The night she and Daddy told him he was getting a little sister, they went out for hot fudge sundaes before dinner. A drop of chocolate stained Midnight’s wide-ruled notebook paper where he made a list of all the things he’d teach her: the right way to throw a spitball, how to dig for worms, and the proper form for pitching a curveball. Midnight would always have a seven-year head start and she’d never catch up. He liked it that way. When she was old enough, he decided he’d take her to the junkyard to sift through metal for something special, like the time he and Daddy found a grille and lights from a damaged cop car. Daddy had let him keep both in his bedroom to show off to his friends when they slept over.

“Can I hold her when she gets here? I won’t drop her. I swear I won’t,” he’d said to Mom.

“Yes, sweetheart. I promise,” she’d answered, looking him in the eye.

Daddy just grinned like he always did back then, even when he had to work overtime at the plant to bring in extra money for the crib and all the other baby stuff. The night Mom’s water broke, Daddy ran all the red lights to get them to the hospital. He sang the whole way to keep Mom calm.

The hospital smelled funny, like a mix of Lysol and cough syrup. People in white coats and what looked like pastel pajamas rushed around holding clipboards and checking their pagers.

They didn’t allow kids inside the birthing room, so Granny waited with Midnight down the hall, close enough though to see Mom’s room. They tried to decide who his little sister would look like—whether she’d have Daddy’s long, narrow nose or Mom’s pink lips and sandy hair.

Just when he and Granny were about to start playing Uno, the door to Mom’s hospital room swung open and Daddy flew out of it like he’d been knocked back by a blast from an explosion. Even now, Midnight could still see Daddy’s body hitting that wall behind him and sinking to the floor. Granny jumped from her seat quicker than Midnight had ever seen her move. He got up, too.

A tall doctor walked toward them, his head down, and it looked to Midnight that the man’s eyeglasses might tumble from the tip of his nose. When the doctor finally spoke, he said Hannah didn’t make it. It took a couple of seconds for Midnight to recognize his mother’s actual name, and he didn’t know right away what didn’t make it meant until Granny fell against a chair and Daddy squeezed his head between his hands as if it would fall apart unless he held it together.

All the lights went out in Midnight’s brain and he couldn’t make sense of what anyone said after that. Later, Granny would remind him that the doctor had said Mom and his little sister had died of something with a weird name. Preeclampsia. It had something to do with high blood pressure, which made no sense. Granny was his mom’s mom and she had that, and she still lived to get old. His sister hadn’t even lived long enough to get a name of her own.

Midnight wondered what he had done wrong. Why had Mom lied about all the things he’d get to do with his little sister? Was she mad about that time he tried to stick her tampons up his nose? Or because he never cleaned his room when she told him to? Or helped her wash dishes?

Midnight watched from the doorway of her hospital room as Daddy and Granny tiptoed in as if Mom were asleep and might wake up if they made too much noise. From the doorway, he saw her in the bed, but with everybody gathered around, they were blocking her face. He almost screamed and ran away but didn’t want Daddy to think he was a little punk, something he called him when he refused to touch a dead possum or a snake slithering on the side of the road. So, he stood there, close enough to prove his manhood, but far enough away that his clearest memories of his mother would not be of her lying there in that bed, dead.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t forgive her. To him death was just another way people broke their promises. A way for them to leave and have the last word.

Six

Ruth

Every time Ruth held her key card up to the wall reader on the twenty-third floor, she heard a soft click, then saw a green light that brought her more relief than she cared to admit. That small token granted her access through the electric-powered doors into the inner sanctum of Langham, the consumer-packaged-goods company where she’d worked since graduating college.

Nothing had been the same with Xavier since Thanksgiving, when she told him the truth about her baby, so when she walked into the reception area at Langham the Monday after, the air felt different, lighter somehow. Here, she could surround herself with the certainty of product testing and avoid the variability in her personal life. The laboratory had always been her refuge, and she immersed herself in building laundry detergent formulas. Yet lately, she felt the way she had as a kid in gym class teetering on the balance beam, where one misstep could land her in a heap on the floor.

Once a week, Ruth sent her lab coat out for dry cleaning, because she preferred it neatly pressed, the fabric crisp and white without blemish. After a few years on the job, some of her colleagues had settled into a more casual relationship with the company, their dress sporadically slouchy and their performance erratic. But when you came from where Ruth did, you knew what the bottom looked like, and you couldn’t slip and fall back there again.

Shelley, the Black assistant who sat at the front desk to greet visitors, nodded to Ruth in sisterly approval. Obama’s win had widened her smile more than usual and Ruth grinned back.