Even the meticulous blacks, grays, and whites of Lillian’s print don’t show how, after a month at home, her skin is still that weird orangey chemo color, but the picture is jarring enough as is. A bald woman in a high-necked nightgown sits at a wooden desk chair in a suburban bedroom meant for a teenager, the outline of her skull too visible beneath a face that stares at the camera without expectation, a face resigned to waiting. Lillian had come back a week into the school year and Grandma was the one taking care of her, so I saw my mother only when I wanted to, which wasn’t often. After all, I reminded myself whenever I started feeling guilty or neglectful, there was so much studying to do.

I know I did well that fall at St. Margaret’s because it was the first and last time I made honor roll, but I can’t name my classes or teachers except for Drama with Sister Theresa. I didn’t make many friends. By tenth grade, there were too many in-jokes and shared histories, and I figured it was just a matter of time before I moved back to Brooklyn. Besides, the guys my age all looked like boys to me, though sometimes some random blue-chinoed St. Vincent’s upperclassman would cross my path, and the smell of English Leather would revive my Brooklyn self. The longer I stayed in Cleveland, the more that self scared me. Studying felt like the opposite of that person, distanced me from Brooklyn and Cleveland at the same time, all those quadratic equations and articles of the Constitution making less room in my brain for everything else.

One day I came home from school, and instead of being in her bedroom, my mother was in the living room. Tears were running down Grandma’s cheeks. I wanted to get out of that room so bad, only I couldn’t, because my mother was talking to me; but all I could see was her mouth moving. The alarm going off in my head had blocked out the words. Then I heard her say “remission,” and I saw that Grandma was smiling as she cried. I walked to the couch. I laid my head in my mother’s lap, and she stroked my hair. When I started crying, my mother started crying, too, along with Grandpa, until we were all happy-crying together. Then Lillian explained how half of all leukemia patients got sick again after less than a year, and almost all the rest relapsed after less than two. Remission didn’t mean better forever; it just meant better for now. My mother wanted me to know that we weren’t going back to Brooklyn, because when—not if—she got sick next, she’d have to do Detroit and chemo and orange skin and barfing and almost fifty percent chance of dying all over again.