I Dreamt About Mother Again

I dreamt about mother again. This time she was wearing a white nightgown and sitting on the ironing table between my brothers’ room and mine. She never did that, but in the dream I didn’t seem to notice as I recounted the events of my day excitedly. I had moved into my new apartment I said. It wasn’t really my apartment, I corrected; but it was the same place I had lived in before in Harlem, but a different room this time.

You remember the landlady I told her and her eyes widened in recognition. Yes, she remembered the very maternal landlady. The Chinese woman who I had introduced to my oldest brother. The one who wore wigs and watched soap operas and talent shows every night in silence. Yes, mother remembered. I complained that the landlady was treating the new roommates better than she had treated me when I lived with her before. They could eat in the living room and have their boyfriends cook in her kitchen. Was it because one of them was Chinese? I asked mother. All she did was nod. She bit her lip and looked pensive. I went on with my story until for some reason I stopped halfway, but you didn’t meet her I thought and I looked at mother and finally she looked at me. I realized I was dreaming and was instantly pulled out of the dream. I woke up. I wasn’t supposed to know I was dreaming in the dream. In the past, I never knew. Mum and I would do activities as usual. Go shopping at Sweet Sensation and go to St. Charles for Mass or the market. In most of the market scenes, I am just walking behind her, past stalls and away from puddles, but never really going into any store. We walk and walk and walk until I wake up.