My mother didn't know about my OCD while she was alive. If she did, she didn't touch on the problem.

My mother's brain was shaken from a battle she had participated in her youth. Shell-shocked. Her limbs, excepted for her left arm, were paralyzed. Sometimes, some days, if lucky, mother would be sober enough to tell a few stories or ask about my schoolwork. Most of the time, she sat in a wheelchair chair by the window, a glaze cover her pale eyes.

When I was young, Gran came over to look after me, my sister and my mother. Gran was every bit the opposite of my mother. An old hag with a crinkling face, always keened on a moment where she could remark at the fact that we—Jesse and I—were unwanted, accidental children. She hated my father, hated my mother for loving a black man, hated that her grandchild was a brown, dirty little rat, hated the war that stole her precious daughter from her. She hated, she hated, she hated. Her hatred toward me intensified after Jesse ran away, and became a constant in my head after mother’s death. Gran was a wrathful ball up until she collapsed in a heart attack. Her forehead, even to death, was etched with deep, angry lines.

The thing was: Gran might have died physically, but her voice—nagging and screeching with criticism—was still alive in my head.