Page 36 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“My mother still has the picture in the hallway,” I said. “Right next to my junior high school photo, which should tell you something about my mother’s hierarchy.”

“I like your mother,” he said.

“She’d take that as an insult.”

“I know.” He reached for his own bread, unhurried. “That’s how I know she’d respect it.”

We were into the second course—shrimp, something that I ate without bothering to identify all the components because it was good—when he asked me what I listened to as a kid.

“In the car?” I asked.

“Wherever.”

“My mother played the radio,” I said. “WQUE on Saturday mornings. That was non-negotiable. The whole house smelled like whatever she was cooking, and there was always the radio. Old stuff. Earth, Wind and Fire. Frankie Beverly. She’d sing wrong and loud, which is its own gift.”

“Wrong how?”

“Like—she knew the vibes of the lyrics but not the specifics. So, sometimes she’d just replace a whole line with sounds that fit the melody.” I did a brief, generous imitation that made Amai put his fork down, so he could laugh.

“My mother did the same thing,” he said, when he recovered. “She still does it. I heard her do it in church.”

“Dangerous in church.”

“She was singing something by Kirk Franklin, and one of the runs—she just replaced it with her own syllables. Nobody around her reacted. They were all doing it.”

“That’s community,” I said. “That’s what that is.”

He smiled at that, and it was different from his other smiles—no overthinking in it, just ease.

“What about you?” I said. “What were you playing when you were driving around here at seventeen, trying to be scary.”

“I was not trying to be scary at seventeen.”

“That is a lie.”

He paused. “Ugh,” he said. “Juvenile. Some Wayne, early. Birdman when the first album dropped.”

“Okay, I respect that. What else?”

“Genuine answer?”

“Please.”

“Bobby Womack,” he said and looked at me with the air of a man who had committed to honesty and was prepared for judgment.

I pointed at him. “Yes.”

“Nobody from my age group was listening to Bobby Womack.”

“I was.”

“Because of your mother.”

“My mother is right about most things,” I said. “That’s the part I didn’t want to admit until I was grown. If You Think You’re Lonely Now is a complete piece of art. I am standing by that.”

“The Poet album,” he said. “My grandfather had it on vinyl. I used to sit in his living room and listen to the whole thing and act like I wasn’t listening because I was supposed to be reading something.”

“That’s the most tender thing you’ve said to me in months,” I told him.