“Okay, but could you tell him that—”

Click.

She sat in silence with the phone against her ear, listening to the dial tone. She was in the kitchen now, sitting on the countertop with her feet on a stool. What if he’d answered the phone, what would she have said?

Would I have told him that I love him and miss him? she thought. She began to hope that she would have. She didn’t know. Suddenly she was feeling abandoned, and the hands of the clock on her wall were whittling time like a pocketknife, and there was nothing she could do with the pieces.

book three

chapter seven

Dear My Son,

I hope this leter cachis you in the best of helth. I hold my head and cry when Fire come back an tell me that he see you becus I thout I would go in my grave and not here from my ondly son. I get the money that you sen for me with Fire thank you but Im an old lady I dont have any use for so much. I dont really want for anyting. Fire have me retyred. I have a nice room for myself and he use to kuorrel if I pick up even a pin, but I tell him that I am boring when I dont have nothing to do so I cook and take care of my littl garden. I am trobling with my heart nowaday. Im going on haiti years old now. I can dead anyday so come and look for me. Son rich or poor you are my son no mater what hapen I am glad to see you. My birtday is coming at mont end and Fire ask what I want I tell him my son to come and he say right and ask you. I tell him if you cant get to come then to go to Jerusalem and see were Jesus walk woud be my other wish. As I say I dont have much use for mony so here take back a tosand pounds and by a plane ticket if this can by it and come for my birtday next month in october. If you cant come keep the mony and come another time. I am so glad to fine out your adres to right you. I learn to right a littl bit well now so you will here from me again. And dont tell Fire I send the money for you or he will kuorrel with me. Dont let me die before I see you my son. I will pray for you that you will fine a nice yung lady to care for you. Fire to. He need the same. Boat of you are good childran.

—Your mother Gita Bhagwandhat

It was Labor Day. The summer was gone.

Sitting on the edge of the low iron bed, in his illegal conversion in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, shirtless and shoeless, dressed in a pair of pea green boxers, Ian looked up from his mother’s spidery script into the sheet of silver sky that filled the windows like wrinkled foil. He withstood the bite of the glare, vowing not to cry even as the tension in his head began to buckle his face, deforming it like a hand squeezing water from a sponge.