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Christmases with the Schweigers. Ramona and some sidewalk Santa Claus spent one Christmas together at his apartment, and I don’t remember where she was for the other two Christmases I spent inside the Schweigers’ apartment, opening presents, like a baby doll and a purse, that I never expected.
    “I know what God is like, Mrs. Schweiger,” I said on that Christmas Day, watching her peel potatoes.
    “What is he like?” she asked, throwing the peels into the garbage.
    “He’s like you.”
    She stopped her work and looked at me. She knelt down and held my face, kissing my forehead: I could feel her wet potato hands on my cheeks. “Believe it or not, God loves you even more than I do, Melissy,” she’d say. She always called me Melissy, and I was surprised at how much I liked that. I loved being loved by Mrs. Schweiger.
    Louie and I played with Bruce Linton from upstairs, a kid four years younger than me who always had a snotty nose. Every day in the winter his sleeve was crusty with dried snot. If things didn’t go Bruce’s way, he’d slap or kick Louie and me, but we were both bigger and could pin him down until he stopped acting like a baby. Bruce also ate dinner a lot at the Schweigers’ but not because his parents weren’t around. Many times his parents ate with us, too. Playing with Louie and Bruce and being with the Schweigers was the best three years of my life, and I gushed like Niagara on the day we moved away.
    “I’ve prayed for you, Melissy,” Mrs. Schweiger said on that final day. “And I’ll keep praying, okay?” I nodded, not really believing in it too much because I prayed that we wouldn’t ever, ever move away from the Schweigers, but Ramona got a wild hair and loaded us into the station wagon. “Don’t ever stop praying,” Mrs. Schweiger said, her eyes wet and drippy. “Don’t ever stop believing.” Tears streaked my face as we pulled away, my arm flapping in the air. I think what little belief I had ended that day on those two hundred miles to Jacksonville.
    To my knowledge, Ramona never really talked to Mrs. Schweiger beyond that occasional cracked apartment door. Ramona made it a point to never know anyone at any of the places we lived; it made running out in the middle of the night so much easier. She cheated landlords out of a lot of money but always waved it off, saying, “It will cost them more to track us down than what we owe them.”
    I warm up another plate of chicken and dumplings for lunch and hear someone talking outside the front window. Moving the blinds, I see Gretchen on the phone again. Talking to her boyfriend, no doubt, a man the kids don’t necessarily like but someone she can’t break things off with, not yet, anyway. I sit on the sofa and eat, watching her through the blinds. The conversation is serious. She hasn’t smiled yet but keeps pushing her hair behind her ear and looking at the front door of her home. I finish eating and step to the window, watching. She takes the phone from her ear and crosses toward her door. I open mine and pretend to see her. “Oh. Hi.”
    “Hi,” she says, waving at me with the phone.
    “Those chicken and dumplings were really good.”
    “My mom’s friend made them.”
    I step out and look at her. I’m just standing here, and she feels uncomfortable, I can tell. I clear my throat and take a breath. “I don’t know how long it will take to clean out Ramona’s apartment … so if you can’t, it’s no big deal. I thought it might go fast if two.… she had a lot of junk mostly, so it shouldn’t take too long.”
    “Sure,” she says, thumping the phone against her thigh. “When?”
    “I work until five each day so…” I fade out and look at a passing car.
    “Do you want to go today?”
    I wasn’t expecting this, to do it so soon. “Could you?”
    “I’ll call my mom and see if she can come over to be with the kids.”
    I close the door and feel my heart racing. Why was I doing this? Why do I even care