An excerpt from Reversible Skirt

From a day I thought I was going to see my mother again after a long separation:

Gramma and I are quiet, still holding hands as the cab turns down this beautiful street with big trees on each side, leaning toward each other like they’re trying to kiss over the cars below. It’s so much quieter than the bigger street we turned off.

“Pretty,” I say to Gramma.

“Yes, it is, Laura. It’s Richmond Street,” Gramma replies. The cab stops in front of a little gray house. “This is it,” Gramma says.

The driver opens the door for us, and then helps Gramma up the front stairs, holding her by the elbow. Then he pats me on the head saying, “Good luck, little one.”

I’m certain I’ve never been to this house before, but then Daddy opens the door and says, “Welcome home, Laura.”

Gramma and I step inside to a space too small to be a room, but not long enough to be a hall. There’s a table about as tall as I am with a vase full of pink carnations in front of me. To the right is a doorway to the living room. Daddy steps through and walks across the room, and stands by a smiling woman leaning against the door to another room.

By the window on a couch are Kathy, Mary Ruth and a hunched up man with thin, dark hair and yellowy gray skin. To his right is a big curvy piece of furniture with a bench in front of it. And under that is the most beautiful dog, with long white, black and brown hair.

Daddy calls me over. I slip away from Gramma and walk across the room. Daddy is holding the woman’s arm, and he says, “Laura, this is your mother. Say hello.”

She smiles looking me right in the face and leans down a little and says, “Hello, Laura.” I’m feeling really strange because there is my own mother standing in front of me and I don’t recognize her.

Lots of things flood into my mind all at once. One thing I know for sure is that Daddy is always right, and if he says this is my mother, she must be.

And I think about things changing, like if I put biscuit dough into my mouth and chew, it disappears. It doesn’t exist anymore. If Gramma takes some dough and puts it into the oven, when she takes it out, it’s fluffy and crusty and golden brown. If I put some dough in a bowl of water, it gets bigger and starts to sort of melt, and the water starts to look like milk. Other things change too, like my trike was shiny, and now it’s dull and full of rust. And Kathy, Mary Ruth and I are always changing. Mary Ruth’s hair is darker now than Kathy’s, and just a bit ago their hair was the same color. We’re always growing too.

I think Mommy must have changed somehow like this.

Daddy clears his throat in irritation and says, “Say hello to your mother, Laura."

“Hello,” I say staring into a face that has sharp, little brown eyes. It’s not like I can say for sure how she’s different. I don’t exactly remember Mommy’s eyes because I can’t remember looking into them, but I don’t think they used to be brown.

“Go sit on the couch now next to Grampa Adams,” Daddy says.

I look at the man. He looks so sour, like a pickle. I think of Grampa O’Neill. I haven’t thought of him in a while. I look over at Mommy and wonder if maybe this Grampa Adams is really a changed Grampa O’Neill, but Daddy didn’t say he’s Grampa O’Neill, so I think he must be someone different. I sure hope he is.

I sit down next to Grampa Adams. I’m not the least bit inclined to lean into him like I remember leaning into Grampa O’Neill. Grampa Adams is looking at me like I’m a mosquito about to land on him. Then the dog under the curvy thing growls.

“That’s Rusty, Laura, Grampa Adams’ dog,” Daddy says.

Grampa Adams says, “You aah ehh better stay away from ehh him. He no like aah childaren.”

The way Grampa Adams talks, he says the same words, but they’re all different sounding. I have to listen hard because he stops and starts at different times than I’m used to.

I don’t ask about how Mommy got to be so different, where she was when she was gone or where Grampa Adams came from. This is all just more stuff to figure out, and I’m pretty good at that.

I’m thinking all of this over, thinking maybe Gramma will come in and sit next to me, and I’ll be more comfortable, but then Daddy says to Gramma, “Well, it’s time to get you on home now, Mom.”

Gramma hasn’t even stepped into the room. I didn’t think that meeting Mommy would mean saying goodbye to Gramma, especially this way, without Gramma even coming into the room and having a piece of candy or something. Gramma didn’t tell me she was going to leave me here.

How can she have ridden so happily all that way with me and known she was just going to slip away?

I slide off the couch and take a few steps toward Gramma, thinking if Gramma’s going I’m going too, but Daddy says, “Get back on the couch, Laura. You’re staying here with your family where you belong.”