“So much. She was perfect.”

He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on it. “Well, not exactly. Can you allow yourself to remember your not-so-perfect mameh?”

She gripped the sides of her chair. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” he said bluntly, sitting back and waiting.

She sat in silence for what seemed a long time. He made no attempt to fill it, seemingly content to simply wait for as long as it took.

“She … it always happened when she was pregnant or right after the baby was born,” she said softly. “It was like she … went away somewhere and someone else came, a stranger, to take her place, someone who would yell at us and hit us and then weep and hide in her room. Everything fell apart. Clothes didn’t get washed. Shopping didn’t get done. Her job … the school had to hire substitutes…”

“And when this stranger came, who took care of you?”

Shaindele shrugged.

“And your brothers and sister?”

“I had to. It wasn’t a choice.”

“So this was also part of your ‘perfect’ mameh?”

She stared down at her fingers. “She couldn’t help it. She was sick.”

“Tell me about that, about her sickness.”

Suddenly, it all came flooding back to her, all the ugliness: the smell of her mother’s unwashed body, the stink of dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and the brown-crusted pots left over from Shabbos that stayed on the counters all week long. Then there were the stacks of unwashed laundry in overflowing bins that never seemed to get any lower; and the baby in clothes that he had long outgrown because there was simply nothing clean to dress him in. “I tried … to help. But I couldn’t do it … take over. It was too much. I couldn’t be her. And then … and then … she died.”

“What do you remember about that?”

Every minute, every agonizing second. But she only said, “She died. From the sickness.”

He looked at her penetratingly. “Try again,” he encouraged her, not unkindly.

“I … I … was home with her, I was right there, on the other side of the bathroom door, the whole time. A whole bottle she swallowed! Aspirins. Why would she do such a thing? Why?” Tears fell softly down her young cheeks.

He handed her a box of tissues. She took one gratefully, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes.