Free Shelter Us: A Novel by Laura Nicole Diamond Page A

Barbara an hour earlier, a day later. A thousand more “if onlys.”
    It blurs together: Saying good-bye to my parents in our driveway. Bibi coming to stay with me while they were gone. And then The Call.
    “Hello?” I answered the phone. It was nearly midnight, and I was watching TV. I thought it might be my boyfriend, Brian, calling to say he was going to try to sneak in without Bibi’s noticing.
    “Sarah.” My dad’s voice sounded distant. “Is Bibi there?”
    “Yes. Why?”
    “Put her on the phone.”
What happened?
I wondered.
Did the car break down? Do they need a ride?
    I got my grandmother out of bed, and she came back with me to the family room. I watched her, hoping to find out what was going on from the half of the conversation I could hear.
    “Yes?” A pause. “Just tell me, David,” she said. She was quiet; then, a moment later, she dropped the phone and a wail emerged from her body like nothing I’d ever heard from her. I had never even seen her cry. She began punching the pillows on the sofa, scratching at the skin on her neck and chest, pulling her hair. My heart banged against my chest so hard it felt like it had sharp corners instead of soft tissue. I moved toward the dangling telephone. The room and its contents started to look fuzzy and white. I dropped to my knees to keep from falling and could make out the outline of the telephone receiver by my grandmother’s feet. She had slowed her frenzied movements, had stopped punching the furniture, and all her energy was coming out through her voice: “
No! No! No! No!
”
    I reached the phone and clutched it to my left ear, covering my other ear with my hand to block out Bibi’s frightening sounds. I curled on the floor, knees down, fetal position, forehead touching cool, hard,wooden floor, and closed my eyes. “Dad?” I creaked. I could hear him on the other side, trying to talk. He kept taking a breath to start again, and on the third or fourth try he began to speak the words I feared were coming.
    “Sarah, there was an accident. Mommy . . .” He stopped speaking, couldn’t make himself say the words he heard in his head. He’d said “Mommy,” not “Mom,” I noticed.
    “Is she okay?” My voice came out like a little girl’s. I told myself that Bibi was crying like that because my mom was very hurt, maybe even paralyzed. Or maybe she’d killed someone else while she was driving, maybe she’d killed a whole family, something terrible. In the background I could hear people murmuring, a voice over a PA system, metal wheels rolling. My father spoke words I’ll never forgive him for. “She died, Sarah. Mommy died. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    At seventeen years old, I joined an unofficial high school club—the Death Kids. Among us were Girl Whose Sister Was Kidnapped, Boy Whose Older Brother Hung Himself, and me: Girl Whose Mom Died in a Car Crash While Her Dad Was Driving. I wasn’t friends with the other Death Kids. They were shrouded by loss. I stayed as far away from them as I could.
    When my mom died, none of us knew what to do, ritually speaking. She—a Jewish convert for her secular, atheist husband—loved Jewish rituals and read a lot about them. But she never forced it on us. We didn’t have to embark on her spiritual journey, she always said. Apart from a Passover Seder every year that involved all of us and a smattering of stragglers she invited, her Judaism was between her and God. When she died her rabbi came over and counseled us that Jewish law called for us to stay home from work and school for a week, cover the mirrors, and let visitors come pay their respects. “Sit shivah,” he said. I liked the sound of it.
    My father would have none of it—not the mirrors business, not the visitors, and definitely not the staying home. The day after her funeral, he went back to work, staying late like always, a work habit that had been responsible for his rise to head of white-collar crimeand managing partner at