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asked me to put gel in it so he could comb it back off his forehead the way he liked. His friend Keke down the street told him it looked cool that way. She’s the girl who once put cornrows in his hair so her judgment was not always reliable.
    Mrs. Warren looked at Noah and a hand went to her throat.
    I approached warily.
    “Good morning,” I said.
    “Wiley,” Mr. Warren said.
    Then he said no more.
    “Hello,” Noah said nervously, loudly, refusing to be ignored.
    “Hello, Noah,” Mr. Warren said, looking down at him.
    Do you remember your grandmother and grandfather? I signed.
    He shook his head, but smiled hopefully.
    “How is he?” Mrs. Warren asked.
    She wants to know how you are, I signed .
    “I fine,” he said to her, smiling and showing his mismatched teeth, the gaps, the doubles, the hell that his dentist patiently tried to soothe.
    “He’s gotten so big,” she observed.
    She looked at her husband as if to judge how to proceed. The determined set of his jaw and the hard flint in his eyes were palpable. She lowered her gaze and said nothing further, deferring to his judgment. Mr. Warren was very good at judgment.
    I put my hand on Noah’s shoulder and pulled him close.
    “He is your grandson,” I pointed out quietly. “No matter what you think of me.”
    “I believe I made our feelings quite clear to you, Wiley,” Mr. Warren said, staring at me as if defying me to look away. “Since you refused to give up custody of Noah so that he could be raised in a decent, proper home— our home —a Christian home, you left us no choice. Raising the boy in a homosexual environment… but let’s not get into that .”
    The last time I had seen Mr. and Mrs. Warren, they were standing on the other side of an incubator, looking at the pathetic, scrawny little thing that was their grandson, born a month too soon, addicted to crystal meth thanks to his mother, cursed with various and sundry birth defects. They came to announce that their daughter Kayla had run off and would not be coming back, and that they had decided they would take care of Noah themselves if I gave up parental rights and disappeared into the background. Clearly they had given the matter a great deal of serious thought. Had even talked to their lawyer.
    They seemed surprised when I refused.
    They had come up with what they considered, in their business-like minds, the only possible solution to the problem that was their grandson. They were genuinely upset when I told them I would not disappear, that Noah was my son and I would take full responsibility for him, no matter what, even if I was gay and not a very good person. I was not going to cut and run like their daughter. They were welcome to help and be part of his life, but I was not going to be chased off.
    “Then we wish you the best,” Mr. Warren had said, steering his wife out of the hospital room and refusing to listen to her protests.
    Standing there now, with the two of them, I couldn’t help but think of that night.
    True to their word, they had nothing to do with Noah. No birthday cards, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas presents. They did not call and ask how Noah was doing. They did not ask to have Noah for a couple of weeks over the summer so that I could have a break from parenting and they could spend quality time with their flesh and blood. They were not concerned about his health, his progress at school, his grades, his hearing aids, what his favorite sport was, who his favorite superhero was, what it was like to experience the world as a deaf child.
    Noah looked up to me, sensing the tension in my body, his eyes asking what was wrong. I shook my head in a way that suggested something was wrong but he was not to worry about it.
    He put his arm around my waist.
    We waited for Kayla’s release in silence. The camera was a reassuring weight against my chest.
    At about five minutes to eight, another car pulled up, parking at some distance from us. It had modified rims, tinted