Danny Nicols didn't want a sister. He may have claimed he did, but that was before he found out she'd be Chinese. He wasn't being mean or insensitive or the word his mom used until his dad said, "Come on, Jen, he's just a kid." "She's our bundle of joy," his mother explained, showing him a photo. "You'll fall for her, Danny boy," his father promised. "You won't be able to help yourself."

They had to go to China to collect the bundle of joy. Three weeks they'd be gone, leaving Danny in the care of Grandma Collins. Six weeks later, his parents still hadn't returned and their phone calls, usually late at night -- "What's the time difference again?" his mom would apologize -- were becoming more and more strange. "The poor dears," Grandma said after one call. "What they must be going through over there."

Then she sighed and sipped her orange juice, and even a ten-year-old knew she was thinking: *And what I'm going through right here.*

Danny had never been babysat by Grandma Collins before, and now he understood why.

Grandma didn't cook. Grandma hardly ate. Instead, she smoked cigarettes and drank juice, though only once she used the refrigerator door to block him from seeing what she was adding to her glass. Her eyes were soap bubbles and her coughs were gargles; her hands shook so hard she sent Kraft dinner flying from its box. The cat bolted when she entered a room.

"Are you really my mom's mom?" Danny asked the first night.

"She's my darling," Grandma answered.

"Do you think my parents have been taken prisoner in China?" he said on the forty-first night.

"I think I have been lonely for much of my life, and that I'd do just about anything to make it stop."

Danny didn't know what to say. "Christmas is in six days," he said, trying not to sound excited.

"Sorry?"

"Suppose they aren't back in time?"

"Then we'll have to make do, won't we, sweetie," Grandma said. She patted his head, like he was a dog, and emptied her glass.

Matteo G was Danny's oldest friend. His parents were Italian -- the G was short for Giordani -- and his mother refused to step outside from December until March. She dressed Matteo for Arctic expeditions. Today his hat was down to his brows and his collar climbed to his nose. What little skin that was exposed looked like a bruised peach.

Sweat ran off his cheeks.

Danny wore a sweater and running shoes. Snow fell from a grey sky that hung only a few feet above their heads. It wasn't cold, and Grandma Collins had been napping when he left. His feet were already soaked.

"Are your parents back yet?" Matteo asked.

"They're being held hostage in China," Danny answered. "I have to figure a way to bust them out."

Wong's grocery store was two blocks from their houses. They'd been coming here since they were kids. Mr. Wong always sat behind the cash register, and though he addressed their parents as "Mr. Nicols" or "Mrs. Giordani" he just called them "nice boys." He had skin like butterscotch and eyes like peanuts. He had hair as black as hard licorice. When he glanced up at customers, his eyeballs seemed to float over his lenses. When he looked down, they sank back.

Until six weeks ago, Danny hadn't known much about the Wongs. Now he did. He knew they lived in an apartment above the shop. He knew their son Michael was in another grade six class at his school. Most important, Danny knew the Wongs were Chinese, which made him, for some reason, mad.

In the beginning he just pocketed gummies and sour jubes -- candies he didn't even like.

That was too easy. Soon Danny was stealing packs of chips and bottles of Gatorade.

Matteo ran out of the store the first time. Now he hung around watching him, but always from one aisle away, to distract Mr. Wong, and because he was scared.

Without a jacket to hide stuff, today would be dangerous. Danny's mouth went dry and his heart thumped, but he still slipped a pack of M&Ms under his sweater, tucking it behind his belt. In the slanted mirror he though he saw Mr. Wong's eyeballs pop over his frames.

"Let's go," he said to Matteo.

Matteo brought a pack of gum to the counter.

"You good boys?" Mr. Wong asked.

"You Santa Claus?" Danny answered.

"We didn't do anything bad, Mr. Wong," Matteo said.

Michael Wong, who had a shaved head and glasses nearly as thick as his Dad's, appeared from a door at the back of the store. He lay a math text on the counter. It was for Grade Eight.

"Hey," Matteo said.

"Hi," Michael replied. He looked at Danny. "You're in Six A, right?" Danny said nothing.

"Christmas is pretty cool, huh?" Michael Wong said.

"Cool," Matteo agreed.

On the sidewalk Danny offered Matteo some M&Ms. Matteo pulled off a mitt to take a handful, but only once they were down the street. The sky had dropped even lower, as though to snuff out the day.

"I heard that Michael Wong's math teacher gives him homework from the Grade Eight text," Matteo said.

"So?"

"Maybe your sister will also be good at math."

Danny almost socked him. "Did you see my mom's belly get big?" he said. "Did she go to the hospital in a taxi, like your mom?" Matteo had two brothers and a sister called Maria. She was just learning to walk.

"Maybe it's an immaculate conception," he said.

Danny punched his friend in the chest.

"We have our marching orders today, all the way from a place called Nanzing," Grandma Collins said. "I had some men deliver a tree and ordered a turkey from the market, as per your mother's instructions. Your job is the decorations."

"Then they'll be home in time?"

"We should know in the next couple of hours."

"They won't be home," Danny said. "You're lying to me."

"It is my most ardent wish, Danny Nicols, that your mother and father walk through that door this very instant."

He went quiet at her tone. They trimmed the tree together. Grandma refilled her glass only once and smoked just two cigarettes, lighting up on the porch, as she had promised his parents, and then finishing over the sink, the window cracked. Danny watched her grill sausages and potatoes, the leftover smoke curling around her head, like incense around a statue in a church.

The phone rang. "Wonderful, wonderful," Grandma Collins said. "I'm delighted for you both." Danny tried slipping away, but she blocked the door. "He's right here, dear."

"Son?" his mother said, her voice tiny and lost behind Chinese prison walls. "We have her now. Your sister. Our bundle of joy!" Though she wanted to say more, her sobs choked her. They would be home by mid-day on the 24th.

"Dad says she is high-strung," Danny told his grandmother that evening. They sat eating chocolates and admiring the tree. He felt happy and excited; finally, it was Christmas in the house.

"Do you know what that means?" He admitted he didn't.

"Your mother wanted so much for us as a family," Grandma said. "I did too, of course.

Funny how it never occurred to her then -- or now, for that matter -- that I was feeling the absences, the holes, at least as much as she was."

"Did I have a grandfather?"

"Yes, and I had a husband."

"I still don't have a sister."

Grandma Collins closed her eyes, as if to pray. "A priest once told me that families are like congregations. Natural. Pleasing to God. 'God is sociable, Doris,' he said. 'He likes us to assemble.'" She said they'd better put a star on the tree. Danny told her they used an angel instead, and removed it from a box. His grandmother, who had poured herself three juices since the phone call, offered to climb onto a chair. Danny said he'd do it, and she held onto his legs, laughing and gargling simultaneously. The cat shot out from under the branches.

"Timber!" Grandma shouted.

On the last day of school a parent dressed like Santa Claus went around to all the classrooms passing out gifts. Danny had just finished explaining to a girl named Sita Kumar how his parents were in a Chinese jail where the toilets were holes in the ground and inmates had to eat dogs to survive. He hadn't planned to say so much, but Sita had eyes the colour of dark chocolate and cherry-lip-glossed lips. "They were helping orphans escape the country," he said. "They throw babies into rivers there."

"I thought your mom and dad were adopting a girl," Sita Kumar said.

Matteo Giordani sat next to Sita. Danny showed him his fist. Matteo, whose long johns poked below his pant bottoms, turned even ruddier.

"Ho, ho, ho," Santa Claus said.

Danny recognized first the voice and then the eyes, which were bobbing behind the glasses like apples in a barrel.

"You good boys?" Mr. Wong said. He yanked his beard down to his chest and roared.

"Merry Christmas everyone!"

"We didn't do anything bad, Mr. Wong," Matteo said.

They looked different. Older and thinner, not quite as tall. When Danny hugged his mom, she almost collapsed into him. When he hugged his dad, his father went stiff as a pole.

"That tree looks ready to topple," Dad said.

"Danny helped me decorate," Grandma Collins said. She was scrubbing her hands. It meant she needed a cigarette, and a juice.

His mother lifted a bundle from the bassinette she had bought a year ago, and kept by their bed. "Baby Lili," she announced.

Baby Lili was sleeping, her eyelids purple-blue. Her face was squashed, but so was Maria Giordani's for the first months. He noticed her fingers gripping the blanket. He noticed her lips sucking on air.

"At least she wasn't born in a stable," he said, thinking of the school pageant.

Why would this make his mother cry? "Is that the nicest thing you can say?" Dad asked.

"Things are never quite how we want them," Grandma offered. "But they are always, in their own manner, lovely."

"If I stack some bricks around the base, it might not fall over," Dad said.

Danny ran from the room.

He had spotted Michael Wong at the counter, but ignored him and walked down the aisle.

He stuffed a chocolate bar into each pocket and a can of Coke into the pocket inside his jacket. Now Danny was making for the door, his coat open, one of the bars half out. He heard Mr. Wong order his son upstairs. He heard the shuffle of feet to cut him off.

"I didn't do anything!" he said.

Mr. Wong made Danny sit on the same stool Michael Wong used for homework while he called his house. The grocer's eyes had stopped floating. They had settled on him.

"Damn it to hell," his dad said, entering the store five minutes later.

"Christmas eve, eh, Mr. Nicol?" Mr. Wong said.

"He really stole from you?"

"Not just tonight."

"That's not-- " Danny said.

"One more word... " Dad said.

Mr. Wong told Danny he could leave with his father.

"He'll make it up," Mr. Nicols said. "Shovel your sidewalk for a month. Cut your grass next summer."

"We see," Mr. Wong said.

The car was out front, the emergency lights flashing. Danny's father neither switched on the wipers nor shifted into gear. Fat flakes bombed from the black and splat onto the glass. The store went dark, though lights rimming the window blinked red, yellow and green.

"Of all the nights," Dad said. "Of all the stunts."

Danny said sorry.

"Your mother and I are totally exhausted, the house is a disaster, and almost nothing is ready for tomorrow."

"Grandma had to take naps," Danny said, to defend her. He liked how the car was turning into a cave.

"Look, we know these last weeks have been hard on you, too. I felt awful leaving you here alone. We were half-expecting a call from Children's Aid."

Danny's forehead went hot. He had to find the right words. "You could ask Grandma to come live with us," he said. "She'd say yes, I think."

His father switched on the wipers. Danny couldn't see his face.

"Tomorrow is the start of a new life for our family, Danny boy. It's going to be perfect."

He went downstairs in the night. Santa Claus, or someone, had already come and gone, and Danny moved a few gifts aside so he could slide under the tree. He only fit to the waist now, but didn't mind the draft on his legs. The cat was in there, its eyes glimmering, and the air smelled of pine needles. He scratched the cat between the ears until it purred. Needles rained on them both.

Danny wished he hadn't told Sita Kumar his parents were in prison. He wished he had said hi to Michael Wong in the store. Grandma Collins *should* move in with them, he decided. The house was big, and the family was still small. He heard her cough from the guest room, and knew her hands would be even shakier in the morning. He heard a baby cry, and the shuffle of footsteps overhead. He had liked watching Lili sleep. Her fingers were so perfect, her nails so pink. Her lips had puckered, as though expecting a kiss, and she had almost smiled. Why wouldn't she smile? His sister felt safe and happy inside her milky dream.