“Where’s Mom?”
Oma pulled a paper towel off the roll and handed it to me. “With your sister.”
I nodded and blew my nose.
Grandma said, “Shouldn’t you try to go back to bed?”
“I can’t sleep.” I hiccupped. “I should go check on them.”
I poured three cups of tea and put them on the little woodentray Mom had brought back with her from Iran. It matched the one Mamou had in Yazd, the one she would use to bring tea and snacks to Babou when he was resting.
I held in a sob.
Upstairs, Laleh’s door was cracked.
“Mom?”
“Come in.”
I elbowed the door open. Mom was sitting on Laleh’s bed, holding a sobbing Laleh and rocking her back and forth.
She looked up at the tray of tea.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I croaked.
Mom nodded and scooted over to make room for me. I set the tray down on Laleh’s nightstand and sat on Laleh’s bed. I wrapped my arms around Mom and Laleh both. Mom rested her head against my shoulder.
I’d been taller than Mom for a couple years, but for the first time, it really struck me how she would never hold me again the way she was holding Laleh. And one day, Laleh would be too big for her to hold too. And she would grow older.
Time would flow inexorably forward.
And someday, she would be gone too.
I held my mom as tight as I could.
And I cried harder than I had ever cried before.
Oma and Grandma came in to check on us, and to take away the tray of cold, untouched tea. They brought a fresh box of Kleenex and an extra trash bag, and kissed Laleh on the forehead, and whispered in Mom’s ear, and patted my shoulder. But mostly, they left us to our grief.
Once we’d cried ourselves out—Laleh actually cried herself back to sleep—Mom kissed us each about a hundred times. She sniffed and whispered, “I need to call Mamou.”
I stood as quietly as I could and helped Mom tuck Laleh back in. She brushed Laleh’s hair off her forehead and kissed her one last time, and then we closed the door behind us.
Mom got the call started on her computer while I wheeled over a chair to sit next to her.
We waited.
And waited.
And just when I thought Mom was going to hang up and try later—
“Hello?”
Mamou’s pixelated face appeared on the screen. Her voice sounded robotic and compressed, like her bandwidth was throttled, which it probably was.
Mom started crying again, but she sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Hi, Maman. Chetori?”
Mom and Mamou started talking in Farsi.
