The Christmas Tags I Read Out Loud

I had a whole year of thinking about it before I did anything.

The year that came after that Christmas was a hard one for everybody.

Dwayne didn’t call on Harley’s birthday in March. He didn’t call on Gunner’s in July.

Gunner turned five and asked Misty at the table if Daddy had lost his phone, and she said probably so, and then she went out on the porch.

Dakota turned nine in September. He didn’t ask about his daddy at all. That worried me more than the asking.

I’d pick Dakota up some Saturdays and take him out to the old strip bench behind Mama’s to shoot his bow at a hay bale.

He was good at it. Better than good. He’d put six arrows in a paper plate at fifteen yards and pretend he didn’t care how I clapped.

One of those Saturdays in October he went quiet in the truck on the way back and said, “Aunt Leah, do you think Daddy’s ever coming back?”

I had to keep both hands on the wheel. “I think your daddy’s working a long way off,” I said. “And I think he loves you. Grownups get lost sometimes, buddy. It’s not because of anything you did.”

He nodded and looked out the window at the creek. “Okay,” he said, and he didn’t ask again.

I never said one unkind word about Dwayne to those kids. Not that day, not any day. Mama would have skinned me, and she would have been right to.

A child is half their daddy. You can’t run the daddy down without the child hearing it about himself.

At work that fall I had a resident named Opal Hatfield, ninety-one, sharp as a tack, born in a coal camp in McDowell County.

I took care of her on second shift, and she liked me to brush out her hair before bed.

One night in November I was brushing her hair and I told her about the tags. I don’t know why. She just had the kind of face you told things to.

Opal listened to the whole thing without saying a word. Then she said, “Honey, a present with somebody else’s name on it is just a thing that showed up. Them children don’t know they’ve got you.”

“They know they’ve got me,” I said. “I’m around all the time.”

“They know you’re around,” she said. “That’s not the same as knowing you carried them.” She patted my hand. “You don’t have to be loud about it. But you don’t have to hide it either.”

I thought about that for two weeks.

Then the Sunday before Thanksgiving I went to Misty’s after church and sat at her little table while the kids watched a movie.

I’d already started my list again. I’d already been picking up doubles since September, same as the year before.

“I’m getting the kids Christmas again,” I said. “I want to.”

Her face did two things at once. It lit up, and then it fell. “Leah, you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” I said. “But I’m asking you to leave my tags alone this time. Just leave them. That’s all I’m asking.”

She looked at the floor. She picked at a thread on her sleeve. Then she said, “We’ll see.”