“You’re not dead? I’m going to kill you!”
“I’m okay,” I say, but that doesn’t stop my mother from yelling at me.
“Where were you? How do you just disappear? I was almost calling the police . . .” Her face is pale and her eyes bulge like a runaway horse’s. I know there is no point in trying to explain.
“. . . You could have been lying in the road, hit by a car, your leg broken, or kidnapped by a crazy man.” Her voice escalates in direct proportion to her fears.
“You could have been somewhere, all alone . . . Gottinu, what have I done to deserve such a vildeh chayeh?”
I remain very still, being careful not to shift my weight from foot to foot, something that infuriates my mother. I am itching to protest that I am not a wild animal, that I didn’t disappear. I want to say that all I want is to be like the other kids and play with my friends after school. But I don’t say that. Answering back is not allowed. Finally, it is my turn.
“Nothing happened, Mameh. See? I’m okay.”
She looks at me as if she doesn’t recognize me—the oig in her kop, the light of her life, on those days when she loves me. Why, if I’m not hurt, I wonder, does she get madder, as if my being alive and not dead is beside the point?
The tirade is almost over, I know, when my mother lifts her eyes to the ceiling and asks God her favourite question: “I survived Hitler for this?”
The year I am nine, my mother does something I never imagined possible. She disappears.
Every morning.
After breakfast, but before I’m ready to leave for school, she stands at the door, her wiry...
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