She had been, she realized, exactly as polite about it as Emmett.
"That's different," she said.
"How?"
"Because Leon's gone." It came out before she could choose it. "Because it's just me. Because I've got a stack of his hospital bills in the drawer under the microwave that I'm still paying down four years later, and I've got a seventeen-year-old who might, *might*, get his whole college paid for if he has the right game in front of the right man, and if he doesn't, then I don't know how it happens, Mama. I don't know how I pay for two of them. I can do the arithmetic. I do arithmetic all day. One of them has a door that's open right now and the other one has a door that's going to be open for years, and I thought—" She stopped.
"You thought the smart one would be fine," her mother said.
The stairwell was very quiet.
"Yes," Yolanda said. "God. Yes. That's exactly what I thought."
"Because you were."
"Was I?"
Mama Ruth didn't answer that, which was its own answer.
"Leon would have known about the basketballs," Yolanda said, after a while. "He'd have been in your basement dropping them with them. He'd have been the one who couldn't shut up about it at church."
"Leon would have been at every one of Emmett's things and every one of Dante's things," her mother said, "and he'd have been late to half of them and forgot his wallet at the other half, and you'd have been the one making sure the forms got signed. Don't make him a saint, baby. He was a good man. He wasn't a schedule."
Yolanda laughed, and it turned into something else halfway through, and she sat on the step and let it.
When she could talk again, she said, "Will you come to the game tonight? Emmett might not want to sit with me."
"I'll come. I'll bring the cushion." A pause. "Yolanda. You're not gonna fix this tonight."
"I know."
"No, listen to me. You're going to want to. You're going to want to buy him something or say something big or cry at him so he has to make you feel better. Don't. That boy has spent a long time making people feel better about him being easy. Don't give him one more job."