Chapter 22: Joan

I handed the baby back to the nurse.

Then I walked across the delivery room and took my mother by the elbow.

"Not in here," I said.

"Claire, honey, I only want to see her."

"Tara has to say that. Not you, and not me."

I steered her out into the corridor and let the door close.

My mother turned to look at it.

She was smaller than I remembered.

The coat hung off her shoulders, and her hair had been cut shorter and not by a professional.

"I brought a blanket," she said.

She held up a paper bag.

Inside was a yellow knitted blanket, with a cluster of mistakes in one corner where she had dropped a stitch and not gone back.

"It's lovely," I said. "Put it on the chair."

"You're so cold."

"I'm tired. I've been up since three."

"You're cold, Claire. You were never cold."

"I was never a lot of things, Mom."

She put the bag on the chair.

Down the hall, a vending machine hummed.

"I lost the house," she said.

I waited.

"The paper I signed on that Tuesday," she said. "The uncle had me sign the deed over to him, in case you didn't go through with it."

She pressed the tissue to her nose.

"When he left, everything in his name went to the family. It all belongs to Silvio now. I got a letter in January."

"You've been living there since January?"

"Silvio's man lets me stay. Month by month."

"I know."

"Then you'll talk to him." Her face lit up. "A word from you, honey, and he'd put it back in my name, or..."

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