Betty remembers with shame her reaction when Vera left Lincoln with her. Vera must have borrowed her parents’ car. Betty doesn’t know. All the vehicles along the curb looked the same—crusted with salt and ice, the windows glazed. Vera rang the bell and stood on the porch until Betty opened the door. Betty was fatigued from work and the needs of her children. Simon had been tried and found guilty of second-degree murder. They hadn’t sentenced him yet. Before Betty could stammer out a hello, or invite her in, Vera said Here and handed her the baby. She must have been waiting in the car with the heater on. She wasn’t wearing a jacket, keeping the baby close to her breasts, one last embrace. Her face wasn’t tear-streaked. She looked flushed and awkward, not distraught. Here. Betty held her arms out instinctively and took the baby boy. Vera turned and walked back down to the curb. She looked into the face of the baby and saw Lester’s face, so brown it was almost purple, like a bruised juneberry. She knew the terror of hospital delivery, where the afterbirth is dumped into the garbage along with the umbilical cord, the rudeness of modern medicine, and she studied his face to see if he bore the effects of such impersonal attention. She looked up and saw Vera return with a piece of paper in her hand. Betty suddenly understood what was happening.

“You’ll need this, too,” Vera said holding out the birth certificate. Betty reached for it, her eyes glittering hard.

Vera looked around and crossed her arms, chilled and scared.

“It’s blank. The name’s blank,” she said finally, and she turned and walked down the porch steps.

Betty yelled after her. “Gaagokwe! Just like a porcupine! Abandoning your boy when you get scared!” She slammed the door. Only she couldn’t tell how Vera got there, didn’t see the final leaving, the shifting of attention from the complexity of giving up a child to the more mundane things that demand our energy: watching for ice, wiping her hand on the inside of the windshield, getting the aging car into gear. How painful it is to make that switch. Betty still feels guilty. Maybe her words cost Lincoln some contact with his mother.

Betty folds her hands and looks at Lincoln’s presents. Little does he know he has inherited his mother’s indecision, her bashfulness. Betty knows he is curious, has a head full of questions. He holds her responsible because she won’t talk about those times, those dark years between 1969 and 1971. He blames her because she is all he has to blame. Caroline is dead, Irma ran off, and Simon is incomprehensible.