Bennie didn’t know where she was, whether she was conscious or dreaming, alive or dead, but she didn’t want it to stop because it was light and golden and she was so happy. Her mother was alive, healthy, and well again, a vision holding out her arms, her long fingers moving and white as bone, reaching for her daughter.
Benedetta, her mother whispered. I am here.
Bennie hadn’t understood how much she had been hurting, she had been in pain, her heart sick and sore, part of her had stopped living, too. But that was over now and her mother was back, her hair loose and raven-dark, her skin smooth and soft, like when she was young, in the picture.
Her mother was wearing her blue chenille bathrobe, a welcome sight until later, when that was all she wore and she got so sick, and nothing could make her happy or cheer her up or cure her. If Bennie only tried harder, she could make her mother well again, but nothing she did worked, no good grades, no library books read, no spelling bees won, no merit badges, jokes, funny faces, nothing at all could make her mother smile again. But Bennie knew, even when she was little, that her mother was still inside her body and would come out if only she could, and the thing that stopped her was the disease.
Bennie was sitting at the kitchen table, and her mother was cooking pancakes, and she could breathe in the nice baked smell and hear the butter sizzling in the pan. Her mother was showing her how the bubbles popped on the pancakes, a secret clue they were ready to be turned over, and Bennie was standing next to her mother, barely reaching the pan, feeling the heat from the burner near her nose, watching the pancakes flip over so that the golden side came up, all smooth and fresh.
The best part was that they were together again, just the two of them, standing so close that Bennie could smell her mother’s tea rose perfume, hear her voice, reach out and touch her soft robe, and she was so happy to have her mother back again for just one pancake breakfast, just one morning, just one day would be all she could ask for. Her full heart told her what she knew was true, that this was surely heaven.
And even though they were both of them dead, Bennie felt that this moment was the only time she felt truly, happily, fully alive.