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extracurricular bastard child was nine years old too. That little out-of-wedlock thing is only one year younger than my baby Andre.
    The news lodged a hot piece of coal in my chest and wrapped me in a straitjacket. I couldn’t just take the kids and leave. Where would we go? We live in the apartment downstairs from my parents in their two-family house and we don’t hardly pay the rent on time. He didn’t come home last night. He’s like a cat, he comes and goes on his own terms. He left yesterday while I was at work and all he told Andre and Nina was that he’d be back with us tonight to bake cookies.
    “You ready, Ma?”
    I looked up from the letter. Nina was holding our big silvermixing bowl and a wooden spoon. The smile on her face melted a fake one into mine. Christmas was always about the kids. Every year we put on the Nat King Cole Christmas album and stay in the house together to bake sugar cookies as a family. At midnight we all go upstairs to my parents’ apartment, and Nina and Andre open up the presents from my parents. Then they go to sleep and wake up and unwrap what I got for them.
    The doorbell rings and I know it’s my younger sister Diamond with her new snap-turtle-looking boyfriend, Lex, with his bald water-baby head, and his no job. My eyes watered up and my insides started to twist. I wanted to run to the door and collapse. Drag Diamond by the arm into my room and just melt down. But no. This is my life, and Diamond, she never liked Eddy. I give her five minutes of milling around the apartment before she gets around to asking, “So how’s Eddy?” She’ll look concerned, put her hand across her mouth and follow me around the room with her eager eyes. Ever since she divorced her ex-husband Elroy and got him deported back to Jamaica, she thinks she’s better than somebody. She’d know Eddy’s truck wasn’t out front but she just liked to hear me say it. She gets a kick out of the whole exchange. So she could hold a deep stare over my shoulder and shake her head, searching and waiting, like I owed her an explanation.
    He’s a wayward bastard and that’s been established, but he is my husband and the father of my children. He at least makes it home for the holidays. I swallowed and tucked that letter in my back pocket along with all my good emotions. I opened the front door and told Diamond that Eddy was getting off of work late and that we could go ahead and start baking without him. The night rocked along slow. The kids were enjoying themselves but I was losing faith.
    Around ten thirty his Bronco rattled up outside. He blew inside, stumbling, and smelling like the bar he’d probably been slumped in all night. From the minute that man stepped his feet in the house he was all jumpy and twitching around like he had lightning in his veins, eyeing the clock like he was already trying to leave again. His jaw was chattering and I knew he was high on something. I just hoped I was the only one who noticed it ’cause tonight was not about him.
    I’ve always tried to live the way my mother says: “Never let your life show.” I stretch out my pockets so the kids can have a few things to show their friends when they get back to school after vacation. I supported Eddy when he began to struggle, same way he continues to struggle, all in the name of getting his reggae career off the ground. I even sign the kids’ presents: “From Mommy and Daddy.” All I asked is that he just be around to spend time with his kids. He checked out of our marriage in terms of a relationship a long while ago. But the papers aren’t signed yet. And I’m still the wife of Eddy “E-Bone” Battel.
    “Pop!”
    The kids screamed in unison and ran up the hallway, draping off of him like he was a walking coatrack. They almost knocked him over. We were making the frosting for the sugar cookies; Diamond snorted and flashed a look across the table at Lex. They both stood up and walked through the back door up to my parents’