WHAT I DON'T KNOW ABOUT MY MOTHER

by Graham Guest

(1)        I don’t know her real, legal name: her name at birth. Once, I thought it was Marion
            Bush, but that turned out to be wrong. Oddly, my dad doesn’t know, either.

(2)        I don’t know who her parents, grandparents, etc., were.

(3)        I don’t know if she had any siblings.

(4)        I don’t know exactly where she lived in New Jersey as a child; I do not know what the
            house looked like in which she grew up.

(5)        I don’t know why there are no other pictures (aside from the one) of her, her
            hometown, her family.

(6)        I don’t know where she went to high school, and I never got a straight answer on
            whether she went to college. There was something about her having moved to where
            Pratt Institute is, but never a clarification as to whether she actually went there. One
            thing is clear, though: she never graduated from Pratt, or any other college.

(7)        I don’t know why she left New Jersey and her family. I don’t know how she got to
            Portland.

(8)        I don’t understand her relationships and how they came to be, between her and Red
            and Stan. I don’t know why she calls Stan “brother” when it’s just not true.

(9)        I don’t know how she met her first husband, James, and where they lived, and what
            happened to them.

(10)      I don’t know why she and her son, Randy, hate each other so much, and why he ran
            away. She never spoke, at all, of Randy to me—or anyone, I suppose.

(11)      I don’t know why, or how, she came to Houston.

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