He opened one from the middle. February. Daddy called. He sounds different. He sounds tired. He says you're the one who wanted me gone. Is that true? You can just write yes or no.
He opened one near the end. The handwriting had gotten smaller and straighter, like it had stopped running and started walking very carefully.
Mama. I'm not going to write anymore. You never write back so I guess you don't need me to. Aunt Bernice says I can come home in August. I'll come home. But I want you to know I know now. I know I was the problem in that house. I'm not stupid. Clara.
Malik sat on the floor of his mother's childhood closet with the shoebox open on his knees and read every single letter, all forty-one, until the window went from black to blue. Then he put them back in order, and put the rubber bands on, and did not put the box back on the shelf. He put it on the desk, in the middle, where it could not be missed.
V.
Josiah Lyle-Whitfield was six years old, and he knew three things that nobody knew he knew.
He knew that a stegosaurus's brain was the size of a walnut, which was not a secret but which nobody believed. He knew that Mommy kept a letter behind the Raisin Bran, because he had seen her put it there and then stand with her forehead on the cabinet door for a long time. And he knew that the reason Malik had to go live with the church grandma was him.
It had started at Aunt Tanya's. Aunt Tanya was his daddy's sister and she lived in a yellow apartment by the bowling alley and every other Sunday after church Mommy dropped him off there for three hours, because Aunt Tanya had always been nice and had given him the dinosaur sheets and cried when she hugged him. In September, Aunt Tanya's phone rang while he was eating SpaghettiOs, and she looked at it a long time, and then she said, "Somebody wants to say hi," and turned it around.
It was a man's face. It was a nice face. It smiled. It said, "Hey, big man. You know who I am?"
Jojo did not, exactly. He knew he had a daddy who was Away. He knew there was a picture of a man holding baby-him in Aunt Tanya's hallway. The face on the phone was the face in the picture, older.
"I'm your daddy," the man said. "Man, look at you. You got big."
Afterward, Aunt Tanya said, "Maybe don't mention that to your mama yet, sweet pea. It'll just upset her," and her voice was funny, and Jojo nodded.
The next Sunday, the man said, "You got a tablet, right? I saw it. What's your name on there? I'll send you some dinosaur pictures." And Jojo said JojoRex, because he was proud of it, because Malik had made it for him.
Then the messages came. Not to Aunt Tanya's phone. To his tablet, in the blue app where Malik sent him pictures.
hey big man its daddy. this is our secret game ok? dont tell mommy, she'll take the tablet.