"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't hover in the kitchen once people get here. Take the little ones to the yard. You're the oldest."
"I know."
She paused with her hand on the refrigerator. He was looking at the handle, not at her, which she took for moodiness and which was, in fact, the last of his practice. He had said the sentence into the bathroom mirror before she was up. He had said it softly, because soft seemed like a way she could agree without anyone else having to hear her change her mind. Mama, it's my birthday too. The words had sounded smaller in the tile than they had in his head on Thursday night, when Leon had said they'd do it proper on Sunday. Thursday itself had been pancakes and a five-dollar bill under the plate and Denise not home until the note on the counter had already been written in Leon's hand: He liked them. She had stood in the doorway of Andre's room with her shoes still on and felt the old ache that did not behave like love and did not behave like dislike, and she had not woken him.
"Your grandmother's coming," she said now. "Be polite. Don't let Imani climb her."
"I won't."
"Andre."
"Yes, ma'am."
She almost added his birthday, four days late, the way a person adds a stamp to a letter that has already gone out. The words stopped behind her teeth. She went down the hall toward the zipper.
Imani stood on the rug in the bright dress, pink and orange and a green she had chosen herself at the store while Andre waited by the belts with his hands in his pockets. The sash was twisted. Imani's face was all arrival. Denise knelt, smelling the lotion on the girl's arms, and worked the zipper up without catching skin. Imani flinched, then laughed, and Denise's shoulders dropped in the old relief. This one shows you the gift on her face, she thought, and did not examine the thought for what it cost the boy in the hall. The other one looks at you like he's keeping the receipt.
"Hold still, birthday girl."