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at me until I looked away.) “And second, you can’t give this knowledge, period.”
    I wasn’t convinced. “How did you learn, then?”
    “I have to make dinner.”
    I caught the edge of her sari as she tried to escape to the kitchen. I told her I wasn’t letting her go until she told me the whole story.
    “There’s no story to tell. I had a gift. A distant aunt who was a dream teller recognized it when she came to visit.”
    “But how?”
    “I don’t remember very well. I think she made me sleep in the same room. Anyway, when she left, she took me back to live with her.”
    I stared at her, trying to imagine how it must be to leave everything you love behind and go off with a stranger. “You left, just like that? Didn’t your mother stop you? Didn’t you miss her?”
    She stared down at the backs of her hands. Her unhappiness was a tangible thing. I could have held it in my palm, like an injured bird. I’d never noticed before that the ends of her nails were ragged, as though someone had been biting them. My mother, biting her nails? It shocked me so much, I said, “Never mind. Tell me what your aunt taught you. Did she give you lessons?”
    “I guess you could call them lessons.” She spoke slowly, the words sleepwalking through her mouth. “But they came later, and only because I already had the gift.”
    “And I don’t have it?” I tried to make my voice nonchalant, but it cracked a little.
    She hesitated. “I don’t know for sure. I haven’t sensed it, that’s all. Maybe I’m just too close to you to see it.”
    I knew what she was saying, under the careful kindness. But I couldn’t bear to give up yet.
    “I want you to try, Mom,” I said. “Really try, one more time. Let me sleep with you.”
    She drew in her breath to say no—I could see it in the set of her mouth. But then she agreed. Was it because she loved me? Was it some deep, chromosomal guilt, for not having passed on the gift to me?
    I slept deeply that night, waking in the morning with a slight headache. My mother’s face was drawn, her eyes rimmed with dark circles.
    “Do you remember anything? Anything you saw?” she asked. She sounded hoarse, as though she were coming down with the flu.
    When I shook my head, she looked disappointed and relieved at the same time. “It didn’t work,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    Her words were like a door closing, with her on the other side, beyond my reach.
    “It’s all right,” I said, turning away, my voice as casual as I could make it. “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for trying, anyway.”
    I’ve never been able to fool my mother. I could feel her eyes on me, sharp and sad. But she only said, “Maybe it’s for the best. Being a dream interpreter isn’t as glamorous as you think.”
    A year later, I would learn how right she was.
    The second kind of interpretation occurred when my mother dreamed. These dreams were not about herself, or us, or anyone she knew. All the people in these dreams were strangers, and usually they didn’t believe in dreams. Or they believed—but in spite of themselves. Which was worse, because when you’re forced to believe in something you wish you could dismiss, it makes you an angry person.
    My mother’s duty was to warn these angry people of what was about to happen to them.

    This particular morning my mother had a migraine. She’d get a blinding headache once in a rare while—though looking back, I think it was probably more often than my father or I realized. She wasn’t the complaining type. Or maybe she kept deliberately silent because she didn’t want us to realize that the headaches occurred whenever she’d had a stranger-dream.
    But this morning the headache must have been really bad, because after she’d made my father his breakfast and he’d gone off to work, she lay down on the living room carpet and asked me to bring her a blanket and a bottle of aspirin. She swallowed a handful of the white pills and asked me to tuck the