“Mamá…” you whisper.
She does not answer right away.
She keeps reading, her eyes racing across the yellowed page while tears fall faster and faster, dripping onto the paper as if she is trying to drown the words before they finish. Then she presses the letter to her chest and lets out the kind of cry that makes your whole body go cold. Not ordinary crying. Not hunger crying. Not tired widow crying.
This sounds like grief waking up again after years of pretending to sleep.
You move toward her slowly.
Your sisters begin to cry because children always know when the adults have stepped into a storm they cannot explain. One of them clutches the edge of your shirt. The other hides behind the table. Outside, the winter wind rattles the loose sheet metal above the patio, and for one wild second the whole house feels like it might lift off the ground and blow apart.
Your mother finally lowers the letter.
Her face looks older than it did ten minutes ago.
