Mrs. Bernstein pulled a crayon drawing out of her purse, her hand shaking, and laid it on the seder table. It was a childs picture of a woman holding a little boy, with a big red heart around them both.
Howard, she said, you said somebody has to pack the lunches. Let me tell you what this woman did in a bathroom in Shaker Heights.
In October 2023, Mrs. Bernstein said, my grandson had a seizure in the bathtub, and his parents were away, and the only person in the house was the nanny. She kept him breathing on that bathroom floor, with her own hands, until the ambulance came. The doctors said another few minutes and he would have been gone. That little boy is my grandson. He drew this picture of the woman who saved him. He calls her his other mama.
The table had gone silent. Rachel had her hand over her mouth.
Howard said she babysits rich peoples kids, and the woman he mocked kept his new partners own grandson alive on a bathroom floor.
Mrs. Bernstein had come to the seder with her husband, Howards new business partner, never dreaming the nanny her family still thanked God for would be at the same table. She had recognized Rachels face the moment she walked in.
I am Rachels mother. She passed the matzah and said chag sameach, Howard, and took the comment, because a woman who kept a child breathing on a bathroom floor does not need a developer to tell her what she is worth. Howard looked at that crayon drawing, and at the woman he had called a babysitter, and he did not ask anybody what their house was worth for the rest of the night.