My mother is busily applying makeup
her veined hand steadying a compact 
while in the other a foam rubber sponge
cleanses the years from her skin.

I can still see our faces in that mirror
like phases of the moon, as she arches
a wicked eyebrow—her way of saying, I see you—
mascaraed lashes haloing her eyes
dark hair hennaed a favorite eggplant-brown.

To touch it is to get on her bad side
and I don’t want that, but place my hands there 
anyway, on the pronounced swell of her skull,
burrow my nails in the long purple strands
iron at the roots. “You know I can’t stand that,” 
she threatens, menacing my reflection 
with her own. She is Gemini, the Janus-faced.

Concealed deep in her genetic makeup
are annals of witchery. “Remember
that woman in my office, the one who made
my life a hell those many, many years?”

I try to recall which colleague, which office.

“She’s in the hospital now. Incurable.”
This last word unfolds with lusty gusto
underscoring her message: I did it. I put the hex on her. 

“This is what happens when people cross me
or—godforbid—my children.” Now thirty years

after she’d cursed some nasty old bitch
out of her office job, I place my hands
on her hair again, what’s left of it. “You of all people 
should know I hate it when my hair is touched.”

Who cursed her, I wonder, strapped her ghostly 
bones to this wheelchair? Who did she cross 

to merit this?