​Melissa Glenn
writer

Four Plaits Publishing, LLC  

I learned very early that my mother was not dependable. She didn’t come to my school concerts or meet with my teachers about the subjects that I mastered or those that I struggled with. She didn’t remember things that were important to me or important for me, like a regular bed time or brushing my teeth. She didn't show me how to comb my hair by sections, slowly from root to end. When she did show up, we were late for almost everything all the time. Except for her job. As I grew older and less forgiving of her lack of presence, I decided that in addition to being undependable, my mother was irreparably broken and forever struggling to be whole. 

How I wish I could feel about her again the way I did as a child. She reminded me when she dressed up to go out of a Black Elizabeth Taylor. Her wigs were dark and silky, just like Hollywood hair, and she wore oversized gems around her neck and wrist that to me looked real. Her already thick brows and lashes were more pronounced by the stroke of her charcoal-colored penciling. She kept it and the other powdered and colored things for her face in the red vanity across from her bed. Arlene was heavier than Taylor. Bustier and curvier. She looked effortlessly beautiful in her fancy clothes, and I was always in them when she wasn't because to me, she was the star.
 
There is one picture in particular that I love and still look at from time to time. I don't know where she was going or if I was even around when she got dressed, but Arlene sparkled in a gold, wool gown that flared into pleats from the waist down. She wore a matching satin scarf around her long wig, and I could barely believe that she was my mother. She seemed to be someone unreachable. She's smiling broadly in the Kodak taken photo, and the glare from the flash created a kind of starlight image above her.  

When she didn't dress up and go out, she worked. That was it. She went out and she worked. In the crevices between, I got to be part of her life. Not to say that she was cold or mean to me. She actually spoiled me a lot, giving me whatever she could and a bit more besides. I wanted more her. Still, we laughed and played games on the bus ride to her work. Lawyers and judges in the city wanted cheap labor and despite government assistance, Arlene needed the extra money. So she worked two and three jobs at a time, no benefits, no retirement fund, no taxes. She cleaned houses in neighborhoods we would otherwise never be welcomed in. But I didn’t think of her as a maid back then. I helped her fluff pillows and change the cat’s food, and I watched her make the White kids' beds while my own was always a mess. Our house was always a mess. My mother never complained and she never missed work.

This latest job paid well enough that she didn't need to work under the table anymore. It offered her benefits and bonuses. Arlene had colleagues instead of a boss. It was finally a position that she felt elevated her from worker to professional - Administrative Assistant to VP.
 
At 45, I'm an outward clone of my mother but without that hint of 50s glamour. Without her work ethic too. And I rarely stop thinking. Forever trying to make sense of things. We still laugh together sometimes, but anything beyond a surface relationship would not survive. Too much time. Too many years of hurt. But we're there for one another in some obligated sense. 

I'm a bit heavier than I was last year, though I hardly enjoy food. It gathers around my naturally full face, rests beneath my ballooning breasts, and sits, immovable, on my thick thighs. A voluptuous me, physically resembling a young Arlene. She worked this job and that for a total of 50 years, trying to piece together an income to live on. Yesterday she was let go from the administrative job. I left work early to come tell her it was going to be alright. To see if it would be alright.

© Copyright 2025 Melissa Glenn