And I — God forgive me — had told my own wife to be quiet.

“My mother knows what’s best for us,” I said.

I said it to Amina’s face.

I have spent a great deal of time since, in a therapist’s office and out of it, trying to understand the man who handed over that card, because from the outside he looks like a simple fool, and the truth is stranger and sadder than foolishness.

I did not give my mother my salary because I was stupid about money.

I gave it to her because somewhere very deep, in a place I had never examined, I believed that her approval was the thing that made me real — that I was only a good son, a worthy person, a man who had turned out right, for exactly as long as I did what she wanted.