“No.”
I looked at her.
“It isn’t.”
She grew quiet.
My aunt stepped out of the room, leaving us alone.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I asked the question I should have asked months earlier.
“Will you show me how you call me?”
She laughed.
“You taught me.”
“I know.
Show me anyway.”
She reached for the phone.
Her movements were careful.
She unlocked it, searched for the video-call icon, hesitated, then glanced at me.
“This one?”
“Yes.”
She pressed it.
Then she accidentally opened the wrong screen.
Immediately, she looked embarrassed.
“See? I still get everything wrong.”
Months earlier, I would have corrected her before she finished speaking.
This time I waited.
She backed out, tried again, and found the right place.
“There,” I said.
Her face brightened.
“I remembered.”
“You did.”
She turned the front camera on.
For one second, the phone showed the ceiling.
We both looked at it.
Then I started laughing.
My mother laughed too.
Not the nervous smile she used when she thought I was irritated.
A real laugh.
She lowered the phone until both of our faces appeared on the screen.
“There,” she said proudly.
Then, almost automatically, she asked the question she had asked me countless times.
“Can you hear me now, my son?”
I couldn’t answer immediately.
My throat tightened.
“Yes, Mom.”
I looked at her directly instead of at the clock, another message, or some task waiting for me.
“I can hear you.”
She studied my face, perhaps confused by why such a simple answer seemed to matter so much.
That afternoon I stayed longer than I had planned.
Nothing dramatic happened.
There was no grand confession.
No speech.
No sudden repair of every missed moment.
We drank something together.
She told me about a neighbor.
She complained about the price of groceries.
She repeated a story I had already heard.
She asked about work, then asked again twenty minutes later because another thought had distracted her.
Ordinary things.
