It is a thing quite misunderstood in families, and I want to clear it up: the knowing of secrets, the keeping of them and being entrusted with them, is the very thing that breeds madness. Most people think it's just knowing that they exist without having a comprehensive knowledge of their details that drives you insane. They'll tell you it's being aware of the gaps in your family history that is the trauma, but it isn't, because filling in the gaps is putting together a puzzle- it's a sort of sport. Knowing the details is nothing like a game. It is the safeguarding, this arduous task that you don't get to choose, that has driven the women in our family mad- quite mad, in fact. Mad to the point of wishing we'd one day wake up as someone clean and shiny and brand new, with no knowledge of the things that fill the gaps. Wishing we'd forget our names altogether.
Maybe what in fact happens is we lose our minds before we even know what it is we are to keep hidden. I think of this as I watch Oumama's laboured breathing. She was not well enough to leave the hospital, of course, but she does seem stronger, even if she now sleeps afternoons off in her own bed. I tuck a loose grey curl back under her headscarf. Hair: a secret. Perhaps the darkest one. Often the root of the darkest ones, at least. Often the beginning of how family stories start and families come apart, in this country.
