The Day After Christmas

It is the day after Christmas in Odyssey, and while other children play in the snow, Annie McNeil wanders into Whit's End with nothing to do. She has just received a mountain of presents - a new coat from her stepdad, a Cabbage Patch doll, a talking teddy bear, shoes, a bracelet, a music player with a mirror in it - and already the shine has worn off. She does not even like the color of the coat and plans to exchange it. Her mother has told her she is being a pill and sent her out of the house for a while.

John Avery Whittaker, whom everybody calls Whit, is busy packing boxes with food and toys. Annie asks who they are for, and Whit explains that every year on the day after Christmas he drives down to Foster Creek, a poor neighborhood on the edge of town, where a pastor friend hosts a celebration at his church. They cook a meal, sing songs, and nearly everyone comes. It is not much, Whit says, but it is something he can do. He invites Annie along, and she agrees mostly because she cannot think of anything better.

The drive startles her. The houses are patched together, some of them out of cardboard, and everything looks dirty. Annie says she would like to go home. At the little church they meet Reverend Clarence Pike, who greets Whit like the old friend he is, and a restless boy named Tommy Wilkins, whose father is away on a work program and whom the reverend is watching, without much success. The four of them carry the boxes inside. Whit needs to stop by Applegate Hall, a home for people who can no longer care for themselves, but children under sixteen are not allowed to visit, so Annie stays behind with strict instructions not to wander off.

Tommy has other ideas. He tells Annie she must be rich, because only rich people cannot tell whether they are rich or not, and then he dares her to come see a strange old woman around the corner who supposedly keeps a hundred cats. Annie hesitates, worries about her coat, and goes anyway. The alley is long and it smells, there are rats in it, and just as they reach the gate a carload of boys from a street gang called the Locos spots Tommy on their turf. Tommy shouts at Annie to run, and the two of them are separated in the chase.

Annie is pulled inside a house by the old woman herself, Mrs. Teresa Rossini, who wants to know why a child is trespassing in her yard. There are not a hundred cats, she points out tartly. There are seven, kept for company. She has no telephone to call the police, so she puts water on for tea and asks Annie to tell her about Christmas. Annie describes waking her parents at five in the morning. Mrs. Rossini remembers a father who would not let her out of bed until she could see daylight in the window, and one snowy year when she feared she would be stuck there until spring, and the Christmas he brought home a refrigerator because he loved anything new and mechanical.

When Annie works up the nerve to ask how someone with such a good family ended up in a broken-down shack, Mrs. Rossini answers gently. Her two sons went fishing with their father, and a drunk driver never even saw them. Afterward she could not manage, mentally, and spent a long stretch in a hospital. By the time she was well, the savings were gone, and there is little work for a woman whose only jobs have been wife and mother. She lives on a small amount of county and state aid. Then she tells Annie about Bennington, a cat whose cut foot she once had to re-bandage knowing it would hurt him. A cat that expects pain either runs or attacks, but Bennington lay still and let her work, because he trusted her even though she could never explain why. Whenever the old wounds start to open, Mrs. Rossini says, she reaches for Bennington, and he reminds her that God is still in control, even when it hurts.

Annie asks whether she is happy. Mrs. Rossini says that yes, generally, she is. More money would be welcome, but money guarantees nothing. What counts is what is in the heart, and that kind of happiness comes straight from heaven when a person is right with the Lord, and nothing on earth can take it away.

Their quiet is broken by the Locos outside, taunting and throwing rocks through the windows. Annie is frightened, and so is Mrs. Rossini, but help is already on the way. Tommy has run back to the church and confessed everything, and Whit and Reverend Pike come looking. The sheriff's deputies approach on foot rather than with sirens so the gang cannot scatter, and the boys are picked up. Annie's first request, once she knows everyone is safe, is that Mrs. Rossini come back to the church with them. The old woman protests that she is not much for socializing, but Annie begs, and she goes to fetch her sweater.

The meal is a good one, with plenty for everybody. Whit informs Tommy and Annie that their disobedience started the whole mess, and that they will be paying him back for the glass he buys at the hardware store by installing the new windows themselves and doing whatever odd jobs Mrs. Rossini needs. Annie hopes her parents say yes. She would like to come back even if she has to work, and she starts thinking of the clothes and toys at home that she no longer needs and might bring along. There is one more errand she has in mind for the trip, too. She wants to stop at the store, because she would like to buy a bag of cat food, and she needs to know what flavor Bennington likes best.