Summary

“The Mother” begins with the main character, a Black woman named Ms. Hawkins living on the East Side of New York, talking to a white woman who is asking her about someone named Joshua’s father. Ms. Hawkins used to be a prostitute, and she thinks about how her mother sold Ms. Hawkins’ body to men for money. Apparently, the white woman is a reporter who is looking to find out if Ms. Hawkins thinks her “son was God like them folks that was following behind him in Abilene” (4). It sounds like her son was running a cult and eventually got a lengthy prison sentence for allegedly checking a young girl’s genitals for cancer. His body disappeared shortly after he died, leading the reporters to come to Ms. Hawkins.

It sounds like Hawk, her son, was taken from her when...