No one is safe from her censorship; from the albums she excises unflattering images of herself as well.The few snapshots my mother has of my father she keeps hidden If I ask to look at one, she might show it to me. In every photograph, he is a tiny figure in a suit and glasses; the only person in the frame, still, he is never in its centre or its foreground, he seems as incidental as a bystander. I can't make out his features.A "man of God" is how someone describes my father to me I don't remember who Not my mother. I'm young enough that I take the words to mean he has magical properties and that he is good, better than other people.He sends long letters to my mother, and sometimes, folded in with them, are little ones for me In them, my father describes his work as a minister. He takes Christian youth groups into the slums, where they rebuild people's homes.
They paint the walls white and bring blankets, food, and toys for children who have no toys. I have everything a child could possibly want, my father tells me. He hopes I'll have the opportunity to experience some poor people, because otherwise how will I learn to be grateful?I'm six when my mother moves out and leaves me She is gone, but her room remains just as it was. I pull down the coverlet and see that fresh sheets are on her bed, and in her closet hang the dresses she didn't like well enough to take with her Dresses of all colours: red, blue, pink, green I stand among them.
I duck under the skirt of one and let it fall around me like a yellow tent, a tent the colour of the sun and smelling of flowers. I push my face into the smooth fabric, a hundred times more lovely than any other thing in this house. If a dress like this was not worth taking, how could I have hoped to be?She's moved to a nearby apartment, although to protect herself from my predatory grandmother she never tells us what street she lives on, nor does she give us her phone number. She sees me often, but she comes and goes at her own discretion: she does not want to be summoned by fevers or nightmares or lost teeth. It's the first of my mother's attempts since the divorce to make an independent life for herself, a life that does not seem possible to her unless motherhood is left behind.It begins when I'm 20.
