Something passed between them that Malik could not read, a whole conversation in a language of two. Then Reverend Pike turned around, and Malik saw her face for the first time up close. It was a hard face. Lined at the mouth, unyielding at the eyes. But it was not hard at him. He would think about that for weeks. It was hard the way a coat is heavy. It was hard for him.
She took the suitcase handle out of his hand. He let her.
"Say goodbye to your brother, son," she said.
He went to the glass. He tapped it once with a knuckle, the way he did when he came home late and Jojo was supposed to be asleep and wasn't. Usually Jojo came running. Usually Jojo pressed his face against the other side and made a fish mouth.
Jojo held the tablet tighter against his stomach, shook his head, and backed into the dark of the living room until Malik couldn't see him anymore.
Malik turned around. His mother had not moved. She reached out, once, toward the drawstring of his hoodie, the beige one with the bleach spot on the cuff, and her fingers stopped an inch from it and stayed there. Then her hand went back inside her cardigan.
"Go on," she said.
He went.
II.
His grandmother drove a burgundy 2009 Buick LaCrosse that smelled like peppermints and the inside of a hymnal. She put the suitcase in the trunk herself, waving him off when he reached for it, and she adjusted her mirrors as if she had not adjusted them on the way down. The radio came on with the engine. It was not gospel. It was a baseball game, the playoffs, a man's calm voice describing a pitcher who kept shaking off his catcher.
Malik looked back once as they pulled away. His mother was still standing on the porch under the tea-colored light, arms folded. She did not wave. Across the street, Mr. Lucius Grant's porch light was on too, and the old man was standing at his railing, not pretending not to watch.
They were on the highway before either of them spoke.
"There's a clipboard under your seat," Reverend Pike said. "Pull it out."
He did. It was a scorecard, the old kind, with a grid of little diamonds and the lineups written in neat blue capital letters. The first four innings were filled in with symbols he didn't understand.
"I can't keep it and drive at night," she said. "My eyes aren't what they were. You'll do it."