Hearing Ezra use the word mama made me feel a pang of longing. I was not really longing for my mother, who certainly was no mama. I wanted another mama, a fictional one. I thought about what my dream mama would look and feel like. Would she be like Mrs. Schwebel? Would she be like Ana? If it were possible to create the mama I’d wished for, I wasn’t even sure who she would be. My wish for that mama had always been a response to an absence. I didn’t know how to think about a mama in terms of presence. In my fantasies, I’d cobbled together scraps—fragments of women who’d crossed my path. I’d
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