Although Henry’d been young, only twelve then, there were things Mom believed he had the right to know. Stories that might help explain why Papa was the way he was, for the years to come when she wouldn’t be around to play arbiter. She’d been woozy with meds, stiff and stretched over the daybed where she’d spent her final months. From the belly down she was draped in a vibrant shawl that she used as a blanket, patterned with a shape he’d first assumed was a four-petal flower. A student from Ghana had given it to Mom, the young woman’s economics professor, and explained the flower was actually a bese saka—a sack of kola nuts—a symbol of health and prosperity. Its color scheme had always seemed too bright for the circumstances. Irreverent, gaudy as a neon sarcophagus, but Mom still wore it every day. From where he’d been sitting, the elevated saline pouch perfectly obstructed the framed photo, tucked among the overflowing shelves of his parents’ library, showing the three of them in Manila. Before starting the story, Mom made that wistful smile of hers. He would never understand how an expression that typically signaled contentment could dispatch such sadness.

Henry’s dad—“your papa,” she corrected herself—had come stateside for grad school. He only received partial funding, but, more importantly, his visa paperwork was taken care of by the university, which was where they met. A child of the plains, Mom had never met anyone like him, and, truth be told, her attraction could have been deemed problematic, after a colleague in the sociology department casually filled her in on the notion of racial fetishism. That skin, though. Those eyes. His papa had been so sharp, charming, tough. Even a little cocky, despite that bouncy, singsong accent of his. Adorable, really, but Henry had to promise never to tell Papa she’d said so, okay? A tremor ran under the bese saka shawl.