I was standing on a stranger’s sidewalk, staring through a window at the daughter I hadn’t been allowed near in twelve years. She was laughing. Spooning mashed potatoes onto some kid’s plate like it was the most normal thing in the world.

And I just stood there on the concrete because my brain kind of stopped working for a second.

Let me back up. I went to prison when Keisha was nine. Possession. Five years. I’m not going to dress it up or pretend I was framed. I made my own bed. The part I can’t take back is that she went into the system the same week the cell door shut.

Before all that, it was just me and her in a little apartment off Marshall. She used to fall asleep on the couch during cartoons and I’d carry her to bed. She had this gap in her front teeth she hated and I loved. I used to leave the hall light on for her because she didn’t like the dark. That’s a detail that’s going to matter later, but back then it was just a thing moms do.

Three foster homes in five years. I heard pieces of it through a social worker who didn’t have to tell me anything but did. The first two were fine, she said. The third one was not. I won’t write what I found out about that third house. I couldn’t do anything from a cell anyway except read the same letter over and over and feel like garbage.

I got out when she was fourteen. I had this whole picture in my head. I’d show up, she’d cry, we’d hug, we’d start over. That’s not what happened. She wouldn’t see me. Not that year, not the next one.

She sent one message through the caseworker. “Tell her I’m okay.” That was it. That was all I got.

So I stopped pushing. I told myself I was respecting her space. Honestly I think I was just scared. Scared she’d say the thing out loud that I already believed about myself. That I’d thrown her away over nothing. Years went by. She aged out at eighteen. I didn’t even know where she landed. I’d given up trying to track her, which I’m not proud of either.

Then a couple weeks ago I ran into Miss Dolores from my old street at the pharmacy. We got to talking, the way you do. And she goes, real casual, “You know your girl runs a house out on Chestnut now? Takes in foster kids.” I just stood there in the aisle holding my blood pressure pills like an idiot.