“Dr. Josephine Bo-ah-teng,” a sonorous voice responded. “Isn’t that right, son?”
Mal glanced at me with the helpless look of a man who has accepted his fate.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Look, I’ll be home later tonight, I’ll call you then—”
His phone buzzed in his hand. His parents were requesting a video call.
“Just let us see you,” Momma Waters said. “God knows how long it’s been since I’ve seen your face.”
“Momma...” Mal started in protest.
“It’s okay,” I said, bemused. “You can pick up.”
Mal swallowed an inaudible sigh, then held out his phone and hit “accept.”
A man and a woman filled the screen, staggered behind each other and grinning with mischief. Their faces were unreasonably close to the camera. Mal’s parents.
“There you are!” Momma Waters said. She wore red lipstickand pearl earrings, presumably while lounging around the house. “Where’s Josephine? I want to say hi to her too!”
Defeated, Mal tilted the screen toward me.
Instantly, I could see the family resemblance—Mal’s features were a perfect intermediate of theirs, his skin a blend of his father’s caramel and his mother’s deep umber, his nose and lips containing elements from both. Only his eyes were distinct, snatched clean off his daddy’s face. Unbidden, I thought of my own mother. Her hand on my chin, examining my face for any evidence of the father I never knew. Her smug satisfaction when she could find none. How, when I was young and starved for her approval, I’d mistaken it for affection.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs.Waters,” I said, feeling, to my surprise, a bit shy.
“Lena and Russell, please. And it’s lovely to meet you too, Josephine,” Momma Waters said. Then, with a wink: “Hopefully, someday, in person.”
Mal snatched the phone back.
“That’s enough,” he said. “I’m hanging up.”
“She’s a beautiful young lady, son, good job—” Russell started, but Mal, true to his word, jabbed a finger on the screen to end the call.
We sat in stunned silence for a long, protracted second. Then Mal dropped his forehead onto his steering wheel.
“I am so sorry about that,” he said, plugging in our destination on his phone and snapping it into the mount on his dashboard.
“Don’t be. That was sweet,” I said. “They love you.”
I’d hoped to sound unaffected, but Mal sensed my tension all the same. He snapped back to look at me, biting the hollow of his cheek.
“I remember you saying that... you don’t really talk to your parents,” he said hesitantly. “Is that still... accurate?”
I nodded. “Got emancipated at sixteen,” I explained. “I’ve talked to my mother once since then. Which is fine. She never really wanted a relationship.”
I waited for him to gasp, to saywow, or to call mestrongor something equally asinine.
Instead, Mal fell back into his seat, released a slow breath. Then: “Did she... hurt you?”
I stared down at my lap, swallowing down my panic. The turn in conversation took me by surprise, so far from the safe shores of our typical banter.
“Sorry,” Mal said. “I shouldn’t have asked that—”
“Not often,” I provided. “She beat me when I was younger, but at some point, she stopped, and somehow that was worse. Like she no longer really cared. I mean, she kept the fridge stocked enough for two, covered the basic necessities, but it was clear from early on that I was on my own. I learned how to take care of myself pretty quick. But I turned out okay, so—”
“You were a child,” Mal interrupted. Then he turned to me, sorrow and something like anger creasing a furrow in between his brows. “Jesus, Jo. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to go through that. You should have been cherished. You should have been protected—”
I cut him off, wrapping my arms around myself to stop the tears that still, after all these years, threatened to sprout at a mention of this topic.
