But my mom also left something else behind. Her one attempt at painting. She loved art, but she was a terrible artist, and even my father couldn’t lie and tell her it was good. We put it in the basement, but after she died, I dug it up and held on to it. I didn’t know why. Maybe because I resented what art had done to my family, and I liked seeing its ugliness and chaos immortalized on canvas. I had her note as well, and when I was older, I reworked the frame and placed it inside the painting. The most fucked-up part was I named it after her. Magda.
