Twelve Presents for My Brother, One Small Box for Me

My stepbrother had opened twelve Christmas presents before I lifted the lid on my one small box, and by then the wrapping paper had spread across the living-room rug like a second carpet. Inside the box lay a pair of gray socks decorated with tiny white snowflakes. I held them in my hands and tried to smile, because I knew they were useful, and because I had already learned that a child could make a grown-up uncomfortable simply by looking disappointed.

That morning, our home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, smelled of cinnamon rolls, fresh pine, and the vanilla candle my stepmother lit whenever someone came to visit. Frost had traced the edges of the windows overnight, while the television played a crackling fireplace beneath a choir singing familiar Christmas songs. Everything looked warm and cheerful, but I remember feeling as if I had been left just outside the circle of it.

My name is Natalie, and I was eleven that Christmas. My stepbrother, Mason, was twelve. His mother, Dana, had married my father, Adam, three years earlier, and since then we had shared a house, a bus route, and all the ordinary disputes that come with living alongside another child. We argued about the last glass of orange juice and whose turn it was to take out the recycling, but most days I called him my brother, and he called me his sister.

Dad worked as a mechanic for the city bus system, and the weeks before Christmas had kept him at the garage later than usual. Dana, who managed the office at a neighborhood pharmacy, handled most of the holiday shopping. She kept lists, compared prices, and had a way of knowing which store had the best deal before the rest of us had even thought to look.

Mason began opening gifts at seven thirty. The first was a pair of sneakers in the exact style he had been asking for since September. He hugged the box and thanked Dad, trying to act casual, though the grin spreading across his face made that impossible. Next came a hoodie, then a remote-control car, a new backpack, a sports bottle, a book, a board game, a LEGO set, and a headset. Mason thanked everyone as he went, and he did not make a show of his good fortune; he was simply a boy enjoying Christmas morning.

I counted the gifts because, after a while, I did not know what else to do.

Dana kept reaching beneath the tree, and each time she found another package with Mason’s name written across the tag in her slanted handwriting. He tore the paper carefully at the corners, saving the bows on the rug as if he meant to keep the day from ending too quickly. The eleventh present was a gaming console. The twelfth was a game to go with it.

When the last box was open, I saw a small red one tucked behind the tree stand. Dana picked it up and smiled toward me.

“Natalie, there’s yours.”

The box was so light that I wondered if something had fallen out. I lifted the lid and found tissue paper, then the socks, folded into a neat square. A price sticker had been bent beneath the cardboard hanger, but I could still read the number: $7.99.

I needed new socks. The pair I had worn to school the day before had a thin place at each heel, and one toe was beginning to show through. Still, I could not stop looking at the open presents around Mason’s knees.

“Thanks,” I said.

Dad glanced at the box, then rubbed his thumb along the handle of his coffee mug. Dana gathered some wrapping paper and kept her voice bright.

“They’ll be nice for school. And remember, Christmas isn’t about presents; it’s about family. You have a lot to be grateful for.”

I nodded, because I had become good at nodding when I could not tell which answer would make a room easier for everyone else.

“Mason had a longer list,” Dana added, as though I had asked her to explain. “He knows what he wants, and he’s older. You didn’t ask for much.”

I had asked for one thing. Everyone in the room should have known about it.

Mason held the new console by its handle. He looked at it, then at my little box, and finally lowered his eyes. He was not laughing or gloating, and that somehow made the room harder to understand. I knew he had noticed the difference, but I did not know what he was thinking.

“You’ll have another Christmas with your mom next week,” Dana said. “This isn’t the only holiday you’ll have.”

My mother lived in Cincinnati, two hours away, and I was going to visit her before New Year’s. But that would be another home and another morning. I had never thought a parent’s love at one house could be used to make my place in a different house feel smaller.

I folded the tissue paper over the socks and returned them to the box. Dad watched me do it. Then the oven timer began beeping in the kitchen, and he turned toward it.

Grandma Ruth had been sitting in Dad’s old armchair, one hand resting on her purse. She was sixty-eight, a retired elementary-school librarian with red reading glasses on a chain and a habit of noticing things other people hoped no one would notice. She had arrived the night before with shortbread cookies and an overnight bag, and she had spent half the evening helping me tie ribbons around the cinnamon ornaments I had made for everyone’s place settings.

Now she leaned forward and looked beneath the tree.

“Adam,” she said, “where’s Natalie’s drawing tablet?”

Dad stopped halfway out of his chair. Dana’s hand went still above the wrapping paper.

“Her what?” Dana asked.

“The tablet for her drawings,” Grandma replied. “I sent Adam four hundred dollars to buy it.”

The television fireplace crackled. No one spoke, and I could hear the sound as clearly as if the screen were in another room.

Dad sat back down. “Dana told me it was out of stock. We were going to order it after Christmas.”

Grandma looked at him for a long moment, then at me. “I came last night, and I thought perhaps it was hidden somewhere. But Natalie has opened her only present, so I’m asking now.”

Dana began collecting bows from the rug. “We’ll take care of it, Ruth. There’s no need to make this uncomfortable in front of the kids.”

“The kids already saw what happened,” Grandma said. Her voice was calm, but the question was firm. “Natalie deserves an answer.”

She opened her purse and took out her phone. On the screen was a photograph of a check, written in her careful handwriting. The amount was four hundred dollars, and beside the word “Memo” she had written: For Natalie’s tablet.

“That’s the check I mailed your father,” she told me. “I didn’t forget your present.”

Something in my chest loosened and hurt at the same time. I had not been greedy, or mistaken, or asking for too much. Someone had remembered. Someone had wanted me to have the thing I had spent months hoping for.

Dad placed his mug on the coffee table.

“Dana,” he said, “did you ever actually order Natalie’s tablet?”

Dana did not answer.

Grandma turned her phone so Dad could see the check. “Let’s start with that. Then we can talk about where the money went.”

The Drawing Tablet I Had Been Promised

Three weeks earlier, I had believed that a check with my name written on it was almost the same as a promise.

Grandma called on Saturday, December fifth, while I was doing homework at the kitchen table. A library book leaned against the salt shaker, and my sketchbook lay open beside it. I had seven blank pages left. I was drawing a winter scene for an art-club assignment, but I had erased the girl’s face so many times that the paper had started to shine.

“I have a little Christmas surprise for you,” Grandma said. “Your dad is going to get you that drawing tablet you’ve been talking about. I sent the money for it.”

“All of it?” I asked.

“All four hundred dollars. Don’t faint on me now.”

I almost laughed. A tablet with a stylus meant I could draw without rubbing holes through the paper. I could change a line, try a different color, and save my work when I was finished. I had watched videos about digital drawing at the library, but I had never owned anything like that.

“What if it’s too much?” I asked.

“That’s for the person giving the gift to decide, sweetheart. I know you’ll use it.”

She promised Dad would choose a sturdy case, and then she made me promise not to ask her how many days remained until Christmas.

“I’m an old woman,” she said. “There’s only so much suspense I can take.”

That evening, I drew a Christmas tree for her card and wrote, Thank you for believing I can make something good, beneath the branches. I folded the picture carefully and tucked it inside the card I had made for her.

Mom called the next day from Cincinnati. Under the custody schedule, I spent most school nights with Dad, and Christmas Day was his year. Mom planned to pick me up before New Year’s, and she asked whether there was anything special I wanted to do during my visit.

“Could we go to the art museum?” I asked.

“I think we can manage that,” she said.

Mom and Dad tried not to make their homes compete with each other, and I had always been grateful for that. I never imagined one adult would use the arrangement as a reason to expect less from me in another house.

In our home, Dana handled most of the shopping. She was organized, practical, and quick to find a coupon, whether she was buying groceries or holiday decorations. Dad said he was glad she took care of the gifts while he worked extra shifts at the bus garage.

She handled more than the gifts. When Mason needed new cleats, Dana ordered them before dinner. When I outgrew my winter boots, she told me we should wait for a sale. When Mason needed a large piece of foam board for a science project, they drove to two stores that night. When I asked for a ride to an art-club exhibit, she said she would try to fit it around his basketball practice. She never did, and Dad missed the exhibit too.

None of those moments had seemed important enough to complain about. Mason’s game started earlier. My boots were technically wearable. The school displayed the artwork for another week. I learned how to add up reasons until they began to sound like an explanation.

Mason did not keep score. He made popcorn when I got stuck on homework and once let me borrow his good colored pencils after mine broke. He teased me because I drew every dog with the same serious expression; I teased him because he talked to his video games as though they were people. We were ordinary siblings, except in the places where adults decided we did not quite belong to the same rules.

On December twelfth, Dana took Mason shopping. She said she had errands to run and would be home by supper. Mason stayed in the car while she went into an electronics store. He told me later that he had seen a shopping bag in the trunk and assumed it was something for Dad.

A few days before Christmas, I asked Dana about my tablet while she wrapped gifts at the dining-room table. She had built a little wall of boxes in front of herself, so I could not see what she was wrapping.

“It sold out,” she said without looking up.

“Could we try another store?”

“I’ll take care of it after Christmas, Natalie. Don’t make a big thing out of it.”

I wanted to ask whether Grandma knew. Instead, I helped Dana gather the scraps of ribbon that had fallen onto the floor.

On Christmas Eve, Grandma arrived with a tin of shortbread and an overnight bag. Mason reached the door first, so she hugged him before she hugged me. When she wrapped her arms around me, she squeezed hard enough to slide my glasses down my nose.

That night, we made cinnamon ornaments for the tree. Mason cut his into a lopsided star. I made a little house with four windows and a chimney. Beneath it, in tiny letters, I wrote the word home.

After Grandma had gone to bed, I came downstairs for a glass of water and found Dad standing by the tree. His hands were in his pockets, and he was looking at the pile of presents with the expression he wore when he knew he had forgotten something important.

“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked.

“Sure, Nat. Just tired.”

I nearly asked why none of the larger boxes had my name on them. I did not. I wanted to believe there was a surprise too special to leave beneath the tree.

Dad looked at me, then at the packages.