“As a matter of fact, it did.”

“Yeah,” he says. He ain’t listening. His eyes is glued to that TV, so I just say, “I quit my job today, ’cause I wanna be a full-time prostitute and make babies and then go find the daddies and make ’em pay up their asses in child support.”

“Come again. What you talking about over there, girl?”

“I said, ‘I want a divorce.’ ”

That shit gets his attention. He picks up the remote and turns the volume down and looks at me. “What?”

“You heard me, Al.”

“Come on, Charlotte, not tonight.”

“Why not tonight?” I say, and reach in my purse and get out that letter and throw it at him. He picks it up and starts reading it, and then let it drop in his lap. He don’t say one fucking word, just sit there like all the bones in his body is leaving. His shoulders start drooping, and the next thing I know he slumped over like he about to fall.

“Sit up,” I say like it’s a order.

But Al don’t sit up. His hand is cupped on his forehead to cover his eyes. “I was praying this day would never have to happen,” he says. He’s crying. Al is crying. But I don’t really care.

“Well, it’s happening,” I say.

“I didn’t wanna hurt you, Charlotte.”

“Hurt me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m confused, Al. Some woman serves you papers for back child support and they take our income-tax checks and you sit here and expect me to believe that you didn’t wanna fucking hurt me? Spare me, would you? You’re too kind, Al. Who the hell is she?”

“You know who she is.”

My heart feels like somebody’s sticking darts in it. I know who she is? I’m scared to go over the women I know, and I ain’t about to sit here and have no stroke trying to guess. “Who is it, Al?”

“Remember a long time ago when you found that note in my toolbox?”

“Her?”

“She went and had herself a baby on me, and ’cause me and you didn’t break up, she told me as long as I sent her some money every month she wouldn’t bother me.”

“She had your baby?”

“Yeah, she did. A boy. His name is Raynathan. He nine going on ten. They live in South Carolina, which is where her people from.”

“What’s her name?”

“Alice. Charlotte, she didn’t tell me about this till it was too late to do anything about it.”

“You ever seen this boy?”

“Not in a few years. It was too hard. I never loved that woman, Charlotte, and she did this here hoping I would stay connected to her, and it worked.”

“How good did it work, Al? Tell me that.”

“Well, I been sending her regular money all these years, but you know what’s been going on around here with the Laundromats and stuff, and we strapped some months, so I ain’t been able to do what I been doing, and I guess she got mad.”