The streets were pretty much deserted. I walked past the houses of people I knew and wondered how they were doing. I was particularly interested in what the women were doing. Since I wasn’t going with anyone when I was sentenced, my fantasies were impartial as I considered what it would be like to fuck all the women I knew. By the time I reached my block my cock collar had grown to the size of a turtleneck sweater. I hadn’t told my folks what time I’d be getting into New York. I didn’t want them taking off from work to meet me when I arrived. I needed some time to be by myself, so I wrote telling them to leave the key with a neighbor.

“What is it?” Mrs. Cotton asked through a partially cracked door.

“Mrs. Cotton, it’s me—Melvin Ellington. My folks said I could pick up my keys from you.”

“Oh, it’s you, Melvin. Can’t see too good without my glasses. Come on in here and let me have a look at you… You look about the same to me, Melvin. Only difference is you grown now.”

“That’s what everybody tells me.”

“Well, tell me what you been doing with yourself. I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’ve been away for a while, but I guess I’m back to stay now.”

“Thought about what you gonna do?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, Melvin, just remember to do something even if you only spit!”

“I will, Mrs. Cotton.”

I wondered if Mrs. Cotton knew where I’d been. Even if she did she would never have mentioned it. She was not a person who visited the business of others unless invited. And she never judged. Instead, Mrs. Cotton had an unassuming way of forcing you to judge yourself. Leaving the house, I saw that she still had her vegetable garden. It reminded me of growing up watching her in her Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap squatting over tomatoes, green beans, and cabbage. I respected that patch of earth she took such pains with, but once I allowed myself to be meekly led into temptation by some of my friends who dared me to do the Bristol stomp on it. And from behind the bushes we waited for Mrs. Cotton to come home. When she finally turned the corner carrying two shopping bags, we marked time to see how long it would take her to acknowledge the desecration. She stopped and a deep breath welled up within her. But she held it, and then very slowly forced it back to a proper distribution throughout her body. It was as if she realized that the release of all that energy through her nostrils was too much to give up for something as common as a senseless act of destruction. Instead Mrs. Cotton saved herself for the task of replanting her vegetables.