They would wait for him every day at dismissal, hiding behind the Batey School’s perimeter wall, until Segundo would appear through the gates, one able body in a procession of helmets, wheelchairs, and boxy walkers, all reflecting sunlight. 

I'd lit a match and given it to someone else to hold. What surprised me in that moment was that there were no signs I would lie, nor any that Latha would respond so strongly. It was December 28th. An odd number. A seven. It should have been a lovely day, like all odd days were, and it almost had been. I dragged my feet as we returned to my grandfather’s house in the darkness and drizzle.

Quinn vaults over the sill of his bedroom window onto the patio roof. His feet trigger a heart-stopping cascade of pebbles. He crouches, scuttles, lowers himself from the roof’s lip into empty air. His arms shake and a sour scum of fear coats his tongue. 

Jahan arrives as footsteps, the sound of worn leather chappals slapping against the wood floors of the corridor to his study. This is new. Usually, he is shadowed against his trees or his now-empty bee house.

“Yuh sure it will work, mama?” Faye asked.  She often stood on the sidelines, watching her son drink the tea that smelled like rotten eggs.  “It will mek him bettah, Faye…trus’ me…have I evah lied to yuh? In di country men who couldn’t perform use to drink dis…It wuk miracles.” 

Her mother responded with the authority of a doctor.  A woman who knew the science of the herbs she picked.  For every ailment there was a bush Mama Elise had in mind.  She picked them herself, squatting in the backyard, hovered over some plant like she could see into its compounds; the science of it.  Its use.  She would grasp the plant by the stem; brown, calloused fists wrapped around it like she would do the neck of a chicken and uproot it.