My mother used to laugh a lot more. She had a strong laugh. Not the kind that sort of just hovers at the back of your throat without ever truly coming out in the open. No, she laughed like she meant it. She had a way of tossing her head back, her nostrils would flare out a little, and she'd clap her hands once or twice. Sometimes, she cried because she was laughing so hard. It was a beautiful sight.
It was my father who could really make her laugh the kind of laughs that eventually brought tears. He'd sit down at the piano with me, bopping up and down on his knee, and we'd sing along to some silly made-up tune. She'd start twirling around us in that pale blue dress with the white flowers; her long, brown hair swaying behind her. At the end of the song, she'd come around behind us and put a bare arm on each of our shoulders, bending forward to kiss us. I remember the smell of her hair, like honey, falling over my face in soft, feathery curls. She cut it when he died.
I remember crying when I saw her come out of the bathroom, after being in there for what seemed to me like forever. Her face was flushed, and beads of sweat formed around her temples and above her upper lip. She had chopped off more than a foot of her beautiful hair. It barely reached her ears anymore and stuck out at all these funny angles. I thought it was the worst thing she could have done to me. I peeked between her legs and saw into the bathroom where she had spread out newspapers on the tiled floor. Her thick brown locks covering the Sunday post. I kicked her as hard as I could in the shin. I was only ten. And I called her ugly to her face.
