“Okay. Now is a good time, then. We need to discuss an action plan for her care going forward,” Gio said, nodding towards me. It was a subtle command to sayI’ll need your support with this, but I was already prickling at his ambush.
This wasn’t the way to get through to Soraya. But this was my practical brother, who always pushed for a solution. He took the emotion out of it, tried to digest the facts, and plan because he could see the train coming down the tracks with no brakes. He knew Soraya was standing in front of it, refusing to move. He was trying to protect her while she thought he was replacing her.
“Mamma’s condition is getting worse,” he breathed, glancing at Soraya, then at me. “She nearly overdosed on her pills last night because she’d forgotten she’d already taken them.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Soraya muttered. “She took two extra before I realised and stopped her.”
“She is going to need around-the-clock supervision soon. We’ve been doing the best we can, but it would lessen the load if we hired help, at least at night.”
“Why at night?” I asked, realising I’d been kept in the dark about how bad the situation was, more than I’d thought.
“She tends to wander,” Gio answered. “She gets confused about the time of day and often gets out of bed. The night soldiers have had to escort her back, but she starts losing it with them because she doesn’t recognise them.”
“I’ll sleep with her,” Soraya argued.
“You barely sleep as it is. No,” said Gio, shaking his head. I glanced between them, feeling torn.
“Raya,” Elle interjected from the phone. “You’ve been so amazing, Sweetie, but it’s too much. It’s only going to get worse.”
“So you’re okay with hiring someone who seesMammaas just some… task? A paycheck? What’s next? Do you want her to leave her home?”
“Of course not,” Elle said. I rubbed my hands down my face.
“I said I’d care for her, didn’t I? Gio can’t stop working. You live in Sicily with the kids. Sani is in Rome, so I was happy to look after her. If I tell you I’m managing, I am. Liv helps too. We’re fine.”
Gio stared at me, and I realised I was expected to back him up. I inhaled deeply before turning to Raya. She glared at me as if to say, ‘Don’t you even dare.’
“Raya, you just burst into tears. I’m worried. They might be right. It’s okay to ask for help.”
She scoffed. “So I’m being punished for being emotional?”
“No one is punishing you,” Gio argued. “You’re twenty-nine, Raya. You should be living your life, studying nursing, and playing music.”
“What were you doing at my age, Gio? Or you, Elle?” She folded her arms across her chest. “You two have looked afterMammaall your lives. Let me do it now.”
“This is different,” Elle said. “This is progressive and terminal.”
“And you’re burning yourself out.”
“I’m not burning myself out,” Raya whispered, her bottom lip trembling with that rare emotion again. I reached for her. For the first time in her life, she shrugged me off.
“Raya, you don’t sleep more than three hours a night, you barely eat, and—”
“We all have shit going on. Am I not allowed to have mine?” she suddenly shouted, leaping from her chair and shocking us all. This was so out of character for her. There was only one person she had ever lost her temper with before, and that was me when we were kids. She frantically wiped her eyes, then stormed out of the room.
Gio huffed back into his chair as I stared at the door, wanting to go after her but needing to resolve this situation.
“Raya never loses it like that,” Elle said with concern. “That just proves our point.”
“Let me talk to her,” I said, standing up. “Ambushing her like this was a terrible fucking idea.”
“We’ve tried everything else,” Gio argued, running a hand through his hair. “I’m done tiptoeing around it. I’m not trying to hurt her.Mammaneeds help, and so does Raya.”
I left the room in search of my sister and found her sitting in the bay window of her bedroom, looking out across the lawn. I sat on her bed, elbows on my knees, and stared at her. She refused to look at me. She’d withdrawn into herself, as she always did when things got too much for her. She shut the world out.
I climbed onto her bed and lay down, placing an arm behind my head and grabbing the tattered book of Italian poems from beneath her pillow. I read aloud, lifting my gaze every so often to check on her. A tear slid down her cheek, but she brushed it away. Finally, eight poems later, she slowly edged off the window seat and lay on the bed beside me, curling up in a ball. I kept reading until she was ready to talk.
“You know you can’t be everywhere, Sani.”
