“What’s your daddy really like?” I asked, maybe a bit too fast. Before she could even answer, her face flushed red, bloomed really, slow and lovely like a flower bursting out of a bud. That was love. That’s how kids loved their parents when they were around and spent time with them and invested in them. That smile made me jealous. I didn’t even know who my father was, where he was, and if he even thought about me at all. And here she was so overwhelmed with emotion that she couldn’t even answer my questions. She finally said, “My dad is present and sweet, and he want to help everybody.”

“Present?”

“When he’s with you, you got his attention.”

I liked her answer. I pushed my face against the gate, let it move through me for a while.

I peered into the world as if I was searching for my dad. Then Precious said, “But he works all the time, and I wish I could see him more. I know it’s the Lord’s work, but sometimes, I don’t want to share my dad with the whole world.”

I pulled my face off the gate and looked at her. She wasn’t crying, but she looked sad. I didn’t know what to say, so I just asked her, “You think you’ll still be at church all the time after you move?”

“Yeah. After you get baptized, they put you to work!” We both laughed at how she said it. Then got quiet again. We listened to the sounds of the block, which always sounded like layered echoes of people calling to each other and laughter, mixed in with bass from someone’s music. We were comfortable sitting in silence together, having our own thoughts that we’d share once they emerged or we’d keep to ourselves, but there was an ease with Precious that I didn’t have with my other friends.

She scratched her arm, a nervous tic I’d noticed years before, so I asked her, “What you thinking about?

“Tonya,” she said. “I worry that we haven’t seen her because of those guys. Remember when she used to walk up and down the stairs all day, every day? Now it’s like she’s just gone.”

“And every time I go up to her house, her mama say she ain’t home.”

“Fe Fe, it’s been like three weeks since she been to the square.” We were quiet again, then Precious said, “We really gotta pray for her.”