Reflections in Shadow

2. Wild Roots

The house always smelled like paint and earth. Music spilled out from every corner, the crackling sound of old vinyls echoing through the rooms. Laughter loud, unrestrained rose above it all, breaking the quiet of the small, working-class neighborhood. This wasn't a home bound by rules. It was a place where freedom lived in every messy stroke of a paintbrush, where creativity danced in the air like dust caught in sunlight. Her mother was the heart of it all. A woman who moved through life with a wild, untamed grace, completely indifferent to what the world thought of her. She wore her hair in loose curls that bounced with every step, her clothes always oversized and splattered with paint, like she was constantly on the verge of creating something new. She wasn't like the other mothers in town never concerned with how things looked on the outside. It wasn't appearances that mattered, but authenticity.

"When they tell you who to be, do the opposite," her mother would say, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she spoke, her fingers stained with the colors of her latest painting. "People will always try to put you in a box. Don't let them."

And she never did.

As a little girl, there were no tea parties, no dolls dressed in frilly clothes. Instead, she roamed the streets on her bike, dirt on her hands, grass stains on her jeans, her hair tangled from a day of climbing trees and exploring the edges of town. While other girls practiced their manners, she spent afternoons with her mother in their cluttered kitchen, learning to mix colors on canvas and listening to Janis Joplin's raspy voice howl from the record player.

But then, when she was fourteen, everything changed.

The illness came quietly at first. Small things, little cracks in the surface that were easy to overlook. But it grew, spreading like a shadow across their home. Her mother's vibrant energy began to fade, her laughter quieter, her hands no longer steady with a brush. Breast cancer. The words sat heavy between them, unspoken for a long time, until they couldn't be ignored. Even in sickness, her mother refused to be anything less than herself strong, defiant. She never let the illness define her, never let it take away the spirit that had always burned so bright. As the disease took its toll, the lessons her mother had been teaching for years solidified. The world is fleeting, her mother would say with a sad smile, her once strong hands now frail. And in that fleeting world, there is no time to be anything other than who you are.

When her mother died, something shifted. The world grew quieter, but Mae grew louder. The prim dresses her father bought for her stayed untouched in the back of her closet, hidden behind her mother's old flannel shirts. The day after the funeral, she took a pair of scissors and hacked off most of her hair, leaving just enough to twist into the thick, messy dreadlocks that her mother would have loved. She stopped smiling for the sake of others, stopped pretending to fit in. The last years of high school were a blur of defiance. She spent more time painting murals on old, forgotten buildings than in classrooms. She wore torn jeans and boots that had seen too many days on the streets, always with layers of black, her mother's old silver rings heavy on her fingers. People stared, but Mae never cared. The world wanted her to be something she wasn't, and she wasn't about to give in.

Her apartment, a small, cluttered space in the heart of the city, was a reflection of everything she had learned. Paint splattered the walls, old records were stacked high in every corner, and nothing matched. It was chaotic, but it was hers every inch of it a testament to the life her mother had shown her. There was no room for pretenses, no space for shallow expectations or conformity.