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were as light and small as a three-year-old. And when I was clean and dry and had a towel wrapped around my bottom half, we returned to the den to decide together what would be the best outfit for our next activity: tea in her living room, a room that I had never been invited into before, the den and kitchen having been designated as the only domain appropriate for a child.
    When Ida opened my suitcase—whose proper place turned out to be the ottoman beside the couch—I was relieved to see that Elka had packed several changes of clothes, including my favourite yellow turtleneck that went with my favourite black stretchy pants with the stirrups that went under the arches of my feet, and my favourite skirt: a green plaid kilt that was held together with a gold pin. The mere sight of these familiar things lifted my spirits, and Ida must have sensed that, because she patted my hand as I patted my yellow turtleneck and said, “Sometimes things can feel like friends.”
    A few minutes later, dressed in my green kilt and yellow turtleneck, I made my debut in Ida’s living room. It was a formal room, decorated in shades of blue, with scallop-edged blinds behind layers of drapery, and lace-scalloped lampshades and a gilt-framed mirror hanging over the powder blue sofa that Elka referred to as the Louis Quinze sofa and that didn’t look like anything I should be sitting on but was the only object in the line of Ida’s pointing hand, so I sat there as she had indicated I should, hands folded on my kilt, and waited for her to bring in the tea. She brought it in on a large silver tray that was crowded with pots of various sizes, placed it on the coffee table in front of the sofa and poured out two cups. She poured the tea from the largest of the teapots, placed a slice of lemon in one cup and poured in some amber fluid from a smaller pot, then stirred a spoonful of raspberry jam into the other cup and handed it to me as if it hadn’t crossed her mind that I might spill the scarlet-tinged liquid onto her powder blue sofa. As if I were no longer the same girl who had peed her pants ten minutes earlier.
    “ L’chaim ,” she said, lifting her teacup to me in a toast.
    “ L’chaim ,” I echoed back, and she smiled.
    She threw back her tea unmindful of its heat, poured herself another cup and smiled at me again, as if my presence suddenly pleased her.
    “So I hear you don’t want to move,” she said.
    “No,” I said. I wondered if she had also heard that I had been carried out of Green’s Restaurant screaming and crying like a four-year-old.
    “You like your house. You like your street.”
    I nodded. I had not told anyone the real reason I didn’t want to move, not even Carrie, and I was not about to make Ida Pearl my first confidante.
    “You think that if your mother comes back for you she won’t be able to find you if you’ve moved.”
    Now I was afraid. Ida could obviously read my mind. But I was amazed too. No adult had ever voiced my deepest wish. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid if I nodded she would tell me I was being silly, that my mother was not coming back. But if I shook my head she would know I was lying because she could read my mind.
    I gave a little nod. Ida nodded too, as if she had, in fact, known my answer and was just waiting to see if I’d admit it.
    “She’s a very smart lady, your mother. She’ll be able to find you.”
    “You know her?” It was hard for me to piece together the chronology of things. On the one hand, my mother had left before Elka and Sol were married, so Ida Pearl hadn’t really been part of our family yet at that time, so how would she know my mother? But on the other hand, Ida Pearl had been the one who came over right away and showed the policeman the full quart of milk.
    “Not well, but she came to my store once.”
    “She did?” An image formed in my mind of the inside of Ida’s store, which I knew so well, Ida standing behind her display counter, her loupe