"Wouldn't everybody want to go to the FIRST one?" I asked.

"I dunno," Dad replied in a joking tone. "When you're number two, you try harder."

I was twelve. It seemed like the world was full of things that made no sense. Consequently, I was full of questions.

It was the Friday before Christmas, and we were driving to my grandparent's house. They lived in a small Yankee town, as New England as New England could be, small houses set apart from one another, snow everywhere, fences, steeples, big old leaf-less trees, and here and there a scrawny soul, bundled up in bright plaids and oversized boots, trudged through the snow, going who knows where.

"For a small town, they go all out for Christmas," Dad noted.

"You say that every year," Mom replied.

"It looks like no one wants to be outdone," Dad went on, and Mom (who knew all his phrases by now) finished the sentence with him: "but at the same time, they want to be understated."

He laughed. "Sorry to be so predictable."

I was beginning to half-know the way, and as we turned down the aptly-named Church Street, I knew what we would find: two identical churches, each of them long and white, like an old schoolhouse with a steeple. Each had a nativity scene out front. For the first time I noticed that the church on the right side of the street was the FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH and the one on the left side of the street was the SECOND CHRISTIAN CHURCH. I pointed this out to my parents and asked them why.

"I don't know," Mom replied tersely, in a tone that said, Please stop asking questions.

Dad, on the other hand, stopped the car and backed up. He looked from one to the other, scratching his chin.

"Wouldn't everybody want to go to the FIRST one?" I asked.

"I dunno," Dad replied in a joking tone. "When you're number two, you try harder."

Mom gave him a look and said, "How long are we going to sit here?"

Dad replied, "Look at the nativity scenes — they're practically identical." His head went back and forth, like a man watching a ping-pong match. "Except for a couple of figures, they're the same." Mom shrugged. "Do you know, Tony," Dad said, turning to look at me, "Your mother and I got married in church number two over there."

"Why not number one?" I asked.

"Your mother's family went to number two," he replied, and put the car back in gear. "You know who could tell you about the churches, if you really want to know, is your Grandpa. I'm sure he'd be glad to tell you."

Just before the car started moving away, I called out, "Wait!" There were words written in Gothic letters over the door of the Second Christian Church, but the script was so ornate, I couldn't read it. "What does that say?" I asked.

"Come out from among them. 2 Cor 6:17," Dad replied.

"What does the two-core thing mean?" I asked. Mom sighed loudly, so I let it go.
 

By the time we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house, I'd forgotten all about Church One and Church Two. My grandparents fussed over me, got me out of my winter clothes, and then fussed all over my mother. She was their daughter, of course. Grandpa shook Dad's hand and Grandma gave him her cheek to kiss.

After lunch, which was followed by Grandma's amazing apple pie, the adults pretty much collapsed into the comfort of the living room. All except Grandma, who was "straightening up" the kitchen, which was something she did after everything was already clean. I wandered into the dining room to look at my Grandpa's nativity scene.

Most people I know who have nativity scenes bought them at a store. But my Grandpa's family comes from Naples, Italy, and there, people make their own nativity figures. Every year Grandpa adds a new character, and by now the figures he adds have nothing to do with the original story. He has a baker, a pizza maker, and a man carrying a big smoked ham. There is a policeman and a Salvation Army woman with a bell and a bucket. He even has a grown-up Jesus, with a stiff robe all wavy to look as though it's blowing in the wind. He carries a great big walking stick, and looks like an action hero. He usually stands somewhere apart from the manger, distant from the baby version of himself. Doctor Who would have said that Jesus couldn't cross his own timeline, and that made sense to me.

Grandma saw me looking at the figures, and she stopped "straightening" to look at me. It was a funny moment, because I was looking at Grandpa's little people and thinking how special they were, and there she was, looking at me in just the same way.

I think she was waiting for what happened next, because when I gasped in surprise, she walked over to ask, "What is it?"

"I just realized that the three wise men are all women," I told her. "Were they always that way? Or is it new this year?"

"It's always been that way," she said. "You were just too little to realize before."

"Oh!" I exclaimed. I bent to examine them carefully. I knew better than to touch them or pick them up. Grandpa would have blown a gasket, and there was no way that I could put the figure back exactly where he'd placed it.

"Grandma!" I exclaimed in soft surprise, "One of them looks like you!"

At that, Grandma stiffened and stood up tall, drawing a long breath as she did so. She didn't say a word, but I felt her pull away. I looked from her face to the figure's face. It was a speaking likeness. I didn't know what to make of it, so I asked her why Grandpa made the little wise man look like her.

"You'll have to ask your Grandfather," she replied in a frosty tone, and went off to straighten up the kitchen a second time.
 

I wasn't alone with Grandpa until late that afternoon: Grandma was making dinner and chatting with my Mom, who sat at the kitchen table. Dad was snoring on the couch, the victim of a pair of beers. Grandpa asked me to help him make a bed on the back porch, where he was going to sleep. He did this every time we visited, though I never understood why.

When we were done with the bed, I asked him why his three wise men were women. He looked surprised. "Have you never heard that story?" he asked. I shook my head dumbly. "Well!" he exclaimed, and then, after carefully checking that Grandma couldn't overhear, he told me the following.

"Now, Tony, you may find this hard to believe, but ten thousand years ago, when there still dinosaurs in this neighborhood, your grandmother and I were your age. And we lived in this very same town, although we all lived in caves back then, and dressed in animal skins.

"That year, we were both fourteen—:

"I'm only twelve," I interrupted.

"Ah," he said, caught short for a moment. Then he went on, "Well, back then twelve was fourteen and fourteen was twelve. So we were both your age.

"Now anyway, it was Christmas, and of course we had to have the Christmas pageant. They chose this cute little girl with dark brown hair to be Mary, and a skinny little boy to be Joseph. And of course there were kids to play lambs and cows, and shepherds and angels and so forth... and just like every other year, they wanted the three tallest boys to play the wise men."

"Was one of them you?" I asked.

"No," Grandpa said, thinking for a moment. "I believe I played the mailman.

"So anyway, Your Grandmother and her two best friends they got to thinking and talking and confabulating, and they announced — or rather, your Grandmother announced — that she and her two friends wanted to be the Three Wise Men.

"Miss Percival, who ran the whole affair, wanted none of that. She told your Grandma that none of those three girls were Men, and that if they wanted to pretend they were, that they couldn't very well be Wise, either.

"Your Grandma right away pointed out that the boys Miss Percival wanted weren't MEN either, they were boys, and 'If they have to pretend they're men, well, we can do the same!' and then she pointed out that the three girls all did better in school than the three boys.

"Miss Percival told her, 'Being wise ain't the same as being smart' so your Grandma came back with, 'At least we won't be picking our noses or scratching ourselves in places we oughtn't!'

Grandpa laughed. "And of course, at just that moment one of the three boys was scratching himself, one was picking his nose, and the third was doing both."

I laughed.

"They argued back and forth, and for every objection Miss Percival had, your Grandmother went her one better. Finally, the three boys got fed up and said they didn't want to do it anyway, and left, so Miss Percival had no choice."

"And Grandma got to be one of the Wise Men?"

"Yes, she did," Grandpa agreed. "She certainly did."

Then he fell silent, and ran his hand across his face. His nascent beard gave off a rasping sound as his dry fingers passed over it.

"That's such a funny story!" I commented, laughing.

Grandpa looked at me a moment, then sighed. "Yes, I guess so. *That* part is certainly a funny story. But what came after isn't quite as funny. Some of the parents, and some of the people who weren't parents, got VERY upset when they saw three girls playing the Wise Men, and they made quite a stink about it."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because they thought that women shouldn't try to take a man's place," he said. "Or some such foolishness."

He was quiet for a few moments. Until now, Grandpa's tone had been joking, laughing, mocking, silly, but now he was serious. "In fact, some people were so offended, so scandalized, that they did what every good Christian would do: they split off and made their own church."

I frowned, trying to make sense of it all. I wasn't sure whether Grandpa was making everything up, or whether any of it really happened. And I knew, that being a kid, I had almost zero chance of finding out whether it was right and real, or all made up.

"Have you noticed," Grandpa said, "When you come onto Church Street, there are two Christian Churches? Well, that's why. The First Church had the female Wise Men, and the Second Church couldn't bear it."

© 2013 by Kaleigh Way