Mom says. “Is cold at night.” She’s said the same thing in the same moose-and-squirrel accent since I was twelve and going off to summer camp. “Mom,” I say, “it’s May.” “Sveater veather,” she says, pulls the aforementioned garment out of my dresser, and lays it atop my duffel. It’s the bulkiest sweater I own, bright red, and makes me look like a big, fuzzy chili pepper. It also takes up half the duffel, but it was her gift to me. Need I say more? We have this conversation every time I leave home for more than a day and I always leave with extra sweaters, extra sox, vitamins of all kinds and— “You have your obereg?” This literally means “protector” in The Mother’s Tongue and, like the sweater and vitamins, is something Mom will not let me leave home without. Not that she’d admit to being superstitious. But with a PhD in Russian folklore, a fascination with arcana, and a vast collection of materia magica from all over the world, she views packing an amulet as a practical consideration.
