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The garbage truck driver in my neighbourhood has acquired the intuitive ability to know which households don’t have their shit together. I knew this because on that sunny but lousy morning the beeping of his truck lingered at the front of our yard longer than it typically should. Ma hadn’t seemed to be doing well again and had to be kept in sight. So despite his grace, I wouldn’t make the garbage run that morning.

Ma paced about the house and fidgeted. I watched her as she lifted a brass ornament with intent, only to then gently place it down. Suddenly Ma assembled a stack of random papers and stuffed them into her handbag.

“I have a viewing this morning,” she said. “The estate agent will arrive at nine am sharp to walk me to the house.”

When announcing a house move, Ma had rarely said more than that, though, in her defence, we’d never moved far enough for me to have to explore a new neighbourhood, nor had we stayed in a home long enough for me to need to say goodbye. “I’ll join you,” I said. As we waited for the estate agent, I quietly admired the thick black dreadlocks that rested against Ma’s back. I wondered how I’d come to have a back so slouched when hers was as upright as the steel gate we stood beside. I wondered what she’d been like when she was my age, whether she’d had sex yet and what her biggest secret from her mother had been. Then I wondered what her relationship with her mother had been like, and