angels left in the box. One for Aunt Barb, one for Uncle Ron, one for the cousin from Ottumwa.

And one that said Grama Janet.

Lily held it up and looked at me.

“Should I keep it for her?” she asked.

I did not know what to say. Grandma did.

“You keep it right there in your box,” Grandma said. “Christmas isn’t over till tomorrow night.”

Christmas morning

My mother’s car pulled up in front of the duplex at 8:15 on Christmas morning. I saw it from the kitchen window while I was making coffee.

She did not get out.

She sat behind the wheel with the engine running and the exhaust curling up white in the cold. I watched her for maybe ten minutes. I did not go out. I did not know what I would say.

Grandma came up beside me at the window in her housecoat, the one I had lent her, which was much too long for her.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“Grandma, it’s twelve degrees.”

“Then you’d better get me my coat.”

She went out in her good navy coat with the clothespin angel still pinned on it, and her bedroom slippers, and got in the passenger side of my mother’s car. They sat there together for almost half an hour. I could not see their faces through the windshield.

At five minutes to nine, both car doors opened.

My mother came up my sidewalk behind my grandmother with a wrapped box in both hands. Her eyes were swollen. She had not put on any makeup, which I had never in my life seen my mother go out of the house without.

I opened the door before she knocked. We stood there.

“I’d like to talk to Lily first,” my mother said. “If that’s all right with you.”

I called Lily. She came to the door in her pajamas with the reindeer feet, holding her stuffed rabbit, and she stopped when she saw who it was. She stood behind my legs.

My mother got down on her knees on my doormat. My mother is sixty-eight and has two bad knees and does not kneel down for anybody.

“Lily,” she said. “Yesterday I did something mean. I shut the door on you and your mama, and that was wrong, and it wasn’t because of anything you did. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not one thing. I’m very sorry.”

Lily looked up at me. I nodded.

“Okay,” Lily said.

My mother held out the wrapped box. It was the fifty-dollar gift from the exchange, I found out later, the one she had brought for the grab bag, a doll with a whole wardrobe of clothes.

Lily took it. Then she said, “Wait,” and ran to her room.

She came back with the shoebox and took out the last angel, the one that said Grama Janet, with the J backwards, and handed it to my mother.

My mother held that clothespin angel in her palm and cried like I had not seen her cry since the night my father left.