The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah by Nora Raleigh Baskin

circle time. Nana could have told me, I thought. Had I only asked.
    I felt a shiver run through my whole body. I was tired and I was hungry.
    I bit into my sandwich and finished my whole meal in about a minute. Juice and all. I was starving. Aunt Gert was still not back yet. My chair squeaked loudly across the floor as I pushed it from the table and got up.
    Aunt Gert’s living room, the one with the thick, dark drapes, is the biggest room, I figured, although I still hadn’t seen the bedrooms down the hall. I needed to use a bathroom. There was a little door by the front hall. That must be it.
    There was also a long, skinny wooden table against the far wall that seemed to have no other purpose than to sit huge ornate frames upon.
    Yes, this was the bathroom. The kind nobody ever uses, with little shell-shaped soaps in a shell-shaped dish and plush hand towels with ribbon and an embroidered emblem right in the center that makes it hard to dry your hands with.
    On my way out, I took a look at the photographs on the long table. I saw one that I was sure was my grandmother and grandfather, Nana and Poppy, but they were very young. The photo was black and white. It was a wedding photo.
    It was so quiet in here, I could hear the ticking of the clock in the kitchen.
    Why would she have this picture? I thought she hated my grandmother. I thought she was so opposed to the marriage, she never talked to her own brother again, until his wife died, my nana.
    And is that how my nana and Poppy felt about my own father? I felt tears burning behind my eyes. Being in New York, being here at night, I missed my grandmother. I knew it couldn’t be true.
    And then suddenly I felt someone was behind me.
    How had my aunt Gert sneaked up on me like that? So quietly I hadn’t heard her walking down the hall? I spun around, but no one was there.
    I looked back at the photos. This one must be my grandfather when he was young; I could just barely recognize him without his little rectangle moustache, but it was him. He was wearing a suit, his hands in his pockets, standing next to a tall young woman. Attractive but not pretty. She was wearing a huge, funny hat. She had her arms around him. It was his sister, it was my new aunt Gert before she got horribly ugly and mean. Or maybe she was mean then, too.
    They looked like they loved each other. There was even a little photo, a color one in the back, in a more modern-looking frame. It was my family, a long time ago. Me and Sam and my mom and dad. I barely remembered when we took it. On vacation inFlorida visiting my dad’s mom just before she died. I was about six years old. Sam was a newborn. How did she get this?
    Just then the phone rang down the hall. I heard Aunt Gert’s muffled voice. I hoped it was my parents calling to tell me everything was all right. Sam was fine and they were coming to get me and we’d all go home.
    â€œCaroline?”
    I stepped toward the hall. “Yeah?”
    â€œCan you pick up the phone in the kitchen? Your mother wants to speak with you.”
    â€œOkay.”
    I nearly banged into the wall as I turned and headed back toward the kitchen. I had turned out the light after putting my dish and glass in the sink. I tried to scan the dark room with my eyes wide as could be, looking for the phone as I felt around the wall for the light switch.
    My hand moved up and down as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Edges of the counter, the stove, the refrigerator became clearer. I think that’s the phone over by that calendar. I didn’t want to wait to turn on the light. As I made my way through the shadows and across the floor, I felt something brush by me. I felt something warm, something beside me, and I stopped when I smelled something familiar, like perfume.
    Nana?
    â€œCaroline?” my aunt called out again. “Can you find the phone?”
    As quickly as it had come, the perfume was gone. I picked up the phone and spoke with my