My Beautiful Aunty Greta
the mothers of memory by brown 2010 My Beautiful Aunt Greta My mother is a bastion of secrets. Her fortitude in the face of my questioning is magnificent. She will not tell that my brother has a father other than mine. She will not tell about her pre-marital pregnancies. And if it were not for pictures, she would not have even told the true color of her hair. But she will, and enjoys, telling of other’s trespasses. One such trespass she particularly relishes, one she constantly refers to behind her mother’s back is that of my great grandmother Frances Lopez. “Shhh.” She would say, alive with a glee that should only be reserved for the adolescent, “Don’t let Mommy Clarisse (her mother) hear us. She does get vex when she feel we bad talking Ma.” It is February and I have traveled to Trinidad. It is the first time I am here with my husband and child—in other words it is the first time I have traveled to Trinidad as a woman. The trip is a lesson in how difficult it is to sle...