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Then the front door opens and my mama comes out on the porch.

Denise Jackson. Five-foot-two in her church shoes. Purple suit, purple hat, purple everything, ‘cause it’s Women’s Day. Her glasses on a chain. Her Bible under her arm. And her face, which is my face, twenty years older, looking at me over her glasses like she can see straight through my dress to everything I’ve been doing.

“Get up here,” she says.

I go up there. She grabs me and hugs me so hard my back cracks. She smells like Jergens and oxtails and the church fan she keeps in her purse. I put my face in her shoulder and hold on.

She lets go and holds me out at arm’s length and looks at me. Up and down. Real slow.

“You look rested,” she says. Suspicious. “Why you look rested?”

“I’m sleeping more.”

“Mm-hm.” She looks at my dress. My shoes. My nails, which the girl Sasha sent to the house did on Thursday. My edges, which are laid. “You look expensive, Dylan.”

“Mama…”

“Get in this house. Tasha, baby, come eat.”

* * *

Sunday dinner is oxtails and rice and peas and greens and mac and cheese and cornbread and a sweet potato pie on the counter cooling. My auntie Gwen’s here, and my cousin Keisha and her two babies, and Pastor Moore’s wife stopped by to drop off a plate and stayed for two hours. Everybody’s at the table. Everybody’s talking. Everybody keeps looking at me.

Nobody says nothing about the video.

Until Keisha’s oldest, who’s six, puts down his cornbread and says real loud, “Auntie Dylan, are you the lady on the phone that the big man picked up?”

The whole table goes silent.

Auntie Gwen chokes on her sweet tea.

“Eat your food, Jaylen,” Mama says, without looking up.

“But Mama Denise, she was in the video, and the man was carrying her like this…” He puts his arms up like he’s carrying a sack of potatoes.

“Jaylen.”

He eats his food.

I’m staring at my plate. My face is hot. My whole body’s hot.

“Well,” Sister Moore says, real bright, “he was a big man, wasn’t he?”

“Sister Moore,” Mama says.

“I’m just saying, Denise…”

Somebody knocks on the front door.

Everybody looks up.

Three knocks. Slow. Heavy. The kind of knock that rattles the security bars.

My fork stops halfway to my mouth.

Mama looks at me across the table. She looks at my face. Whatever she sees there, she puts her fork down, wipes her mouth with her napkin, and stands up.

“Mama, don’t…”