I ran a finger down the fugly striped tie AJ was wearing in the old, yellowing class photo—fourth grade, we were in then.

I definitely remembered that face. But what had his mother been thinking, sending him to school with that terrible tie around his neck? Lord...

I was one kid down from him, too, just like he'd said. My eyes all startled like the photographer had barked "Boo" instead of "Say cheese" or whatever little stupid little thing he'd yelled out trying to get smiles that would convince our parents to pay for those mug shots.

I was kind of chuckling to myself, thinking how different our lives had turned out—and that his stylist would have a stroke if he went out in public in a tie like that now—when my Aunt Jennie yanked open the closet door all the way and bellowed, "Girl, what on Earth are you doin' in here?! We got a house fulla people come to pay their respects and you--"

I struggled up off the stack of quilts and blankets I'd been sitting on and sputtered, "I was just...I wanted to...find some old pictures of Mama Sadie to...to maybe put out somewhere..."

Which was partly true.

But the whole truth was...well, right after AJ and I ran into each other at the Target, I drove over to my mother's house. Okay, technically, she was actually the aunt who raised me after my real mother died.

Mama Sadie, we all called her. Tiny, feisty little woman she was.

Or had been—God, I still haven't gotten over finding her out in the garden that day. I mean, I thought it was a pile of old clothes or something laying there. Like she was going to make a scarecrow or something, between the rows of collards and tomatoes and whatnot.

Paramedics said she'd been down a good while probably—I was so hysterical I'm not sure what all they said, to be honest.

Cause she'd raised me like I was her own, that woman. Maybe because she'd miscarried a bunch of times, I don't know. But she treated me like she'd carried me in that wonky womb of hers full term. And I loved the hell out of her for it.

So, on the day of the family "celebration" she'd asked for—I'll explain in a minute—I went to her bedroom closet looking for pictures of her to put out on a little altar thing I'd made on a table in Aunt Jennie's big backyard across the street.

Like a lot of our elders, Mama Sadie'd kept huge boxes full of pictures. So many that after a while she quit even trying to put them into albums. So many I gave up on digitizing them, too.

One of the photo albums she had updated regularly was a big red one with "SCHOOL" written on the front in the big, block letters I'd learned to make in kindergarten. I'd been so proud to have a picture book all to myself.

When I found it that day, I flipped it open and there he was. Little Ahn Ji-Yeong. Even cuter than I remembered, actually. Big old eyes and Cupid's bow lips—those lips were the girlish part I told you about earlier. More than made up for that damned tie...

And something about those pictures of us and the smell of the Chanel perfume Mama used to dab on her neck before Sunday service kind of comforted me, you know? So, I sank down against all the clothes and blankets and quilts and things she'd squirreled away in that closet with all those picture boxes and just kept flipping and smiling...flipping and smiling...

I just wanted to feel her presence again in some kind of way, you know? I just couldn't get used to her not being there with us anymore.

She'd been so spry for eighty-seven. But apparently she'd hidden—and neglected—her high blood pressure and some other medical issues while I was gone.

And I'd gotten my own little place when I came back from Cali where my dream of becoming some kind of celebrity chef had slowly died on the vine. I was thinking I might eventually want to start dating again once I'd recovered from the toxic trainwreck I'd left behind in LA. And there was no way she would've put up with me bringing some guy home. Or staying out all night, either.

But my not living there allowed her to keep on acting like there was nothing wrong until the pressure built up so much it just popped a vessel. A few vessels, I guess.

So, we were trying to do what she'd told us she wanted us to do when she passed, that day I hid in the closet. She'd repeated it many times to many family members, to make sure.

We were to wait a few weeks after she was buried and throw a big "celebration gathering" of family and friends. "No moanin' and groanin', just drinkin' and dancin'," she told me. Wagging a little skeleton finger in my face the last time she reminded me.

I was fine with that. Because I couldn't have handled them giving me shit about my "college degree cooking" as fragile as I was right after she passed.

I have a degree in "dietetics." No cap, that's how I got the job at our school district: Director of Food Services. Don't get all excited, we have less than 1000 kids in our two little schools. I was catering on the side mostly because the pay was so bad, although I did like being able to flex my skills from time to time.

But like a lot of black families, mine could be picky as hell about even the most traditional soul food, let alone what they called my "hincty" healthier stuff. Old habits didn't die hard in our little corner of the world, they didn't die, period.

But my mother had.

Which is why I was only half-heartedly hosting that "celebration" she'd asked for.

I mean, I wanted to be as strong as Mama Sadie that day. But even when people started rolling up to Jennie's with their arms full of food and my cousin Jaymes—don't ask me where the "y" came from—started mixing music so loud you could hear it in Phoenix, I didn't feel like clappin' and finger snappin'.

But I was about to straighten up and head on out to the back yard when Jennie's daughter Beneatha—don't ask me how they gave that child a name like that the day she was born, either—came running in talking about, "Y'all need to come see this boy dancin' like MC Hammer out here!"

Ran right back out like her ass was on fire. So, I went over to the window and saw this big old crowd all ringed around...

The K-pop King.

Who was doin' it to death, I'm not gonna lie.

Jaymes had put on "Too Legit to Quit" and the men folk had jumped up to do their thang like always. But they couldn't top this kid who did his thang on stages all over the goddamned world.

It was like he'd actually learned that whole dance Hammer does toward the end of that long ass video. And he made it look easy, too, all that poppin' and lockin' and twistin' and jiggin' around—he was smooth with it.

Had all the young women watching him kill it out there. While his grandparents sat at one of the tables with almost no expression on their faces.

They'd always been like that, though. Some people thought they were mean, but I thought it might be a cultural thing, not to get all emotional in front of people.

We'd also been taught to smile and nod and speak politely in the presence of strangers because people liked to say how loud Black folks were. But the Ahns had a quiet dignity that felt deeper than that. So, they were watching AJ as if he were another species almost, out there jumping and bumping.

And just as I was heading outside to get a closer look, Aunt Jennie came rushing up to me yelling, "Wave that boy down so he can come in here and show us how he made that chicken he brought—you get a piece?"

"Chicken?"

"We got big old platters o' chicken all up and down that buffet table but they huffin' and puffin' 'cause everybody snatched up that kind he—"

"Taste this," Beneatha said, shoving a little nugget into my mouth.

And I normally would've gotten after her for sticking her fingers that close to my lips, but I when I heard that batter snap, crackle and pop in my mouth I swear to God my eyes almost rolled back—it was sweet, too.

And Bennie (I can't keep calling that child Beneatha) said, "Got a little kick to it, right?" Just as the heat registered somewhere on my taste buds.

I could see why people were trying to pick the crumbs off each other's plates. Shit was like crack, I swear.

So, I shoved my way through the ring of rookies ogling his fine ass like he was a piece of chicken they were dying to get their hands on.

And child, when that man spun around and landed facing me, I forgot what a chicken even looked like, let alone how to ask him to go fry up some...