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chicken soup packet, add noodles, boil it, pour it into small deep china bowls, chop up some stale white bread, and then deliver this pleasure to our stomachs, which, during the day, only ever had a roll spread with margarine, ajvar , or a small cheese-filled bun for a snack. We’d slurp up that soup as if it were human warmth while Mom, pale, distracted, or sick lay on the couch in the kitchen and watched us silently, absently, or worked mechanically on her needlepoint, pushing the needle through the small openings. Our father would be rustling down below in the garage. Srebra and I sat on our chair, and all our sadness, shock, and concern floated in the chicken soup with the crumbled stale bread, which, homeopathically transformed into a transitory feeling of security and happiness, caressing our souls like the soft warm blanket we didn’t have in our childhood because we were covered with heavy quilts, or roughly woven covers, scratchy shag wool throws, or small tattered blankets that smelled of dust and decay. That soup from a packet, served with boiled beans, was one of our favorite, but also one of the most unavoidable, meals of our primary-school years. As we slurped our soup greedily, we glanced, either surreptitiously or openly, under the couch on which our mother was lying, where, ducking our heads, we had hidden the small first aid booklet, and during moments of our mother’s dizzy spells, when we were not sure what washappening to her, we madly turned the pages with trembling hands, hearts in our throats. Although we tried to remember how to do artificial respiration and revive a person, nothing stayed in our heads, and we never really learned how to give first aid. When our mother got up to use the bathroom, Srebra and I, as if on command, would sneak into the pantry, open the refrigerator and, one after another, quickly take swigs from the blueberry juice that was purchased only when our mother was sick—on those days when she wore her blue robe with its yellow-green flowers. That’s how we knew for sure she was sick, and we felt a tightness in our chests, and in the spot where our heads were conjoined it felt like the striking of a wall clock. Her robe covered her body almost to her feet, protecting it with cotton, and announcing to her surroundings that her body underneath was weak, vulnerable, and sick. On the days Mom wore her blue robe, she was drowned in a world of her own. She had the unhappiest face in the world, and never smiled. What was it: depression, nerves, or some other illness? Or was it only tremendous pain? Reliving the memories of her first year of marriage when her father-in-law beat her with a broom and she was pregnant with us, and then nursing babies with conjoined heads? All the torments, all the human evils that had injured this poor typist? Whenever she felt she was at death’s door—we knew that by the whispered sentence, “I’m going to die”—our dad would start the car and take her to the doctor. When she felt like that he would shut us into the big room so we wouldn’t see it if she died. And outside, the hit song “Julie” echoed, filling the air with lightheartedness and sadness at the same time. One day, several years later, when we returned from school, our mother was sitting on the balcony doing “The Gypsy” needlepoint pattern and crying. At moments like that, neither Srebra nor I knew what to say, what to do. We stood, leaning on the balcony and turned toward her, silently, our hair hanging loose, intermingled, our two heads with one head of hair reflected in the window of the balcony door. All at once, our mother stood up, left everything behind, and went out. We saw her from the balcony as she hurried, nearly at a run, down the street that led to the store. She returned with a bar of chocolate. She opened it and ate it herself, without offering us a single smallsquare. That day, Srebra and I ate beans without