“Ready for dinner?” she asked. “I’ll cut you a piece.”

There was no way she’d be able to cut that chicken, I thought. But I said nothing. Even though I was in my 20s, at my grandparents’ apartment I felt like a 6-year-old—it wasn’t my place to critique Grandma’s cooking. Watching Grandma hack at the chicken, I wondered if, in fact, she had some secret knowledge that could instantly turn raw frozen flesh into our dinner. I contemplated grabbing a knife and offering my help.

“It’s awfully tough!” Grandma grumbled.

“It’s frozen solid …” I said sheepishly.

“Really? Frozen! Oh, me, the old fool!” Grandma laughed. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be.” She quickly shoved the bird back in the freezer.

I decided to make myself useful. I cleaned the apartment and did the cooking. I was making soup when Grandma announced that we needed to have a conversation.

“It’s simply cruel,” she started.

“What are you talking about, Grandma?”

“Your parents. They left me all alone to starve to death here.”

She began to cry. I called my parents in Phoenix immediately.

“Grandma says you’re starving her to death! She has no money.”

My mother gasped. “We just sent her $1,600. She signed for it at the Western Union.”

“What should I do?” I asked my mother.

“Find the money! Or find out what happened to the money! Be an adult!”

That night, after Grandma and my daughter settled in the living room to watch a soccer game on TV, I searched Grandma’s bedroom.

For most of my life, I’d been implicitly barred from this room, where my grandfather sat at his desk, working on his memoir. Once, I’d sneaked in and attempted to chew a plastic gem off my grandfather’s pen cap. I had left teeth marks all over the pen and spent weeks waiting to get caught.

Rummaging through the desk drawers, I hoped that Grandma had spent the money. Or that she’d gotten robbed at the currency exchange and was covering up. If I discovered the money, it could mean Grandma Gita was losing her mind.

I finally found the money in the wardrobe. Grandma had wrapped hundreds of rubles and dollars in swatches of cheesecloth and old plastic bags and had tucked them under folded sheets. My parents’ $1,600 was there, too, bundled with the Western Union receipt.

After the soccer match ended, my daughter went to the bathroom, and I led Grandma to the bedroom.

“Oy, Anichka,” she exclaimed. “Where did all this money come from?”

I explained that she’d stashed it there herself. Suddenly, Grandma’s attention shifted away from the money. She looked worried.

“It’s OK, Babushka,” I said, trying to comfort her. “You just forgot …”

“Tell me, Anichka,” she interrupted in a conspiratorial whisper, “whose child do we have in our bathroom?”

Two years later Grandma Gita died of Alzheimer’s disease. She had been good at covering up her slips, but our ignorance of her condition was also partly out of denial. When, during her stay in Phoenix, she’d gone for a walk and got lost in my parents’ subdivision, we’d blamed it on the uniformity of suburban architecture.When she’d called from Moscow to ask about “the kids,” we hadn’t guessed that she was no longer certain of the kids’ names.

As long as Grandma was around, my parents got to be children, and I remained a grandchild. No matter how many birthdays we celebrated, Grandma’s presence assured us that we had many years left ahead. I wonder what will happen when my own mother begins to lose it. I fear I might help her hack apart that frozen chicken, and eat it, too.