I Opened the Closet — and Found the Life My Mother Hid From Everyone (2 of 3)
Two faded envelopes. A pair of women’s gloves — pale blue, delicate, stained at the fingertips. And a small, cracked leather notebook. The air smelled like cedar and something else — old paper, maybe dust and perfume. But when I flipped open the notebook, I froze.
Every page was filled. Not in English, but a frantic, swirling script I couldn’t quite identify. French in some places, yes—but also Latin? German? There were sketches, strange ones. Eyes, hands, doorways. Symbols I didn’t recognize. One page simply read, in my mother’s handwriting:
“Do not show this to your father.”
I brought it to the kitchen, notebook in hand. When she saw it, she went still. She didn’t speak for a full minute. Then, quietly, she said, “I thought I’d burned that.”
What followed was a conversation I never expected to have.
The notebook belonged to her sister—my Aunt Elise. A name I’d never heard before.
Elise was 19 when she disappeared. The story the family told was that she ran away to California in 1965. But the truth, according to my mother, was different. Elise had suffered a breakdown — or what they called a breakdown. She spoke in languages she hadn’t studied, saw things that “weren’t there.” Their parents, conservative and terrified of scandal, sent her to a private facility upstate. She died two years later. My mom was just sixteen.
My grandparents buried it all. Even Elise’s name.
There were no photos. No grave. Nothing.
That notebook? It was the only thing left of her.
