It was a question of good. I had never doubted before that Mama was good. But here she was, discounting everything I asked in exchange for the money of these women, for the sake of the gold lettering on her building downtown. I could not, in all conscientiousness, call that righteous or good.

I am a fool, and maybe you are, too, I wrote in the book, and then I closed it, and sat back, and cried.

The next morning, we rode into downtown as if nothing had happened—Mama telling me the tasks ahead. Indeed, it felt worse to know that our reckoning had not even been a reckoning for her, it seemed, just a slight annoyance at the end of the day. Here was another break between us. She could not even see when we were at odds with each other.

I thought it had not affected her at all, until a few weeks later when she looked up from her books as I brought her a cup of tea one night and said, her voice cool but her face blushing slightly, “Cunningham College in Ohio has accepted you for further studies. I think it’s for the best, don’t you? I have taught you all I can here.” She took off her glasses and smiled wanly at me. “I think I cannot teach you anymore.”

I did not even protest. I said nothing and understood I was to leave her, had been banished, for wishing her to ask more of the world around us.

Se lè yon sous seche, moun konn valè dlo

It’s when the spring goes dry that people appreciate the value of water

She sent me away, so I’d send her away, too, I resolved. I would banish her from the very recesses of my heart, from my consciousness, to forge a new self that had not ever been touched by my mother.

In the weeks leading up to my departure, she did not speak to me of it at all. It was Lenore who directed how to pack my trunk, told me what route I should travel, reminded me to never look a strange man in the eye. Mama went about her work as if I would be there with her forever.

So she wants silence, I wrote to the lady. I’ll give her the silence of the grave.

On the morning I left, she told Lenore to take me to the ferry to Manhattan. “I should stay at the hospital,” she said. But as I climbed into the cart, she stopped and held my hand and kissed it, in that same desperate way I’d seen her do to Madame Elizabeth.

“You write to me, you hear?” she said, her voice strangled. “You write to me everything that happens to you so I can know it.”

I kept my hand in hers for as long as I could. Let me stay with you, and I wouldn’t have to write anything at all, is what I wished to say. But I only said, “Yes, Mama.”