Triniti looks up, her expression morphing from serious to less serious when she sees me. Ever since she was a baby, this girl has made you work for her smile. It makes them all the more beautiful and worth it. She flashes me a small one now, standing and wrapping her arms around my waist.

“Hey, Aunt Kimba,” she says, her voice low and sweet.

A boy, the spitting image of Kayla’s husband Lawrence, runs up to me. He’s six now, if I’m keeping them all straight. I take inventory and make sure they each get a hug. In ascending order there’s the oldest, Triniti, the twins Ida and Gwendolyn, the one boy Joseph, named after my father, and finally the youngest, still in diapers, Zaya.

“You hold Zaya,” Kayla says, thrusting the baby at me. “I want to get Ida over with. She’s tender-headed.”

“I am not,” Ida says, sitting on the floor between her mother’s knees.

Kayla tugs the comb through one swathe of Ida’s wild hair and the poor child screeches, catching the comb before it can go any farther.

Kayla gives me a what’d I tell you look, and moves Ida’s hand.

“Tender-headed,” she mutters.

I bounce Zaya on my lap. I didn’t grow up thinking about how many children I would have. I don’t remember Kayla doing that either, but she and Lawrence got right down to the business of making babies soon after they married and haven’t stopped since.

“I have two sinks down here,” Kayla says. “I can wash Ida if you can get Trin.”

“Crazy thought,” I say, “but ever considered taking them to a salon? They’re all the rage these days.”

“I do sometimes.” Kayla shrugs. “It’s not just about getting the hair done. It’s about the doing. Don’t you remember how we’d complain when Mama did our hair, but that was at least an hour where I had her undivided attention? She was always teaching, doing something with Daddy or out in the community. When she did my hair, though, she was all mine.” She kisses Ida’s forehead, the usual stern lines of her face softening. “I want my girls to have that sometimes.”

Even though the lavishly decorated living room looks like a natural disaster struck, Kayla has this ecosystem, like every other thing in her life, under control. She probably doesn’t even need my help.

She doesn’t need my help but wanted me here. She doesn’t just want me to bond with the kids. I could be wrong, but I think my sister wants to bond with me, too.

She’s allergic to sentimentality, so I downplay my discovery.

“Cool, cool, cool,” I say with a little grin that she returns after a pause.