I don't remember....

I don't remember why mama left. As soon as it was clear to my dad that she was gone, he cut off my hair and made me look like a boy. Gone were my long, cascading curls, replaced by short, ugly boy hair, hair that was easier, he said, to care for. He knew nothing of fancy shampoo or conditioner or detangling spray, he said, so short hair it was.

I hated my mama for leaving. And I hated my daddy for trying harder to let me be who and what I needed to be.

I remember crying when I realized she wasn't coming back. I was stuck with just dad, and Bungee, my crazy grandmother, to raise me. My mama was beautiful, and young, and always smelled good. I think she wore Chanel No. 5, but that is another thing I don't remember.

I can only imagine her now, she is nothing but a blurry snapshot in my mind's eye. Her texture is lost to me; the fine lines that must have crisscrossed her face near her eyes, the swinging, soft hair that brushed against my face when she kissed me goodnight and goodbye, the perfectly almond-shaped nails on her delicate, pampered hands were all just memory, or maybe imagination, now. I can't even be sure anymore. I just accept that everything I think I remember about her was the truth, was the reality of her.

Not being able to remember is too hard, too embarassing, too humiliating to admit. I could never ask my father what my mother smelled like. He would think I was crazy, and then he would fall silent because he, too, had forgotten.

I wonder, sometimes, if she remembers us; if she remembers that she left behind a man and a child who once loved her desperately and now could only picture her outline, her shape, but none of her finer points. I wonder if she regrets leaving me. I wonder if she ever wonders what became of me. I wonder if she herself remembers why she left.