Memories must be tended like a fire, elstwise they’ll die.
Mama give her last breath just as I took my first.
Although Pa and my big brothers never said they blamed me for her death, I always felt it achin inside me, like the rotten tooth our blacksmith pliered out of my mouth. Why else would a pa and his boys let a little girl come into the world and live for twelve years without givin her a name?
My brothers and Pa always looked through me, as though I weren’t but a thin sheet of mica between them and the world. Sometimes I had to step outside to see my shadow afore I knowed for sure that there were a real person inside me.
Even though I never knowed Mama, I pieced her together in my head the way I made my patchwork rag doll, Hannah. After my grandpa passed and his stories about my mama quieted, I grabbed on to the threads of Pa’s and my brothers’ mentions of her, which weren’t often, and needled them into my own life.