The Year My Mother Came Back by Alice Eve Cohen

Daddy said he had the last laugh when he won the sailing championship last summer even though he wasn’t allowed to join the yacht club.

    Eliana sleepily sits down to breakfast in blue and red striped pajamas, her unruly caramel hair an appealing mess. I arrange scrambled eggs, sliced cantaloupe, and toast on her plate, and open the fridge to make her lunch.
    â€œI miss Julia,” she says.
    â€œMe, too.”
    I assemble a cheese sandwich and add some baby carrots to the lunch bag—wishful thinking on my part, as Eliana is a vegetarian who doesn’t like vegetables.
    â€œIt doesn’t feel like home without Julia.”
    â€œI know.”
    She looks at her plate and pushes the eggs around with her fork.
    â€œYou okay, Sweetheart?”
    She starts to cry. I kneel beside her chair and she lets me hug her. She doesn’t like anyone to see her cry, so she hides her face in my chest till my shirt is damp. She wipes her nose on a striped pajama sleeve and looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes.
    â€œMom, when do I have surgery?”
    â€œNext month. About six weeks.”
    â€œThat’s so soon!”
    â€œI know.”
    Her mouth quivers, tears brimming again. She glances at the clock and shifts into high gear. “I can’t be late for school!”
    She bolts into her room, slams the door, emerges moments later in T-shirt and jeans, speed-braids her voluminous hair, tosses her homework and lunch bag in her backpack, and we’re off.
    I FALL INTO a daily routine, taking Eliana to school, walking through the labyrinthine paths of the Central Park Ramble, lying motionless on the radiation table. Those once excruciating sessions fly by, now that I’ve begun time-traveling with my mother. When Jamal says, in his beguiling Barbados accent, “Please lie perfectly still for ten minutes,” it opens a portal through which I summon her. These telescoping minutes might last for days, or for just a few fleeting moments. We revisit events from our past together. Sometimes we just talk. Always, my mother is there and she is not there.
    IN MY PERIPHERAL vision I see Mom leaning on the end of the radiation bed, ankles crossed, reading the
People
magazine I picked up in the waiting room. She’s wearing a loose-fitting dress in an Indian paisley print, and she looks relaxed. It’s comforting to have her in the room, watching over me.
    â€œIt’s chilly in here. Are you cold, Sweetheart?” she asks.
    â€œA little.” The side of my face is pressed on the mattress. She pulls the sheet up and smooths it over my shoulders. “Thanks.”
    She goes back to reading the magazine. I listen to the pages flipping, and the customary electronic beeps and whirring of the machine.
    â€œMom, can I talk to you about something?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œYou never told me about your childhood.”
    â€œThat’s true.” She puts the magazine down on the end of the bed.
    â€œI learned about your Oklahoma roots years after you died. I always hated your secrets, and this was one more secret.”
    â€œI didn’t intend for it to be a secret.”
    â€œReally? Well, it was, and it made me mad. You never told me a thing about your childhood or about Oklahoma! I talked to your brother, he told me to talk to your aunt, and I had to invent the rest. Makes me angry now, all over again. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
    â€œYou never asked.”
    â€œOkay. Sorry. I’m asking you now.”
    â€œThen I shall tell you now.” She pushes her reading glasses up on top of her head and sits on the step stool next to my bed.
    â€œI grew up in an unhappy home, in a big, dark house, in the orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn. My family was affluent, relatively speaking. My father—your Grandpa Ben—was a well-respected doctor. His office was in the house, and we had to be very quiet when he was seeing patients. Our