Two grown men at a table designed for eight-year-olds, doing pipe cleaners, in April.

Part Sixteen: The Sentence, Eight Years Late

My mother met my son for the first time on the eleventh of June, seven months after Congress Avenue, for forty minutes, at a park, with Carmen present.

It took seven months because Carmen set the terms and the terms were not negotiable and I did not try to negotiate them.

They were: no gifts.

Not a small one.

Not a book.

Nothing brought.

No Grandma.

She was Loretta until such time as a child decided otherwise, and nobody was to suggest it, ever, including me.