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Part 2: The Phone Call
Mom sat down on the top step. She was still sore from surgery. Dad sat beside her. He held her hand.
He said, quietly, Dr. Shah called yesterday afternoon. The lab tested the tissue they removed. It’s routine.
They found something. Very small. Very early. Cancer.
Mom closed her eyes.
Dad said, He said it’s the earliest kind. Stage zero. He said if you hadn’t had this surgery, they might not have found it for years.
He said, Lou, this surgery may have saved your life.
Mom started to cry. So did I.
Then she looked at the bedroom doorway. At the empty walls.
She said, Why did you take the mirrors?
Dad took the shoebox from under his arm. He turned over the photograph.
It was a black-and-white picture. A woman in her fifties. Thin. Wearing a hospital gown. Two teenage girls standing beside her.
My grandmother. Mom. And Aunt Lil.
Dad said, Your mother had a mastectomy in 1972. You told me once she covered every mirror in the house afterward. For the rest of her life.
He said, When Dr. Shah called, I panicked. I thought he’d tell you you’d need more surgery. I thought you’d come home and look in the mirror and see your mother.
He said, I just wanted to tell you first. Before you saw anything. Before you got scared.
Mom put her head on his shoulder. She cried for a long time.
Aunt Lil stood at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t come up.
Mom looked down at her sister.
She said, quietly, How did Brad have your number?
Aunt Lil said, He called me two years ago. When I got my test results. I asked him not to tell you.
Mom turned to Dad. Her face changed.
She said, You knew? For two years?
Dad said, She made me promise.
That night, Aunt Lil called me. She’d left without coming upstairs.
She was crying. She said, Your mother’s never going to forgive me.
She said, She hasn’t spoken to me in twenty years. Because of what I did when Mama was dying.
She said, Tell her I’ll stay away. I just needed her to know about the gene.
I kept my voice calm.
Aunt Lil, I said, she’s scared. She’s angry. But she let you in the house.
Lil said, She’ll want me gone. She always does.
Then she said, quietly, There’s something else she needs to know.
Mama left us both a letter. Before she died. I’ve had them both for twenty years.
Part 3: Twenty Years
I sat in my parents’ kitchen that night after Mom fell asleep. Dad sat across from me. We let ourselves count.
Seventy years old.
Fifty-two years married. My parents met at a dance hall. Dad stepped on her foot. She said she’d marry him anyway.
Thirty years of back pain. Mom never complained much. She just stopped doing things. Gardening. Dancing. Long walks.
Twenty years since she spoke to her sister.
Dad told me what happened.
When my grandmother was dying, Mom took care of her. For two years. She moved her into our house. She bathed her. Fed her. Sat with her every night.
Aunt Lil lived three states away. She visited twice.
When my grandmother passed, Aunt Lil came to the funeral. Then she went through Grandma’s jewelry box. She took the pearls. The ones Grandma promised to Mom.
Mom said she’d never speak to her again.
She didn’t. For twenty years.
Then I counted what the surgery found.
A tiny spot of early cancer. Smaller than a grain of rice. In tissue that would have stayed inside her body for years if she’d never had the reduction.
Dr. Shah told Dad that with a gene like Aunt Lil’s, it could have turned into something much worse. Without anyone knowing.
Then I counted Dad.
Fifty-two years. He drove her to every doctor’s appointment. He carried her laundry upstairs when her back was bad.
He didn’t want her to have this surgery. He was scared.
Then the surgeon called. And he took down every mirror in the house. Because he remembered something she told him forty years ago. About her mother.
In the morning, a car pulled into the driveway.
It was Aunt Lil.
She was holding a small velvet box. And two envelopes.
Part 4: Aunt Lil
Mom was sitting on the living room couch. Propped up with pillows. Dad sat beside her.
Aunt Lil stood in the doorway. She didn’t come in.
Mom looked at her. She didn’t say anything.
Aunt Lil started talking.
She said, I know you hate me. I know I wasn’t there when Mama was sick. I know I took the pearls.
She said, I had my reasons. You never asked what they were.
She said, You think you were the only one who suffered. You weren’t.
She said, I didn’t come back for twenty years because I couldn’t face you. You were the good daughter. The perfect one.
Then her voice changed.
She said, I came today because of the gene. That’s all. You should get tested. Your daughter should get tested.
She said, I’ll leave after this. You never have to see me again.
Then she held out the velvet box.
She said, Here. Take your pearls back. Then we’re even.
I felt the room go tight.
Mom took a slow breath. Her voice was quiet. Steady.
She said, Lil, I don’t want the pearls.
Aunt Lil blinked.
I took care of Mama for two years, Mom said. You came twice. That hurt more than the pearls ever did.
She said, But I never asked why. You’re right. I never asked.
Aunt Lil’s eyes filled with tears.
Mom said, gently, I’m asking now.
Aunt Lil sat down slowly in the armchair across from her sister.
She said, very quietly, I had my first mastectomy the year Mama got sick.
I was thirty-nine. I didn’t tell anyone. Not you. Not Mama.
I couldn’t watch her go through what I was going through.
And I couldn’t let her see me sick too.
Part 5: The Mirrors
Mom stared at her sister.
She said, You had cancer? Twenty years ago?
Aunt Lil nodded. She said, Then again five years ago. The other side. That’s when I got tested for the gene.
She said, I took the pearls because I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see you again. I wanted something of Mama’s.
Mom covered her mouth. She started to cry.
She held out her arms. Slowly. Carefully. Because of her surgery.
Aunt Lil crossed the room. She sat on the couch. Gently. She put her arms around her sister.
Two seventy-year-old women. Holding each other. Crying.
Twenty years.
Then Aunt Lil handed Mom one of the envelopes.
She said, Mama wrote us each a letter. Before she died. She gave them both to me. I was supposed to give you yours.
I never did. I was ashamed.
Mom opened it. She read it out loud.
My girls. Don’t be like me. Don’t hide. Don’t cover the mirrors. Look at yourselves and see two women who survived. And take care of each other. Always.
Mom couldn’t finish reading. Aunt Lil finished for her.
Mom had a small follow-up procedure a month later. Dr. Shah says she’s cancer-free. She’ll have checkups every six months.
I got tested for the gene. So did my daughter. We’re both negative.
Aunt Lil moved back to town in the spring. She lives ten minutes away now. She and Mom have lunch every Tuesday.
Mom’s back doesn’t hurt anymore. She started gardening again. Last week, she danced with Dad in the kitchen.
On her seventy-first birthday, Dad hung a new mirror in their bedroom.
Full-length. Gold frame. He asked me to help him pick it out.
At the bottom of the frame, he’d glued a small brass plate.
It said: Look. You’re still here.
Mom stood in front of that mirror on her birthday morning. In her robe. Looking at herself for a long time.
Then Aunt Lil walked into the room. She was wearing the pearls.
She took them off. She fastened them around Mom’s neck.
The two of them stood together in front of the mirror. Side by side.
Mom said, quietly, We look like Mama.
Aunt Lil said, We look like survivors.
Then they both laughed.
And for the first time in fifty years, nobody in that house covered a single mirror.
