“You abandoned a dreidel game,” he says, like it’s a huge aveirah. “How could you?”

“They didn’t mean it.”

Aunt Chana’s been sent to pacify me, and I’m not interested. Hello? Her kids — hers and Aunt Malky’s Shani — trashed my room, took my stuff. How does she think they didn’t mean it is going to make things better?

“They used my perfume. And makeup,” I say, petulantly.

“I know. They shouldn’t have,” Aunt Chana says, soothingly. She sits down on the bed beside me, rubs my arm. “I’m sorry, Ashira. It’s not nice to have your stuff invaded.”

Not nice. Haha. Thank you very much.

Aunt Chana just sits there, absorbing my negative energy, and suddenly, a memory surfaces: she’s sitting with me just like she sat next to Raizy, that night when she came to tell us Ima’s story.

She… cares about me. They all do.

Well, some of them, at least.

“I’m okay,” I mumble, finally. Aunt Chana squeezes my arm, starts to say something, but just then there’s a knock at the door and my little cousins troop in, the aunts trailing behind them.

Oh, boy, this is a communal crisis now.