Page 121 of Night Songs

The tape hadn’t been entirely coherent—some of it I was still parsing in my mind—but it seemed possible. She had made herself disappear, or at least she had planned to, all those years ago. She could still be out there somewhere.

I pulled out my laptop and searched for records of an Ernestine Arwood over the last sixty years. I found what had eluded me these past few months—her birth certificate, social security enrollment, some public assistance her aunt and uncle had taken for caring for her.

I went deeper, using databases I sometimes used for work. These hopped over firewalls to secure state records; most of the state systems were ancient at best, and it wasn’t too hard to do if you knew the right code.

I got a hit on a ’92 hospital stay in Arkansas, but the date of birth didn’t match Belle’s—born in ’41, died in ’93. The woman’s race was identified as Black.

After combing through a few more dead ends, I finally found something.

A record of an Ernestine Arwood admitted to a state-run mental health facility in New Orleans in 2000.

Hess gasped behind my shoulder. “Could that be her?”

I flicked through the documents and found a date of birth: 10.29.49. “It’s not the right date, but it’s the right year. She might have lied to them.” I searched for an accompanying photo, but the record was brief. Date of admittance and date of discharge. She’d stayed three months.

“We should call,” I said, picking up my phone.

“They’re not going to give you any information without verifying your identity in person. I had some issues when Martha was sick because I’m not a blood relative.”

“Old Crone” fromThe Cursed Womanstarted to play in my head:

If I could be an old wom’n

I’d shimmy down to N’awlins

Make friends with the spirits

Sing to all who’d hear it

’Til my hair turn’d gray and broke

Like the Spanish moss hangin’ from the oak

We drove all night on kudzu-lined highways and arrived in the city with the morning light. New Orleans felt lower to the land, like I was closer to the earth’s pulsing, sentient core. People drank in the streets and bared themselves with abandon, as if this was a liminal place where the usual rules didn’t apply. I felt safer here, like I could exist without constantly looking over my shoulder.

At the treatment facility, after proving my relationship to the patient, a case manager took us to his office where the walls were lined with file boxes and his computer looked older than me.

He handed us a thin file with the tab marked “Arwood, E” in fat blackmarker. “She spent a few months with us about ten years ago, before my time. I’m afraid there’s no one on staff who was working then. We get a lot of turnover.” He pulled out a VHS tape. “Her stay coincided with a grant geared toward making video records of patients.” He tapped the tape. “This is her video file. I can’t let you take it off the premises, but you can watch it here if you’d like.”

Hess and I agreed, and he showed us how to work the ancient television in the corner of his office. He said he’d give us some privacy and walked out. I pulled the tape from its sleeve and pushed it gently into the player.

The screen suddenly illuminated in gray and yellow tones, and a blurred woman appeared with her back to the camera. A low sound came from the speakers, and I turned up the volume, so that the voice suddenly filled the room with its smoked honey.

The woman was singing.

Hess gasped and pressed her fingers to her lips. I leaned toward the screen.

A voice from behind the camera asked the woman to turn around, but she ignored them and kept on singing. It was hard to make out the exact words of the song, but the feeling of it was like hunching inside yourself and searching for comfort, music meant to soothe your own soul.

The camera moved toward the woman and then circled around so that she was finally facing the lens.

I had never imagined my mother as an old woman. She was perpetually frozen in her early thirties, her skin smooth and her eyes bright.

This woman’s face was hollowed and rough, like the people I saw living on the street in Phoenix. But her eyes still blazed, the fire behind them untamed. She was not just older; she was more feral, a person left to her own devices and no longer afraid of what she might lose.

Hess stared at the screen, her eyes shining. She reached out, as if they might touch.

I didn’t know how to react, except that I felt like a kaleidoscope. Witheach twist of reality, I was pulled apart and then reassembled into a new configuration.