The little girl was scared.

Standing alone in the middle of a gaping hallway that was ready to swallow her whole, she heard a misplaced murmuring. Her father was long gone and her brother had not been home for a couple of days. Who could be whispering behind her mother’s bedroom door? She tried the handle. Locked, as usual. She pressed her ear to the smooth wood and knocked lightly. Within, she heard frantic whispers and a scuffling sound, the scrape of metal on metal.

“Mommy?” she called, and there was a moment of silence before the lock clicked from the inside and the answer came.

“Come in, dear.”

The little girl took a few steps inside, picking her way forward cautiously, careful not to step on anything. The floor was littered with dirty clothes, empty bottles of alcohol, cigarette butts and used coffee mugs. She wrinkled her nose against the smell. Her mother was seated on the bed, long evening gown flowing around her while the midday sun sent blurred rays through the greasy window and shone through the cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Who’s in here?” the girl inquired, looking around. The sliding glass doors of the closet were pulled together in the middle, and her mother’s gowns and fur coats spilled out on either side.

“No one, precious,” her mother’s nonchalant tone had a hint of the drunken drawl that had been a constant since her husband left.

The little girl took a few timid steps toward the closet. She could hear a man’s ragged breathing from within her mother’s sea of fur and chiffon, and she felt knots beginning to form in her stomach. Icy adrenaline began to pump through her, as she turned to look at her mother. “Someone’s in there!”

“No, there isn’t,” the woman replied sternly, filing her long nails and taking no notice.

The little girl took a deep breath, shut her eyes tight, and put her tiny arm into the closet. The fur of her mother’s coats greeted her seeking fingers, soft and familiar. Then, a new, disgusting texture, the pliable surface of a strange man’s stomach.

“There’s someone in there!” she said again, jumping back from the closet, heart hammering. “I felt him!”

The woman laughed. “Don’t be silly darling, that’s just your imagination. There’s no one there. Now run along and play with your dolls.” By the glow of the gaslight, her tear-stained cheeks turned away from her mother and back into the gaping maw of the empty hall, where she spent her childhood alone.

Over thirty years later, Lydia still remembers vividly the horror of that afternoon. No longer a little girl, she now has decades of memories: her mother lying to her face over and over, sinking deeper and deeper into her feather four-poster. Cigarettes, rum balls and martinis. Locked doors. Lydia had locked her own secret doors, against all who would abandon her, myself included, her own daughter, and her mother, the woman who gave her life.

My mother once told me that the women in our family were destined to break each other’s hearts, but the only negative memory I ever had of my grandmother was told to me through my mother. When I was a toddler, Lydia had come home to find my grandmother with alcohol on her breath. All the old rage washed over her. She felt small again, the seven-year-old with blond pigtails making her own dinner and cleaning the house, because no one else would. She then felt small and towering at the same time, a grizzly bear momma defending her young. She threw her mother out of the house and I was not allowed to spend extended periods of time with my grandmother until I was nine.

My limited memories of her then consisted of the great expanse of the king-sized bed, of cuddling story-times and ancient fairy tale books, coming apart at the seams. She tickled my arm with her witch-like fingernails, and showed me her tarot cards. I remember her painting her nails endlessly, ivory pink shining in the same light she used to roll her cigarettes. She always smoked in the house, no matter how many times Lydia asked her not to.

My more recent memories of her included her fumbling for the keys, out of breath from her long journey up the sidewalk from my mother’s car to the apartment building, fighting with those fingernails, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on her wrinkled forehead as she furrowed in concentration. I stood idly by, letting her struggle.

When my grandmother was eventually diagnosed with cancer, it didn’t seem real to me. I was in my first year of university, trying to keep up with all the classes I was taking while still managing to have a social life. I was surprised with how much time my mother was spending at the hospital. I thought she hated her mother, I marveled. Why should she leap into the role of caregiver so easily? I know now that it wasn’t easy. Family is sometimes ambiguous, but as they say, blood is thicker than water, and Lydia went to the hospital every day.

My mother bought the whole series of Bewitched on DVD, and in those last days, it was playing in my grandmother’s room all the time. Meanwhile, there was a great hustle and bustle, with my mother and my great-aunt going back and forth to the apartment, making sure everything of value was salvaged before the rest of her belongings were donated. Most things they unearthed in the bowels of forgotten closets were too saturated with cigarette smoke to be of use to anyone.

Yet, there was one piece of jewelry that the old woman had had the presence of mind to remember. She used to brag to me that she was once courted by a Spanish prince and her jewelry reflected that status. But this particular piece was very important and someone had to find and give it to her one and only granddaughter. Even though her body was deteriorating rapidly, she harped on it until her sister, my great-aunt, found it in a box at the bottom of a closet. It was a necklace with a deep purple amethyst pendant and a knotted diamond above it, the missing piece to a set of square earrings and a bracelet she had gifted me for a graduation.

Noticeably, amethyst was my mother’s birthstone. Though she tried to hide it and claimed it “wasn’t her style of jewelry anyway”, Lydia quietly resented not receiving the necklace instead. Her own heart broke for a lost childhood as she witnessed her estranged mother present a shiny face to her daughter instead.

Still, my mother was there every day amid the blare of Samantha Stephens and Endora’s voices. As every day my grandmother worsened quickly, my mother decorated the walls with more and more pictures of the family. Eventually, she could not even make the long trip from her room to the smoking area, and my mother then massaged her bulging, fluid-filled legs as I brought her a pair of my fuzziest socks to keep her swollen, bruised feet warm.

My grandmother had been beautiful once: short black hair, wide mouth and long regal nose. Once upon a time she had looked like Elizabeth Taylor. Now, shriveled and dying, she forgot us as we hugged her in her hospital room.

After she passed, my mother and I planted two trees she would have loved: a crab apple tree and a cherry tree. In the holes we dug for them, we scattered my grandmother’s ashes and she grew within the trees. Until my mother sold that house, I felt like she was there with us. Sometimes I wonder if my mother was happy to leave the trees behind, too relieved to grieve too heavily or for too long. I wonder which mother she remembers: the one who drank brandy and passed out without making dinner, or the soft, loving grandmother. Lydia once told me, “She was my mother. I knew her face better than anyone.” I think of my own children and the hours we spent staring into each other’s eyes when they were babies, and I know she finally forgave her mother.

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