Chapter 6: The Mother's Hands

I gave my mother the copy from my bag, and she read it standing up.

She took the lamp from the table and held it close to the paper.

Ciro had gone out onto the porch without being asked, and I could see his shadow through the curtain, leaning on the rail.

My mother turned the first page, then the second.

She read the oncologist's name, the staging, the line that said survival estimated in days.

She read everything, from the top, without skipping.

Her face did not change.

When she reached the last page, she laid her palm flat on it and kept it there.

I watched her hand.

The knuckles had gone white around the edge of the paper.

"You should have come to me," she said.

"I called you from the cemetery."

"You called me from a cemetery." She said it like a charge. "You picked the one place where I could not believe you."

"I tried in March."

"You told me you had pain."

"I told you I was bleeding. You said it was nerves."

"The doctor said," she began, and stopped.

I waited.

She folded the report along its creases, once and then again, and set it on the table with the edges square.

"The doctor will come tonight," she said. "I'm sending for him now."

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