The table sits in the middle of a circle of dark brown and black soil and mulch. Underneath, bronze figurines reach their hands high to the thick granite tabletop as if holding its weight up in the air. The figurines are staggered in rows that disappear under the slab, giving the impression that there are more bodies lifting the table than the eye could ever see. Steady wisps of aether stream between their arms and legs and waft over the damp earth like golden mist.

“They put the table here for folks who want to read, study, or rest. And yet I find it difficult to sit here and do anything else but get sad.”

The voice comes from a hidden corner of the grotto.

A stunning Black woman with graying locs sits on a stone bench, a late lunch spread out on the empty space beside her. A brightly patterned shawl with alternating burgundy and yellow tassels lining its edges drapes her shoulders. Her eyes are the color of warm, rich earth, and her oval face is a deep brown. She peers at me from behind a set of bright yellow horn-rimmed glasses. I can’t tell how old she is, of course, because Black women are magical like that. She could be forty or sixty, or some number in between.

“Are you—”

“Dr. Patricia Hartwood.” A wide smile spreads across her face. It makes me feel lighter, brighter. “You must be Bree.”

I study this woman as if examining her face, really leaning into that simple act, could somehow bring me closer to my mother. Like maybe there’s a new piece of her hidden in this woman’s eyes. A crumb of life still preserved in someone who knew her in a way I didn’t. I find I’m desperately, uncomfortably hungry for whatever she can give me.

She looks back calmly, as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking.

My eyes find the table again. “Why does this make you sad?”

“Take a closer look.”

I walk between two of the stone seats until I’m less than a foot from the slab. When I crouch, mage flame billows into warm clouds around my ankles. The figurines aren’t identical, like I’d assumed from far away, but they have several things in common: natural kinky hair. Broad, strong noses. Full lips.

Black folks.

They’re all Black folks.

Black folks raising the round slab like hundreds of Atlases holding the world. Some of the men wear long shirts over pants. Others are bare-chested, their bronze muscles straining across stomachs and biceps. Women in skirts lift the impossibly heavy weight. Their feet are buried beneath the mud and mulch, and yet they push.

My voice is quiet and breathy. “What is this?”