Reaching her gnarled hand toward me, my mother said in a gasping voice that there was something she had to tell me before she died.

“Child, I don’t want to tell you this but I have no choice because it will greatly affect you when I am no longer living.”

“Mom, be at peace, I don’t need to know anything if it hurts you so much,” I answered.

Her frail voice quaking, my mother insisted that she must tell her story.

’I was a young woman in my twenties who was unable to have children of her own. This caused me tremendous grief every day. I decided to go to the art museum so I would get my mind off my problems. There I saw the most beautiful painting of a young child with flowing golden hair sitting in a chair looking straight at me with her lovely green eyes. She was so real with such longing on her face that I reached my hands out to her and pulled her out of the artwork and took her home with me. The little angel was you, my love. I knew there would be questions about your sudden appearance so I packed up and moved to another city where I wouldn’t be known. Eventually, I found a wonderful man and we raised you as our own. The man you thought was your father never learned of my duplicity and went to his grave loving us both.”

I was horrified at what I was hearing and thought maybe my mother was delusional. “No matter what, Mom, I love you,” I assured her.

Just then, I heard a knock at the door. “Answer it, my child,” my mother requested.

Standing at the door were two official looking people. “We’re here to take you back to the museum,” they informed me. “We found out what your mother had done a long time ago but you were just on loan until she passed. She only has a few hours left. Now we must return you to the museum.”

There are bright lights where I am but I am trapped in my canvas. People stop to stare at me, saying they have never seen such a life-like painting.

“I’m alive, let me out!” I beg. But no one hears me.

I was born into war. My earliest memories were playing hide-n-seek and the twin towers falling. In school we were punished for putting a cloth on our heads because playing gypsy looked a lot like playing terrorist. Trips to grandmothers house were over the river and through airport security. And I never grew into that daily fear that daddy might not come home. 

I grew into a broken woman. Broken family, broken dreams, broken spirit. Now I sit beside my broken mother in her sanctuary as we watch hell unleash on the news channel. "I never told you this," she says without looking at me. "Your daddy found you in that desert. You're one of them. Hell, you'd be queen of them by now. You were their crown jewel."

To say I am shocked is an understatement. "What do you mean? I was adopted?"

"Not adopted. Stolen. And they want you back."

One day, not so long ago, my aging mother had a look that only a daughter knows. She was sitting in her favorite chair, her shawl around her shoulders, staring ahead.

“Whatʼs wrong Mother?" I asked with concern.

"Come here my darling", as her shaking fingers urged me to sit beside her.

"I need to tell you a story from the past, itʼs been in my mind for so long, I now feel it has to be told before my past disappears only in foggy memories. It could change your life."

"Alright mother, Iʼm here, tell me your story". I hesitantly said.

"In 1915 your Nana was a maid in a..house of ill repute". She hesitated with the word.

"Thatʼs not bad mother, lots of women took jobs they hated in order to survive." I said

"No my dear, thereʼs more to the story. Your Nana was very outgoing, and the Madam of the house loved her energy as well. She could work hours without complaints. One day Madam Davila asked Nan..if she would be willing to "entertain gentlemen"…mothers hands were over her eyes.

"Are you saying Nan was a…whore?!" I asked loudly

"Yes! She was a WHORE! She also got pregnant entertaining disgusting gentlemen and dirty sailors!" mother started to weep.

I took her in my arms and kept holding her. What did this mean for me?

"What happened after she got pregnant?" I asked.

"Madam Davila couldnʼt have a working girl pregnant. Abortions were too dangerous in those days. When my mother gave birth to a baby boy, the Madam gave him to a group of Nuns. No one knows what became of him." Mother was in tears, not just for her lost brother but for her own mother.

"Did she leave after he was born?" I asked.

"No, she needed the money. 2 years later she met your Grandad at a pub. Till the day he died, he never knew her past. Mother made Kathleen swear she would never tell a living soul. She would have been ostracized."

Then mother did a strange thing, she started to giggle.

"Whatʼs so funny?" I asked

"The Madam called her..'Dora the Explorer!” We both laughed out loud! It seemed like my mothers burden had been lifted.

My life changed and I now had to search for my family.

O,

Who can attest the depths of her sins?

'Say not that the skivvy maid triumphed over you with her charms!'

'For woe, my lord!

What length your royal father wouldnʼt sacrifice to subdue this Trojan fetus?'

Borne in the womb of she whoʼs base born

They're slaves, and we—masters!

In Spartanʼs court, her insolence

at last, shall be paid in full!

Mark these words sung in ancient ages

With wise men sweet secrets perished

Over gullied landscapes words died

And ashes of their breath vanished

Skeletons of co-conspirators lingered

Beneath cold depths where Davis Jones

Battles three headed sea serpent!

The lost lordʼs fetus was born a boy

Beyond the realms of night

he travelled, frolicked, seeking wisdomʼs old

Not afraid to venture out

To reach precincts of fine palaces

Where his mother still scrubbed,

floors, walls and backs of princesses too

So soft, he tiptoed, snatching clarets

from baby dives; in hour of trouble

he clung to the selvedges of his motherʼs petticoats

And through the rain, her skirts his refuge

Yet always praying for papa to see him now

The boy thus grew; half bold, half cold

Sweet brown eyes with unknown hair

Ringlets, wafting through the air

Chestnut in hue!

Lithe, with unbecoming curiosity

Black folks cried—Lo!

That dimpled pearly-eyed fella—

who fathered that?

At twenty-five, a sullen man

Despite the torrid heat,

Toiling, toiling, toiling…

Clad in tattered gabs,

Always, leathered-peak caps

No cravats

Even lacking the refinements of polite society

Yet, all maidens and hoes

Beguiled by his neoclassic appeal

Beauty to behold!

His strife born gorgeous!

Before him, all of us, lined up

Till an invisible line was formed

We gave him our virgin lots

Praying the seed be planted

To blossom and hold

a replica of his beauteous God!

I blush to think,

One day, he arrived with a sack of limes!

Beneath a pair of red orbs of light

We kissed!

Mother knew his name, the face not yet

Three weeks on, dowry paid

On the day we wed

Mother came, trembling

Death at the tip of her tongue

Crying—wedding be stopped

That day, King Somerset

made a public appeal

Claiming my betrothed his son!

His cries rent in the air, so were my mother's

She said, no!

They cried no—to both of us

For —he was my brother!

I ceased to exist!

My mom is very beautiful and she loves me more than I love her. She is my fairy and makes the best decision for me. But one day I came to know that she chooses the best decision but not the one I would wish to. Eg: gifting gold to a dieing man. I understood this when she said that she had rejected my favorite course that I got in merit for a better course that we have applied, that too after finishing my first year of college. From then I noticed that she always had been doing the same and can't be stopped easily.