Nine Inches

The Chosen Girl

ROSE’S FRONT WINDOW LOOKS OUT on the bus stop across the street. Despite the ferocious early March cold — the radio says it’s eight degrees with the wind chill — the middle school kids have assembled as usual in their sacklike jeans and ski jackets, clapping their gloves and stamping their fancy sneakers against the frigid ground, snorting plumes of vapor as they crane their necks for a glimpse of yellow down at the far end of Sycamore. It’s only seven-forty — the bus won’t be here for another five minutes. Rose presses her cheek against the warmth of her coffee mug, releasing an involuntary shudder of sympathy for the Chosen girl. Five minutes can feel like forever on a morning like this, even when your parents haven’t sent you out of the house without proper clothing.

The Chosen girl stands off to one side, over by the fire hydrant, her primly old-fashioned outfit — long skirt, drab woolen sweater, simple cotton kerchief — intensifying her isolation, making her seem even farther away from the other kids than she already is. There’s a look of vacancy on her face, as if she’s unaware that she’s the only one at the bus stop not wearing a coat. Her brother and two other Chosen boys are dressed for the weather, bundled into nice bulky parkas that let them blend into the scenery at first glance, though they, too, stand apart from the others, a cluster unto themselves. As far as Rose knows — and she’s the first to admit that she doesn’t know much about these strangers who have become such a conspicuous and disturbing presence in her town — the Chosen just don’t seem to believe in coats for the women and girls, though it’s hard to imagine something like that could actually be part of their religion.

Watching the girl, Rose can’t help thinking of the expensive winter jacket — her grandson’s Christmas present — that’s been gathering dust in her hall closet since November, a two-tone monstrosity emblazoned with the ugly logo of a team called the San Jose Sharks. It would be too big for her, of course. The girl — Rose imagines her name to be Rachel or Sarah, something plain and biblical — is such a scrawny little thing; the coat would just swallow her up, the garish mall colors mocking her sickly complexion, the dishwater pallor of her lank hair. It would be warm, though, and Rose pictures herself carrying it across the street, draped across her arms like a sleeping child, wordlessly offering it up to the half-frozen girl. Would she take it?

Would you? she silently inquires.

As if she’s heard the question, the Chosen girl looks up, tugging nervously at her kerchief. Her expression darkens, but it’s not anger on her face, just an adolescent petulance that makes Rose smile in spite of herself. At almost the same instant, the familiar bulk of the school bus slides into view, coughing dirty exhaust. It lurches away a few seconds later, leaving behind a forlorn vista of blacktop, sidewalk, and trampled grass. Rose remains seated in her chair by the window for a long time afterward, still staring at the spot where the girl had been, the coffee mug going cold in her hands.

MANY YEARS earlier, when her son had waited at the same bus stop, Rose had not been allowed to stare out the window like this. Instead she’d had to flatten herself against the wall, peering through the narrow crack between the blind and the window, seeing without being seen. She’d done this to humor Russell, who’d been mortified by the sight of her face pressed against the glass, her benevolent gaze trained on him as he went about his business in the world.

“Stop spying on me,” he’d told her a few days into his new life as a fifth-grader. “It’s embarrassing.”

“I’m not spying. I’m just seeing you off.”

“Well, cut it out. The kids are making fun of me.”

Rose would have liked to laugh at his concerns, but she knew what a sensitive boy he was, how easily wounded. It was hard enough being smaller and smarter than the other kids; he didn’t need to be ridiculed as a mama’s boy on top of that. So she’d compromised, retreating behind the lowered blind, actually becoming the spy he’d accused her of being in the first place.

This arrangement worked out pretty well until the morning the boys stole Russell’s hat. It seemed like a joke at first, a dopey prank. Russell was standing by himself as he often did, not bothering anyone, his face hidden beneath the bill of his brand-new Yankees cap, when Lenny Barton came tiptoeing up behind him. Lenny was an older boy, husky and boastful and unaccountably popu­lar, despite the fact that he was repeating sixth grade and rarely washed his hair. As far as Rose knew, he and Russell had never had any trouble before.

Lenny snatched the hat quickly and cleanly. When Russell rushed at him to grab it back, Lenny began backpedaling, waving it in the air just out of the smaller boy’s reach. It broke Rose’s heart to see her son jumping for his precious hat like a dog being taunted with a stick. Lenny tossed the hat to another boy, who tossed it to another, causing Russell to careen madly in pursuit, always reaching his target a second too late.

Rose closed her eyes and reminded herself that it was all harmless play, but it was no use. When she opened them again, the game had gotten worse. Some girls were in on it now, and she could hear their squealing laughter rising above the mocking chatter of the boys. Russell was exhausted, stumbling and flailing, and when she saw him go down — it was hard to say if he’d fallen or been tripped — Rose had finally had enough. She was out the door and halfway across the street before she realized that she was only wearing a nightgown and slippers, but by then it was too late.

“Stop it!” she shouted, her voice sounding shrill and hysterical in her own ears. “Just stop it right now!”

The whole bus stop froze at the sight of her, a grown woman standing by the curb in a flimsy peach nightgown, her hands raised as if for a fistfight. Rose looked at the faces of her son’s tormentors as they traded glances and fought off smirks. Already she knew that she’d made a terrible mistake. Before she could say anything, the hat came fluttering out of the crowd — she hadn’t seen who threw it — and landed near her feet. Rose bent down to pick it up, pressing one hand against the collar of her nightgown to conceal her breasts, which felt huge and pendulous and all but naked in the cool morning air. It wasn’t until she straightened up that she dared look at Russell.

“Here’s your hat,” she said, slapping it against her leg a couple of times to dust it off.

He was standing about ten feet away, close enough to Lenny Barton that you might have mistaken them for friends. Rose was in her late thirties then and still considered herself an attractive woman, but something in her son’s eyes made her wonder if she’d gotten old and ugly without realizing it.

“Go inside,” he snapped, as if commanding a dog. It was a voice she’d never heard from him before, though she’d become quite familiar with it in later years. “Go inside and put some clothes on.”

SHE FINDS the skirt in the attic, tucked away in a cardboard box. It’s only calf length, and plaid to boot, but it’s the longest one she owns. It still fits, more or less, just as long as she leaves it unzipped.

It’s harder to find a kerchief. Rose hasn’t worn one in years, though she remembers a time when they were not at all uncommon. On rainy days you’d see women all over town using them to protect their hairdos. Women had hairdos then. They wore curlers. Now even the words sound funny: hairdos, curlers. Rose once had beautiful hair, chestnut with auburn highlights. Pat used to love watching her brush it when they were first married. It’s cut short these days, and she’s stopped coloring it now that he’s not around to tease her about looking like an old lady.

On the way out she examines herself in the hall mirror. The outfit looks awful, even worse than she imagined. The brown and tan of the skirt clash with the peculiar maroon of Pat’s bulky pullover, and the thing on her head — it’s a torn vinyl rain bonnet, decorated with a print of faded purple daisies — barely even qualifies as a kerchief.

Oh my, she thinks, laughing softly as she slips out of the mirror’s grasp. Am I really going to do this?

The cold attacks her the instant she steps out the door, stabbing through her sweater, swarming under her skirt, doing its best to drive her back inside. She hesitates for a second or two on the stoop, mustering courage, reminding herself that it’s only a five-minute walk to the supermarket.

The sidewalks are empty. Nobody around here walks anymore, not even when it’s nice out. Rose leans into the heartless wind, thinking how nice it would have been to invite the girl inside for a cup of tea, to get to know her a little better.

I watch you, she would confess. Through the windows.

I know, the girl might reply, sniffing suspiciously at the tea. I don’t mind.

Go ahead and drink, Rose would say. It’ll warm you up.

We’re not supposed to. It’s a sin.

A sin? Rose starts to laugh, then stops herself. I don’t think it’s a sin to drink something warm on a cold day.

The girl thinks it over, then brings the cup slowly to her lips, allowing herself only the tiniest of sips. She looks up at Rose.

It’s good, she says, the blankness of her face giving way to shy pleasure. Thank you very much.

ROSE DOESN’T know if the Chosen girl is forbidden to drink tea. The idea just popped into her head, and she’s not sure if she’s confusing the Chosen with some other strange religion. She’s heard so many rumors since they began moving into town four or five years ago, she doesn’t know what to believe: they’re Mormons, they’re Quakers, they’re ex-hippies making it up as they go along, the men have multiple wives, the women aren’t allowed to speak in public, they don’t own televisions, they keep large sums of money hidden in their mattresses, and so on. All she really knows is what she’s seen with her own eyes and read in the paper about their zoning dispute with the town two years ago.

The Chosen bought a house on Spring Street, in a nice residential area, and applied for a permit to turn it into a place of worship. After a lot of angry debate and letters to the editor — some of the neighbors were concerned about traffic and noise and parking problems — a compromise was finally arrived at in which the Chosen agreed to sell the property and use the proceeds to buy a house in a mixed commercial/residential zone, where they wouldn’t cause so much of a disturbance. Since then a lot of the tension has died down, and the Chosen seem to have been accepted as a more or less permanent part of the community, both of it and apart from it at the same time.

Rose didn’t realize how accustomed she had become to their presence until Russell’s last visit, when he stopped by for a day at the tail end of a conference in New York City. Driving back from Home Depot, they pulled up at a red light in the center of town, right in front of a teenaged Chosen boy who was standing on the corner in a business suit, shouting at the top of his lungs the way they sometimes did, testifying to the passing traffic. Rose barely gave him a second thought, but Russell lowered the driver’s-side window and began gesturing to the boy, asking him what was wrong, did he need any help? The boy stepped closer — he was tall and good-looking, like most of the Chosen boys (the girls, for some reason, were another story) — and bent forward until his face was almost inside their car.

“They betrayed him!” the boy was screaming. There was a note of genuine outrage in his voice, as if the betrayal had happened just a second ago, and he wanted someone to call the police. “They betrayed him!”

“What?” demanded Russell. “Who?”

“The son!” the boy wailed. “They betrayed the son!”

By the time Russell figured out what was going on, the light had changed, and some of the drivers behind them had started honking. Russell stepped on the gas, glancing in bewilderment at his rearview.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What was that all about?”

“The Chosen,” she replied, enjoying his confusion more than she would have liked to admit. “They do that sometimes.”

“The Chosen?”

“You’ve been away too long,” she told him.

ROSE TAKES a cart and starts off for the produce section, ignoring the hostile and questioning glances some of the other shoppers seem to direct at her. It’s mostly old people at this time of day, and she feels suddenly depressed to find herself in their company. I should be working, she tells herself. I should never have stopped. But they had kept changing the computers around on her at the office, and then her arthritis started flaring up. On top of everything else, her boss was replaced by a younger man who talked to her like she was stupid, and one morning she simply couldn’t bring herself to climb aboard the train. Now she’s here, part of a small army of retirees who watch the cashiers like hawks and stand motionless in the parking lot, poring over receipts as if they’re love letters from the glory days.

“Rose?”

Startled, Rose looks up from the bananas in her hand and sees an old woman peering at her with an expression halfway between confusion and concern. A dirty-faced toddler is crammed into the child seat of the woman’s cart, sucking regally on a lollipop.

“Rose, honey, is that you?”

Rose has to force herself to look from the child to the grandmother, to work her way past the mask of age to the real face underneath. Janet, she realizes. Janet Byrne.

“It’s me,” Rose confesses.

“My God.” Janet looks her up and down, smiling as if Rose has just told an unsuccessful joke. Janet leans forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I thought you were… one of them.”

Rose shakes her head, overcome by a sudden wave of embarrassment. She’d like to explain herself to Janet, to tell her about the Chosen girl — I just wanted to know how cold she was — but it all seems crazy now, nothing she feels free to discuss at the Stop & Shop. She turns her attention back to the baby, who is gazing up at her with glassy, placid eyes.

“Isn’t she precious?”

“I’m too old for this.” Janet shakes her head, but Rose can see the happiness in her eyes as she reaches forward to stroke her granddaughter’s cheek. “You forget how much work it is.”

Rose wants to tell her that she envies her fatigue, that it’s better to be tired from doing something than from doing nothing at all, but she and Janet have never been more than passing acquaintances.

“Such a pretty girl,” she says instead.

“How many do you have?” Janet asks.

“Just one. Cody. He’s eleven now. I don’t see him enough.”

“Cody.” Janet makes a face. “The names they give them. This one’s Selena.”

“Selena.” Rose wishes she’d had a little girl of her own to dress up and fawn over. Eliza they could have called her. Eliza Geraldine. They would have stayed friends, the way Rose had with her own mother. She would have kept close to home. “Such a pretty name.”

“You son’s in California, right?”

“Beverly Hills.”

“I hear he does face-lifts.”

Rose nods, though Russell’s actual specialty is breasts.

“Will he give me a discount?” Janet laughs merrily, tugging back the skin on both cheeks. For a disconcerting second, her former face rises to the surface, the slyly pretty young mother Rose remembers from Little League and PTA, the chain smoker with peasant blouses and tinted glasses.

“He’s coming for a visit soon.” Rose wants to smile, but her mouth won’t cooperate. “We’re going to celebrate Christmas in April.”

“That’s nice,” Janet replies, as her face surrenders to the forces of gravity. “That’ll be nice for you.”

“He’s very busy,” Rose adds. “His wife doesn’t like the cold weather.”

“You must be proud of him.” Janet smiles, but it’s an effort of will. Her boy, Bobby, had a drug problem and now works the stamp counter at the post office. “My son the doctor.”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Rose explains, her voice coming out louder than she means it to. “Come when you want, that’s what I tell him. Whenever it’s convenient.”

The baby whimpers impatiently. Janet touches Rose lightly on the shoulder.

“We better go,” she says. “You take care of yourself.”

Without asking permission, Rose bends down and kisses the baby on the forehead.

“So precious,” she whispers.

RUSSELL AND his family aren’t coming for another month, but the blizzard on Saturday morning inspires her to put up the Christmas tree. It’ll be nice to have the company, a visible symbol of the holiday to lift her spirits and keep her mind focused on the visit. And besides, it’s something to do right now, something to keep her occupied through the otherwise empty hours. She doesn’t know why, but Saturday is always the longest day of the week, the day she most misses Pat’s company, though all he did the last few years of his life was lie on the couch and complain.

The plastic spruce is taller than she is, bottom-heavy and unwieldy, and Rose struggles to drag it down from the attic. It was Pat’s idea, the artificial tree. Rose always preferred real ones, fire hazard or not. But when you celebrate Christmas in April, it’s pretty much fake or nothing. At least there’s no assembly required.

After getting the tree righted in the stand — another tough job — Rose makes several trips back to the attic for boxes of ornaments, tinsel, lights, and the little wooden Nativity scene she received as a wedding present from her great-aunt Margaret. She would have preferred to wait for Cody to trim the tree, but she knows from her last visit to California — most of which he spent wearing headphones and playing video games — that he’s past the age of enjoying it.

The decorating goes slowly at first. Rose tries to ignore the lurking sense that something’s missing, that she’s performing a common household task rather than a holiday ritual, when it finally dawns on her: she forgot the music. You can’t trim a tree without music.

She opens the cabinet, finds the ancient Bing Crosby album — he’s looking pleased with himself on the cover, sporting a rakish little elf’s hat — and sets it lovingly on the turntable. That was one thing that got Cody’s attention, the fact that she owned a record player and still used it. He was as amazed as Russell had been, at about the same age, to learn that his own grandmother had killed chickens with her bare hands, snapping their necks with no more thought than he would have given to twisting off a bottle cap.

Once Bing starts crooning, everything falls into place. Suddenly it’s Christmastime, a curtain of snow falling slantwise outside the window. The individual ornaments emerge like old friends from their tissue-paper cocoons. Before long the fake tree becomes the real thing, or at least close enough to believe in. Stepping back to admire her handiwork, Rose finally admits to herself how cheated she’s been feeling the past few months, how bitterly she resents her daughter-in-law for canceling the holiday at the last minute.

It’s all right, she thinks. We’ll pretend it never happened.

THEY DECIDED to go to Hawaii instead, Rose imagines saying. She’d keep her tone neutral, let the facts speak for themselves. Can you imagine?

The Chosen girl would nod, eyes full of sympathy. Did he give a reason?

He said his wife was stressed-out. She needed a little downtime.

Stressed-out? The Chosen girl repeats the phrase as if she’d never heard it before.

She was working too hard. The real estate market is booming where they live. That’s what she does — sells real estate. She used to be a nurse. That’s how she met Russell.

Do you like her? The girl asks the question without gossipy intent. She seems to be trying to work something out.

Rose isn’t sure how to answer. It’s as if there are two Ellens, one the mousy-haired girl from Freehold who somehow snagged herself a plastic surgeon, the other a platinum-blond businesswoman who couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t involve making and spending lots of money. The last time Rose saw her, she had a new Mercedes and new breasts to go with it, plus a wardrobe of revealing clothes to call attention to the upgrade, including a bikini meant for a much younger woman.

She changed a lot, Rose would explain. After they moved to California. They live in Beverly Hills.

That sounds pretty, says the Chosen girl.

It is. Rose smiles. Nothing like here. Sunny and beautiful every day of the year.

The girl seems perplexed. So why did they need to go to Hawaii?

Rose had wondered the exact same thing. She’d wondered it many, many times.

You’ll have to ask them, she says with a sigh. I try not to interfere.

WHEN THE tree is finished, she wraps presents in the cheerful glow of the blinking lights: a low-fat cookbook for Ellen, a nice travel kit and bathrobe for Russell, a bathing suit and package of socks for Cody. All that’s left is the Sharks jacket, but her heart sinks as she removes it from the closet. It’s a ridiculous gift, she sees that now — a warm coat in April for a boy who lives on a street lined with palm trees. She wonders if the store will let her exchange it for something that makes more sense, a baseball glove or maybe some computer games, but she needs to consult Russell before doing anything. For all she knows, her grandson already owns three baseball gloves and every computer game known to man.

She picks up the phone, punches in the numbers, then hangs up before it has a chance to ring, her heart pounding erratically. She can’t understand why she’s so nervous; all she wants is to ask a simple question. Can’t a mother ask her son a simple question?

Rose hasn’t spoken to Russell for two weeks, since the Saturday morning when she caught him on his way out to play golf. He said he’d call her back that night, but something must have come up. The time difference makes it hard for them to connect sometimes, especially with Russell’s busy schedule.

I’ll tell him about the snowstorm, she thinks, and running into Janet Byrne. I’ll tell him about the tree. She presses redial, breathing slowly and deeply, her heart beating at a more manageable rhythm.

“OH, JESUS,” Russell mutters. “I said that? Are you sure?”

“Russell,” she says weakly. For a moment, Rose wonders if she’s losing her mind, if she imagined a conversation with her son the way she’s been imagining conversations with the Chosen girl, but in her heart she knows it’s not true. She understands the difference between being lonely and being crazy, and she remembers what he told her. “You said we’d have Christmas in April.”

“My memory’s a little fuzzy on that, Ma. What I do remember is you saying we should come when it’s convenient, and next month really isn’t convenient.”

“Isn’t it Cody’s school vacation?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the problem. It’s Ellen. She’s going into the hospital on the ninth.”

Rose catches her breath. “The hospital? Oh my God.”

“Don’t worry, Ma. It’s no big deal.”

“Is she sick?”

“She’s fine. It’s an elective procedure.”

“Female trouble?” Rose whispers.

“Just some contouring,” Russell explains after a brief hesitation. “She hasn’t felt good about her thighs for a long time.”

Contouring? Rose stares dumbly at the tree across the room, the red and blue lights blinking on and off with monotonous regularity. You stupid woman, she thinks. You stupid, stupid old woman.

“Mom?” Russell says. “Are you there?”

THE TREE seems lighter as she drags it over the rug and into the hallway, though it should by rights feel a lot heavier, weighted down as it is by the metal stand and its full array of ornaments, a number of which have by now fallen from the branches and gone skittering across the floor. A small part of Rose is shocked by what she’s doing — this shaky voice in her head keeps pleading with her to stop, to get hold of herself — but the rest of her just keeps tugging and shuffling toward the door, intent on getting the thing out of the house, out of her sight.

Squeezing backward through the doorway is the hardest part — she’s got to prop the outer door open with her hip while bending and yanking at the same time — and she’s so caught up in the logistics of this maneuver that she doesn’t even remember the snow until her slipper sinks into the drift on the front stoop, and she yelps in surprise. Still, there’s nothing to do but keep going, finish what she’s started.

She descends gingerly, holding on to the railing with both hands, testing her foothold before committing to the next step. Once she’s made it down, she seizes the tree by its top branches and yanks it off the stoop in a single violent motion, scattering a spray of ornaments onto the white-blanketed lawn. After that it’s easy: she drags the tree like a child’s sled down the front walk and heaves it up onto a bank of curbside snow, where the garbagemen will be able to get it on Monday morning.

Her feet are cold and she’s not wearing a coat, but she can’t bring herself to turn around and go back inside. The snow’s coming down hard, falling in clumpy flakes that cling to her eyelashes and have to be blinked away like tears.

I’m alone, she thinks, staring down at the gaudy corpse of the tree, the candy-cane ornament she got at Woolworth’s, the little train she picked up at a yard sale, the gingerbread man who’s been around so long he doesn’t have any buttons left. Her mouth is open, her breathing fast and shallow. No more Christmas for me.

A stiff wind kicks up, but she barely notices. She’s thinking of her mother at the end, sitting with an attendant in the TV room of the nursing home, watching a program in Spanish. She’s thinking of Pat putting down his newspaper, telling her his chest feels funny. She’s thinking of her last visit to California, the inhuman bulges beneath Ellen’s tight blouse, the pride and tenderness with which Russell offered her up for inspection.

“Don’t they look great?” he asked. “We should have done this years ago.”

IT FEELS like a dream at first, the Chosen girl materializing out of the snow, emerging against the gauzy white curtain like a figure projected onto a screen, the Chosen girl and her little Chosen sister, both of them without coats. They’re veering across the not-so-recently plowed street in Rose’s direction, dragging what appear to be brand-new shovels, the kind with crooked handles and curved plastic scoops.

“Shovel your walk?” the little one inquires. Her voice is sharp, pushy even, with none of the timidity Rose expects from a girl in a kerchief. “Ten bucks. Twenty and we’ll throw in the driveway.”

Rose doesn’t answer. It’s the other one she’s looking at, the girl she knows from the bus stop and her daydreams. She’s squatting down by the tree, examining an ornament that’s fallen into the snow.

“We’ll do a good job,” the little one promises. She’s only eight or nine, too small for her grown-up shovel.

The Chosen girl rises, cupping the ornament — a red, metallic heart — in her outstretched hand, her mouth opening on a question she can’t seem to ask.

“They’re not coming,” Rose declares, her voice breaking with emotion. “She’s having an operation. An operation on her thighs.”

The Chosen girl says nothing, just stares at Rose with that look of patient suffering that never seems to leave her face.

“She can’t hear you,” the little one explains.

Of course she can’t, Rose realizes. She’s suddenly aware of an immense silence in the world, a vast cosmic hush pressing down from the sky, drifting to earth in little pieces, an illusion only shattered when the Chosen girl sniffles and makes a horrible hawking sound in the back of her throat. The poor thing. She looks bedraggled, maybe a bit feverish. Her nose is runny and her kerchief’s soaked with melted snow. Her lips have taken on a faint bluish undertone. But still she stands there, holding that heart in the palm of her hand. It seems brighter than it did a moment ago, newly polished.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Rose tells the little one. “I’ll be right back.”

SHE ONLY means to run in, grab the coat, and hurry back outside, but it doesn’t work out that way. She’s barely through the door — the warmth of her house hits her like something solid — when she steps on a glass ball, crunching it underfoot, losing her balance and falling dreamily to the floor. She’s lying there, moaning softly to herself, trying to figure out if she’s broken anything, when the phone begins to ring. She knows it’s Russell even before she hears his voice coming through the answering machine, launching into a complicated, self-pitying apology, reminding her how busy he is and how many responsibilities he has to juggle, and how nice it would be if she could just cut him a little slack instead of trying to make him feel guilty all the time.

“I’m trying, Ma. Can you at least admit that I’m trying?”

Her cheek pressed against the nubby rug, Rose wiggles her fingers, then her toes. Everything seems to be in working order. She picks herself up from the floor, dusts off her pants, and takes a few careful steps toward the closet, where the Sharks jacket is hanging. She slips it off the hanger, pleased by its bulk, only to realize that the price tag is still attached. The scissors should be right on the floor with the tape and the wrapping paper, but they’ve disappeared. Rose checks the kitchen and hallway before giving up and removing the tag with her teeth. By the time she tiptoes around the broken glass and steps outside, the girls have already gone.

Rose makes her way down to the curb to look for them, but the street is empty in both directions. Even though she’s standing right in front of it, she needs a second or two to register the fact that her Christmas tree is no longer lying on the ground like garbage. It just looks so natural the way it is now, standing upright in the snowbank, the remaining ornaments clinging stubbornly to its branches, that it’s hard to imagine that it could ever have been otherwise.

THE STORM continues all night, but the tree is still standing on Sunday morning, its branches cupping soft mounds of powder, when Rose sets off in search of the Chosen girl. She’s wearing her skirt and sweater again, but this time she cheats a little in deference to the blizzard — galoshes, a fleece jacket under the sweater, a woolen hat instead of the rain bonnet. She’s got the Sharks jacket stuffed into a red handlebag from Macy’s, along with her best winter gloves and a blue-and-green-plaid scarf.

The walk is longer and more treacherous than she anticipated — almost no one has shoveled yet — and she doesn’t reach her destination until a few minutes after nine. She feels weak, a bit disoriented. There’s nothing about the Chosen house that marks it as a place of worship. No cross, no sign, no parking lot. Just a shabby gray Colonial with cracked asphalt shingles and a boarded-up attic window tucked between the Quik-Chek and the Army Recruiting Center on a busy stretch of Grand Avenue.

Rose doesn’t imagine outsiders are welcome at the service, and her determination falters. Maybe I should stand here until it’s over, she thinks. Give the girl the bag on her way out, tell her parents not to let her out of the house without a coat anymore. But then she notices the freshly cleared and sanded walk leading up to the front steps, the two shovels resting against the porch railing, and it all comes back to her: the girl’s blank face, her chattering teeth and chapped hands, her soggy kerchief and snow-crusted sneakers. And deaf on top of that.

You poor thing. It’s a sin the way they treat you.

And now she’s doing it, not even thinking, just marching up the steps, feeling strong and purposeful, reaching for the doorknob. Pulling it open. Stepping inside. The warmth and the faces. Oh my.

Rose has never seen anything quite like this. The floor is bare. No curtains on the windows. The Chosen are seated in folding chairs in a large, otherwise empty room, the men and boys in business suits on one side, the women and girls in kerchiefs and long skirts on the other, each one more drab-looking than the next. There are more of them than Rose realized — the room is packed, the air a bit close — and all their faces are turned in her direction, their expressions welcoming, as if they’ve been expecting her. A tall, bearded man rises and relieves her of the bag.

“It’s for the girl,” Rose whispers. “So she won’t be cold.”

“Thank you.” The man is wiry and hungry-looking, his suit jacket a little short in the sleeves.

Rose’s errand is done and she knows she should be going, but the bearded man is guiding her with one hand toward an empty chair on the women’s side, as though she’s an invited guest.

“Sit,” he tells her.

Rose obeys. She feels suddenly exhausted, incapable of arguing or facing the cold outside. The woman beside her, whom Rose recognizes from the Stop & Shop, greets her with a quiet nod. The Chosen girl and her sister are sitting two rows ahead, a little to the right. The girl glances at Rose, her eyes crinkling with worry. She looks a lot better than she did yesterday, her hair freshly washed, her kerchief bright and dry. Rose smiles back, clenching and unclenching her hands to speed their thawing.

As if a secret signal’s been given, the Chosen all turn to face forward, though there’s nothing in front of them but a blank white wall. After a moment or two, a soft murmur rises in the room, a strange melodic mumbling that fills the air like background noise at a party. It doesn’t grow louder, and it doesn’t die out; it just keeps winding around and around on itself, never resolving, repeating the same uncertain notes of praise and lament. Rose closes her eyes and listens closely. Hard as she tries, she can’t quite decide if it’s a prayer or a song she’s hearing, or just a lot of people muttering to themselves. All she really knows — and it comes to her as something of a surprise — is that her own lips are moving, too, her voice blending in with everyone else’s, the words tumbling out of her like she’s known them all her life.