Free The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat

said, “but there, in Haiti or the Philippines, that’s where people see everything, even things they’re not supposed to see. So if I see a woman’s face in a rose, I’d think somebody drew it there, but if you see it, Manman, you think it’s a miracle.”
    They were coming off the Jackie Robinson Parkway and turning onto Jamaica Avenue, where traffic came to an abrupt stop at the busy intersection. Anne tried to take her mind off the past and bring her thoughts back to the Mass. She loved going to Mass on Christmas Eve, the only time she and her husband and daughter ever attended church together.
    When her daughter was a girl, before going to the Christmas Eve Mass, they would drive around their Brooklyn neighborhood to look at the holiday lights. Their community associations were engaged in fierce competition, awarding a prize to the block with the best Nativity scenes, lawn sculptures, wreaths, and banners. Still, Anne and her husband had put up no decorations, fearing, irrationally perhaps, that lit ornaments and trimmings would bring too much attention to them. Instead it was their lack of participation that made them stand out, but by then they had already settled into their routine and couldn’t bring themselves to change it.
    When her daughter was still living at home, the only way Anne honored the season with her daughter—aside from attending the Christmas Eve Mass—was to put a handful of shredded brown paper under her daughter’s bed without her knowledge. The frayed paper was a substitute for the hay that had been part of the baby Jesus’ first bed. Over her bedroom doorway, she also hung a sprig of mistletoe. She’d once heard a mistletoe vendor say that mistletoe had all sorts of reconciliatory qualities, so that if two enemies ever found themselves beneath it, they would have to lay down their weapons and embrace each other.
    By offering neither each other nor their daughter any presents at Christmas, Anne and her husband had tried to encourage her to be thankful for what she already had— family, a roof over her head—rather than count on what she would, or could, receive on Christmas morning. Their daughter had learned this lesson so well that Christmas no longer interested her. She didn’t care about shopping; she didn’t watch the endless specials on TV. The only part of the holiday the daughter seemed to enjoy was the drive from block to block to criticize the brightest houses.
    “Look at that one,” her husband would shout, pointing to the arches of icicle lights draped over one house from top to bottom. “Can you imagine how high their electricity bill is going to be?”
    “I wouldn’t be able to sleep in a place like that,” the daughter would say, singling out a neon holiday greeting in a living room window. “It must be as bright as daylight in there, all the time.”
    The traffic was flowing again. As they approached St. Thérèse’s, her husband and daughter were engaged in their own Christmas ritual, her husband talking about the astronomical cost of Christmas decorations and her daughter saying that one lavishly decorated house after another looked like “an inferno.” Meanwhile, Anne tried to think of the Christmas carols they would sing during the Mass. “Silent Night” was her favorite. She hummed the peaceful melody and mouthed the words in anticipation.
    Sleep in heavenly peace.

Sleep in heavenly peace.
    The church was packed even though the Mass would not begin for another fifteen minutes. Their daughter was outside in the cold, smoking. Anne and her husband found three seats in the next-to-last row, near a young couple who were holding hands and staring ahead at the altar. Anne sat next to the woman, who acknowledged her with a nod as Anne squeezed into the pew.
    The daughter soon joined them, plopping herself down on the aisle, next to her father. Anne had tried to convince her to wear a dress, or at least a skirt and a blouse, but she had insisted on wearing