The Sour Oranges

The oranges were small and ugly.

Anna held one up to the window, turning it in the gray morning light. It was not the bright, round kind she had seen once in a shop near the wharves. This one was pale and dented, with a soft spot near the stem that made her thumb sink in when she pressed too hard.

“They were all I could find,” her mother said from the hearth, not turning around. “Be grateful.”

Anna was grateful. She just wished grateful felt more like the word sounded.

Christopher was already at the table, peeling his. He did it badly, tearing the skin off in jagged strips that left white threads all over his fingers. He didn’t care. He never cared about doing things neatly. He shoved a piece into his mouth and made a face so sharp and sudden that Anna laughed before she could stop herself.

“Sour?” she asked.

“Like vinegar,” he said. But he ate another piece anyway.

Their father sat at the far end of the table with his hands wrapped around a cup of something warm. He had not touched his orange. He watched the two of them the way he sometimes did when he came home late from work, like he was counting them, making sure they were both still there.

“Fröhliche Weihnachten,” he said quietly.

“Merry Christmas, Papa,” Anna answered.

Christopher said nothing. He was already looking at the door.

* * *

The Seider home was not large. Two rooms downstairs and a loft above, where Anna and Christopher slept on opposite sides of a curtain their mother had hung from a rope. The curtain was thin, and Anna could hear Christopher breathe at night, fast when he was dreaming, slow when he was truly asleep. She had memorized the difference without meaning to.

Downstairs, the hearth took up most of one wall. The fire was low this morning. Wood cost money, and her father had said twice this week that money was not what it used to be. Anna did not know exactly what that meant, but she understood the weight of it, the way her mother stretched the bread, the way her father’s jaw tightened when he counted coins on the table after supper.

Still, it was Christmas. Her mother had found the oranges. There was bread with butter, not just drippings. And the house smelled like something sweet that Anna could not name, maybe the candle her mother had lit near the window, or maybe just the feeling of everyone being inside together while the cold pressed against the glass.

“Can I go out?” Christopher asked.

He asked it the way he always did, not quite as a question.

“It is Christmas morning,” their mother said.

“I know. I’ll come back.”

“Where?” their father asked.

Christopher shrugged. “Just out. Thomas said there might be something happening near the —”

“Not today.” Their father’s voice was not loud, but it filled the room the way a door fills a frame. There was no space around it.

Christopher looked at Anna, as if she might help. She looked at her orange.

“Fine,” Christopher said. He leaned back in his chair and kicked one foot against the table leg. Not hard. Just enough to make a sound.

* * *

After breakfast, Anna helped her mother clear the table. Christopher had gone up to the loft, and she could hear him moving around, restless, the way he always was when he could not go outside. He was eleven and acted like the walls were shrinking around him. Anna was nine and could sit in the same chair for an hour without minding, as long as she had something to look at or hold.

She dried the cups and set them on the shelf. Her mother washed in silence for a while, then said, “Your brother is getting too old for this house.”

Anna didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded like a complaint, but her mother’s voice was soft, almost sad. Like she was talking about something that had already happened and could not be taken back.

“He just wants to see his friends,” Anna said.

“He wants to see everything.” Her mother wiped her hands on her apron and looked toward the stairs. “That is not always safe.”

Anna waited for more, but her mother turned back to the basin and said nothing else. The fire crackled. Outside, church bells began to ring, deep, heavy sounds that came through the walls like something leaning against the house.

When the washing was done, Anna climbed the ladder to the loft. Christopher was lying on his back, tossing a small wooden ball toward the ceiling and catching it. Over and over. The rhythm of it filled the space, thwack, catch, thwack, catch.

“Mama says you’re getting too old for this house,” Anna said. She sat on her side of the curtain and pulled her knees up.

“I’m getting too old for a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

He caught the ball and held it. “Like being told where to stand.”

Anna didn’t understand that. She picked at a thread on her stocking and waited.

“There was a crowd last week,” Christopher said, quieter now. “Near Mr. Lillie’s shop. Men were shouting about the boycott. Calling him a traitor.”

“Were you there?”

“I was close.”

“Papa would be angry.”

“Papa is always angry. He just does it quietly.” Christopher threw the ball again. Thwack. Catch. “You know what Thomas told me? He said there are boys not much older than me who stand right at the front. Right where the soldiers can see them.”

Anna felt something cold settle in her chest, though she could not have said why. “That sounds stupid.”

Christopher laughed, a short, sharp sound. “That’s what Mama would say.”

“I’m not Mama.”

“No,” he said. “You’re worse. You actually listen.”

He meant it as a tease, but his voice was warm, and Anna held the words the way she held small things she wanted to keep, carefully, with both hands.

* * *

In the afternoon, their father read aloud from the Bible. He read in German, the way he always did on holidays, and Anna followed the sound more than the meaning. She understood some of it, enough to know it was about a child born in a place far from home, a family with nothing, a light in the darkness. She liked the rhythm of her father’s voice when he read. It was the only time he sounded like he was not worried.

Christopher sat on the floor near the hearth and carved at a piece of scrap wood with a small knife. He was making something, though Anna could not tell what. He worked at it with the same rough energy he brought to everything, quick cuts, no hesitation. Once, he nicked his thumb and put it in his mouth without stopping.

“Careful,” Anna said.

“You sound like Mama.”

“Someone has to.”

He grinned at that. It was the kind of grin that made it hard to stay serious around him, fast and crooked, like a door swinging open. Anna felt her chest loosen. When Christopher smiled, the house felt right.

He held up the piece of wood. It was rough and lopsided, but Anna could see what it was meant to be, a bird. The head was too big and the wings were uneven, but it had a shape that was trying hard to be something.

“For you,” he said. He tossed it across the room. Anna caught it against her chest.

“It doesn’t look like a bird,” she said.

“It’s not finished.”

“Will you finish it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. If I feel like it.”

She turned it over in her hands. The wood was warm from his grip and smelled like the hearth. She closed her fingers around it and said, “Thank you.”

Christopher didn’t answer. He was already looking at the window again.

Their father finished reading and closed the book. He sat for a moment with his hands on the cover, as if the words were still moving under his palms. Then he stood and went to the window.

“Snow coming,” he said.

Anna joined him. The sky was the color of old wool, low and heavy. The street below was empty except for a man in a dark coat walking fast with his head down. Somewhere farther off, she could hear boys shouting, not angry, just loud, the way boys were when they had nothing to do and too much energy to hold.

Christopher was at the door before Anna turned around.

“Just the street,” he said. “Just for a minute.”

Their father didn’t answer right away. He looked at their mother. Something passed between them, not words, just a look that Anna had seen before but could not read. It was the kind of look that made her feel like the room had a conversation happening above her head, in a language she almost spoke but not quite.

“Stay close,” their father said.

Christopher was out the door before the sentence ended. The cold came in behind him, a sharp, clean gust that made the fire jump. Then the door closed, and the house was quieter than it had been all day.

Anna stood at the window and watched him go. He moved fast, hands in his coat, head up. He turned the corner and was gone.

She pressed her fingertips against the glass. It was so cold it almost burned.

On the table behind her, the last orange sat untouched, her father’s. She could smell it from where she stood. Sharp and faint and slightly wrong, like something pretending to be sweet.

She stayed at the window a long time.

Christopher did not come back for a minute. He came back when the sky was dark and the candle in the window had burned halfway down. He came in smelling like cold air and woodsmoke and something else, something that clung to his coat and his hair that Anna could not name.

“What did you see?” she asked from the loft, through the curtain.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Everything.”

His breathing slowed. Anna lay on her back and stared at the ceiling and listened to the bells, still ringing somewhere, far away now, one after another, like the city was trying to say something it could not finish.

She closed her eyes.

She did not know it was the last Christmas.