“You don't want to see her, do you?” I said. “I mean, do you want to come with me?”
Dad shook his head. “She's your mother,” he said. “I'll wait here.” He squeezed my hand. “Unless you want me to come.”
“No.” She was only his ex-wife of long ago, but yes, she was my mother.
My mother
.
“Aga, wait.” I looked at him; he was afraid. “What will you say to her?”
“I don't know.”
I expected the world to crumble, expected everyone to turn and stare, my body glowing guilt-red. It was the kind of hotel lobby with high ceilings and well-dressed elderly people relaxing in burgundy plush chairs; a few people waited in line at the registration desk, luggage at their feet. I spotted a small placard announcing Virginia's “Willing Amnesia” workshop, directing participants to a conference room on the third floor. The elevators had dark mouldings; everything smelled like clean carpet.
I found the room down a third-floor hallway â a regular-sized door with a curtained window. It was clearly small; I'd expected a ballroom. I saw the participants list on the wall: only twelve names, all checked off except for two: Minnie Summer and Agatha Acker. At the sound of muffled voices through the door, I stepped back with a start and then walked quickly away, back toward the elevators, trying to figure out what to do. The carpet was navy blue, with gold stars and planets. I felt nothing but the urge to run. I reached the elevators and forced myself to turn around again.
“Agatha!”
I jumped, with a little scream. Past the last elevator, Jasmine was sitting in a large armchair, burgundy velour like the ones in the lobby.
“Shh,” she said. “Be quiet.”
I breathed hard, my heart pounding, and stared at her. “What are you doing?” I whispered back. “Let's get out of here.”
“No way.”
“What's that?” She was clutching a plastic shopping bag in her lap; her backpack was on the floor beside her.
“What took you so long to get here?” she said. I settled stiffly on the arm of her chair. “I was going to go in, but it's not like I expected. There were only a few people and in a small room. She would have seen me right away. I was supposed to surprise her at the end, when she sets fire to the stuff.” Jasmine leaned close. “We have to show her.
She
's our burden. Virginia's our buried burden, don't you get it?”
“You weren't going to try to burn her, were you?”
Jasmine rolled her eyes and whispered, “
No
!” her voice cracking. “Why are we whispering, anyway?” she said, slightly louder, and I giggled. We were leaning close to each other, trying not to move suddenly, as if there was a hungry lion around the corner. “These are our burdens,” she told me, holding up the plastic bag. “You still have to write the three words to go with yours. We'll go into the room at the end, when everyone else is coming out.” She pulled a shoebox out of the bag and opened it. Tam-Tam's shoebox â my shoebox â with Mama's cranes inside.
I pulled it out of her hand, pushing the top back on. “I don't want to burn those!”
“Shh!” She glared at me and reverted to whispering. “Tam-Tam wanted to get rid of them. You should, too. We have to tell her. She's our fucking buried burden. We're right here. We can't just give up.”
I looked at her helplessly. “How did you pay for this, anyway?”
“With your credit card.”
I caught myself about to say her name in that way she hated and stopped myself, shaking my head.
Jasmine
. “Come on,” I said. “It's almost over. Let's go to the conference room. That way we won't chicken out.”
Jasmine stood to follow me down the hall. “Thanks, Agatha,” she said.
We stopped outside the door, and I pushed my ear close to the crack, jerking away when I heard a woman's voice inside. I forced myself to move close again, and Jasmine did the same. I could barely breathe. Jasmine clutched my arm, hard.
“Okay,” Virginia was saying, in a loud, clear voice. “Now we're going to say goodbye to all the things that hold us back, all those deeply buried anchors we've been talking about â those Christmas dinners with your in-laws, that extra ten pounds.” A few women laughed, and someone clapped. “We're cutting them loose.”
Jasmine tugged at my sleeve, and I squeezed her shoulder. We listened to the scuffle of chairs against the floor as all the women moved around. From what Virginia was saying, it was clear that they were all depositing their buried burdens in her infamous metal trash can.
“I need a volunteer,” Virginia said. “Um. Yes, you.”
I stepped back, and Jasmine pressed her hand, palm flat, against the door.
“Now?” I said.
“No,” she whispered. “No, Agatha. Wait till after.”
She grabbed both my wrists as I reached for the knob, and I twisted in her grip, trying to bend her arms the wrong way. She was too strong.
“I surrender, I surrender,” I gasped. “You win.” She let go, and I caught my breath, pushing my hair out of my face, looking down at the starry blue carpet. Jasmine grabbed for me as I lunged forward and caught one of my arms.
“Bombs away!” cried J. Virginia Morgan.
I threw the door open with my other hand, just as a chorus of women hollered, “Forget it!” They were sitting around a large table, and a huge blue flame exploded high from the metal can at the end of the table furthest from the door, obscuring the two women standing behind it. Jasmine yanked me back into the hallway and slammed the door shut.
“Holy shit!” she said, and I laughed loudly, then covered my mouth with both hands. We stared at each other for a moment, then turned and ran down the hallway as fast as we could, Jasmine a few
steps ahead of me. I stumbled slightly, trying to keep up with her, and regained my balance as we reached the elevators. Sure that something monstrous was right at my heels, I ran past the elevators and into the stairwell, holding the door open for Jasmine to follow me. We sat on the top step to catch our breath.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Did anyone see us?”
“I don't know. Maybe they heard us.” We sat in silence, breathing hard. No one came. “Don't you think she must have been expecting us, Min? When she saw those names on the list?”
“Unless she's retarded,” Jasmine agreed.
We sat in silence, and gradually the possibility of leaving receded. We were so close. She existed; she was right there.
I remembered what I was thinking that Halloween, as I wandered across Tam-Tam's office to the slim, pink door. I'd imagined myself taking the stairs down into the apartment to hide in TamTam's bathroom. They'd find me lying in a bathtub full of bright red water. Mama would scream, seeing blood, not realizing that it was only dye from my hair. I'd sit up slowly, red streaks dripping down my body. “It's my Halloween costume,” I'd say. “I'm a fetus, miscarried by a woman smoking in the bathtub.”
I'd leaned close to the door that led to the servants' stairwell, careful not to get hair dye on the pink-painted wood. I was sure I could smell cigarette smoke, faint but definite. After Minnie was born and Oma Esther died, I had stopped using the servants' stairs and stopped writing letters to my great-grandfather's ghost. The phantom cigarette pack I remembered checking each week as I descended to visit Oma Esther in the kitchen was still a mystery; I used to tell myself so many stories, I often found myself remembering things that couldn't possibly have happened. And yet, recalling Jozef's role in my life, he seemed as real as Helena, as real as my Oma Esther. More real, I contemplated, than Asher Acker, who existed only as twelve-year-old words on a creased bundle of paper. I leaned against the door, smelling smoke, and I pictured Jozef's spirit relaxing in the stairwell. I wondered what he would think about my romance with Ingo Bachmann.
A prickling sensation in the back of my neck sent a shiver down my spine, and I turned. My scream scared Mama, and she screamed, too, stepping back. “Calm down,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around her chest.
“How long have you been standing there? Why are you spying on me?” Mama always had an eerie habit of approaching me from behind, standing quietly and watching until I realized with a start that I wasn't alone. Asher wrote that Mama had all the habits that bothered her about Oma Esther. I'd never put it together that way before, but since reading Asher's words, I could clearly see what a hypocrite she was.
“What's that smell?” She looked around. “Were you smoking in here, Agatha?”
“No! Do you think I'm an idiot?”
“Well, where's that smell coming from?”
“You can smell smoke?”
She tried to reach around me to open the narrow door. “If you weren't smoking,” she said, “why don't you want me to look?”
“Okay,” I pleaded, struggling to block her, “just don't.” Shoving me aside, she wrenched the door open. My hands were over my eyes, but when Mama gasped, I looked down just in time to see the downstairs door ease shut.
A group of women came down the hall, and as they waited for the elevators, Jasmine stood to peek through the door and sat down beside me again. She rested her forehead on her knees, and I put my hand on her back. “You okay?”
“Oh no,” she said. “They all have copies of her books.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She was probably signing them. So?”
Jasmine slumped lower, hugging her legs. I waited, rubbing her shoulders. She had a huge knot near her neck, and I massaged. “Ouch.” She pulled away from my hand. “This is a joke. I thought it would be â different. This isn't working at all. Let's just go. I can't do this; it's a total fucking joke.”
“No way,” I said. “We've come this far. Come on.” The commotion by the elevators had stopped; the women were gone. I grabbed her hand and stood up. “Come
on
.”
We walked back down the hall, toward the open conference-room door. I held Jasmine's hand tightly, practically dragging her the last few steps. I pushed her ahead of me through the door, just as I felt my head clear. I was ready for anything. White walls; polished pine conference table; curved, solid wood chairs. We stood and stared.
“I knew it,” said Jasmine. “She's gone.”
“Come on,” I told her. “Where's your buried burden?” She pulled all three of Virginia's books out of the plastic bag, and I led her past the table to the metal trash can that was still sitting there. We both bent over to see inside and stared at the pile of intact knickknacks and T-shirts and one teddy bear with faint scorch marks, until Jasmine finally kicked the can as hard as she could.
“Fucking sophistry!” she yelled. She slammed her three books, one old and worn, two brand new, onto the table, and a small piece of paper drifted out onto the floor. We both bent to pick it up, and she grabbed it, just as I saw her handwriting in thick, black permanent marker:
Please Forgive Me
. She shoved it in her pocket, and I touched her arm.
“Those were your three words?
Why
?”
“Forget it.” Jasmine reached for her books, and I pushed my arm through hers, pulling her toward me despite her resistance. Halfway down the hall, she wrenched herself free and walked a few steps ahead of me.
“Jasmine?” I said, as we stepped into the elevator.
She looked at me.
“Dad's outside in the car.”
I was the one who needed forgiveness; I should have confessed long ago. But who could I tell? Who would have understood my anger with Mama for opening that pink door, for forcing me to realize
those cigarette packs had belonged to Tam-Tam all along? How could I confess something so absurd? Mama had looked at me helplessly, arms hanging limply at her sides. We stared at each other until her eyes darted to the side like they always did when she was thinking hard. “What a sneak.” She sounded intrigued and triumphant, like a sleuth smacking her lips over a long-hidden clue. “Do you know how guilty she used to make me feel? How long do you think . . . Agatha, why are you crying?”
“You stupid, fat cow.” I choked on tears to get the words out, and then I was yelling. “You don't understand anything. You ruin everything. You always have to ruin everything I care about.”
“I don't understand what you're talking about.” Mama stepped away from me as if she was afraid I might explode. “What on earth is wrong with you?”
“Everything! Everything is wrong with me, and you just have no idea. You're so stupid. You're a big blundering disaster that ruins everything and doesn't even notice!”
Her utter confusion only made me angrier; I wanted to slap her, punch her, make her suffer. She said, “But what does Tamar's smoking have to do with you?”
“What does anything have to do with me?” Mama shook her head. There was a smudge of mascara high on her left eyelid. “I have to know everything, because you're too dense to know it yourself!”
Mama crossed her arms. “Oh, I know more than you think I do,” she said. “I know you're sexually active, if that's what you mean. I wash your underwear, young lady. I know what it means when a girl trades in her sports bras for black lace ones.”
“Asher!” I said, not caring how loudly. “Asher, my biological father. He didn't take off to you-didn't-know-where. He went to Israel and then California. You smoked while you were pregnant with me. You only married Steven so you wouldn't have to live with Tam-Tam and Oma Esther.” I didn't look at my mother. Keeping my eyes focused on the door to the stairs, I told her, “I know you and my real father didn't want me. You both hated me. And I know he died when I was ten. I was in your closet when you and Dad were talking about it. I kept waiting for you to tell me, but you never did.
Because you're a coward!” I finally looked at Mama's face, and I reached for her arm, sure she was about to faint.