Mothers Bake Pogácsas

Mama sends me to the deli down the corner to buy yeast because she’s making pogácsa, even though I don’t even like pogácsa because it’s too salty and too dry and looks too much like a toad, but Mama bakes it anyway because, as she says, “Mothers Bake Pogácsas”, pressing the first letter of each word as if they should be capitalized, as if the words were the names of three towns I’d end up living in, just like she did, but the handwritten sign on the deli’s smudgy window spells Closed, and I guess Mama forgot that the deli is closed on Sundays, because she keeps forgetting everything: the days of the week, her keys in the fridge, checking my Math homework, which I don’t mind because when I open my workbook, the numbers turn into sparrow footprints dancing on fresh snow, and I’m scared to tell her that, because on my first day of school, when I opened the creaky gate that left a line of brown rust on my palm, Mama told me “This is your job now,” and that “You have to do well, you understand?”, and her voice hovered above my head with the weight of a distant thunder that could crack open the grey cement of the sky in any second, but now she forgets checking in on me, just like she forgets checking in on my brother. One time, she reached for my hand and tucked it under the warmth of her cardigan, resting it on her belly as she whispered “Here’s your brother”, but she never mentioned him again, and I stopped asking because the first time I asked when I would get to see my brother, and I imagined a little boy with round ears that stick out like the ears of my Teddy bear, and I imagined him squishy and soft and sweet, Mama grabbed my hand and placed an overbaked, rust-colored, hard-shelled pogácsa on my palm and told me to eat it.