I’m not sure at what young age I became frozen with the knowledge, certainty, and horror that my mother would die one day. Spared the passing of my father, the Captain, by my status as a fetus, I was cowering in the womb when my mother found my father dead in his chair.

Polly told me the story when I was old enough to hear it. She was smoking a cigarette, a habit I feared and detested. One of my earliest memories was reaching up and trying to snatch a cigarette from her lips. Even then I knew my enemy. But she was too fast for me, and by the time I heard the story of my father’s death I’d mostly given up trying. So I just sat watching the trail of smoke. “The Captain was once a navy man, you know that. Anyway, he got this wooden lobster from the Philippines when he met Ferdinand Marcos—another story—but when he died the lobster was sitting there in his lap. I guess he’d taken it down from the wall to admire it just before the stroke got him. And that’s what happens when you die. It’s no more complicated than that, if you’re lucky.”

She took a long puff and the smoke spiraled toward the ceiling, her eyes bright. My mother never cried, at least not in front of me. Instead, her green eyes got greener, more sparkly, as though the tears were fuel for that color and nothing else.

She had conceived me in something close to a bona fide miracle, when she and her soon-to-be-late husband of thirty-six years consummated their love for the last time. From the absurdity of that union came the news that my mother received from her doctor three days after my father’s funeral: Polly, in her late fifties, was due to have one more child in the year 1992.

Willow.

Me.

The doctor advised her to terminate the pregnancy. She advised the doctor to drop dead and mind his own business. Eight months later I was born, my family already gone like a train pulled out of a station: my father dead, my brother and sister grown and gone.

Polly was old and tired and cranky and yet she had to start over. A new generation of parents had moved into the neighborhood, remodeling the houses around her as hers fell apart. Old enough to be my grandmother, she brought me up with the same methods she’d used with her other children: folksy southern wisdom and distinctly custom-made punishments. Which explained why, on this brisk April morning, we were barreling toward my school in a two-tone Impala, Polly driving, me riding shotgun, and a falcon in a cage in the back seat.

Polly had found the falcon through an old fishing buddy of hers and had managed to procure its rental for free.

“Please,” I begged Polly one last time. “I’m sorry. Don’t go to school with that falcon.”

I was ten at the time, and Polly sixty-eight. We were at a light. The brakes squealed a bit and she glared at me. She had on her Homeowners’ Association power suit: a pale, pearl-colored dress with round buttons, a small silk handkerchief in the breast pocket, and medium-heel shoes—she’d rubbed them down with a cheesecloth earlier that morning to take out the scuff marks. She was a small, slim woman, petite, with a delicate face and remarkably smooth skin for a woman her age—the result, perhaps, of the homemade mixture of rosewater and black currant seed oil she faithfully slathered on at night.

She wore no makeup except for a burgundy lipstick, in the shade of a knowing glare. She had worn the same hairstyle for decades—a soft bowl around her head, and had kept her hair, more or less, the same shade of light brown, although she had dyed her hair the night before. Either through agitation or distraction she had left it with a certain orangey tone that she had noted with exasperation, but did not have time to address.

Orangey hair and red, red lipstick—they did not go together. Like two flowers that clash in a bouquet, the configuration was wrong and I was somehow to blame for it, too.

“Did you hear me?” I asked. “I’m sorry.”

But she was unmoved. “No one calls my daughter a liar,” she said, leaning on the word in a way that made me miserable because I was, in fact, a liar. And I had told some lies—and even worse, some truths—about my mother to my classmates. In my defense, she was great fodder, and this was years before she killed our neighbor.

I sighed, giving up. Once she had determined a punishment, she never deviated, so it was hopeless to ask. I turned around and looked at the falcon. Polly’s friend had shown her how to take it out of the cage and wear the leather protector on her shoulder. The falcon had white feathers with brown spots, a yellow, world-weary head, and a dangerously curved beak. It stared back at me. The falcon, no doubt, was equally unamused by the situation.

“Just tell me,” Polly said, “that saying I hunted with a falcon was the biggest lie you told.”

It was not.

My elementary school had not been updated for decades and still bore that seventies school decor. We arrived right before school started, so the halls were crowded as Polly moved down the hallway with a purposeful stride, the falcon balanced on her right shoulder, perched on its leather protector, its right foot secured by a leather strap.

I followed her, wilting, horrified, as I’m sure she had expected. It was one thing to speak of her in fond abstractions, to tell both the tall tales and the truthful ones, and let my listeners sort them out, but here she was in the flesh, and kids stopped to gape as she passed by.

No insults or smart remarks or giggles of laughter. Just open wonder at the sight.

The falcon sat calmly on her shoulder, staring at the students as though sizing them up as prey, its eyes flat and dark. As shamed as I was at being part of such a spectacle, I could not help a creeping pride in my mother’s regal manner, the way she glided along in that dress, with buttons carefully repurposed from another dress and sleeves she had pressed that morning with the tip of an iron. She did not speak to me. I quickened my steps to catch up with her and then entered the sphere of her fragrance, lilacs with an undercurrent of honeysuckle, the only gentle and forgiving part of her outfit, for it was the perfume she wore to church to be sniffed by her Methodist God.

My mother had made no bones about the fact that she had already raised two children in this school, both of whom had their own share of disciplinary problems—Shel, with his penchant for pocketknife flipping, and Lisa, with her proselytizing—and Polly’s only wish was to lie low while the last, laggard child grew up without trouble. And here I was—in trouble.

Our school counselor, Ms. Jordane, used to be Coach Jordane back in my first-grade gym class. I remembered her as somewhat boyish and happy, her cheeks puffing out to release the shriek of a whistle lustily during dodgeball, her arms bare and thick with dark blond fuzz, and a single hair growing out of her cheek. Ms. Jordane had taken night classes, gotten a master’s degree in psychology, and hoisted herself into administration, but even her name on the door seemed to evoke the hot, cat-tongue smell of that gymnasium.

Ms. Jordane sat behind her desk going through some papers when we entered her office. I hadn’t seen much of her over the years, and up close, her appearance startled me. They’d tamed her, plucked the hair from her face, smoothed her arms, taken her out of gym clothes, and dressed her like a businesswoman. She sensed our presence and looked up, her face unguarded for a brief instant as she took in the sight of Polly with the falcon on her shoulder.

“Who’s calling my daughter a liar?” Polly demanded by way of greeting.

She shook off her look of surprise, stood and extended her hand. “I’m Beth Jordane. And you must be Mrs. Havens. So nice to meet you.”

I knew right then that she had lost my mother’s respect. Even as Polly reached with equal politeness for the handshake, I could tell by the slight shift in her body language that she did not think much of Ms. Jordane’s attempt at equanimity under the stern and humorless gaze of the falcon. Polly would have much preferred for Ms. Jordane to come out and say, “YOU HAVE A FRIGGING FALCON ON YOUR SHOULDER,” even though she wasn’t fond of that particular expletive.

My guidance counselor got right to the point. “Your daughter has been telling some pretty tall tales about you. Normally, we tend to think this kind of thing is harmless. But the stories have escalated. We have had some complaints from the parents of some of the more sensitive children.”

“Wussies,” Polly said under her breath.

Ms. Jordane’s eyebrows went up. Her face was so smooth. They’d put makeup on her. They’d killed my gym teacher, stripped her boy/girl soul away. She looked down at her notes.

“Willow says she has an older sister who’s with Jesus.”

“Not a lie,” Polly responded. She crossed her arms in satisfaction.

“You have a daughter who is deceased?”

“No, Willow was simply saying that her sister is on Jesus’ team. Although, I might add, so am I, but sometimes I’m puzzled because her Jesus doesn’t sound like mine at all. Hers won’t let her drink margaritas or say damn or play slot machines. I don’t know how she met this Jesus, but mine is much more fun to be around.”

She blinked a few times. “Not dead?” she said at last.

“No, quite alive, but boring.”

She picked up her black pen and jotted down something. I could feel a stream of cold air coming from the vent in the room. The falcon stared at the potted plant, or beyond it, as my old gym teacher’s eyes moved down the page to the next item.

“Willow says you are the oldest living mother in the world.”

“I am not the oldest living mother,” Polly answered. “I’ve actually been beaten by mothers in South America, China, and even the U.S. I would call that a slight exaggeration, not a lie.”

She sent me daggers with her eyes, as did the bird. My mother was somewhat sensitive about her age, and happy to look much younger. I sank down lower in my chair as the litany continued.

“You can make an obscene gesture with your toes.”

“Yes, I can, with the left foot,” Polly said proudly. “I would show you, but I’ve got hose on.”

Ms. Jordane looked uneasy but she continued down the list.

“You shoot the squirrels in your garden with a shotgun.”

“The gun is loaded with blanks,” she snapped. “It just stuns the little bastards. Occasionally, I flip them off with both fingers and toes. Sometimes at the same time. Do you own a garden?”

Before she could respond, Polly answered for her. “Of course not. If you did, you would know that squirrels and other varmints are the enemy. They strip my peach trees and tear up my greens and steal my pecans. And just the other day I caught a squirrel dragging his butt between my cucumbers and sugar peas like a dog. That was pure spite.”

Her interrogator’s shoulders had begun to slump. She was used to dealing with truancy and bullying and low grades and boys fighting on the playground. Clearly my mother’s game plan was way above her pay grade.

She looked at the list again. “You and your neighbor Mr. Tornello hate each other. You once paid a little girl to knock on his door and ask to borrow a cup of dumbass.”

“True!” Polly nearly shouted.

She made one more weak, insubstantial volley. “Do you think it is a good example to a girl as young and impressionable as Willow to have feuds with the neighbors?”

Polly fixed her with a steely gaze. “We were all born into a world made of Hatfields and McCoys. And as you grow, you need to ask yourself: Am I a Hatfield? Or a McCoy? Because there is no middle ground. You are one or the other, and Willow’s going to be the best she can be.”

“It’s just that these stories she is telling around school...”

“Are true. It’s not my fault that the gray of everyone else’s stories makes the color stand out.”

Ms. Jordane looked like she’d give anything to be back in the gymnasium, in her tomboy clothes, blowing on the whistle with her tennis shoes squeaking and her single, long cheek hair growing wild from her face. There was still a whole list to go through and its sheer length seemed to make her weary. She started to put it away and then something caught her eye.

“You have a tail?” she asked in wonder.

Polly looked stunned. From the side, I could see her left eyebrow twitch—a sure sign of agitation. The pupil of the one visible eye darted over and shot me in the heart. That glance was a month of deportation out of the sunshine of her good graces, and I withered. She returned her gaze to Ms. Jordane, and I could feel the inner struggle going on inside her—to keep up the farce that everything I was telling was the truth, or to lose face and call me a liar.

Several more moments passed before she composed herself. “Yes,” she said at last. “I have a tail. A very small, dainty tail. Barely noticeable, and certainly I don’t go flashing it around. I wish my daughter would have been a bit more... respectful of my privacy. And yet, I’m proud of it. I’m proud of my tail.”

The falcon was growing restless and so was Polly. She stood up, balancing the bird carefully, and held out her hand. “I appreciate you having me come in to discuss Willow,” she said, saying my name as though it belonged to a horned, green worm attacking her tomatoes, “and I trust everything is fine now. I’ve already raised two kids in this school system, and I’d like to grow even older ”—(another glance in my direction)—“and die without having to attend another meeting like this.”

Polly didn’t speak again until we were in the car and she had bucked it into reverse and then hit the accelerator, making me lurch against the seat belt as she careened out of the parking lot. In the back seat, the falcon’s cage slid over the seat and it gave out a slight shriek.

“Mom,” I said, “why are you so mad at me?”

Her face had turned a shade of red I’d barely glimpsed before. “How could you tell them I had a tail?” she demanded. “I am a southern lady . Ladies most certainly do not have tails!”

“But—”

“Now it’s going to spread all around! Everyone in town will hear about the crazy old lady with the tail! The Homeowners’ Association will find out! The Garden Club. The people at church. Mr. Tornello will use it against me. Maybe Good Morning America will do a special on it. Would you like that? A special on your mother’s tail?”

She was nearly apoplectic with anger. She zoomed through a yellow light just as it turned red. “A tail!” she shrieked. “You’re a liar and not even a good one!”

She didn’t speak to me for three days. But that didn’t stop me from talking about her. She was so much older than the other mothers, and I was determined to make her bigger than life so that she would never die. I couldn’t let her die without knowing her secret. What had happened before she met my father? Something that made her vow to never return to her hometown in Louisiana. The story was a blank stare and I wanted it to blink.

By the time I was born, all my grandparents were dead. Polly’s only sister, Rhea, came to visit once, when I was very young. She was a small, kind woman with a head of black hair teased in all directions, with two fascinating streaks of white fanning out past either ear. Rhea and my mother called each other “Devil Cat.” I wasted no time cornering her out in the backyard, where she was smoking one of my mother’s Virginia Slims.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she told me when I asked her what on earth had driven my mother from Louisiana, why she wouldn’t return, and why she refused to speak a word of it. “I’ve been told to keep my piehole shut in no uncertain terms.”

“But I want to know!” I shrieked. “I have a right to know!”

“How old are you? Eight, nine?”

“Seven.”

“Jesus. Why are you so curious? When I was seven, I was wondering about the birds and bees and when I found out I was sorry I ever asked.”

“I don’t care about the birds and bees. I want to know about her .”

My intense stare and fake, slow-forming tears never worked on my mother, but Aunt Rhea had a soft heart and a big mouth.

“Don’t cry, honey,” she said. “It was a terrible thing that happened. She was just twenty years old. Wasn’t her fault. There are people in that town who might very well shoot your mother if she ever showed up at their door. I’m here to tell you that her only crime was falling in love.”

“With the Captain?”

“No, no, no. He came later, after the mess was already done. She was in love with a man named—”

The back door slid open. Polly had her own unlit cigarette in her hand. She looked at Rhea and then at me.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Nothing, Devil Cat,” Aunt Rhea said innocently.

But I was young and stupid. That night when Polly was putting on her night cream, I approached her. “What happened in Louisiana?” I demanded.

She paused, midslather. “What are you talking about?”

“The terrible thing with the man you loved. What happened? What was his name? Did the Captain know him? Why does everybody over there hate you?” She turned to me, her eyes a suddenly bone-chilling green, and brushed past me out of the bathroom. Presently I heard a stormy fight erupt between her and Aunt Rhea. Shouting and then the slamming of doors.

Aunt Rhea left the next morning, and never came again. She and my mother eventually repaired their relationship enough to speak on the phone once in a while, but the lesson was clear to me: The mystery of Polly was not something that was going to be handed to me. I had to root around for it, dig for it, claw for it, snoop and lie.

And keep her alive. HAe7JURZMF3pehKXX7XrumLDuURTcpgxJGJUR9EWEO6Eo0vOSvFfRGkL36oZ6C2d