Meechie remembered. He told me that one time, in Sabbath school, the teacher gave out toys, and he got a tiny Transformer. That’s his strongest memory of church; that somebody gave him the perfect gift.

I tried to fix my face before I got to her door, to straighten up before I knocked. She opened the door, and I must’ve looked bad, because she asked, “What’s the matter, Chile?” I opened my mouth, then closed it and just stood on the other side of the frame looking up at her face, but the little white lights had blurred it.

“Come on in here, you letting the heat in,” she said, holding the door open for me.

I walked inside and told her, “I don’t feel good.”

She came over to me and put the back of her hand on my forehead. “You hot!” she said. “Gone sit down.”

I took a seat on the couch and closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning. I heard house shoes moving in the other direction, and water running, ice clinking, then shoes brushing the tile again. Things were still twirling, and I could see the lights dancing back and forth.

“Drink. And put this on your head,” she said, handing me a makeshift ice pack. She sat in silence for only a few seconds before asking, “Where you coming from?”

Older people always seem to know the unspoken. They can sense when you’ve been doing something dangerous. They know when you need help and haven’t asked for it. I didn’t even try to lie.

“I went to see Stacia.”

“Went to see her?!” When I didn’t explain myself, she said, “You stay ’way from ’round there.”

It was too much work to say or do anything, so I just kept my eyes closed, sucking on the ice.

“Drink that up, then you lay down. I’ll tell your mama you here.” She got up again and went in the kitchen to grab her phone off of the wall.

That’s all I remember. When I woke up, I felt funny, but the room had stopped rotating, and the dancing white lights were gone.

Mama Pearl had fallen asleep too. I could hear the fan making breathing noises, but it hadn’t cooled the room down. When I tried to get up and leave, Mama Pearl’s eyes popped open.

I flopped back down, and my thoughts went back to my brother.

“Meechie,” I said, low, and then I stopped talking and started playing with a hangnail. “He in trouble” was all that I could say. She just looked at me.

“In trouble how?” I couldn’t say the words. I looked up at her, then out the window. She didn’t need an answer, though. She just asked me, “Do he even want your help?”