and I felt the ache for them to know the real woman mauma was, not just the cunning one, but the one smelted from iron, the one who paced the nights and prayed to my granny-mauma. Mauma had yearned more in a day than they felt in a year. She’d worked herself to the bone and courted danger, searching for something better. I wanted them to know that woman. That was the one who wouldn’t leave me.
