“I just need to make sure that you’re in full understanding of each one of these,” Dan said, and she signed what was in front of her.

“Can I use the ladies’ room?” my mother asked, and I glared at her.

“Of course,” Dan said. “Shelly,” he said to the paralegal, “would you show Mrs. Jenkins to the restroom?”

My mother stood up, wearing a little velvet bag that hung crossways over her body, over her tiny orange T-shirt. I swear I heard the bag rattle with pills.

“Mom,” I said.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and smiled a little, like I was the one who was ridiculous.

After that, she looked around the room while Dan went through the rest of the papers. She watched a cat cross the street outside; she focused for a few minutes on the sweep of the second hand on the clock above the archway. She traced imaginary shapes with her finger on the glossy surface of the table. And she started to fall asleep.

I whispered and pinched her arm under the table. “Mom.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

“This last one is an affidavit,” Dan said, handing her one more sheet, “just stating that you understand.”

“Oh my God,” my mother exclaimed, and started laughing, her voice like a bell, her mouth wide and wet and happy. “I fucking understand,” she said.

I had to sign underneath her on all the pages, as the grantee, and my handwriting looked like a little kid’s. Like a boy, forging a man’s name.

We left the office at three thirty. It was my job to get my mother out of there before she started asking questions or fell asleep at the table so hard I couldn’t move her. I took her outside, where we each smoked a cigarette, side by side next to the truck, and she wouldn’t say a thing to me.

I dropped her at home, where she rushed inside to see if Birdie had stayed put, but I backed right out, heading straight for the power company and then the water authority, where I had to show copies of the new deed and schedule to have service reinstated.

“It can take three to five days,” the woman at the desk told me.

I thought about standing outside the bathroom at Bear’s house. All he had done was touch my elbow, through my shirt; I had felt his fingers go in a circle around the bone. I straightened up at the counter. “It can also be done right now,” I said back to her.

I felt a blush spread on my cheeks, and I thought I had never known how to ask for what I needed, but I raised my eyebrows at the woman, and she came back with an approval for turn-on that evening.

In fact, I left both places with the services restored, the water, the lights, and the heat, even though we didn’t need it just yet.

I left them inside, happy for the moment; Birdie needed a bath, and she would get one. My mother was already messing with the TV surveillance. I heard her voice but couldn’t make out what she said, and then I heard Birdie’s little laugh.