Yugi and I are on the ground in front of his mother’s cabin. We’ve drawn a circle in the dirt and are supposedly playing marbles. But neither of us is paying much attention to our shots. We are listening to the conversation our mothers have been having on the front porch as they sit together working on a quilt. My mother has explained what my father has been doing even better than I explained it to her. They’ve looked over at us once or twice during the conversation. And out of the corners of our eyes we’ve seen that the expression on their faces were those every son likes to see—protective, approving, perhaps a little surprised at how grown up their little boys have become.

“So, you will talk to your husband?” my mother finally asks, snipping a thread as she did so. The way she says that is not really a question.

“It would be good for me to talk to him,” Yugi’s mother replies. “Could you hand me that patch?”

My mother does so and for a time there is no sound but the smooth hissing of needles and thread through cloth.

“So,” my mother asks, “we are in agreement?”

And as Yugi’s mother sews on a patch of the quilt, which depicts a rising sun, she firmly nods her head. “We are in agreement, my older sister,” she says.

My mother stands up and dusts off her apron.

“Osdadu,” she says. And then my mother and I leave.

It is the next day. Yugi is telling me about what happened when his father came home.

“I was eager to hear what my mother would say to my father,” Yugi says. “But that was not to be. As soon as my father walked in, my mother turned to me.

“‘My son,’ she said. ‘I need you to run an errand for me. Go now!’”

Yugi shakes his head in amusement. “So I went, leaving my mother alone with my father—who already looked confused about what was going on. I walked down to the river, tossed a few rocks into the water, and then tried drawing some of your father’s symbols in the mud. Finally, when I thought I had been gone long enough, I went back home. My mother was in the kitchen sweeping up the pieces of several dishes that had somehow been broken. There was a little smile on her face that she tried to hide by turning away as I came into the cabin.

“‘Your father,’ she said, ‘is out on the back porch and wishes to speak with you.’

“It was hard for me not to laugh. My father always likes to pretend that he is the one who runs our household. ‘My son,’ he said. ‘I, ah . . . ah . . .’”