KARTIKA REVIEW
Ruin Joe's life? My eyes sting. Something is caught in my throat, making it impossible to reply. I shake my head and drop the phone in my mother's lap. Reluctantly, she picks the telephone up and raises it to her ear. She says, “I'm sorry to bother you. Really, I am . . . but we're having a problem proving Bobby is an American citizen. We need a notarized copy of Joe's birth certificate.” Although I can hear the woman's muffled voice spilling out of the receiver, I can't make her words out. My mother nods and says, “Yes, of course I have the annulment, but the American embassy won't move forward without Joe's birth certificate.” After a pause, my mother frowns and says, “Of course we're not trying to make trouble for him and his family. What do you think of me? I'm also happily married and I also have other children." She lowers her head and doodles on a page in the notebook on her lap. While she does this, she gives the woman on the other end of the line our California address, which is over two thousand miles from Alabama. She nods and says, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” After a minute of silence, my mother says, "Okay." Then she tries to hand me the telephone. “Your grandmother wants to speak to you.” I shake my head and draw my hands away, but the frustrated expression on my mother's face tells me I had better take the phone. “Hello,” I say. The woman says flatly, “I hope you're old enough to understand we have nothing against you. Alabama wouldn't have been a good place for you people.” She pauses and adds, “I hope you get that.” You people? Symbiosis: unlike organisms coexisting harmoniously for mutual benefit. “Hello. Did you hear me?” I don't answer and the line goes dead. I stare at my mother and hand the phone back to her. She raises it and when she realizes no one is there, she replaces it in its cradle. For a moment she looks lost, far away. Then she touches my arm and says, “What did your grandmother say?” I look at my hands and do not answer. I look across to the mirror above my mother's dresser and do not recognize the boy who gazes 50