Free Days of Awe by Lauren Fox Page A

descended on Josie that weekend, and it never quite lifted.
    And I barely noticed that my pregnancy nausea and lethargy had disappeared, until two days after we got home, when I started to bleed.

“Promise me you’ll never let Hannah go skydiving,” my mother says. “I just read the most awful story in the newspaper.” She breathes out, a familiar little
achh
that signifies her disapproval of a world in which anyone thinks skydiving is ever a good idea. “I want you and Hannah Banana to come over for dinner tomorrow night,” she says.
    “Okay,” I say. “Right after her parachuting lesson.”
    “And you need to wear decent clothes,” she says.
    “What? Why?” I look down at my sweatshirt, which is decorated with a little archipelago of coffee splotches from this morning.
    “Because I’m tired of seeing you in sweatpants. And I’m cooking something nice.”
    The last time my mother made us dinner, a few weeks ago, it was boiled carrots, boiled potatoes, and a chicken so overbaked that by the time it came out of the oven it had turned into a vaguely chickenish kind of cardboard. “Hey, I have a super idea, though! Let’s order from DiPalma’s.”
    “No, no, no,” she says. “I want to cook for you.”
    “I won’t even tell Hannah. You can come out of the kitchen wiping sweat off your brow, like you slaved over a hot stove. It will be our little secret.”
    Helene laughs, and her voice turns girlish and high. “Oh,
you.
”
    “Oh,
me,
” I say, laughing, too. “But seriously.”
    “You’re coming. I’m cooking,” my mother announces, no longer joking, and when Helene stops joking, you stop arguing.
    ···
    When I was in eighth grade, like eighth graders everywhere, I was given the assignment to explore my family history by interviewing a close relative. I figured this was my chance to get the answers to the questions my mother had been evading for months. I hounded her daily, right up to the night before the assignment was due. Every time I asked, she said things like, “Why don’t you call your dad’s second cousin Sascha in Lansing? He was a Communist!” Or “I’m so tired. I’ve been talking at work all day. I can’t say another word. Let’s do this tomorrow.” And finally, “For God’s sake, just make something up.”
    “Fine!” I said, and picked up my pen. “Helene Strauss Applebaum was born on Jupiter.” I scratched my head and pretended to write, drew circles and loops on the page. “Her parents abandoned her, and she grew up in a large family of green aliens, the only one of her kind. When she was thirteen, she embarked on a”—I sketched an alien with long antennae—“a
lifelong search
for her human parents.” I looked up at my mother, who was standing in the doorway, and scowled. “I think Mrs. Murphy will love this.” I snapped my notebook shut and said, “Hmph.”
    Helene had been about to leave the kitchen, but she turned and came back, sat down with me at the table, and sighed. “All right, Isabel. But you’re going to be disappointed. I’m telling you, I don’t…Grandma and Grandpa never really talked about Germany. And what do I remember?” She shrugged, answering the question. “A child’s memories. Not much of a story. Only bits and pieces. Fragments.” She shook her head. “A…a room with a red painted toy box. The smell of bread baking. A yellow apron. A cloth doll one of my cousins gave me. I named it Gustav. I thought that was the most beautiful name in the world. But Trude told me it was a boy’s name and insisted I change it, and I cried.”
    “Cousins?” I asked, my heart pounding.
    “Mmm-hmm. I had three girl cousins. We played together all the time. They lived in an apartment above their parents’ grocery store, and we played hide-and-seek there. There were so many places to hide, so many little closets and pantries. For years I thought, well, maybe they hid.” She brushed a little pile of crumbs from dinner into her palm,