In the bridal room, as the music changed to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” Nana squeezed me against her. Her skin was pale and soft, with rouged pink cheeks, and she’d let her hair go white and cut it short, so that now it was a nest of curls on her head. I’d never seen her without makeup, or when she wasn’t dressed in what I thought of as an outfit, usually in shades of cream and rose and pink. For my bat mitzvah, she wore a tweed skirt and matching jacket made of tiny squares of pink and white with darker-pink trim around the lapels and the pockets, with a cream-colored silk blouse underneath, and she wore a hat, the way she always did in synagogue, a jaunty disc of pale-pink wool with the tiniest bit of netting peeking out from under the brim.
“Aren’t you going to put your party clothes on?” Her voice was so gentle, and, suddenly, I wasn’t angry anymore. I only wanted to cry.
“Why’d she have to do that?” I asked. I sounded like a little kid, like I was six and not thirteen, not officially an adult. “Why’d she have to make me sound like such a freak? I’m okay now, I haven’t even been in the hospital since sixth grade, and now all my friends are going to think I’m a huge weirdo.” My voice was wobbling just like my mother’s had, but there was no way I was going to cry.
“I’m not going to argue with you. That was not ideal.” Nana’s voice was dry. “Your friends will still be your friends, if they’re good friends. But I think that maybe your first act of Jewish womanhood is going to be forgiving your mother.”
That made me finally sit up and look at her. In my experience, parents were the ones who forgave kids—for leaving wet towels on the floor or leaving lunchboxes in our backpacks over the weekend, for forgetting to take in our homework or bring home permission slips, for the hundred ways, large and small, that we messed up and disappointed them. Children did not forgive their parents. But Nana was looking at me, her expression serious. “Parents aren’t perfect,” said Nana. “I wasn’t, and your mother isn’t, and if you have children you probably won’t be, either.” I liked her a lot then, for saying if, not when, the way my other grandmother, my father’s mother, always did. “Your mother loves you very much, and it hasn’t been easy for her. I know you don’t like thinking about it, and I certainly can understand that you don’t want to make a big deal about it, but, Rachel, she really did suffer.”
I shut my eyes again. I knew that Nana was right and that my mother had suffered, but all I could think about was how she’d give this exact speech, this exact same performance, at my graduation, and my wedding, and when—if—I had my first kid, and how everywhere I’d go and with everyone I’d meet, my mother would be there to remind them about how I might look normal but I wasn’t; how I was really sick and fragile, how I almost died and could almost die, that I would never be like them.
Outside the door, I heard people laughing, the sound of running feet, probably girls on their way to the bathroom. The appetizers were probably being served by now, the little hot dogs wrapped in pastry that were my favorites, and the egg rolls with the apricot dipping sauce.
“Did you hear what the rabbi said about being a woman of valor?” Nana asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t exactly been listening to the rabbi, that I’d been thinking about the party, and how great it was that I had new friends who were pretty and popular and had never known me as sick or strange or broken.
Nana shook her head, smiling. “That man does love the sound of his own voice. But he wasn’t bad today. Eshet chayil,” she said in Hebrew. “There’s a poem about it, from Proverbs. I used to know the whole thing, but the part I remember best—the part that made me think of you—says, ‘She opens her hand to those in need, and offers her help to the poor.’ ”
“My mom isn’t poor,” I mumbled.
Nana sighed. “No, but she’s needy. She needs to believe that you’re going to be all right, and that’s something no doctor can tell her for sure. Can you imagine how hard that’s been?”
I couldn’t. But I thought that I could at least be kind to my mother, even if I didn’t understand her, even if she embarrassed me.
Nana pulled herself up straighter, adjusting her hat, then recited, “ ‘Charm is deceptive and beauty short-lived, but a woman loyal to God has truly earned praise.’ ”
“I don’t know if I believe in God,” I blurted. I’d been thinking about that a lot, but I hadn’t planned on saying anything, especially not on the day of my bat mitzvah. But what kind of god would let six million people die in ovens in the Holocaust? What god would let little kids get kidnapped, or die in their car seats on hot days after their parents forgot that they were in the car? What god would let a baby be born with a defective heart, or let her mother embarrass her to death at her bat mitzvah? Why would God have let Alice die?