She lashed out and bit and scratched, but still everyone held. They let her hurt them. My mother, my mother, she sobbed. The girl bit Antony’s mother’s hand, and for the rest of her life, there was a scar on the soft part between thumb and pointer. Four teeth marks. The girl kicked everyone with her pink-and-white light-up tennis shoes. They flashed as she lashed out.

Mateo said he had heard his grandfather’s laugh.

Antony took a step farther away from the door, pulled Mateo with him. He did not want to hear his grandfather or his father. Their soft, slow speech, the way they both coughed a little after eating in the exact same way, their cadence that he now carried in his voice. His mom winced sometimes when she heard him laugh now. There were already moments when late at night, awake at the time when all the world felt still, he felt sure he had heard someone saying his name. Antony would always tell himself it was a dream, but the way his body reacted made him feel certain that no, the voice had been real, had been his father’s voice.

He would not tell Ayanna’s mother any of this when they met at college. Not even one night when she would sit him down, tell him the worst thing that had ever happened to her because she loved him and wanted him to understand everything about her. He would not take her invitation to share. She had been raised normally. God did not lure people into traps in her religion. Her god was distant and judgmental, and all his sicko behavior was from thousands of years ago. Her god did miracles like putting a beautiful lady’s face on a shirt, sending white ladies on daytime television angels, and promising eternity.

The door closed with a small thud.

The girl screamed at all the adults that had held her back, “I hate you. I hate you.” Her voice shrill and young. It could’ve just been an I-want-that-toy meltdown at Target.

Later, when Ayanna’s mother told Antony she was pregnant, he gave her the gold stone as a gift. He told her a friend had given it to him when he was a teenager and every time he kept it in his pocket, something wonderful happened. Meeting her at a party. Getting a full ride to the university. Good grades. This.