Free Washing the Dead by Michelle Brafman

with no more familiarity in her voicethan when she’d described her boys’ doings.
    “I don’t doubt that.” Tzippy was a natural. My heart was open and raw, and the mention of her name brought back the old pain over losing the closest thing I had to a sister.
    We let Tzippy loiter in the air for a few seconds.
    “She’s the grandmother of eleven. Kein ayin harah,” the rebbetzin said.
    “Eleven!” I put my hands to my cheeks and shook my head. Tzippy was married with a baby while I was student teaching and living in an efficiency apartment on the east side, convinced that I’d stay single and childless forever.
    The rebbetzin broke the lightness of the moment. “How’s your mother?”
    Blood rushed up from my neck to my temples. Knowing the rebbetzin, she probably sensed the hateful things I’d been thinking in the tahara room. My guard went back up. “She’s fine, thank you.”
    “She’s okay?” the rebbetzin said as if she possessed some knowledge about my mother’s welfare. Had they been in touch? Or was she using her superpowers?
    I said what I had not yet admitted to myself. “She’s having memory issues.”
    “Serious issues?” She used the tone she would in counseling a troubled congregant.
    I wasn’t some naive recruit. She was a big phony, coming back to me after all these years with her concern. I wanted to hurt her. “So serious that she thinks we’re still welcome in your shul. She reminded me that I’m a married woman now and I need to cover my hair at Mrs. Kessler’s funeral.”
    The rebbetzin looked at me as if I were a naughty child who was acting out trying to win the love that she was ready and willing to provide. I was. Fifty-three years old, and my naked need lay exposed. I still wanted to climb into Mrs. Kessler’s lap, and I still craved knowing that some maternal being was watching out for me, a security I freely gave Lili and my students every day.
    “Has your mother seen a doctor?”
    “Neil and his wife took her to see a neurologist last week.” What was I thinking sharing such personal family information with the rebbetzin?
    The rebbetzin looked into my eyes, unearthing the hidden parts of me: the little girl who had taken such pride in her mother’s coveted seat next to the rebbetzin in shul and the teenager who had been cast out with her mother like Hagar and Ishmael. I was no longer Barbara Pupnick, but I was losing hold of Mrs. Sam Blumfield by the minute.
    “It’s probably the medication.” I told the rebbetzin about the cholesterol drugs, and the more I talked, the louder my inner voice insisted that her memory loss was more serious. It was the same voice that had spoken to me yesterday in the emergency room when I saw the doctor’s expression as he read Lili’s X-rays.
    “She’ll need you.” The rebbetzin’s words bore the weight of Jewish law, halacha that demanded that I offer food, shelter, medical care, and exquisite, relentless respect to my mother and father. Tzippy and I never dared sit in our parents’ assigned chairs at the dinner table, and we rose when they entered the room.
    I studied her face, searching her eyes for some trace of the hurt and humiliation my mother had caused her. They looked the same as always, full of purpose and principle. And love. She could put her old wounds aside for God and for me.
    “Our relationship is complex,” I said, “but things are fine between us.” I tried to strain the defensiveness from my words. Despite my little lapse a few minutes earlier, I’d learned to coexist peacefully with my mother, to live without her investment or love.
    The rebbetzin patted her heart with her open palm. “I will help you find your way back to her.”
    “What?” I didn’t know whether to be shocked or angry. This made no sense at all. Why would the rebbetzin want to be a part of our lives after shunning our family? And why would I want to find my way back to my mother? She’d cost me the nook and everything good