Most days, Ruth couldn’t stop thinking about her baby. She burrowed in the cathedral of books at the library, where she could lose herself in differential equations and probabilities, but she had trouble focusing. She wanted to fall in love with math again the way she had in high school, but the numbers became indecipherable and began to resemble a foreign language.

Doubt gnawed at her and panic crawled up her spine when she considered that the one thing she could always count on no matter what was slowly slipping away. Even as an unwed, pregnant teenager, she was still smart. Her mistake couldn’t erode something so innate. All that changed at Yale, where she was often one of the only Black students in her class. It soon became apparent to her that an A in Ganton schools equaled a C in the prep schools these rich kids came from.

She couldn’t flunk her classes and lose her scholarship, returning to Ganton a failure. Not after all her grandparents and brother had sacrificed to give her this opportunity. On one late night of studying, she dropped a quarter and a dime into a pay phone outside the library, then dialed her home number.

“Hello.” Mama’s voice croaked like she hadn’t used it in hours.

“Were you asleep? Did I wake you up?”

Clearing her throat, her grandmother said, “No, baby. I was up. What’s wrong?”

A deluge of tears gathered in the back of Ruth’s throat. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine, Mama.”

Silence stretched between them for what felt like minutes but had to be only seconds. She heard Mama’s heavy breathing on the other end and found it oddly comforting.

“If you need money, I can talk to Eli and have him send you a little bit. He doesn’t get paid again until this Friday. So, you may have to wait till then.”

“I’m good on money. I still have some left from what you all sent last time.”

“All right then. How are your studies coming?”

From her backpack, Ruth pulled her quiz sheet from Multivariable Calculus for Engineers and stared at her failing grade under the light of a streetlamp. She crumpled the paper in her fist. “Classes are good. You know me. I love school. Things are fine. Look, I know it’s late. I’m gonna let you go now.”

“Ruth?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You deserve to be there just like those other kids. Don’t forget that. I’m proud of you, baby.”

Pressing the phone to her ear, Ruth cradled it, tucking Mama’s words and her voice in her memory. Afraid her own voice would betray her, she gently placed the receiver back into its cradle.

Chemical engineering had a reputation for punching out those who couldn’t cut it. Professors seemed to revel in this up-or-out approach to academia. When engineering students formed study groups, it was the Darwinian process of picking teams in grade-school gym class all over again. In the survival-of-the-fittest game, they chose Ruth last or simply left her out.

Desperate for motivation to fight, she conjured the memory she usually pushed to the corner of her mind because it was too painful to remember. Her baby boy’s eyes and the disappointment she’d left in them. Walking away from him couldn’t have been all for nothing. So, she found a tutor through the National Society of Black Engineers and burned that midnight oil, as Papa used to say when he took on extra shifts at the plant. Determined to not just stay afloat, but swim, she climbed from failing grades to solid B’s in every class.

Ruth dug out Mama’s Bible and flipped to the back, where she knew her grandmother kept photos that hadn’t made it into the family photo album. A shot of Eli as a kid on his skateboard, jumping over a crack in the sidewalk. One of Mama’s brother, Uncle Mitch, in his crisp white U.S. Navy uniform, smiling like he was excited to go off to war when he’d actually just been unlucky in the draft. Ruth found a few snapshots of herself when she couldn’t have been more than three or four, cheesing for the camera, poking her tongue through a gap in her front teeth.

She riffled through the photos until she landed on a picture of her mother as a teenage girl. Mama and Papa had named their only child Joanna, after a woman from the New Testament whom Jesus had healed once and come to rely on as a traveling companion.

In this shot, Joanna wore a ratty fuchsia coat that could only be described as gaudy, flaring at the hips and stopping midthigh. If she was wearing a skirt, you couldn’t see it, so she may as well have been naked from the waist down. A glaring, brassy necklace obviously on the cheap side sat on her neck catching the camera’s light.

Mama and Papa had Joanna late in life, and from what Ruth could tell, they’d spoiled her, entertaining the girl’s every whim, giving her a wide berth. Joanna had taken full advantage of her freedom and indulged in anything and everything she wanted, including crack cocaine.

It never made sense that Joanna chose that poison over her own children. How did a mother make that calculation? But who was Ruth to judge? You could say Yale had been her crack. The lure of it so potent she left her baby behind for it.

As a girl, Ruth asked her grandparents where her mother had gone. They always said she was sick and needed time away to recuperate. Leaving the door open for a miraculous, triumphant return someday. A prodigal daughter moment that never came, and Ruth began to wonder if her mother was even alive.

At school, students drew pictures of their mommies and daddies and explained their occupations as best they could with their childlike comprehension of the world. When Ruth received this assignment in Miss Albert’s first-grade class, she pressed the crayon hard on the dark green construction paper, drawing a brown outline of Papa. Big hands. Big work boots. And for his hair, she left part of it bare on top and colored in the sides with gray crayon. She used the same gray crayon to fill in Mama’s curls that framed her face beautifully.