The Paper Bag Christmas by Kevin Alan Milne Page A

same.”
    A single tear dropped from the corner of Madhu’s eye and trickled down his face. He turned back to the baby and set down his empty box, kneeling gracefully at the foot of the manger.
    “It is a small gift, I know, but it is the only thing I have to offer Christ.”
    A ARON STOOD at the front of the stage holding his script at his side, unsure of how best to continue following Madhu’s impromptu sermon. No one in the audience spoke. Finally my brother inched closer to the microphone, his mind racing to find something—anything—to say.
    “Uhh. . . ,” he started. “And so we see that the wise men all brought different gifts to baby Jesus. And . . . some wise men were . . . uhhmmm . . . wiser than others.”
    Just then I felt a tug on my arm. Katrina was taking a step forward and was pulling me with her.
    “What are you doing?” I whispered from beneath my bag. She didn’t say anything but just kept walking across the stage toward the manger with me in tow.
    Aaron saw us walking and tried to fill in a narration as we went. “And then suddenly, two wayward angels stepped forward from heaven to visit the Christ child.”
    The audience laughed hysterically at that, but Nurse Wimble had had quite enough. She shot up out of her chair and screamed, “What do you angels think you’re doing? This is not what we practiced!”
    “And God rebuked his angels and told them to return to heaven at once,” said Aaron over the sound system.
    Again Nurse Wimble was not as amused as everyone else. She placed her hands firmly on her hips and gave my brother a look that warned of severe consequences unless he stopped talking immediately.
    Katrina, however, was undeterred. As the audience settled down she quietly pulled me over to the manger. When she got there, she stood staring thoughtfully down at Jesus. Her green eyes were fixed on the doll lying in the hay, bound tightly in a hospital blanket. Then, without a word, she turned and pulled the mask from off my head. It was, admittedly, refreshing to have it gone, but I didn’t understand why she had done it or what she was up to. Before I could puzzle it out on my own, she knelt down, and in the hushed silence that now gripped everyone watching, Katrina slowly lifted her trembling hands to her own head and peeled off the bag that had hidden her face for so many months.
    With the spotlight shining on us both, there was no hiding the physical reality of Katrina’s appearance from anyone in the great room. Most of her hair was gone, with patches of stubble scattered here and there across her otherwise bald scalp. The brain tumor and the associated treatments had left her skin withered and cracked, with open lesions visible just above her forehead and thick scars from multiple surgeries extending from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck. The shape of her head was slightly abnormal, bulging on one side and sunken on the other. Sections of her misshapen scalp had been grafted together with not quite matching colors of skin to cover up the invasiveness of the operations she had endured. And perhaps most notable of all was a relatively new development: a large, lumpy swelling of tissue protruding from an area high above her left ear and ending down in the softness of her delicate cheek.
    Nobody on the stage or in the audience made so much as a whisper as Katrina carefully folded the white bag in at the corners, then over again in half to make it smaller, and placed it gently down at Jesus’s feet. Turning back again to look up at me, still kneeling near the Christ child, she whispered so only I could hear, “It’s all I have to give.” Then she stood slowly, took me by the arm again and led me back to the choir.
    In that flash of a moment I considered what it was that Katrina had just done. Had she given a simple paper bag to the “Lord of Lords” and “King of Kings”? No, I guessed it was probably much more than that. It might have been that the weathered