“Hi, love!” someone calls from the bar. The voice is warm, inviting.

I get this feeling, just then, that Mama is here. I can’t explain it, but before I know it, I’m wiping my eyes, hot and swollen. This is the kind of dreamlike, love-filled pocket I would want to find her in, not trapped inside the glassy false kaleidoscope of her old world, of Tai’s world.

I clear my throat and sidle up to the group at the bar.

“Oh, sweet girl, let’s get you a change of clothes,” a woman offers, as a trippy remix of an American disco song starts up somewhere. Her eyelids are painted gold, her lips a rich orchid purple. “You look like something soaked with beer and forgotten on the floor after a sporting event.”

I squelch in my damp socks as her friend flicks her in the side. “What Apolla means to say is ‘You look lost, can we help you, love?’” she asks, batting thick eyelashes that end in delicate feathers.

“I’m looking for Baba Yuk—”

The woman with the golden lids wiggles surreal rhinestone-clad pointed nails. “The lady of the house goes by another name here. A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet. Names have power. She has claimed hers.”

I remember the flyer. “Madame Miraki, I mean. Sorry.” Miraki, like butterfly.

She smiles. “Don’t be sorry, sweet. In here, we learn, and we grow.” Rhinestones sparkling, her nails point toward a side door reading BEING A DIVA EVERY DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY, with lipstick marks in every shape and color known to woman. “Come back after, and we’ll get you a tea, okay?”

Pressing through the door, I find myself in a long, dark bustling hallway painted in shimmering silver and covered in framed photos of classic icons. I spot Audrey Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor. Sophia Loren. Many faces I don’t recognize. And then Mama, there, at the level of my heart, knees curled into her chest, a scarf drawn over her hair.

Tears prickle up again, and I brush them aside, just as performers burst out of doors up and down the hallway, in gowns of silk and feathered headdresses. Sashaying, skipping, strutting. It smells of excitement and a hundred different sweet perfumes intermingled, enough to make my head spin.

I peek my head into each open doorway, expecting Yuki and dreaming of Mama, only to find other women painting their faces in lit-up mirrors. One wears just snakeskin print, another’s red hair almost touches the ceiling, worked into intricate curls.

They are designing themselves however they see fit; they are writing their stories, like I want to write my own, and I want Mama to be able to finish writing hers.

I do a double take when I spot a brunette inside the largest dressing room at the end of the hall.