I am a mother and a daughter. But I was not mothered—at least not in any traditional sense. Five months after they met, my parents were married: She’d just turned twenty-one; he was six months younger. They bought a house with red stairs, a half-block from the beach in Santa Monica. Five years later, in 1970, they had me. But in March 1973 my mother divorced my father, and a few months later, she called to tell him that she was leaving me at her parents’ house in Berkeley. The next day, my maternal grandmother met my father at the Oakland airport with me in her arms. My mother cut off all communication with her family and friends.

I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner when I heard the glass shatter. I simultaneously took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and waited for the inevitable outburst.

Desmond turns to us as we watch television and says, “I want another cat.” His lengthy eleven-year-old body reclines on our worn leather couch, hands clasped behind his head, his elbows spread like wings. After three days, his crying has subsided, and his confident expression suggests he has solved a problem.