A Mother's Gift

“I had one of those chilling dreams again,” I told my sister over breakfast. She was standing at the stovetop frying an egg. I was sitting at the bar, casually buttering my toast, so I didn’t immediately notice her turn and look at me with wide eyes.

“What?” I asked when I saw her, surprised at her reaction. I set the knife down and took a bite.

“Jenny, these are happening more and more often. Aren’t you the least bit worried?”

I shrugged. Through a mouthful of toast I said, “They’re just dreams, Maya; I’ve always had vivid dreams.”

She turned from me and shook the skillet, flipping the egg on the first try. A master. The tv was on in the living room, volume low, the newscasters awkwardly cheery whether the news was good or bad. This was our weekday morning routine, listening to the musical stylings of the frying pan, the tv, and the occasional taxi honking five floors below. With her back to me Maya mumbled, “They weren't like that before Dad died.”

“Huh?” I asked, although I had heard her.

With quick precision Maya dropped the egg onto her plate, flipped the burner off, set the skillet in the sink, and faced me at the bar, palms pressed against the edge of the counter. “Look at the timeline, Jenny. When we were kids, you had colorful dreams filled with happy, harmless content. You always replayed them for me, and I didn’t mind because I knew you couldn’t remember Mom, so I tried to be a good listener, mother-figure to you. More than a sister, you know?”

I wasn’t sure if her question was rhetorical, so I said, “Thank you for that,” and took another bite of my breakfast.

“Of course. Okay, but listen. When Dad got sick and was in the hospital for 89 days, you didn’t have a single dream. Not one. It was like your brain got worn out worrying about him during the day and simply shut down at night.”

“Right…” I wasn’t sure why she was repeating recent history to me, especially such heavy stuff this early in the morning. I’d already covered this in therapy.

She barely took a breath. “Then, after the funeral you started dreaming again, but awful, scary stuff. I would hear you in your bedroom writhing in agony—”

“You could hear me?” I set my toast down.

Maya nodded.

“You never told me that." I crossed my arms.

Undeterred, Maya said, “Anyway, this has been going on for six months now, and I think you need to tell somebody.”

“Maya, I have told somebody. My therapist knows all about the dreams. It’s grief and stress and shock all trying to work itself out.”

“Maybe so. And I’m glad she knows, but they’re not improving; they’re getting worse.”

I rolled my eyes at my older sister’s diagnosis. Isn’t that for me to decide? It’s my brain after all. My thoughts, my dreams, my own way of grieving.

She was unfazed by my eye-roll and continued. “Jenny, your therapist is not helping anything. I think we actually need to tell the police.”

At this I laughed. “Huh? Like, report my therapist to the police?”

“No!” she said, flustered. “Your dreams! Report your dreams to the police.”

I stared at her in confusion. “What? Why? You’ve lost me.”

Maya flipped the water on and started furiously cleaning the dishes in the sink, her egg and toast now cold on the forgotten plate by the stove. She was silent for a good minute, and I could tell she was debating something in her head. I dutifully kept quiet until she was ready.

“There’s something you don’t know,” she told me without looking up.

I didn’t ask. I only waited. After what felt like an eternity, Maya turned the water off and stood still. We listened to it glide through the pipe until all was silent, save for the muffled sounds of the street below and the tv in the other room.

“I know you don’t remember Mom, but you’re a lot like her. Not just your long legs and thick hair, both of which I envy, as you know--" a half-smile, “but also in the way you don’t like cooking, you’re always cold, the books you choose. The list goes on…”

I could listen to Maya talk about Mom all day, and I wanted to ask her to continue the list, but I didn’t dare interrupt.

“One thing I never told you about Mom is that she used to have premonition dreams. I never told you because I was jealous of the myriad ways in which you two are similar, and I didn’t want you to have one more thing, not this thing. Her dreams were a secret between me and her. They were our thing,” she sighed. “I found out during the first year I went to school. I would come home and announce something good my teacher had said about me or something mean a classmate had done, and Mom would say something like, ‘I dreamt about that last night; I am so proud of you,’ or ‘I knew that would happen today; I am glad you are okay.’ Because I was so young, I believed her with every fiber of my being. It didn’t occur to me to question it. But I never needed to anyway because she eventually proved it to me.”

I was holding my breath.

Maya continued. “We started playing a game where I would come home, and she would guess very specific things that had happened to me at school. Jenny, she was always right. One hundred percent of the time. It was real. Mom was dreaming about me, future me. Nearly every night.” She stopped to wipe a tear from her cheek.

All I could muster was, “Wow.”

“When Dad was in the hospital, he told me that Mom had had a gift. I don’t think he knew that I knew about it, that Mom and I used to play the guessing game, so he wanted to share that with me before he died. He told me about some of her premonitions. She even knew that one day he was going to get sick…” Maya trailed off and took a deep breath.

“Mom tried talking to the police a couple of times, Dad told me, when she would dream about a crime. They either didn’t understand that she was reporting a future crime, or they didn’t believe her.” Maya shook her head. “She did dress like a hippie; maybe they thought she was on drugs.”

That made me smile. I lapped up details of Mom like a they were a desert oasis. “Maya, that is fascinating. Thank you for telling me.” I bit my lip. “But that doesn’t mean my dreams are premonitions…” I said, unsure, more like a question than a statement, needing my sister’s comfort and approval.

“That’s the other thing you don’t know.” She came around the bar and sat at the stool next to me, like she was about to give me a grave medical diagnosis.

“Some of those dreams you used to tell me, the harmless ones from your childhood…some of those things happened later, in real life. Our neighbor got a new bike for her birthday; identical twin boys transferred to my school mid-year; I found a two-dollar bill on the sidewalk near the mall. Those and many more are random things that happened after you dreamt about them. I never told you, and you didn’t notice because you weren’t looking for them. But I was. Of course I was. You reminded me of Mom so much I would hang on your every word, listen to every story. Cooking breakfast for you all these years hasn’t been totally selfless; I’ve wanted this time with you because you’re my sister but also for the reminders of Mom and the taste of your supernatural gift.”

I suddenly felt faint, trying to recount the years of stories that filled my head in the night, so many bright or neutral and, lately, several grim. There were so many things I had absent-mindedly mentioned to my sister over breakfast and promptly forgotten about, attaching nothing serious to them. They were only dreams. Weren’t they?

I checked the clock on the microwave. 8:35 am. Maya glanced too and hopped up, realizing she was late for work. A heavy foreboding came over me like I had been plunged underwater; goosebumps covered my skin. I watched, motionless, as my sister grabbed her purse and walked to the door of the apartment. She turned to me. I could barely hear her over the blood pumping in my ears as she said, “Let’s continue this conversation tonight. Love you, Jenny.” Then, she left.

I sat. And sat. For fifteen minutes maybe. Replaying recent dreams in my mind. Taking them seriously all of a sudden. I finally forced my numb legs to walk me to the wall phone in the kitchen. I called Maya’s office, knowing she wouldn’t be there yet if she had walked. If she had caught a cab, she might-- it went to voicemail. I breathed a sigh of relief and left a message. “Maya, when you get this, leave. Come back home. I need you. Take the morning off. I don’t know, please come back.” I hung up and shook my head, not even sure if what I said had made any sense. Next, I tried dialing 911 not knowing what I would say. There was a busy signal. I assumed I had dialed wrong because that’s not supposed to happen. I tried again. Busy. I slammed the phone into the cradle and decided to go after Maya.

Just as I reached for my purse on the side table in the living room, the tv caught my eye. I grabbed the remote, turned the volume up. Smoke. A building. Live footage. Where is this? Local news. Here. Manhattan. The tower. The twins. One burning, one watching in horror. Maya’s building. Which one of the towers is Maya’s again? My whole body shook violently.

Last night’s dream shouts at me. Twins. Like the twins from Maya’s childhood, but this time tall, made of stone. Burning. One falls, then the other. A flag crumbles into pieces at their feet.

I didn’t hear the apartment door open. A voice. “Jenny? It’s just me. I forgot my—” Silence. Maya’s eyes froze to the tv. I watched her process the image; the weight of it rushed over her. I ran to her and crumbled into pieces at her feet.