"Did you eat the cookies I sent you, Sandra?" The connection was bad and her words sounded broken. Still, I had been waiting for her to ask, and dreading it. 

"Yes," I said, "Thank you, Nana." 

"You're lying. You should have eaten them."  

Of course she knew, she was my nana. She didn’t sound angry, though, just mildly disappointed. I felt my face grow hot. 

The dark brown disks had been covered in craters. They smelled like cinnamon but also like something familiar and unpleasant. When I tipped them onto a plate, two fat, shiny ants fell out with them. I had quickly dumped it all into the trash and swallowed my guilt. 

"They weren't sealed," I said. My words echoed and sounded pathetic. "Hello? Nana?" 

She was gone, our communication broken somewhere in the vast space between us. I could see her in my mind's eye, though, huddled close to her corded phone. I pictured her in her tiny apartment, covered in layers of outerwear. She was ninety-three. 

I remembered when she was beautiful, back before time had its way with her. Since I was small, I had known she was what others called eccentric. But her strangeness had drawn me in. She was full of fantastic stories and a calm sort of love that I had held onto for dear life. 

I hadn't seen my nana now in close to five years, and only once since she had to give up her home here in Georgia. She moved into an assisted living center in North Carolina near where my mother lived. A year after making the move, my mother died. And Nana swallowed the bitter pill of outliving her child. 

That's when I had gone. I'd watched my mother’s alcohol-poisoned body be laid to rest, and watched my nana’s mind begin to drift away. Then I left. We were all that each other had, but still I let the days tick by without going to visit her. Deep down, I was afraid of what I might see. 

Shortly after, the odd gifts began showing up, most of which I'd kept. Throwing them away seemed like throwing heraway, piece by piece. Had she ever sent food before? I didn’t think so. The cookies had been a fiftieth birthday gift; a big deal. 

My friends had taken me out after work, to an upscale bar in the city where I'd ended up dizzy and depressed. Turning fifty rang in my ears like a warning bell. I was divorced and living alone in an apartment in an okay neighborhood. It was during my yoga classes that I stretched and balanced, trying to find my center. 

I went into my bedroom and pulled baskets from the top of my closet, one by one, pawing through each. After a few minutes of digging, I saw the bottle: a green, glass jar with a foreign-looking label. 

I removed the cork, so brittle that part of it disintegrated in my hand. It was empty other than the faint smell of aged perfume. It had been the first gift she'd sent, shortly after the funeral. I had never used it, yet now it was gone. Each slow drip had evaporated as I moved through my days. 

Suddenly, I knew that the saddest things in the world were the beautiful ones we let slip away. The things we wasted by saving them. 

“Nana,” I whispered. She had tried so hard to make up for the crazy life her daughter had created for me. 

I continued to dig through the baskets until I felt crushed velvet. To this day, I wasn’t sure what it was. A bar stool cover? Or was it a hat?It was black with black ball fringe all around the edge. The inside was lined with black satin and it smelled stale and unused. I put it on my head. I had every intention of walking over to my dresser mirror, but instead I fell onto my bed. 

I remember the after-pain most, that feeling of relief and fear. It had been bad. My head felt wrong and I could hardly sit up. I had experienced some pretty bad migraines but those lasted for several hours. Whatever this was had come and gone like a lighting strike. 

I felt the bar stool hat still on my head, and beneath it, how my scalp felt unnaturally warm. I staggered to the mirror and saw that my face was flushed, and also that I looked like a damn fool. I pulled the unstylish whatever-it-was off and screamed. 

Everything I used to be so sure of now evaporated like Nana’s perfume. I glanced again in the mirror, and my hand flew to cover my mouth as my eyes grew wide with shock. 

The woman staring back at me appeared to be insane. Slowly, my hand moved up to touch my head of hair and I stepped even closer. I was creeping like a cat towards my own reflection. 

“Silk,” I croaked. 

Just a few minutes before, my hair had been salt and pepper, and getting saltier by the day. The white strands were coarse and unruly, and I had quit dying them years before. 

Now, suddenly, my hair was midnight black. Not blue-black like the box colors touted, but a black so true and deep that I couldn’t look away. And it felt soft, like baby hair, but thick.