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12 AT RAFFERTy’S Black woman, late 20s maybe, with a toddler in a yankees cap at Rafferty’s, it’s past 9, what’s your story, woman? He’s squirmy and four, his toys lined up by the condiments, and it’s Friday, so the place is jammed— students, jocks, couple teachers, the usual cell phone zombies. Why here so late? What’s this child doing eating a healthy spinach salad? As you walk to the bus he says, Momma, the bus is crinkly, and you say Now, how is that? and straining in his knapsack he waves his hands at the heat waves that ripple from the wowing motor and you say Oh I see standing on the pavement stiff and dignified against the corrugated night. Woman, you and he are happier than this whole crowd, these college kids and their self-conscious professors, their boomer parents in tragic jeans-and-blazers, the four sharp dykes behind me, the hostess with the air-brake voice, the waitstaff and the girl at the register with the tongue piercing, snake tats and implants because you are noble, you and your fine dinner partner who attends his sober mother who pays in cash, holds his left hand tight in her right, house keys in her left. ...

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