Aaron said he’d get her. “She has to get used to me sometime.”
When everyone was crowded into the living room, Aaron’s father shook his finger at me. “I bet I know what this is about,” he said. “And here comes the groom.”
But the groom ran in looking very serious and said, “Somebody call an ambulance.”
My world got very small.
It was a stroke.
They took Mameh to Beth Israel, the old brick one, which wasn’t far from where we lived in Roxbury. They opened the modern building a year later, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. There wasn’t much they could do for strokes in those days other than keep them warm and massage the muscles.
It was hard to know what was happening in the hospital. The doctors didn’t tell you anything and patients were allowed only one visit a day and only one person at a time. When Papa went in, he couldn’t say if she seemed better or worse, but he always looked older when he came out.
Betty brought clean nightgowns and said the sheets felt like wax paper, but she couldn’t tell if Mameh was in pain or comfortable or what. “Sometimes she opens her eyes, but I don’t know if she sees me.” She said her face wasn’t as bad as at the beginning, when the right side looked like it had melted off the bones.
They only let me go once and it was pretty awful. The room was overheated and smelled like bleach. My mother’s face on the pillow was yellow and her hair was combed straight back and tucked under her head so I could see the shape of her skull under the skin. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyelids were twitching. I wasn’t sure if she was awake, so I whispered, “Mameh, it’s me, Addie. How are you feeling? Can I do anything for you?” I tried to sound cheerful but my stomach was in the same knot as always, waiting for her to wake up and demand to know what was I doing there, where was my father, who put her in this place?
After a few weeks, she was a little better, opening her eyes, and drinking through a straw. She could sit up in bed if someone helped her and even though she didn’t say anything, we were sure she recognized us.
The doctor said she might get back some use of her right arm and leg, but that could take months if it happened at all. She could start talking or maybe not. Like I said, they couldn’t do much for her in the hospital, so we took her home.
Her right side stayed paralyzed and the right side of her mouth drooped so the words were garbled when she started to talk. She got agitated when we didn’t understand her, so we knew she was still all there inside her head.
During the day, Papa and Betty took turns sitting with her. I came home straight from work and took over while Betty made supper and my father walked to shul.
We were the only three she let in the room. Mildred and Rita offered to watch her, but when they came to visit, Mameh clamped her mouth shut and refused to open her eyes. If Levine, Aaron, or any of the boys came into the room, she muttered and grimaced until they left. She scared the little ones so much they wouldn’t come downstairs at all.
My world got very small, the way it always does when someone in your family is sick. I was at work or at home, where I was either sitting with my mother or helping Betty with the boys. I didn’t go out on the weekends, either, so Aaron came to the house and taught me to play gin rummy and hearts, and, of course, we postponed the wedding.
My new boss was very sympathetic when I got phone calls at the office. Gussie and Irene stayed in touch. And whenever he could, Aaron met me after work and rode the trolley home with me. He put his arm around me and there were a few times he had to wake me up when we got to my stop.
It was about two months after the stroke, Jake’s best friend was having his bar mitzvah. Papa had been his teacher and Betty was friendly with his mother, so I said I’d stay home with Mameh and told them to have a nice time and not to hurry back.
I hadn’t spent much time with her in the mornings. Betty said she usually woke up around ten o’clock, and that was when she seemed clearer in her mind and it was easier to understand if she tried to talk. But that day she didn’t open her eyes until noon. I offered her soup and tea but she shook her head and nodded toward the door, which meant she needed the bathroom.
She hated the bedpan worse than anything, but she’d lost so much weight since the stroke, it wasn’t hard to carry her.
She let me wash her face and hands, but she turned away when I offered a cup of tea or bread soaked in broth. I asked if she wanted me to read to her but she squeezed her eyes shut.
I don’t know why it’s so exhausting to sit with a sick person. It’s not like you’re doing anything, but it’s a hundred times more tiring than hard work. Maybe it’s the helplessness or maybe it’s the strain of waiting for the body to decide if it’s going to get better or not.
The sky had been overcast all day and when it started snowing, the room got dark. I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew, Mameh was sitting up straight, something we didn’t think she could do on her own. Her eyes were wide open and she was looking around the room as if she was trying to figure out where she was, like she was Rip Van Winkle. She frowned at the dirty glasses on the bureau and at the reading lamp I had moved in.
In Yiddish, I said, “Mameh? Can I get you something? Do you know who I am, Mameh?”
She searched my face and frowned. I could hear her breath get faster and I said, “Don’t worry. Just rest.”
Her eyes got big and she reached out to me with her good arm. I sat down next to her on the bed and she whispered, “Of course I know my own daughter.” Her voice was raspy and the words were slow but I could understand her. “How can a mother not know her own beautiful daughter?”
She ran her hand over my hair and let it rest on my cheek. “I didn’t know right away it was you, sweetheart, zieseleh. Your hair is so short. Have you been sick?”
I told her I’d cut my hair and that I was fine and she didn’t have to worry. But she was anxious and started talking fast, as if she was in a hurry to say something before she forgot. “I want to tell you that I’m sorry. You were right and I was wrong. If I had listened to you, you would have been happier.”
She started crying. “Ich bin moyl. I’m sorry. But you’ll forgive me; I know you will. You were always such a good girl, so pretty, so good . . .”
I had never heard her apologize to anyone, not even once. I couldn’t remember my mother ever looking at me that way or telling me I was pretty or sweet. She never called me darling.
It was like a miracle.