Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz

Sadhana and I had stopped fighting and stopped talking, too. All morning we’d been fretting and weeping alone in different parts of the apartment. But squeezed together on the front mat by Deana, neither of us pulled away, and I was relieved. I closed my eyes and leaned in to smell Deana’s scent of pears and powder and Sadhana’s dirty hair. It didn’t feel like Mama hugging us, because Deana was much taller than both of us, and Mama had been almost a full head shorter.
    Deana let us go to wipe her eyes, and then she said, “I’m starving. Have you guys eaten? I have to eat when I get upset or I turn into a demon.” She kept one arm around each of our waists and propelled us into the kitchen. When Sadhana told her about the casserole, she let go and rushed on ahead of us.
    â€œSit down, sit down,” she called. “You shouldn’t have to do anything. Do you want some? Are you hungry?” From the back she looked a bit like Mama, though she was younger, in her twenties, and her hair was a bit lighter, more gold than red. She was an extraordinarily pretty woman. She had fine, pale hands and a wide, hilarious mouth. I knew that when she subbed for Mama, the new students sometimes asked if she was her daughter.
    Sadhana and I sat at the kitchen table watching Deana spoon noodles into a bowl to reheat. She was telling a story about our mother. I wondered how she could go so quickly from crying to talking to bustling around, when the pain of it all was stabbing me in the chest, in the throat.
    She was saying, “I took my first yoga class from your mother. My first class ever. I’d just graduated from high school. Did you know that? She took one look at me and knew I was in pain. She invited me to stay afterwards for spiced tea with milk, and I told her all about Mike, my crummy boyfriend.”
    Deana turned on the oven and popped her bowl inside. I was worried that the porcelain would crack and looked over at Sadhana, but she was intent on Deana, or at least staring in her direction.
    â€œI started training with your mother, and I left Mike.” Deana sat down and reached across the table to squeeze Sadhana’s hands, which were lying on the table, knotted in a hard knuckle lump. My sister barely blinked. “It must have been about seven years ago. And I’ve never looked back. Your mother even helped me quit smoking.”
    â€œHow did she do that?” asked Sadhana. She was gazing past Deana now, at some indefinable point of interest in the direction of the refrigerator. It was calming, somehow, to watch Sadhana, the way she had of sailing forward into something but keeping herself separate. For my part, I was afraid to stir or ask a question. Anything that kept us moving ahead in time without Mama.
    Deana shook her head. “I’ve no idea. I swear, she must have hypnotized me or something. I still don’t understand it. She just told me not to do it, so I didn’t.”
    She took her bowl out of the oven, though the food could not have been hot but only warmed. She ate while we watched. Every once in a while she would swallow and look up at us and smile, and Sadhana and I tried to smile back. I could guess what my face must have looked like by seeing my sister’s, which was pale in the cheeks and dark in the eyes. Quivering and dry and too soft in the mouth.
    If Deana saw the thinness of our rallying, she didn’t show it. To me she said, “I’m going to stay as long as you need me.” I nodded, and she went on, “I mean it. I’m not leaving you guys one second before you’re ready for me to go.”
    â€œOkay.”
    She got up from the table, looking beatific in her blue jeans with the gold glinting in her hair, like an angel sent to save us. But then she was leaning over the counter with her hand over her face, tears flowing. It was as though once she had eaten she remembered why she had come, and she started