Tim Parrish

Gone Mad

My mother, Judith, would always compare us to Agatha Black. She would say, “You are always wondering about aimlessly like Agatha Black!” Or “You are speaking gibberish like Agatha Black.” It wasn’t until our house burned down due to faulty wiring that we would learn the real story. They renovated the place and sold it off but it was beautiful midcentury mansion. The tales of how my family were eloquent, sophisticated southerners...that’s a different tale. My father could never recouperate from that loss. We were a poor family after our house burned down. We did the best we could and we would get by the tough times by reading books and telling stories. We always assumed that this “Agatha Black” person was some saying that everyone used...sort of a Benedict Arnold type expression. But it wasn’t. Agatha Black was a little girl, my mom would tell us. A little girl whom would roam the streets writing things down in this little black book. No one knew what she was writing. All they did know was that at some point she was committed to an insane asylum in the late 1800s.