“Shut up!” she shouts. “I talk, you don’t. I would feel sorry for you if you were really a gay.” She gets closer to me; I feel heat emanate from her chest. “I’d feel sorry for myself, most of all. But you just want to play games with people. Why did you cry about that guy from Argentina? You were either lying then, or you’re lying now.”

“I wasn’t playing games,” I say in a matter-of-fact tone, determined to maintain a composed, calm distance. She wants me to react emotionally, like a child, and that’s when I get into trouble. I look at her and try to respond flatly. “I loved him, too.”

“When you decide to fall in love with someone else, this woman will be just another one of your victims. And I’m sure you’ll come to me for sympathy.”

We are running late to dinner. I am fumbling through an attempt to tidy up the apartment. It’s the only thing I can think to do in this moment that might please her, though I know it will do nothing at all toward that end. “We should get going,” she says. “Does your cousin know where the restaurant is?”

My cousin is visiting D.C. for the week, and she’s the reason, the excuse, that I’ve chosen to stay with my mother this time instead of with Renata, or at my dad’s, or anywhere else.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Should we call her?”

My mother asks me to help with the zipper of her dress, and I do. I rub her neck gently when I get to the top, very gently. I want to soothe her, but I know she’ll push me away if she senses this.

“How many times my father told me to watch out and be careful of you,” she says as she puts on a string of pearls. Her father passed away when I was twelve. “He warned me that you were manipulative. He told me not to marry your father. Why, God, why didn’t I listen?”

My chest begins to ache. Again I try to block her voice. It’s increasingly difficult to do, but I keep trying.

I unplug my phone from its charger, and the screen lights up as I touch it. There’s a text from Anouk: Everything all right? She knows that home is hard.

When we leave the apartment my mother runs ahead of me in the corridor. I struggle to catch up. In the elevator she asks me again who knows, and I tell her that my aunt does—her younger sister. I told her about Anouk while we were in Nablus for Teta’s funeral.

“Great,” my mother says. “So everyone knows.”