Kwame’s voice on the phone had been just as detached as Della’s was just now: Her mother was dead. It was sudden. He was sorry. The funeral was Saturday.

Lex got a few blocks before caving. She wasn’t about to go back to her sister’s. There was no facing family. She flipped a U, the smell of burning rubber filling the car, and headed to Jim’s gas station, sinking into the sweet fleeting feeling of giving in. 

I was barely twelve years old when Baba fell ill. We had been in Rameh for about a year with asbestos sheets and corrugated metal replacing our stone home in Farradiyya.