I know that looks like a typo— Mama-s instead of Mama’s —but that’s how she wrote it on the kitchen calendar. That little dash was her signature. It meant urgency.
“Does she sit alone at lunch?”
“You see,” Mama said, sliding a wrinkled notebook across the table. “For eleven years, I keep these notes. September 12th: She comes home hungry. Says the other children trade her apple for nothing. October 4th: She stops raising her hand.” Mama-s Secret Parent Teacher Conference -Final-
Most parents walked into conferences armed with report cards and star charts. My mother walked in armed with silence. She never asked about grades. She never looked at the math scores or the reading comprehension percentiles. Instead, she would sit in the tiny plastic chair—her knees almost hitting her chin—and ask the same question every single time: I know that looks like a typo— Mama-s