. . . they’ll see for themselves.

—Grace

One or the other, cause it can’t be both. The football or the basketball. Either will put a dent in my so-called savings. The itty-bitty money I’m socking away for when these people let me off their papers—and they will. I choose the Spalding and buy a pack of needles and a hand pump, at prices that leave me with too little to mention, so I won’t mention it. There’s a boy that’s more or less between my firstborn and my middle boy dipped over a station and listening to headphones loud as bullhorns. The boy’s holding a CD with a cover that shows a guy wearing a suit and scarf and fedora with his head tipped low. The boy closes his eyes and snaps his neck back and forth. The next song that plays samples an old soul favorite of mine, and I listen until as a mother I can’t anymore. I tap the boy and he snatches off his speakers. I ask him to suggest an album that’s a bit less explicit. He bops down to another shelf and picks a colorful CD off the rack. This one, he says.

I buy the CD and the Spalding and straggle out the automatic doors with my purchase double-bagged and my previous few dollars fewer. As soon as I get outside, the cold snakes inside me. I’ll have to wait until the paycheck after next for a coat that puts up more fight. Payday is Friday, next Friday, but it’s also the week my court fines are due. Traffic plods along. A hard wind whips up my leg.

This is how it is until the bus comes. The driver is a young woman. I find a seat, but move for a guy who cracks his window in this cold. It’s a long ride to my transfer. I wait under a covered stop for my next bus. There’s a pay phone inside the stop that keeps ejecting coins. The bus rumbles up I-5 and across the bridge and off on the city center and into the bus depot. The depot’s surrounded by pawnshops, old brick buildings, slant parking spots, parking meters made of copper. The last bus carries me across the city. Vancouver, Washington, VW, is lush and unlittered and no one needs to be anywhere fast. I get off and slog what passes for a busy street carrying bags—a heft. Kenny lives in a subdivision, rows of new homes painted tan or blue or gray, homes with double-car garages and neat piles of leaves in the yard—this is the other side of living check-to-check.

If he’d told me about this place—his tongue has never been a conduit for the truth—I would’ve called him a bald-faced lie.

The address he gave me has a big picture window with its curtains drawn apart, fluffy upholstered couches, a glass table, an oil painting of a bowl of fruit.

I am loved.

I am strong.

I am patient.

No one answers. Not the first time I buzz. Not the second. It’s a long time before I hear a voice and the light clop of feet, longer before someone comes to the door. It’s Helen. Are my boys here? I say.

She smirks and slaps a hand on her hip and huffs a lift in her bangs. I sit my bags beside me and cross my arms. I see we still rude as ever, I say.

Did Kenneth know you were coming? she says. She looks past me, and it’s no telling what she sees.

Kenneth, I say. Who’s Kenneth?

Wait, she says, and slams the door shut.

But I won’t let her do it; won’t let her wreck my day. I take out my cigarettes and count what’s left in the pack.

Kenny comes to the door dressed in a starched white shirt and creased khakis as if he just might be other than who and what he is. Well, well, well, he says. Look who finally dropped in.

Needed time, I say. Don’t start.

Don’t we all, he says. How’d you get here?

A spaceship, I say. A hot air balloon.

Still got jokes, huh, I see. But check this out, all jokes aside, call ahead next time, he says. Helen ain’t too fond of surprise guests.

You got my boys a few days and now all of a sudden you calling shots, I say. Trying to tell me when and where?

They’re our boys, he says. Canaan and Kenneth Jr. And how all this time add up to a few days? C’mon, now, Grace. We’re too old for new math.

You wouldn’t put it past this man to have been feeding my boys a bad script about me, but my boys are bright; they’ll see for themselves.

My youngest comes up, calling Kenny. He spots me and yells and almost falls over himself trying to make it outside. He pulls me tight, shoots something out of me, shoots something into me. I missed you, I missed you, I say, and stand back to have a look at him. His father, if that’s what he is, struts off. My baby leads me inside and asks if I want to see the rest of the house, and I don’t have the heart to say no. He shows me a crystal chandelier in the front room, a kitchen fixed with granite counters and oak cabinets, bedrooms posterized with basketball gods. He tugs me into the basement where my middle boy is sitting in the semidark, eyes locked on the giant screen, thumbs drumming a game controller.

Ta-da! I say.

He looks at me, a glimpse, says, Hey mom, and goes right back to his game.

Wait a sec, that’s it? I say. That’s all you got for your mama after all this time, after I hiked across the world for you?

He pauses his game and slogs over and presses his head to my chest for a thump, that’s it.

You would think it was this middle boy and not my baby that marks time but it isn’t. It’s Canaan I was pregnant with the night I caught Kenny, the night he called one time too many and said he wouldn’t be home. It was my youngest kicking in my belly the late night I broke a phone, threw on clothes, and blew red lights all the way to her apartment. By then I’d steamed outside her place many a night, had busted car windows, knifed tires, had keyed curses onto the hood of her car, but of all the times that was the first time I’d ever had the gall to knock on her door. She answered in a robe that was a match of one he’d bought for me, and it must’ve been a reflex how fast she tried to shut me outside. So quick, but I jammed the door, pushed through, and stalked her into the bedroom where I caught Kenny—he seemed the gift of my life to that point—lying butt naked in bunched sheets. He didn’t say a word, didn’t stir when I turned and fled.

That night, I drove home and butchered his suits and dumped them in a tub of bleach. The truth is, though, it was as if I’d done nothing—nothing at all to heal.

He and she bicker above us and it’s a boon for me.

The boys open their gifts and precious hours go on.

They are priceless, my sons; they’re all I need, or else they’re not enough and I hope to never know.