Free Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi

cigarette.
    â€œYou too, Anthony. Share.” My father headed toward the bedroom.
    But when I picked up the stencil of a bell, the twins edged me aside, and I wanted to take them by the shoulders, shove them out of my apartment, toss their dolls and earmuffs out behind them.
    My aunt poured pink glass wax into a saucer, and the twins fought over that until Belinda managed to push one end of the dry sponge in it. While Bianca mashed the comet stencil against one kitchen window, Belinda squished the sponge into the comet’s tail. At first it was gloppy, the stomachache pink of Pepto-Bismol, but as it dried it turned paler until it was the color of deep snow after blood has seeped through it. There’s something odd that happens to the surface of snow after blood has fallen on it. If the snow is loose enough, blood will trickle to the bottom, leaving an almost white surface and, below it, layers of pink that get darker the farther they are away from you, until it looks as if a red lightbulb were shining up from within the snow. The one other time I would see anything similar would be the following winter, on Castle Hill Avenue, when the family in the house attached to my grandparents’ would set up an electric nativity outside. After a snowstorm, Mary and Joseph would be covered to their waists, and between them, where Baby Jesus used to lie in a manger with real straw, a glow would come rising through the snow. All together it would be different, of course. Still, I’d start crying, because it would get me thinking about Bianca again— I wish I’d never have to see snow again —about how she lifted her stencil and looked disappointed because some glass wax had seeped beneath, making her star messy. All wrong.
    â€œAll wrong,” I told her.
    â€œLess wax,” Aunt Floria advised. “Remember now—take turns while I unpack our things.”
    Belinda grabbed the stencil of a bell and kept it flat against the window, while Bianca dunked the sponge into wax and swabbed it against the glass. From the living room came thuds as Aunt Floria and my father hoisted her stuff back onto the dark fire escape. I could tell the twins were not about to offer me the stencils, but I no longer wanted my turn, because I knew what we would look like from outside if Santa were to watch us. The three of us. Here. Together. Forever.
    To separate myself from my cousins, I pulled a chair to the other window and knelt on it. In the snow, the water tower on the Paradise became the huge lizard beast, and on Kevin’s roof, the antennas became people with hats waiting to cross the street. I pressed my forehead against the icy glass, and as I watched the lights of cars and trucks far below on the white street, I hoped the twins would be gone before New Year’s Eve, my favorite holiday, because at midnight we’d put on coats, open the windows, bang spoons against the bottoms of pots in the cold air, and yell, “Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.” All through my neighborhood, people would lean from their windows—the O’Deas and the Casparinis and the Weissmans and the McGibneys and the Rattners and the Corrigans—all of us together, kids and parents, all banging pots, all yelling, “Happy New Year…”
    Not nearly as careful as the television girl, Belinda and Bianca were slopping pink wax on their window, stringing holly branches and comets and bells into garlands that looked like smudges someone had left by mistake, and I felt cheated for ever having wanted the kit.
    â€œGirls,” Aunt Floria called, “did you put that rabbit back in the tub?”
    â€œYou go,” Bianca said.
    â€œNo,” Belinda said. “You.”
    â€œGirls…”
    â€œAnthony can do it.”
    â€œNo. The person who just yelled will do it. You, Belinda. Now.”
    Belinda scowled at her sister. At me. “Don’t touch anything till I come