They kept fighting, fighting over the broken glass, even though Jeremiah was about to lose his flip-flops. A few times I said, “Stop!” but they couldn’t hear me. They looked alike. I’d never noticed how alike they looked. But right then they looked like brothers. They kept struggling until suddenly, in the midst of it all, my mother was there. I guessed she’d come through the other screen door. I don’t know—she was just there. She broke the two of them apart with this incredible kind of brute strength, the kind only mothers have.
She held them apart with a hand on each of their chests. “You two need to stop,” she said, and instead of sounding mad, she sounded so sad. She sounded like she might cry, and my mother never cried.
They were breathing hard, not looking at each other, but they w
