You’re doing it wrong! a brassy voice informs me…I turn from the stove to find an elfin Creole woman with four gold teeth and bright red lipstick watching me…
“I fell,” said Mom on our semi-weekly phone call. Her voice strained as if in pain and sounded thick as if I had awakened her from sleep. “I’m okay. It’s nothing.”
I didn’t notice them gathering behind me until I heard a chorus of “Excuse me!” Five shiny-faced Japanese schoolchildren, aged perhaps ten or eleven, had arranged themselves in a neat line.