ONCE WE DONE eating dinner, somebody knocks at the door. “Answer it,” my sister says.

I shake my head no. Stay exactly where I am, at my seat in the dining room, facing the door.

“Go on. It’s her.”

My heart speeds up, and I freeze at the same time. “Her?”

“Cricket.”

I move fast as a train. Like I got wings. Knocking over a chair, tripping when I get to the ottoman in the living room, I yell, “I’m coming!” The dead bolt won’t work with me. I turn it left and right more times than I can count. Finally, JuJu step in. After she opens the door wide, I scream. Just like that—she in my arms soft and sweet-smelling, pulling my hair, grabbing at my lips. “Cricket. You got so big!” I can’t stop hugging her. Lifting her high, I step on the porch—freeze—hurry back in. She can’t stop talking to me, drooling. “She getting teeth?” I ask my sister’s friend.

She on her way down the steps when she say, “Watch out for the drool.”

I lift Cricket’s legs and each arm, then check behind her neck. JuJu look like she feel sorry for me, then says for me to take her on the back porch. I’m out there before I remember I don’t go out there no more either.

We both sit on the floor, on a shag rug that my father put down. The room is full of windows, so I look around a lot. Feel happy that the sun know where we at. Trees in the yard remind me of them from the house, but I don’t let it bother me none. I’m out here, the closest I been to outside since I came home. Progress, Maleeka would say.

“Do you remember me?”

She give me the biggest grin. Then on her knees she go, crawling. I get sad ’cause I wanted to teach her to crawl, and video her along the way. And tell her when she was grown and I was old what age she was when she figured it out.

Checking her baby bag, I yell to my sister, “Miss E ain’t bring her no toys!”

JuJu tell me this will be a short visit. No more than an hour. I carry her on my hip, run up to my room to get things I got JuJu to buy Cricket soon as we came home: keys, a Binky, a cloth baby block, a teething ring, and books. She ain’t interested though. “Here.” She snatch it out my hand. “You remember?” Up to her mouth it goes, until I explain that crayons ain’t for eating. When I first got her, I let her hold one and she did the same thing I tell her. “This is what they do.” I can’t find clean paper. So, I walk her over to my desk and take out the coloring book Maleeka brung me. “See.” We both get down on the floor. “Stay inside the lines.” I let her think on that some. “If you do, you won’t turn out like me.”

I clear my throat. Tell her I’m not really sad. Then I get back to the crayons. “Don’t use boring crayons like white, light-light pink, beige. And remember, I was the first person to teach you how to do this.” I lift her hand. Hold it, help it outline Maya’s face. “She is brown like you, so that’s why we using this color.” She don’t care. I turn her hand loose and she throw the crayon. Fifteen minutes later, we on our way downstairs, when I remember she just had a birthday. I apologize to her for not remembering sooner, or buying a present. In the kitchen, I take a donut out of the box. Sit a candle in it. And sing to her, crying some. “Your momma loves you.”

She squeezes the donut, eats the pieces. I remind myself to tell Miss E to get Cricket a candle with a one on it, and to buy her a birthday cake.

A hour later she in the car in her seat leaving me. I wave good-bye from the window seat. JuJu wraps her arms around my waist and rocks me. “Do you think she know I smell?” I ask.

“Char, I bet Jesus knows how bad you stink.”

“Miss Saunders didn’t notice all that much.”

“She was being polite. People do that when you going through it.”

I ask her when she think I’ll be done going through it.

“I don’t know, Char. It take some people years to get to the other side. And most need help to make it. But you got to want it.” For the ninety-ninth time she ask if I’m ready for therapy, to see someone or just talk with them on the phone.

“I’m cool, JuJu. Fine.”

When I go to the bathroom and stand in the shower, it’s because I do not want Cricket to remember me stinking like this. Only, I still don’t wash or wet nothing except my feet. I wish I knew why.