I remember a woman with red hair.
A slender woman with short red hair.
I don’t remember any words she spoke or any details of her face, though I’m certain I would recognize her today if I saw her because this memory has been burned into my life. This memory of her; petite and confident, her hair cut short before it was popular. It was probably 1991. I remember her walking my mother outside, to the under cover car, handcuffing my mother, and slipping her in. I watch from my bedroom window. No noise. The memory plays like a silent movie in my head. Was there really no noise? Were there no other people? I was five, so there must have been someone else there, but I don’t remember them. I don’t remember any words spoken, or any tears cried- not even my own. I don’t remember how I got to my room; the space from seeing the red head in the kitchen of our double wide to seeing her through the window is lost. My mind wants to impose my mothers voice into the memory, like a story you’ve been told so many times you begin to feel like you remember it. I can hear the way my mother’s voice would have sounded, the thick sadness of it, a grief you can’t wrap your arms around it’s so big. That’s how my mother’s sadness always is. Encompassing and heart breaking. She would have said “please don’t handcuff me in front of my daughter”. She’s told me that’s what she said, but I don’t actually hear it. No, this memory of mine is silent. And likely not more than ten seconds long. But like a dream you have on repeat, you know it so well it feels like it never ends.