“No,” Tomás said. “This.” He gestured toward my carry-on luggage by the door. “This ain’t a part of you I’ve ever seen—and I ain’t too sure I like it. I understand it. But I don’t know if I agree with it. You’re absolutely sure, Octavio?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

“Nobody’s gonna have your six, compadre,” he said. “I’m not gonna have your six.”

I put a hand on Tomás’s shoulder and said, “You’ve always got my six, padrino.”

But if I were you, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before him. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted.

—Job 5:8–9

The Spanish.

The Portuguese.

The Dutch and Belgians.

The English.

Jesuits.

Republicans.

Democrats.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that Black people are still topside and kicking on this spinning mass grave called Earth.

I stared with unabashed awe and unequaled sadness at the faces, postures and strides of slavery’s children as they searched for their flights, ate sandwiches, swept floors, emptied garbage cans, embraced and kissed, laughed, talked and hailed taxis at Quito International Airport in Quito, Ecuador. Near-white, tan, golden-brown, smooth-chocolate, cappuccino and black-coffee skin with kinky, curly, wavy, close-cropped and dreadlocked hair that was the legacy of a capsized slave ship sunk off the coast of Esmeraldas. The escaped slaves who built Ecuador’s capital, Quito. The shackle-scarred and whip-lashed men, women and children who suffered noon heat as they worked the Jesuit cotton and sugarcane fields in the Chota Valley. Who thrived after having joined Simón Bolivár’s fight for South American independence only to be abandoned after the fight was won.

I saw in their faces my own.

I felt their blends of blood in my own veins.

“Hey, hey, hey!” my young Black cabbie said. On his car’s old CD player, he was playing a song called “No Weakness” by Hety and Zambo. “Where you in from today, my man?”

In Spanish I told him Detroit by way of a long layover in Miami.

“Detroit?” he said. “Motown? No shit?”

“No shit,” I said as we quickly transitioned from Spanish to English.

“Aretha! Smokey! Marvin Gaye! Temptations!” he said. “‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough!’”

Like every other person who has lived in Detroit for longer than five minutes, I felt the needle drop into an etched vinyl disclaimer groove. “Actually, Aretha never recorded with Motown,” I said, “ Aretha Franklin was mostly with Atlantic Records, not Motown.”

“She’s still la Reina del Alma!” The driver laughed. “The Queen of Soul!”

“You got that right, mi amigo.”

“So, you coming home? Or what hotel you staying at, my man?”

“The Villa Colonna Quito,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Remy,” he said. “Reymundo, but friends, they call me Remy. You can call me Remy. And your name, sir?”