Serge Brusselo extract I had to struggle with myself to hold back my urge to smear them in black. I never dared to do so of course. My instinct would whisper to me that such an act would drive my mother into hysteria or even insanity and that she wouldn’t hesitate a second to ditch me  at the bottom of the well.     I didn’t trust her. Her mood would change too often. Two women lived within her, two irreconcilable co-owners: the fairy godmother and the naughty witch. In the course of hours, and without any reason, she would become one or the other and the paradise would change into nightmare. It was quite unsettling. I believe she let herself get possessed by her characters without even noticing. As the fairy godmother, she spread kindness and tenderness. As the witch, she became mean unfair and intolerant. You could never bother her when she worked in her workshop. Leaning on the drawing board, she went into trance. The house could have burnt, she wouldn’t have noticed.    Over the years, I learnt to subsist on the fringes, without getting spotted, as an illegal alien in my own house.       We lived at the foot of the mountain, on the edge of a posh winter sports resort. Our house was a nice postcard chalet, which long ago belonged to a black and white movie star who died in an avalanche. Some used to say he was a UFA star who had actively contributed to the Nazi propaganda.     A den mother would come up from the village to do the cleaning and the cooking. She spoke French with such an accent that I only understood one word out of four, which didn’t help us to get along. Obviously we irritated her. My mother’s paintings scared her, she studied them wincing, As for me, in her eyes I was nothing more but a lazy posh girl not even able to watch over cows.      My father, I knew him then under the false name of Harisson Crawford, was often absent, busy to haul a roped party of young dynamic Texan executives on the other side of the world. He was a very muscular massive man. Some kind of big teddy bear who told me stories of Indian extermination, slavery and civil war to get me to sleep. By driving me into this reality without concessions, he probably hoped to offset the ethereal world that my mother’s fairy tales set up in the house. I remember he had hooked up above my bed the facsimile of a notice from the proslavery south. :for sale, beautiful negress with two male brats, very healthy. Might be bought separately.