Jennifer Zeynab Maccani Mujaddara and Myrrh Mama’s doctor told us she won’t live to see the spring. They sent me to play Go Fish with the nurse, but I kept looking back to make sure Mama was still there. What if she disappears tomorrow? Or tonight at the dinner table? In the next five minutes? Mama’s name is Mariam. I think it’s prettier than my name. Mama told me Rahel was my great-grandmother, but I don’t know any other kids named Rahel. Mama says maybe there are some the next town over. Maybe Khalid’s mama will name his little sister Rahel when she comes. But I don’t know. Khalid’s mama is the only one except for mine that sends him to school with cold lentils and rice instead of peanut butter and jelly. The other kids ask us what it is and I don’t say anything, because if I say “mujaddara” they’ll laugh at me. The doctor told Mama to pray. When we got home she laughed because she never prays. Sometimes I do, like my baba does. We kneel next to the bed and put our hands together and we tell God what’s bothering us. I ask him to keep Mama laughing. Maybe if she keeps laughing she won’t disappear. My sitto, my grandmother, used to get mad at Mama for not going to mass. Mama told me once that when Sitto came to Boston from Syria, when Mama was a little girl, they only had mass in Latin. I’m glad they have it in English now, except Sitto can’t understand very much, because her Arabic is better than her English. I don’t know where they have mass in Arabic, but I don’t think they have it here in Boston. Sitto always used to come with Baba and me to Mass. Mama’s never gone, not even now. Mama said when Sitto first came here and she wore her lace veil to mass, everyone in the neighborhood thought she was a Muslim. Once, a girl at school asked me what I call God. I said, “We call him ‘Allah.’ It means ‘God’ in Arabic.” She laughed at me and told me I was Muslim. That night I asked Sitto, “Who is Allah?” Sitto didn’t laugh. She said, “Al-ilahi al-wahid. Al-muhyi.” The one God. The giver of life. And he was. But now Mama traces the kitchen table with her finger every night after dinner when I’m supposed to be in bed. The table used to belong to Sitto, in the yellow house on Mount Auburn Street. Mama and Baba don’t talk anymore when they sit at the table. They just stare at it like it might say something, like they’re listening. Maybe they think Sitto will come out of the wood and whisper to them from heaven. After dinner, when Baba goes to wash up, I tug on Mama’s sleeve. “When you go,” I say, “how will I know who I am?”
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