Her mother ever having hugged her. Or touched or patted, or that she had undertaken anything you’d see a movie mom do. But—at some point things not done become embarrassing to even contemplate doing. Perhaps her mother was dying to hold Don close but she’d unfortunately let the moment pass when it was possible to start. And anyway she was busy. She had to constantly run along behind her son to wipe his face, to pinch his cheeks, and to listen rapturously when he talked about his equally idiotic friends. Don’s brother needed only to breathe to provoke elation in the mother. Don, on the other hand, she rarely contemplated, and when she did her gaze betrayed the same helplessness with which she regarded herself and her own life.

“I took part in the uprisings,” said

DON’S MOTHER

CREDITWORTHINESS: none

ETHNICITY: Black

INTELLIGENCE: average

HOBBIES: BBC television programs, the royal family, rummaging in thrift shops

SEXUALITY: masturbates to photos of Prince Charles

FAMILIAL CONNECTIONS: 2 children, 1 absent husband

Often.

Don could never picture her mother as an upstanding Black Panther revolutionary. She probably exaggerated her role in the London street battles. That was supported by the fact that Don’s mother used bleaching cream, straightened her hair until it hung from her head like sliced cheese, that the skin color of the supposed father of her children was ambiguous, and that she had no friends from those supposed circles. She preferred to keep company with whites, she rhapsodized about the capital. That her parents left London after the unrest back then was a huge source of humiliation to her, since Rochdale was the brick-and-mortar manifestation of the fact that Don’s mother would never nibble scones at an English flower market with white ladies in twinsets. Don’s mother had learned a decent trade. She was a trained retail saleswoman, or something equally useless from the 1.0 era of the economy. She’d worked for a transport company, a supermarket, and an appliance store and was always replaced at some point by someone in another country, because the trend was to send jobs abroad, because the trend was that a handful of people wanted to make ever more money to protect themselves from the end of the world. This desire had to be respected.