By Yash Seyedbagheri
When I’m eight, I learn Mama is a ghostwriter.
“You write for ghosts?”
“No, darling.” She laughs. “I write for other people.”
“Why do they call you a ghostwriter?”
“They don’t see me.” She laughs, but her smile wavers. I capture that smile: cracked. A fault line.
Twenty years later, I read a congressman’s memoir. He speaks in Mama’s prose, refers to dusk as a ‘purple sweat,’ and his life as ‘tempestuous.’
Pangs of memory and anger tug at me.
I hold the book aloft, pay fealty to graceful words and a hidden woman.
People stare, but Mama smiles. Smooth.
Whole.
Yash, this is a subtle and skillful tale, a nice evocation of familial love.
Love this. Lots of emotionally haunting language
I’ve sometimes wondered what the man who wrote Churchill’s speeches was like. Imagine never being able to claim authorship. I enjoyed reading this because it was thought-provoking.
He – rather famously – wrote his own speeches… https://www.npr.org/2012/07/14/156720829/winston-churchills-way-with-words
She smiled because she got paid for it!