"Every morning, after waking up and making her bed, always taking the time to smooth out all the wrinkles in the sheets with her hands, she'd walk into her mother's bedroom. She'd wrap a robe around her mother's shoulders, lead her to the kitchen, fix her cereal, and lay out her pills. For a few minutes, the two of them would sit at the table, making small talk."
"She opened one of the lower drawers and pulled out a pair of men's pants and a dark men's shirt. From her closet, she grabbed a men's brown leather jacket that she kept on a hanger. She then reached for a Styrofoam mannequin's head that was on a shelf in the closet. A fake beard was pinned to it, and on top was a white cowboy hat."
Peggy Jo Tallas cared for her ailing mother in a small Dallas-suburbs apartment, performing detailed daily routines such as smoothing sheets, dressing her mother, preparing cereal, and laying out pills. She sat with her mother for brief conversations and often delayed her own eating while smoking and drinking Pepsi from a coffee cup. On a May morning in 1991 at age 46, she chose different clothing: men's pants, a dark men's shirt, and a men's brown leather jacket. She retrieved a Styrofoam mannequin head with a fake beard and a white cowboy hat and began dressing in the disguise.
Read at Slate Magazine
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