Mom came in and sat with me on my bed, her face a ponderous mirror. She studied me for a long time in the daylight, then touched the crown of my dreadlocks. “Anywhere you go, I’m going too,” she said. Her kind face was a mercy. It told me, with her warm eyes searching, that she already knew, somehow, about the nail. She moved to the end of the bed now and placed my feet in her lap. Rubbing her hands together until they were warm, she made a bronze fire in her palms, then touched them tender to my throbbing foot.
