that’s all he’s done his whole life,
disappear and reappear. He’ll go off
on a drinking binge and then pop
back up out of nowhere a week
later.
Then you have my mother,
Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. “She
Who Gives Back.” That’s what she
does. She gives and gives and gives.
She did it even as a girl in Soweto.
Playing in the streets she would
find toddlers, three- and four-year-
olds, running around unsupervised
all day long. Their fathers were
gone and their mothers were
drunks. My mom, who was only six
or seven herself, used to round up