Your Mama (and Mine)
Mama said I should write to you. She said it so many times when she was down, that I should write to you because cousins are important. I don’t know much about cousins but I think a cousin is like a sister, but almost. I look in the mirror sometimes and I pull on my face to make it wider or longer to see if I might look like you. I know that you and I are almost the same age, born as we were just a few months apart.
Let me tell you what happened to Mama because no one else will. You probably heard something about her from your mama, something nice I hope even though when your mama heard about me being born in that awful place with the screaming and the cold tile floors she never spoke to my Mama again. I suppose she might have come to Mama’s funeral at the Big House where they both grew up, where they walked the Long Drive arm in arm with their bobbed blond hair shining in the southern sun.
Did you know that we live in the Big House now, again? It’s just in the cottage in the back because the Big House is a museum where Northerners come and park their Thunderbirds in the Long Drive and talk so very loud about the unfortunates who worked at the Big House but that was long before our mamas’ time and so our mamas didn’t know about those sad times at all. Our mamas just went to balls and met handsome men and went for long drives in the country with them because they were in Love.
So here’s the thing. The reason that Mama, weak and so often in her cups as she was, said she loved you and loved you even though she never met you because we were all family. Even him. Even him, she said.
Your father, is he still alive? Does he still bowl with Mitch? Mama talked so much about Mitch that I used to think that he was my father but when I asked her she said no and double no. She wouldn’t tell me who was my father but she said if I met you I might figure it out.
Now that Mama’s gone do you think I could visit you in New Orleans? Do you still live in the same flat where Mama visited you all those years ago, when she was done teaching or as she always said, teaching was done with her? It seemed to me that she did nothing but talk about you and her beautiful sister S and how that last visit with your mama changed her life.
I can bring you some things you might want. Some photos of our mamas together, arm in arm, and some of the two of them with your father. He had those muscles from working in the factory, that’s why I bet. And that smile that was almost like a sneer from him being in the service. The photos show the good times that the three of them had walking through the Quarter, playing poker, eating crawfish, and laughing at I don’t know what but look at all those empty glasses in front of them on the card table.
Yours truly,
Sally S. DuBois