“Oh, you don’t know huh, eh man? You don’t know huh? She holed away in ya’ apartment while ya’ aunt and uncle is away, yet you don’t know huh? Man, c’mon. Who you think you talking to, eh?”

“Shivana, would you tell this fool I don’t know you!”

“Oh? Now I a fool? We shall see who will be de fool…”

“It’s not his fault!” I shouted from nearly inside Ma’s coat. Her grip hadn’t tightened since she had gotten her hands on me. “I’m not having sex with nobody.”

Ma continued to sigh, almost whispering to herself. “I thought you was dead. Lord thank you Jesus. Thank you, heavenly father.”

“Well, something is going on and I don’t like it,” Hakim continued. “Annette, let’s take Shivana back to ya’ home and get to the bottom of this. Sir, you shall see me again. C’mon ladies.”

He pushed past Rasul and grabbed me and Ma, who was still shuddering and unable to speak. She looked terrible—bloated, darker, worn-down, older. Hakim, unsatisfied and unconvinced, nudged Rasul out of the way with a push to his shoulder as we made our way out. Still dressed in his clothes and with my money in the jeans in his bedroom, I didn’t even get a chance to look at Rasul and mouth that I was sorry.

TEN

THE NIGHT WAS long and hard, but ultimately successful. Until nearly midnight, through a haze of chain smoke and with Diana as our background music, I was fired questions from Ma and Aunt Jewel. Hakim patiently stood far away to seem out of it but close enough to intervene if necessary. Had I known this stranger was here, I might have come home long ago. Ma wouldn’t even hit me in front of Aunt Jewel, let alone someone else who had no reason to believe she wasn’t respectable. When we three had walked to my front door, Aunt Jewel had said into the phone, “Thank you, ma’am … she just walked through the door,” and left it dangling while she ran to hug me. After holding me away for inspection, like I was one of the garments she tossed and turned carefully before deciding to buy, she began a tirade I had feared worse than Ma’s hands.

“Shivana, where the hell have you been for the last two days? We’ve been sitting up here thinking you were murdered! We’ve been up to the precinct demanding they do something. We’ve been running around the building and the neighborhood. You’ve lied to us. You’ve hurt your mother. You’ve hurt Renelle. You owe us an explanation little girl!”

They received an explanation, just not the correct one. Jewel did most of the talking while Ma recuperated physically and emotionally from her earlier breakdown.

“The woman from upstairs, Renelle, came by to see us yesterday …,” Jewel started.