Intensive outpatient facility. Severe depression. The words swam through my mind. “Sometimes it’s so gradual that we don’t notice red flags,” the psychiatrist at the hospital said gently, and Mommy and Tatty and I all nodded numbly. I’d let my parents know about Raizy’s phone call, and ran over to her apartment. I’d been there when Hatzolah came and attached Shana to IV fluids, and I’d gone along in the ambulance to the hospital. I was the sister who lived nearby, the one who was best at dealing with Shana. I was the sister who had given over her info to the doctor in the emergency room, realizing with a start how un-Shana-like it was to let someone else run her show, and I was going to be the best option for what came next, too.

And so it comes. “We’ll take the two little ones. They’ve gone to local playgroups and stayed with us before,” Mommy says to me after we leave the hospital. Tatty remained with Shana, and we need to make plans. Once Shana is stabilized, she’s going to move into our aunt’s apartment, right near the facility, so she can spend several hours there daily. The doctors are optimistic that with the right care, intensive therapy, and medication, she’ll be okay, though they predict it will be weeks or more before she can return home to her house. She’d simply stared at the ceiling, silent and stiff, while the doctors told us all this, and Mommy had cried, while I just thought about the kids, over and over again. Two little boys under five. And Raizy, 13 and far too young to have seen her mother like that. “But Raizy….” My mother trails off now.

She doesn’t need to continue; I know the rest. Raizy needs a routine. Raizy needs to be closer to school, and Raizy needs more companionship than her toddler brothers. Raizy needs to be in a house that isn’t dysfunctional, I think, and aloud I say, “She’ll stay on Sari’s high-riser, just like when she comes for Shabbos.”

I stagger into the house where my own bunch and Shana’s are already waiting, Mayer supervising grim-faced. Mommy collects the little ones, who jump to spend more time with Bobby. Raizy sits on a kitchen barstool, her grilled cheese half-eaten. She doesn’t speak, just watches Mommy go with sullen eyes, and doesn’t return Mommy’s tearful embrace.

“Raizy, aren’t you hungry?” I try.

She gives me a cold look. “No,” she says, kicking the legs of the stool.

“You need to eat,” I say, gripped with images of Shana in that bed. Raizy looks a lot like Shana, which I find unnerving now, though she’s always been sweet where Shana had been sharp. She liked to come over after school to do homework with Sari, lingering in our bright, lively house for dinner, instead of returning to Shana’s strident commentary.

Today, understandably, she’s not herself.  “I’m not depressed,” she spits out, the word like a curse. “It’s just gross.”

I take away her plate without a word and offer her a banana. There is fragile rigidity to the way she sits, like she might snap in half if she bends too far. It’s only a matter of time before she collapses in my arms like she has a dozen times before, when she would flee her mother to be with Sari and me.

I wait, but it doesn’t come. I drive her out to her house to collect her clothes, Sari sitting beside her with her hand on Raizy’s knee, and Raizy stares out the window and doesn’t speak at all. I fill the silence with nervous chatter, mostly about Shana. “Right now, the doctors are taking good care of her,” I say when we get there, picking out a few pictures for Shana. “Zeidy is there with her. Once she’s stabilized, they’ll bring her to Tante Shifra’s apartment. She’ll spend a few hours a day at a great program that will help her. You’ll be able to visit Tante Shifra’s every day after school. We can all go together.”

Raizy doesn’t respond. I clear my throat, glancing over at the kitchen floor. It’s pristine in the way that Shana likes, no sign of the drama that ensued earlier that day. “You did the right thing,” I say gently, putting a hand on Raizy’s back. “Calling me and Hatzolah. We’re going to help your mother.”

Raizy pulls away. “I’m not going to visit with you,” she says darkly. I take a step back, startled at the vitriol in her voice. “In fact, I’m not going at all,” she says, twisting away from me to look at Sari. “I have homework. And other stuff. It sounds like a huge waste of time.” She turns on her heel. “I need a suitcase,” she says, and marches upstairs. Sari shoots a helpless glance at me, then heads up after her.

Shana is moved to Tante Shifra’s the next afternoon. “It’ll be at least a month or two,” Mommy reports back to me. “I think you’d better let the school know that you’ll be Raizy’s guardian. But don’t tell them too much,” she adds swiftly. “Shana’s in shidduchim.”

Don’t say too much. I call the principal and stumble over an explanation in which I try to say nothing at all and instead say far too much. When I hang up the phone, I’m drained. Is this how it’s going to be for the next few months? Pretending that everything is fine, when nothing is?

“We’ll keep an eye on Raizy,” the principal had said, and I had mumbled assent. Raizy doesn’t talk to me when she gets home, only gives me a cool look as though I’m a stranger before disappearing into Sari’s room for the rest of the night.

She refuses to come down for dinner, and I ask Sari to take a plate up to her. Sari looks uncertain, torn between her cousin and her mother, and I modulate my tone so it’s gentle and unworried. “Right now, it’s most important that Raizy has a friend,” I assure her, and Sari bobs her head and runs upstairs.

Once, I had once been a friend to Raizy. We hadn’t needed Sari around as a buffer. Instead, we’d sit on the porch together, watching the sunset and talking about school and home and anything on Raizy’s mind. Shana was good at giving Raizy what she needed physically, but she’d never really mastered emotional support, and Raizy knew it.

Now, I am in Shana’s position, trying to keep Raizy safe and fed, and Raizy glowers at me and escapes whenever I try to speak to her. And Shana is….

“This place is a waste of time,” Shana says when I visit the family room. The facility welcomes companions during downtime, and there is a small break between sessions right around when I finish work. “Too much talking about my feelings. I’m not touchy-feely like that.” We sit in a quiet room set with tall windows and lots of squishy couches. Other patients relax with their families across the room, though I’m not always sure who’s the chaperone and who’s the patient.

With Shana, it’s clear. She moves slowly, the way she’s been moving for months now. Her cheeks are sunken, and I remember with some guilt how I’d complimented her last week on how calmly she’d handled some crisis with the toddlers. She’d just nodded, and I had thought, maybe the divorce is what finally mellowed Shana out.

Not mellow, I understand now. This is a woman who doesn’t have the energy to be as caustic as she’d once been, though she does try. “Eli and Avi came to Tante Shifra’s with dirty faces yesterday,” she says, pursing her lips. “And if Mommy is trying to show me she’s handling them, tell her to make sure their shirts fit.” She sighs irritably. “Well, at least they came.”

I swallow. “Raizy will come,” I assure her. “She’s just… adjusting. I think she’s a little afraid to see you here.” It sounds like a reasonable explanation. Maybe it is. “We’d meet you at Tante Shifra’s instead.”

Shana scoffs. “Raizy must be thrilled to be staying with you,” she says. “She always preferred you.”

“That’s not true,” I protest, but we both know I’m lying. When she was younger and I would take Sari and Raizy to the park, Raizy used to call me Mommy. We laughed it off, joked that Raizy wanted to pretend that Sari was her sister, but Shana and I had both known the truth.

“She’ll come,” I promise Shana, and I don’t tell her the next day how Raizy’s face twisted when I brought up the subject again.

On Friday afternoon, Mommy brings the boys over. My little ones are happy to see them, but they make a beeline for Raizy instead, climbing onto her lap and talking a mile a minute about their week with Mommy. “Bobby took us to Tante Shifra’s ’partment lots of times! She baked cookies with us,” Avi says, big blue eyes shining gleefully. “You gotta come next time!”

Raizy laughs. For once, she seems like herself, and I feel a prickle of hope as I watch her with her siblings. They build a Magna-Tile tower together and chase each other on the swings outside and roll in the leaves, and the shadow that hangs over Raizy clears.

I turn to Mommy to tell her what I’ve noticed, but there’s a furrow to her brow. “Raizy hasn’t looked at me since I got here,” she murmurs.

Once she mentions it, I see it. Raizy avoids Mommy’s gaze, and she finds something to do whenever Mommy tries speaking to her. But around her siblings she is full of life, and I slip outside to stand beside her and venture, “Would you like to join Avi and Eli for Shabbos at Bobby’s?”

Raizy twists around. She has no problem making eye contact with me, though it’s sharp and scornful. “You don’t get it,” she snaps. “I’m not going anywhere near Bobby’s house.”

I temper my voice, keep it gentle. “Raizy, Bobby is here to—”

“Stop it!” Raizy snaps. “Stop acting like you’re my friend. I didn’t choose to be here, and you make it worse whenever you—” She takes a step, turns her back to me. “If you want to help,” she barks, “leave me alone!” The words emerge as a shriek, and I wince, stepping back.

I am trying to be patient. Raizy is going through something more traumatic than anything I endured in my childhood, and if I’m going to be her punching bag for a few months, then so be it. But it hurts, seeing her glares and the way she looks at me as though I’m the enemy.

Raizy doesn’t come down when we start the meal, and I have to send Sari up three times till she reluctantly comes down. She talks only to Sari, though I can hear every word. “Your mother is such a pest,” she mutters. “As if I’m gonna get all depressed just because my mom’s, like, a basket case now.”

I bite back the urge to respond. Sari sounds pained, her eyes darting to me. I eat my challah placidly and pretend I’m not eavesdropping. “Raizy…” Sari says.

Raizy ignores her. “Ma used to make us gourmet meals every night,” she says. “Ta hated it. Said we were all going to get bloated and ugly. But she would keep giving us seconds and thirds. I eat plenty.” She punctuates that by taking another piece of challah. “So annoying,” she says, louder this time.

Something about the exchange pricks at the back of my mind, and I decide to   broach it with Shana the next time I see her. I invite Raizy to visit on Sunday, and she sneers at me as though I’ve offended her by existing. I had no idea that my sweet, lovable niece had this teenager lurking inside of her, but I force myself to smile and say cheerily, “I’ll go myself, then.”

I bring along Yossi, my toddler, so Shana has someone new to see. But she’s never been all that interested in my kids, and today is no exception. “Make sure he isn’t too loud,” she says, and goes back to staring out the window, her hollow cheeks illuminated by the sunlight.

I bounce Yossi on my lap and prattle. We discuss the boys for a little while, and I mention Raizy’s visit with them. “She’s great with kids,” I tell Shana. “Sometime soon, she’ll probably want to start babysitting in the neighborhood.”

Shana scoffs. “Raizy? She’s a space cadet. She’d get distracted by a book and forget she was in charge.” She falls silent again, her hands pale and blue-veined on her lap.

I can’t make small talk anymore, and so I ask it, abrupt and rude. “When did you get… like this? After the divorce?” Had it been the divorce that had precipitated it, and our quiet distance? I think about Shana staring out the window, blank-faced and listless, and I can’t remember exactly when it started.

The nice thing about Shana, what I’ve always appreciated most about her, is that she is as unflappable about anyone else’s frankness as she is her own. She shrugs. “A while before that. You know how Yitz was whenever I tried doing anything interesting.” I hadn’t known, but I nod anyway. Shana makes a face. “I tried that art course and he insisted that I needed to be home with the kids at night. He used to complain that my gym membership cost too much. My therapist here says I got so deep into myself that I forgot what it was like to enjoy things. Not food, or exercise, or shopping. I guess it became a habit. He’d be so smug if he knew.” She scowls.

“Smug?” I repeat. I hadn’t known Yitz well. Not that any of us had really tried. He was off-putting and quiet. I’d always felt a little sorry for him, the way he’d borne Shana’s criticism without batting an eyelash, and it’s jarring to hear Shana speak of him like this now.

Shana seems oblivious to my discomfort. “Oh, you know,” she continues airily. “He used to pick out my clothes for me. He’d put food on my plate. I couldn’t even go to your house without him knowing, and he’d get furious if I didn’t check first.” I stare at her, astonished by how casually she reveals this. Maybe he’d just been better at hiding in public than Shana had been.

“This is why you got the divorce,” I say dumbly. Shana has always shrugged it off as, well, you know Yitz, and we’d all nodded and assumed it was Yitz who had initiated it. Shana is my sister, and I love her, but I don’t always like her very much, and I’ve never been blind to her faults.

It seems I had, perhaps, been blind to the faults of others. “Well, not really,” Shana says, shrugging. “It was just when Raizy hit that feisty stage and he started doing it to her, too. Then I had enough. Should’ve done it years ago.” She says it casually, as though she hadn’t done something so supremely courageous for Raizy, as though this is all negligible.

I am dumbfounded. Shana has layers I’d never anticipated, a fierce mother’s protectiveness that had been enough for her to overturn her entire life. Shana isn’t the woman I’d thought she was.

And then she says, “Speaking of Raizy, is she still failing math? She just doesn’t have the brain for numbers and she never does her homework without someone hovering over her,” and I almost laugh. No, she’s still the same Shana, and I’m reading too much into this glimpse of depth.

Raizy, as it turns out, is failing math, and she nearly scorches me with her glare when she shoves a test at me to sign. “I signed Ma’s name and the teacher said that she knew my mother wasn’t home right now,” she says grumpily. “Did you tell everyone about my messed-up mother?”

“She isn’t messed up,” I say, defensive. “She’s just going through something incredibly tough. And she could use your support, too.” It’s more than I’ve pushed her before, but I feel suddenly protective of Shana, my frail sister all alone in that bright lit room. “The least you could do is be a little more generous toward her.”

Raizy gives me a quelling look. “Support,” she says in a mocking voice, and she turns to walk upstairs.

“Raizy!” I say sharply. I am running out of patience, my unconditional love bruising with each day of this. Raizy ignores me. “Raizy!” I say again, and she vanishes into Sari’s room.

I could chase her now, could demand a discussion or at least some peace between us, but I am instead left at the bottom of the stairs, stymied and running out of hope. If I am discovering new things about Shana, Raizy is a closed door to me. No, not a door. Raizy is a wall, built ten-brick thick and cemented at every crack, and she will not yield to me.

“How am I supposed to do this for months?” I ask Mayer, anguished, but he looks just as lost as I am.

It’s nearly two weeks since Raizy has come to our house, and she shows no sign of thawing. Sari is caught between us, helpless and agitated, and I have no guidance for her. I am lost and frustrated and exhausted, running between work and parenting and fostering Raizy and visiting Shana, and it’s beginning to wear away at me.

Maybe that’s why I don’t notice at first that Raizy isn’t home the next afternoon. Sari had gone to a friend’s house straight from school to work on a project. Raizy must be with her, I decide absently, and enjoy the peace that suffuses the house without Raizy’s eternal storm cloud present.

When Sari walks in by herself, though, I start to wonder. “Raizy left school before I did,” she says, frowning. “I thought she came straight here.” She tries a few friends, but no one has seen Raizy.

I can feel panic rising within me, a fear so sharp I might scream. “I didn’t see her at the park,” Sari says. “And she doesn’t like going to the library anymore. I don’t know where she could be.” She chews on her lip. “Maybe Bobby picked her up from school as a surprise?”

“Maybe,” I say, and I force a smile. “That’s probably it. I’ll give Bobby a call.”

But I can’t call Mommy. Mommy wouldn’t have just taken Raizy, and I can’t let her know that I’ve lost Raizy, that after weeks of hostility, Raizy has disappeared. Maybe I’d set her off when I’d snapped at her the night before. Shana is going to kill me.

I gather my thoughts, take a breath, and head to my car.

There’s one more place where Raizy might be.

Shana’s house is dark and quiet, just as it’s been every time I’ve come by to take the mail. But this time, the door is slightly ajar, and I exhale a sigh of relief.

I walk inside. “Raizy?” The lights are off, and fear grips me at the returning silence. I take a step forward, venturing deeper into the house.

My foot hits something soft. Raizy’s knapsack is on the floor. She’s here, even if she isn’t answering, and I walk to the stairs. I’m afraid to spook her by turning on the lights. Instead, I walk carefully into Shana’s bedroom, and I stop.

Raizy is sitting on Shana’s bed, her back to me. “Raizy!” I cry out, so relieved that I can’t even be angry at how irresponsible she’s been.

She doesn’t even turn around. “Go away,” she says dully.

The anger floods my system after weeks spent suppressing it.

“How dare you,” I say, and I am no longer beseeching her to give me the time of day. “You run off — we were terrified, Sari was terrified — and you tell me to go away? I’ve done everything I can to be patient with you. I’ve tried to be understanding. And you just… spit in my face, over and over again—”

Raizy stands up. For a moment I think that she might be apologetic, but then a car drives by outside and her defiant face, flushed with fury, is briefly illuminated. “Oh, sure,” she spits out. “You’re so nice and understanding.”

“Stop saying it like that,” I say, clenching my jaw.

“What?” Raizy asks mockingly. “Like it’s a lie? It is all a lie,” her voice rises. “Every last bit of it. You’re supposed to be her family!” It emerges like a scream, a cry for Shana that silences me. “You were supposed to love her!” I stand stock-still in the place where Shana had lain alone for days, and I can only listen. Raizy sways in place, unsteady, her reedy voice hoarse and pitched high. “And you didn’t see! None of you saw!”

I think of Shana, lifeless and shrunken to a weaker version of herself, and I can’t speak. Raizy trembles with rage. “I know why,” she says, her voice growing louder. “I know why. You did see. You knew she was sick. And you didn’t care. You liked her better that way.”

“Raizy, no,” I say, horrified.

Raizy doesn’t stop. “She was nicer,” she snarls. “She was quieter. She listened more. She complained less. She was disintegrating and you were all relieved! You think I don’t know?” she demands, and I have no answer for her. Her voice is shrill, and the abandoned house echoes with her screams. “You think I don’t know how you felt? Of course, you were relieved!” she bursts out, and she is swaying dangerously now, her body heaving with imminent tears. “I was relieved!” she sobs, and I rush to her before she collapses, hold her tightly, and let myself sob with her.

Because she’s right. Hashem yerachem. We’d all seen the red flags, the signs that something hadn’t been quite right with Shana. It hadn’t just been how she’d picked at her food. It had been the way something had sapped her of her energy, had taken this vital, unbearable woman and broken her into someone more palatable. Someone less abrasive. And we’d preferred her.

Even Raizy felt that way, and it’s been eating her alive. “It’s okay,” I say, sinking to the ground with Raizy in my arms. “It’s okay.” But it isn’t, and Raizy trembles with guilt, with despair, with so much fury in her little body that it feels like it might consume her alive if she lets it loose.

“I was glad,” Raizy chokes out. “I was glad, because she was more like you. And the whole time she was getting worse and worse—”

“I know,” I whisper, and I hold her, and we cry more, because there is no way to undo the past. In this dark, empty place, at the scene of the crime, we can only hold each other and mourn our impossible, terrible emotions.

The next afternoon, we push the  double doors to the family room open together. Raizy looks around the bright room with tentative, anxious eyes. “It looks nice,” she says. “Not like I imagined it.” She is gripping my hand so tightly that it’s gone numb, but I don’t say anything to her.

“It’s mostly nice here,” I tell her. “Your mother is getting a lot of care and attention. It’s not all pills and treatments.”

Raizy nods jerkily. “She won’t want to see me,” she says, and she stops walking. “She must be so angry with me.”

I think about what I know about Shana now, what she’s capable of. “I don’t think she’d ever not want to see you,” I say carefully. “But if she’s a little harsh—”

“It’s okay,” Raizy says, and she stands up straight again. “That’s just Ma.” That’s just Ma, imperfect, but still her mother. Still herself, but a little bit healthier every day. Not every person we love is going to be likable, or even a very good mother. But I do believe that Shana cares, even if she can’t always express it in a way that we recognize, and I can love her despite her imperfections.

Shana is sitting on a couch near the corner today, reading a magazine, and she looks up when we approach. Her eyes widen when she sees Raizy, and she closes the magazine, and her lips press together. “You haven’t brushed your hair today,” she says to Raizy, a scolding like the dozens that she’s tossed her way when I’ve visited before.

For a moment, I think I’ve misjudged her, that this was a bad idea. But Raizy smiles tremulously and Shana touches her arm, delicate and gentle as I’ve only seen her with her babies, and all my doubts fade away. She watches Raizy with a quiet yearning, with love that is as unvarnished as every other part of her, and I know that this is what they’ve both needed for all of this time.

Raizy speaks, Shana retorts, and they melt into each other, locked together in the embrace they’ve desperately needed all this time.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 824)