I waited until I heard our old couch squeak under her weight before I turned back to my food, sniffling and shoving it down my throat. From the living room, I knew the movie had got up to one of her favorite parts, one of her favorite songs. When Billie Holiday had to pee on the tour bus but there were no public bathrooms for miles, so her and the White band pulled over so she could go under the Southern trees and she saw a Black boy hanging from a tree against the hazy white sky. Ma didn’t like it ’cause of that part, since it made her cry once. She liked the one Billie sang onstage right after with this big white flower pinned behind her ear. Ma liked to hum that slow, sad song about flowers falling from Southern trees, with only a piano in the background and Diana’s voice cracking from the tears. She was humming the end of it when I sulked past her, through the cigarette smoke, with a second helping, and shut my bedroom door for the rest of the night.

I can’t remember the number of times Ma told me that the minute I popped out of her, she got old. And I was only fifteen. I wasn’t ready to be old. Soon Aunt Jewel would pull off in a bright yellow taxicab, press Hakim’s number into my palm, and promise to call me every week. I aged that much more thinking about it, knowing I would have to face Ma and this mess alone.