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at all.
    Once I had learned to read, I tried to decipher it, repeating every word, every syllable, to myself, but I still found it very hard. Those complicated sentences seemed so foreign to me, I couldn’t get past the first one:
    “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner . . .”
    There was no mention of dogs or cats, lost moons or enchanted forests. So it was a book of adventures. First mystery solved.
    I started to read it with Dad syllable by syllable. Every night, we would conquer a page. At first, it was a struggle. Soon, though, the sentences flowed without me even realizing it.
    That story of a man shipwrecked on an island where there were only two seasons, rainy and dry, stuck in the middle of nowhere with his friend Friday, whom he had saved from cannibals, filled me with hope. And later I began to create my own adventures.
    Dad could be lost on a faraway island, and I would sail my majestic ship across seas and oceans, battling terrible storms and huge waves till I found him.
    But today isn’t a reading day. I have to tell him about the package that came from Cuba, a real family relic. Because if anyone knows anythingabout that boat and the dedication in German, it has to be him. I’ll persuade Mom to go to a photo lab to get the pictures developed. I know he’s going to help me figure out who they are. Probably his parents are there, too, or even his grandparents, because as far as we can tell, the photographs were taken before the war. The Second World War, the most terrible of all.
    Every morning, when I wake up, I pick up the photo and kiss it. Then I prepare Mom’s coffee. That’s the only way I can make sure she gets up.
    When I make her coffee today, I breathe through my mouth because the smell makes me nauseous. Mom likes it, though, and it wakes her up. I carry in her big cup very slowly, and I hold it by the handle to avoid getting burned. It’s like a magic potion that will snap her out of her daze. I knock twice on her door, but as usual, she doesn’t reply. I open the door slowly, and light from the hall pours in with me.
    Then I see her: she’s totally pale, not moving, her eyes rolled up, and her chin pointing up to the ceiling. Her body is all twisted. I drop the cup of coffee, which falls to the floor with a crash and stains the white bedroom walls.
    I run out into the hall, struggle to open the front door, and then race upstairs to the fourth floor and knock on Mr. Levin’s door. When he opens it, his dog Tramp leaps up at me. “I can’t play with you now, Mom needs me.” Mr. Levin sees how worried I am and puts his arm around me. I can’t hold back my tears anymore.
    “There’s something wrong with Mom!” I tell him, because I can’t say the word I fear most. That I’ve lost her, that she’s gone, that she’s abandoned me. From now on, I’ll be an orphan not only because of my father but also because of her. Maybe I’ll have to leave my apartment, my photographs, my school. Who knows where they’ll send me to live. Maybe Cuba. Yes, I could ask the social workers who come looking for me if they would find my family in Cuba—to find Hannah, the only person I have left in the world.
    I rush down the stairs with Tramp. Mr. Levin takes the elevator. Iarrive first and wait outside Mom’s bedroom, not daring to look inside. My heart is pounding. It’s beating so hard my whole body aches. Mr. Levin enters very calmly, switches on the lamp, sits on Mom’s bed. He takes her pulse, and then looks back at me and smiles.
    He begins calling her:
    “Ida! Ida! Ida!” he shouts, but the body still doesn’t move.
    Then I see Mom’s arms slowly start to relax, and she tilts her head slightly to the left, as if trying to avoid us. Color comes back to her cheeks, and she seems annoyed by all the light in her room.
    “Don’t worry, Anna, I’ve already called an ambulance. Your mom will be fine.