Prologue

 

I THOUGHT SHE WAS MY MOTHER

(But She Wasn't)

I was helping to clean out Lily’s house (which I shouldn’t have had to do). I was talking and reminiscing with my youngest brother Ceddy while we were in our sister's room. Suddenly, I remembered something from decades ago. “When I was around four years old, I was playing in the front yard. A car pulled up in front of the house. There were two black women in the car. The one on the passenger side rolled down her window. “Hello little girl! You are so pretty! I have something for you,” she called. Being a child, I naturally went over to the car to see what it was. She opened her car door, and she was holding a life-sized black doll almost as big as I was. “Would you like to have this?” she asked. “Yes!” I replied. She handed it to me. It was a pretty doll with pigtails and wearing a lacy white dress. I had never seen a black doll before. “Do you like it?” “Yes, I do,” I said as I cuddled the doll. “Good." She paused, and then said, "I am so glad I got to meet you; and maybe I will see you again. Bye now.” “Bye bye!”

"That's a weird memory to have," Ceddy replied as he put some books in a box. "Where did that come from?"

I looked around the room, which was filled with my sister's and Lily's belongings. My sister had died and Lily was being cared for in a lovely nursing home. Yet I could still feel their 'essence' all around me; and it was unnerving. "From being in this room. After today I'm not coming back in here."

He gave me a strange look. "Okay, I can understand that. But hey: whatever happened to that nice lady?"

"I never saw her again."

"That's too bad. It would have been nice to know who she was."

"Well Ceddy, all these years later, after all I had to see going through Lily's and our father's records for insurance and hospitalization and stuff, I have come to realize that she, not Lily, was my birth mother."

COMING FALL 2024