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door. My mother sat up with a start. “James?”
    “Who else could it be? You got another man you didn’t tel me about?” He laughed, fol owing her voice into the den. “Dana!” he cal ed, angling his

    voice toward my closed bedroom door.
    “I’m in the den, too,” I said.
    “Glad I didn’t wake anybody up.”
    James wasn’t wearing his uniform. This evening he was wearing jeans and a crisp blue shirt. In his arms was a large white box. He grabbed my mother around the waist and kissed her. “I love me a woman that can appreciate a cocktail. What you been drinking?”
    “I was about to ask you the same thing,” my mother said.
    “Cuba Libre.”
    “I can’t believe you are running the streets this time of night.” Mother was smiling while they talked. We both acted like we didn’t notice the big white box.
    “Can’t I come over any time I like because I miss my woman? Can’t I deliver a special gift for my baby girl?”
    I perked up. “That box is for me?”
    “You know it is.”
    “James, I know you haven’t been shopping at this hour.”
    “Who said nothing about shopping? I been playing cards, and I been playing wel .” He pul ed off the top of the box with a flourish, revealing a waist-length fur jacket, junior size 7 — too big, but I’d grow into it.
    “James,” my mother said, feeling the soft fur, “tel me you did not win this in a card game.”
    “Yes, I did. My buddy Charlie Ray was playing so bad; al his money was gone so he put this coat on the table.”
    My mother said, “James, you have to take it back. That coat belongs to someone.”
    “You are absolutely right. It belongs to me. And soon as she comes over here and gives me some sugar, it wil belong to Dana. Come on, baby girl, p-p-put this on, and let your daddy see how p-p-pretty you are.”
    I paused for a second at the hitch in his voice, but he smiled and I knew that it would be okay.
    The coat was piled on the floor beside him, and he held his arms outstretched. Feeling like I was in a movie, I hugged him around the neck and kissed him loudly on the cheek. James smel ed sweet, like liquor and cola. To this day and for the rest of my life, I wil always have a soft spot for a man with rum on his breath.
    I think about the world and the way that things take place and in what order. I am not one of those people who believe that everything happens for a reason. Or, if I am, I don’t believe that everything happens for a good reason. But the first time that I encountered my sister, Chaurisse, when I wasn’t under the careful supervision of my mother, was at the Atlanta Civic Center in 1983. There’s only so much that you can chalk up to coincidence. I believe in the eventuality of things. What’s done in the dark shal come to the light. What goes up comes down. What goes around comes around. There are a mil ion of these sayings, al , in their own way, true. And isn’t that what’s supposed to set you free?
    The citywide science fair was held on the day of my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday. This was my own private holiday that I celebrated each year.
    My real birthday, the ninth of May, was real y my mother’s day. She made a big deal of it, forcing me to dress like a pageant queen for a special meal at the Mansion restaurant on Ponce de Leon Avenue. The waiters brought food I couldn’t identify and my mother would say, “Isn’t this nice?
    Happy birthday! You’re growing up.” Mother’s attempts to make it special for just the two of us only reminded me how isolated we were. She and James were suspicious of outsiders, worried that someone might know someone who could expose us. You know what they say about southwest Atlanta.
    On my fourteenth-and-a-half birthday, I set my alarm for 5:37 a.m., the precise minute of my birth, and shuffled a deck of playing cards. I’d heard that there was a way you could use an ordinary pinochle deck to divine the future. The first six cards I dealt were hearts, and I hoped that