One Halloween

My pink leotard, tights, tutu, and raffle tickets were good to go. But I was not. It was my ninth Halloween and I had a sore throat.

I stayed home from school that morning, but Mom said she’d take me to the Halloween carnival with her if I was feeling better by afternoon. I spent all morning trying not to swallow, willing myself to feel better. When the time came to put my hair up in a ballerina bun, Mom looked in the mirror at my star-bright eyes and rosy cheeks, consulted her mother’s intuition, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, honey, but you just can’t go when you’re feeling this sick.”

She led me to my room and I started to cry. My surroundings swam as she helped me out of my itchy tutu and into my soft cotton nightshirt. I shivered under the covers; she tucked an extra afghan around me. Even as my hot tears pooled at my ears and dropped onto the pillowcase, I knew that nothing had ever felt better than submitting to this bed, to my mom’s cool palm on my forehead. She shook the glass thermometer and placed it in my mouth, then sat down on my bed, right on top of my feet, right where I liked her. While she waited for the mercury to rise, she hummed quietly. And then, the verdict. Definitely a fever. A real party-killer of a fever.

“Promise you’ll put my raffle tickets in and be there when they pick the winner?” I sobbed. The big raffle prize at this year’s carnival was a Cabbage Patch Kid, and I had been eagerly saving up my good-behavior tickets, confident that my name would be picked because, well, I wanted it most.

Mom assured me she would put my tickets in the jar, but she also gave me a little talk about the meaning of “odds.” I didn’t care about odds. There was a chance I could win, so in my mind I had already won. Mom left the room to put my toddler brother in his jack-o-lantern costume, and I hazily daydreamed about the new doll who would soon be mine.

I already owned two Cabbage Patches. The first was a bald baby boy who came with the name Aldin Timothy. I had eagerly mailed in his papers and received a replacement birth certificate with the dazzling new name of my choice: Timothy Todd. Timmy was something special. I spent hours inhaling his baby powder scent and changing his fake little diapers. The year we lived in the duplex he became the victim of a dramatic kidnapping when the neighbor boy Hyrum brazenly entered our apartment while we were at church and waltzed out with my baby Timmy, hauling him over to the dark side of the duplex, the side with the scary teenage brother, the stacks of empty beer cans, and the urine-scented carpet. I pined after my baby for weeks, his fate a mystery, until the day my mom spotted him outside being swung around by the grubby hand of the dastardly Hyrum. She staged a daring rescue. Oh, sweet reunion! Timmy sustained a long white scrape on the top of his bald head, but he was otherwise unharmed and I loved him all the more for his bravery.

My second Cabbage Patch was a girl with long dark pigtails, blue checked overalls, and plastic white shoes. She was called Emily Luann, a name I deemed attractive enough not to tamper with. Emily was the only black person I had ever met, and I found her exotic and loveable and perfect. She helped me hone my braiding skills and enjoyed frequent costume changes as my collection of doll clothes grew. Fortunately, Emily’s young life was free of traumatic events, and we all got on rather well.

But I had room in my heart for more. Maybe this new addition would be a redhead. In a clown costume. Maybe she’d have a dimple and tiny white teeth showing. I couldn’t wait to hug her and kiss her freckled cheeks. I wondered what her name was and pictured introducing her to Emily and Timmy. I would keep her forever and bestow her upon my own kids. She would be an excellent consolation prize for having to be sick on Halloween.

Mom peeked in to check on me. I was almost asleep and her whisper barely registered. “Honey, I have to go work the cake walk for a little while. I’m taking your tickets. You just sleep. I’ll be home soon.”

Before I lost consciousness, my mind drifted over all the delights I’d be missing: the thrill of the fishing pond, the challenge of the bean bag toss, and the pride of the costume parade. (I didn’t mind missing out on the spook alley in the school’s basement. I had never dared go down there and I never would.) Filled with these images and an acute sense of injustice, my mind sank off to sleep.

When I surfaced dizzily, the house felt oppressively empty. Almost foreign with quiet. I was just mustering up some real self-pity when I heard the front door open. Mom was back! Maybe she was carrying my new doll up the stairs! I held my breath in excitement. When she entered my room, her arms were empty. She saw the hope in my eyes and let me down gently. “They didn’t pick your name, sweetie.”

“Oh.”

I sank back on the pillow. This was the worst Halloween ever. Whoever won my doll was probably the kind of kid who would drag her around and neglect her and not even care what she was named. And to make things worse, I couldn’t even go trick-or-treating.

But my brothers came through for me heroically that night. They carried my plastic bag through the neighborhood and explained at every door that their sister was sick but would love some candy anyway. Then they tromped back home and plunked a bursting bag of loot at my feet. As I stuck my face inside and inhaled that heavenly blend of Bit-O-Honeys, Tootsie Rolls, and peanut shells, the pang of my loss diminished and my heart swelled with goodwill. After all, wasn’t this, right here, this bag heavy with sugar and happiness, what Halloween was all about? The Cabbage Patch could wait until Christmas.