While sipping coffee in my mother’s Toyota, we hear the birdcall of two teenage boysin the parking lot: Aiight, one says, Besaydoo, the other returns, as they reachfor each other. Their cupped handshake pops like the first, fat, firecrackers of summer,their fingers shimmy as if they’re solving a Rubik’s cube just beyond our sight. Momentslater, their Schwinns head in opposite directions. My mother turns to me, revealing themilky, John-Waters-mustache-thin foam on her upper lip, Wetin dem bin say?Besaydoo? Nar English? she asks, tickled by this tangle of new language. Alright.Be safe dude, I pull apart each syllable like string cheese for her. Oh yah, dem nar real padi,she smiles, surprisingly broken by the tenderness expressed by what half my family might callthugs. Besaydoo. Besaydoo. Besaydoo, we chirp in the car, then nightly into our phonesafter I leave California. Besaydoo, she says as she softly muffles the rattling of my bonesin newfound sobriety. Besaydoo, I say years later, her response made raspy by an oxygentreatment at the ER. Besaydoo, we whisper to each other across the country. Likesome word from deep in a somewhere too newborn-pure for the outdoors, but wesaw those two boys do it, in broad daylight, under a decadent, ruinous, sun.