I definitely hadn’t done anything wrong here. And yet, something niggled at my memory. I knew the answer, I’d heard it somewhere. Where?

Yelena

Icould have Mama live with us.

I could prepare her meals and wash her laundry and fill her pill box with the correct cocktail of medications. I could even make her tea, exactly the way she likes it: black with a lot of mint and a dash of thyme.

What I could not do was sit around and sip that tea with her.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” I told her, forcing patience into my voice. “Call me on my cell phone if anything hap— I mean, if you need anything. Charasho? Here’s my number.”

I wrote my number on a napkin in large digits and placed it next to her cup of tea. “And here, have some biscuits.”

Mama grunted. “You’re always running, running, running. Is there any milk in the house?”

I winced. Since when did Mama like milk in her tea? “Uh… I think we’re out of milk.”

We hadn’t bought milk in weeks. I drank my coffee in the boutique, Benish had his black and Anzel drank cup after cup after cup at the car service station. Our dead fridge had turned into a newspaper rack and a place to house Benish’s recipe collection.

I left a disgruntled Mama at the table and ran down the stairs of the building. Anzel drove me over to Olga’s house and helped me lug Lieba Dratler’s gown inside.

It was only after Olga opened the door and I unzipped the garment bag that I paused. I’d blocked the queasiness from my mind until then, focused on doing, coming, going. But now, Olga…

“The Levinson gown?” she blurted out.

I nodded. “Yes. I have no idea how they got hold of it.”

Which was the truth. I definitely hadn’t done anything wrong here. And yet, something niggled at my memory. I knew the answer, I’d heard it somewhere. Where?

For the next hour, I tried focusing on my work. But of course, when you know you have one skimpy hour to work, everything goes wrong. I spent more time ripping seams than sewing.

By the time Anzel drove me home, I was tired, hungry, and in the surliest of moods.

“Hmm, smells good here,” Anzel commented as we reached our apartment.

I sniffed. A pungent smell of cabbage tickled my nostrils. My stomach grumbled.

We went into the apartment and approached the kitchen.

I stared.

Mama was standing over the counter, humming Tumbalalaika while Benish was puttering over the frying pan.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing at the pan.

“Pirozhki,” Mama answered happily. “I showed Benish how to make it. It’s going to be ready in…” She glanced into the pan, grabbed the spatula out of Benish’s hand and flipped a mini pie. “Four minutes.”

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 677)