Devonne Brown

When I open my mouth, I’m shocked that I hear my mother. I hear her voice, her words, but more than that, her attitude. I hear her cadence in my speech and the philosophy I bucked as a child and an adult. She drove me crazy with her notions of what I should and should not be doing with my life. Her disappointments with me, her admonitions all have come to fruition one way or another. The wisdom she shared with me that I ignored, I hear in my head now. She was always right. Dammit. 

Now she’s possessing my body. I have her eyes. I look in the mirror and she looks back at me, even though her eyes were silver and mine are green, they’re still her eyes. The expression is the same. 

My hands are hers, wrinkled and bony, with blue veins sticking out. They move with my touch, just as hers did. They shake too, mine from my meds, hers from polio, but the end result is the same, especially my left hand. My nails will only grow so long before they split and break, yet are white at the tips, just like hers were. 

My feet, once smooth and clear, are ashy and cracked no matter what kind of lotion I  use, just like hers. I’m telling you, I’m a victim of the Mother’s Curse. She had a kid just like her. 

I even have her hernia ballooning in my abdomen. I can feel it moving and growing. It even appeared on an Xray, size large. It requires the surgery that eventually killed her, and that worries me.

At least I have the good sense to go to a shrink for medication, which she never did. She preferred to aggravate the bejesus out of everyone. To foist her opinions and wishes upon her world and family until they buckled under her will. Dad said she got bossy after she graduated from nursing school. Independence will do that to a woman. 

After she died, she made a bonafide ghostly visit to me one Christmas morning. The boys had been told they couldn’t come downstairs until at least six a.m.. I heard them whisper loudly that “She said to make the coffee first.” and I heard my mother laugh long and loud.