When I graduated high school, I wore my late mother’s favorite dress and heels because I wanted a piece of her with me that day. I never imagined the person who hated that idea most would be waiting for the perfect moment to humiliate me in front of everyone.
My mother died when I was 11 years old.
It was ovarian cancer, swift and merciless, the kind that gives you about four months between diagnosis and goodbye.
My dad held it together for my sake, mostly, and I held it together for his, and we stumbled through the years after that in the quiet, functional way of two people who have agreed without discussing it to keep moving forward.
Janet was the kind of woman who kept her home immaculate and her opinions just below the surface, where they couldn’t quite be argued with.
She wore pearl earrings to casual dinners, organized the refrigerator by category, and had a particular way of looking at things she disapproved of.
She was loud and completely unbothered by what anyone thought of her. My dad used to say she looked like she had stepped out of a rock band and accidentally married an accountant.
He said it like it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, which it probably was. She wore bright colors and high heels, and she danced in the kitchen, and she called me her little hurricane because she said I had inherited her talent for taking up exactly the right amount of space.
It had her favorite dress — deep burgundy, fitted, with a small ruffle at the hem that she always said was excessive and wore anyway — and the heels she had worn to every important occasion of her adult life.
Black, four inches, scuffed at the toe in a way she had never gotten around to fixing.
I put the box in the attic and told myself I was saving it for when I was old enough to do it justice.
The dress fit like it had been made for me, which shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did — my mother and I had always been the same build.
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