She used to sleep without her hair. She'd sleep all day. Most of it. She'd be up at night, when I didn't dare come out. I'd hear her shuffling, down the hall, disembodied.

In the daytime, when she came out of her room to eat, or use the bathroom, I'd peek inside her tiny room. She'd read all day, her bed unmade. The styrofoam head where her wig would wait, watched me while I'd poke around.  Other times, when I'd hear her snore I could slowly turn the doorknob. I open it just enough to see her there, without her hair.

I was always told to leave her be. She never seemed unkind. She had a rhythm, her hands would move, so did her mouth. She seldom spoke. She had lost her hair after being in the hospital. My Grandmother's sister, in my Grandmother's home.

She wasn't always like that. She was once someone else. She had her own children. She had adopted my mother's illegitimate son. The son my mother kept secret from her other kids. She was in the web with us.

One day, she threatened to tell it all. Our family had a conference. The cousin I had grown to hate, who picked on me unmercifully, was my brother. My mother, haunted by her secrets, occasionally  "attacked" by those she socialized with, has continued to slip off the road. She's never really fully grasped that it's not everyone else, it's her. When the whole world is wrong, it's probably you.

She, like me, is inappropriate. No one sees it like I do. I didn't know, years ago, that the woman who slept without her hair was a previous generations' manifestation of the same problem I'd have. My mother passed it to me, her third child. Her last one.

It stops with me. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone. My sister has two sons, my brother, at least one daughter. I've stopped seeing all of them, keeping to my room. Me and my detachable hair