The Christmas Tags I Read Out Loud

People have asked me since why I didn’t make a bigger fuss.

Why I didn’t tell Mama the first year, or tell Misty she owed me, or make her pay me back. And I always tell them the same thing.

It was a Christmas, not a lawsuit. I didn’t want her money. She didn’t have any money.

I only wanted my own name on my own gifts, so three kids would know somebody had remembered them on purpose.

“We’ll see” was not a yes. I knew my sister. “We’ll see” meant she’d do it again and cry about it in the kitchen afterward.

So this time I didn’t drop anything off on Christmas Eve. I wrapped every present at my own table, twelve of them, and wrote every tag in plain black marker, and I kept them stacked in my back bedroom with the door shut.

The week before Christmas I told Mama what I was planning. I didn’t want to surprise her in her own living room.

She was sitting at her kitchen table cutting out sugar cookies, and she didn’t stop cutting while I talked.

When I finished she set down the cookie cutter and wiped her hands on her apron. “I wondered about them tags last year,” she said. “Dwayne Dalton never bought a bow in his life.”

“I don’t want to hurt her, Mama.”

“I know you don’t.” She looked at me over her glasses. “Then don’t. Read them kind. Don’t you say one word about that boy’s daddy, and don’t you look at your sister like you won. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Leah.” She picked the cutter back up. “You ought to have told me last year. I’d have helped. That’s what Mamas are for.”

Christmas morning I got up at five, scraped the frost off my windshield, and loaded twelve presents into my back seat and trunk.

It took three trips. Gunner’s big box and the long box for Dakota went in last.

The road up the holler was white at the edges and clear down the middle. Smoke was coming out of every chimney I passed.

Somebody’s dogs ran along the fence beside me for a quarter mile, barking like I owed them money.

When I pulled in, the kids were already up. I could see them through Mama’s front window, three little heads moving around the tree, and Mama’s colored lights blinking red and blue and green on the glass.

Misty’s car was in the driveway. She’d brought the kids over early, same as every year.

I sat in my car a minute with the engine running and said a short prayer, the kind Daddy used to say before he went underground. Lord, keep me steady.

Then I started carrying presents in.

Gunner saw me first. “Aunt Leah’s got more presents!” he yelled, and he came running in his striped pajamas. Harley came behind him in her pink ones, and Dakota came last, slow, the way nine-year-olds do everything.

Misty was in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in her hands. She saw the stack in my arms and the stack already in the hall, and her face went still.

“Leah,” she said. Just my name.

I set the presents down by the tree. “Morning, Sister,” I said, and I kissed her on the cheek on my way back out to the car for the rest.