The Hand in the Mirror

The closet mirror was taller than Maya and nearly as stubborn.

Soren held one side. Maya held the other. Rain ticked at the apartment windows, and the hallway smelled like wet shoes, cardboard boxes, and the lemon cleaner Soren's mother used when she was trying not to be nervous.

"Tilt it left," Soren said.

Maya tilted it right.

"Other left."

"Mirrors make that sentence unfair," Maya said.

They were supposed to be making an infinity tunnel for the school hallway, a long black box with lights inside so people could look in and see dots falling away forever. Soren had drawn the plans. Maya had already cut the cardboard. The problem was that the second mirror had cracked in the move from the old apartment.

Soren's mother came in carrying a box against her hip. Her right hand gripped the bottom. Her left sleeve was pinned below the elbow. The prosthetic arm she wore for work lay on the table beside a roll of packing tape, its fingers half curled around nothing.

She set the box down too hard.

The tape jumped.

"Ow," she said, and then she bit the word closed.

Soren looked up.

His mother pressed her right palm against the end of her left sleeve. Her face had gone flat, the way grown-ups made it when they wanted children to walk past a thing without touching it.

Maya did not walk past things.

"Is it the sore place?" she asked.

"No," Soren's mother said. "It's my hand."

The room went quiet except for rain.

Maya looked at the sleeve. Soren looked at his mother's face.

"Your left hand?" he asked.

"My fingers," she said. "They're clenched. Thumb tucked under. Like this."

She folded her right thumb into her palm and closed her fingers over it.

Maya's eyebrows pulled together. "But that hand isn't there."

Soren's mother gave a tired little laugh with no laugh inside it. "Yes. People mention that."

Maya went red at the ears.

Soren said, "Does rubbing the arm help?"

"Sometimes. Not this kind." His mother tried to shake her left arm, stopped, and breathed through her teeth. "I know. I know. I should do the exercises. I do not have time to be haunted by my own hand today."

She picked up the tape with her right hand, missed the edge, and set it down again.

Soren had heard about the hand before. Not like this. Usually his mother said it in the same voice she used for bills, traffic, and the neighbor's dog. A problem, annoying and ordinary. This time the missing fingers seemed to have walked into the room and refused to leave.

Maya stared at the closet mirror.

"Wait," she said.

Soren knew that voice. It meant she had put a pin in something that did not match.

"What?" he asked.

"She said exercises. With what?"

His mother closed her eyes. "Maya."

"No, really."

Soren answered because the answer had been sitting somewhere in him since he was small. "At the rehab clinic, there was a box. A mirror in the middle. She put her good hand on one side and her arm on the other."

His mother opened her eyes.

Maya's head turned slowly toward the tall mirror in their hands.

Soren felt the plan arrive in pieces. Not all at once. First the mirror. Then the table. Then the empty sleeve hidden where the reflection would cover it. Then the right hand pretending to be left.

"We can make the box," he said.

"No," his mother said.

"We can," Maya said. "Not a pretty one. A bossy one."

"I mean no, you do not have to."

Soren was already moving the school cardboard off the table. "You said the fingers are stuck."

"They feel stuck."

"Then maybe the mirror can show them unsticking."

His mother looked at him, and for a second she was not busy, not packing, not pretending the pain was small enough to fold away. She looked uncertain, which made Soren stand straighter.

"The clinic mirror box was made by actual people who knew what they were doing," she said.

Maya tapped the glass. "This is an actual mirror."

"And we're actual people," Soren said.

His mother almost smiled. Then her face tightened again.

They built it on the kitchen table. Two cereal boxes became supports. A stack of library books held the mirror upright. Maya checked the angle by crouching until her nose nearly touched the table.

"Too far," she said. "The glass hand lands in the salt shaker."

Soren slid the mirror a finger's width. "Now?"

"Now it lands in the sleeve."

His mother sat down because they had left her no useful way to keep standing. Soren moved the prosthetic arm aside carefully. He had always thought of it as a tool, like a clever wrench, with straps and sockets and a hand that could open when his mother moved the muscles in her arm. Now it looked too quiet.

"Right hand here," Maya said.

His mother placed her right hand on the table to the right of the mirror.

"Left arm behind it," Soren said.

She put the end of her left sleeve on the other side, hidden from where she sat.

Maya leaned over the table, then ducked away so she would not be in the reflection. "Look straight at the mirror."

Soren's mother looked.

Her right hand appeared in the glass on the left side of her body. Not a ghost hand. Not a pretend hand. A bright, ordinary hand with short nails and a freckle near the knuckle, attached by light to the pinned sleeve.

His mother's breath caught.

Maya whispered, "Oh."

Soren did not write anything down. His pencil was in his pocket, but taking it out would have made the moment smaller.

"Open your right hand," he said.

His mother opened it. In the mirror, the left hand opened too.

She flinched.

"Slow," Maya said. "Make both hands do it. Even the one that isn't doing it."

His mother closed her right hand gently, then opened it again. The hand in the mirror obeyed. Close. Open. Close. Open.

At first her shoulders stayed high. Then they lowered a little. Her mouth softened. Rain ran down the window in crooked lines.

"My thumb," she said.

Soren leaned forward. "What about it?"

"It came out."

Maya's smile started before the sentence finished. It was quick and bright and gone again because she was watching the hand.

"Again," Soren said.

His mother opened and closed her right hand. The reflected left hand did the same, patient as a signal finally reaching the right address.

"The brain keeps a body map," Soren said, half to Maya and half to the mirror. "Maybe the map still has the hand on it."

Maya did not look away from the glass. "And the map was yelling at a road that wasn't there."

"The mirror gives it a road."

"A shiny road."

His mother laughed then, a real laugh this time, but it broke in the middle. She covered her mouth with her right hand. In the mirror, the left hand covered its mouth too.

Nobody said anything for a while. Maya got up suddenly and went to the hallway.

"Where are you going?" Soren asked.

"Bathroom mirror," she called back. "It's smaller. For traveling."

"Please do not take the bathroom apart," Soren's mother said.

Maya returned carrying a hand mirror with a chipped blue handle. "Not apart. Borrowed."

Soren pulled his notebook from his pocket, then stopped. He put it on the table unopened and picked up the cracked mirror instead.

"If this works because seeing changes what the brain expects," he said, "then a prosthetic could maybe show more than outside moving. It could help with the map."

Maya put the small mirror beside the tall one. "Or a screen. Or glasses. Or a robot hand that teaches the brain hello before it grabs things."

Soren's mother flexed her right fingers. The reflected left fingers flexed with them.

"Careful," she said. "You two are going to turn my kitchen into a hospital."

"No," Maya said. "A workshop."

Soren's mother looked at the glass hand, then at the prosthetic arm lying on the table, then back at the glass.

"Again," she said.

Maya held the cardboard steady. Soren braced the mirror with both hands. In the glass, a left hand opened, closed, and opened.