My mother was an actress. She wore capes – long ones that billowed behind her as if they were motorized – and when she was still, they landed on the floor in beautiful puddles. Her jewellery – big and colourful like planets – exuded a shimmer of sitar-like music which narrowed into a single coke-bottle note in the evenings. Andy Warhol designed a pair of earrings for her. They looked like two ruins that had been pulled from the earth, but when she wore them – I don’t know what to tell you – something out of this world happened and I’ll just leave it at that. When she hugged me, her perfume stayed with me all day, bloomed when I shook my head, and when she was away, I’d dab it hot behind my ears the way she did behind hers. I waited for it to wear off a