My mother is an incredible woman— I think Mucha would have loved to paint her, the hook on her nose, the tilt of her smile, and the black storm clouds of her hair.

I remember fixating on her nails when I was very young. They were naturally long but unaturally painted, and she thought it was the perfect balance. She took care of her looks; she used to joke that she even cleaned the house in stilletos, and she wasn't entirely kidding. I remember that she lamented over her small eyelashes, poking at them with mascara sticks to no avail. To make up for it, she would wear bright red lipstick. It used to annoy me, because I would have to wash the stains off of all the tea cups and even off of her pillow case.

She enjoyed leaving a mark.

The other Bengali ladies in our town would whisper whenever they saw her, criticize her flirtatious look, her closets full of bright saris, and her perfume (5th Avenue by Elizabeth Arden). "That," they'd say, "is a woman who will never wear white."

They didn't know the other side of her, of course. She was always a one-man sort of woman, fiercely devoted to my father since the age of seventeen. She had her share of admirers— American men thought she was exotic and Bengali men found her refreshingly modern, but she kept them all at arm's length, maintaining that no one could match my father in excellence.

There was one night, specifically, that I will never forget. I was around fifteen years old at the time, deep in sleep. My mother shook me awake, pulling my blankets off so that she could look me in the eye.

"Anni," she said, her face white and her hair in messy curls around her chin. "I saw a terrible dream. I saw that I was a different woman, living a different life. My parents, my school, and my friends had all changed... but I still met and married your father."

There was a short pause as she waited for my reaction. When I said nothing, she continued by saying, "It was awful."

I laughed at her wording. "What's awful about that?" I asked. "Sounds kinda romantic, don't you think?"

My mother was silent for a moment. I remember memorizing her face then, her high cheekbones and her tiny, pointed lashes, delicately outlining her slanted eyes. When all the makeup faded away, her ancestry was easier to recognize; the Bengali ladies called her features pahari, or "of the mountains".

A sad sort of smile flitted across her face. She carefully tucked me back into bed, deep in thought. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. "What sort of person am I," she began, "that I can't even dream of a life without your father?"

"I don't understand," I said, my voice muffled by the blanket. It had never occurred to me before that she wanted anything else outside of the life she led.

She brushed her hand through my short cropped hair and leaned down to place a feather light kiss on my cheek. "It's better that you don't," she whispered. "I'm a woman who has everything I could ever want, but it frightens me. What if he leaves me, Anni? Where would I be, then? Only half a woman."

I cried myself to sleep that night, and I don't know why. I think maybe I envied her, but I can't be sure.