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mom wielding the glue gun. They got along well with each other, having none of the baggage that my mom and I grew up taking for granted when it came to our families. To Isaac, she’s just my mom. She’s another person who loves him, and it’s uncomplicated.
    Isaac knows that my mom didn’t raise me, but he’s never asked why. I would like for him to be able to take for granted that a mother is always there for her child, but I can already tell, by the way he clings to me, that he doesn’t see me as the immovable caregiver most children see their parents as. He already senses that I come from an unstable, secret world, and this makes his world seem somehow less certain.
    In many ways, I am a repeat of my mother’s life. Perhaps that is why I’ve always struggled with feelings of anxiety and fear when I’m around her. Am I doomed to simply relive her life experience and pass it on to the next generation in an unstoppable cycle of misery? Her marriage was also arranged when she was a teenager. She too was forced to have sex, to have a baby, with a man she didn’t love. While I was being raised mostly by my grandparents, she was working menial jobs to put herself through college, an act that constituted her final rejection of our family and community. My father had presented three wives with a religious divorce by the time she was able to obtain her legal one.
    My mom and I can’t talk about these things—it’s too painful for both of us—but talking about books is our safe conversation, the one thing that binds us together. She tells me how she, too, used to sneak out to the library as a child, filling her days withbooks by British authors, like the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton. She was a child of divorce as well, a symbol of scandal among her peers. What made her feel most isolated, though, was her intelligence. She felt perpetually surrounded by the unintelligent, much like the characters in Roald Dahl’s books did, including the one I identified with so much as a child: Matilda.
    I have no doubt my mother is happy. Her life began as mine did, it progressed as mine did, and yet here she is today, accomplished, educated, and independent. She’s also single, and I worry about that. My mother and I both acknowledge that we have enormous difficulty trusting others because of our experiences in the Hasidic community. If she hasn’t managed to get over it by her late forties, I can’t help having that sinking feeling in my heart that I, too, may never learn to trust someone. Is this then the ultimate risk that we take when we escape the only world we’ve ever known: the possibility that we’ll never truly be moored in a new one?
    My mother designated herself the photographer at Isaac’s birthday party. I set my bulky Canon to automatic so it didn’t feel too complicated for her. The event was a huge success. That particular early-spring afternoon was very hot, and the kids arrived in bathing suits ready to jump into the lake. We distributed water balloons and challenged them all to stay dry for the duration of the throwing contest.
    I watched Isaac running around, cupcake icing smeared around his mouth, looking gloriously happy to be the center of attention. I knew how special it felt to him, to have everyone here to celebrate. We’d never been entrenched in a place or community as we were now; it was the first time he could feel a sense of permanence and security. I wished that, in the process of providing that forhim, I could have figured out how to provide it for myself simultaneously, but this didn’t seem to be enough. There never seemed to be a simple answer to what was missing in my life.

    When I’d fully recovered from the hernia surgery, I returned to Ed’s sunlit room. This time around, I chose a smooth white crystal with crimson veins.
    “Maybe this time we can go inside and find something good?” I asked.
    “Yes,” Ed said with confidence. “Let’s go looking in the