Chapter 6 Summary

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." (pg. 111) Christmas remembers a corridor in a soot-blackened red brick building surrounded by cinder-covered grounds and ringed by a ten-foot steel-and-wire fence. He remembers orphans in blue denim uniforms and windows rain-streaked with soot like black tears. Christmas recalls being five-years-old and standing in that corridor. Then, he sneaks into the dietician's bathroom. For some time now, the child has been doing this. Young Christmas is fascinated by the wonderful smell and taste of the pink toothpaste which he has discovered in the dietician's bathroom. He is not yet aware of her as a person; she is only a pleasant pink face he sees in the dining hall. On this night, that is about to change.

As Christmas steals a tiny pink ribbon of guilty pleasure from the toothpaste...