“It sounds mad,” he said.
“It is,” I muttered. “But it’s going to keep all that mad sh—stuff outside.”
He studied my face like he was checking me for bullshit again, and then he nodded.
“You scared?” he asked.
“Of hurricanes?” He nodded. “Nah.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I can’t do anything about it. Ain’t no point in being scared of something you can’t fight.”
He thought about it for a second with a puzzled look on his face. “Hurricane got hands?” he asked.
“Nah, and that’s exactly why you can’t fight them.” That got a little laugh out of him and me too.
“How come I don’t see you?”
There it was. The question I knew was coming, and one I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer. I held his gaze for a second.
“I didn’t know where you were,” I said like it was that simple. I watched his forehead wrinkle up just like mine when I thought someone was full of it.
“You didn’t know?” he asked.
“Nah.”
“But Mama knows where we be.”
“Yeah, she does.” I paused. “I’m just finding out, though.” He sat with that for a second, staring at me like he was thinking. Kids always sensed when adults were skipping parts of the truth.
“You look like me,” he said suddenly.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I noticed that too.”
“You got cereal?”
I huffed. “Cereal?”
“Yeah. The little circle ones.”
I laughed a bit while shaking my head. It was amazing how kids could hop from one thing to the next so quickly.
“You talking about Cheerios?”
He shook his head.
“Not those, the color ones.”
My eyes wandered toward the back corner where I’d stacked some of the shit I grabbed from upstairs last night. A small box of Froot Loops stuck out.
“Aw, you’re talking about Froot Loops,” I said when it finally clicked. A few minutes ago, we were talking about death and abandonment. Now this little dude wanted breakfast. “Come on. I got Froot Loops.”
“Yeah, Froot Loops.”
We made our way over to the little table that sat in the corner. I was glad I’d gone upstairs earlier and brought food down before the storm got worse. There was no way we were going anywhere near those windows with Hurricane Imani hitting like this now. I grabbed the box, poured some into a bowl, then picked up the milk and paused. Shit, was it okay to drink milk that had been sitting out for a few hours? I stared at the carton and then glanced at the expiration date. This milk had expired two days ago. Yeah . . . nah. I set it back down.
“You like dry cereal?”
