She teaches us science and math. “Don’t you see?” she asks us. “There is science everywhere. In your body, at the beach, the salamander running across your windowsill.”

She tries to make the most boring subject fascinating. She flaps her arms and imitates cell reproduction. But when she talks, I try to picture what her hair might look like cut into a short shaggy bob. And how would her lips look wearing Barely Rose lip gloss? Did she have a boyfriend when she was my age?

Sister Rachel is another matter. She teaches English and social studies. Her woolly brows meet over her nose and her upper lip needs waxing. She must have planned to be a nun from the day she was born.

List Maker

“What are you doing?” my mother would ask when she saw me writing in my notebook. “Lists again?” She’d roll her eyes. “You’re too young to have to cross things off a list. You worry too much.”

But I kept writing. Someone had to remember to do things.

My Mother’s Gifts

Olivia makes Auntie Minerva nervous because she never sits still. She dances, skips, twirls. She reminds me of the next-door lady’s Australian terrier searching for a place to poop. I try to keep an eye on her so that Auntie Minerva doesn’t snap at us and complain to our father.

When he’s not doing homework, Frank plays that Korean game kong-gi or marbles. When my mother was alive, she taught Frank to play her ukulele. He made up songs and sang them. He has a beautiful voice and last year was chosen to sing a solo in his school choir concert. He’s like my mother in that way, as Olivia is like her with her dancing. They have my mother’s gifts.

Though after my mother died, the songs in Frank’s head dried up and his fingers held kong-gi pieces instead of strumming the strings of her ukulele.

Olivia didn’t change. She dances and giggles so much, sometimes I want to say, “Don’t you remember? Our mother died.”

I may look like my mother, but I’m not like her. I don’t like to dance or sing. I don’t like to pray. I’m not like my mother at all. I am here.

A Charitable Act

Auntie Minerva believes we should earn our keep. Olivia must dust and I’m in charge of cleaning the bathroom and kitchen.

Frank mows twice a week and weeds the flower beds. The first day, he not only mowed Auntie Minerva’s yard, he mowed her neighbors’ yards on both sides of her house.

“What a good boy!” the neighbors said when they saw Frank had included their yards.

Auntie Minerva smiled smugly and said, “Good raising,” as if she’d given birth to Frank and taught him everything he knew.

I was impressed, too. Frank didn’t usually do what he was asked, much less more. The second time Frank mowed, I watched him from the kitchen window. His eyes glazed, he seemed so far away. If the sidewalks weren’t there to stop his path, I think he would have mowed the entire street.