We both sat on the steps of the round cement hut that was this night's hotel room in the afternoon having set down and rummaged through our bags and thrown tap water at our faces and necks. I had cleaned a few handkerchiefs and was smoking while I watched them dry on the stiff shrubs under the room's window. Last night's hotel, on the other side of town, had been miserable with mosquitos. I had gotten up in the darkness and tried as well as I could to hang the net which I had not needed until then. I couldn't manage a tent like arrangement because I hadn't brought enough string. I achieved something more like a blanket hung on a post in the folds of which I curled on the bare dirty mattress feeling certain there were large gaps somewhere and that big swaths of net lay across my bare skin. My imagination plagued me. So today, though the rooms were far cleaner and there were screens on the window I set up my net nicely with newly purchased string so that it draped liberally onto the floor without touching my body. I offered to do the same for my mother, but she said she would risk it. She said it made her feel smothered, particularly in this heat. That last night the fan in her room didn't work was the greater nuisance, the greater intrusion on her composure. In the present room the fan worked well, though we both expressed our fear that it might fail in the night.

So, having each prepared for the evening according to what we each thought essential, we sat on the two steps at the door of our room. Each room was a small round building of its own built to resemble the circular mud huts with thatch roofs built in compounds that we had begun to see from the bus window as we traveled north and the land grew flatter. But these huts, as well as being of cement, did their best to face away from one another and there was nothing like a connecting wall, only a connecting road. The sun was still in full effect, but I wanted to smoke and the room was small. I suppose this is why my mother joined me, because the room provided no place for the soul other than the door.

We sat silently for a moment and she breathed as if to reach down into her diaphragm for some reservoir of strength and calm, but it sounded to me like the breath never made it that far down before coming up, althougb the words that came out were measured in their falling and had the semblance of mastery and detachment.

"Why do you think it is too much, too hard?"

She was referring to what I had said earlier which I had thought could be simply summed up as "I can't read your mind" and to which I had appended "because it's too hard when you are always changing it." I must have repeated "It's too hard" a few times because it seems that's what remained like some relief brought out when all the other substance has been rubbed away. I was finding that it is rarely the pith, or skeleton that is left, when the thing has been vigorously rubbed at, but, more often, some random detail. So I wanted to answer to this question she asked by saying "Oh, everything!" But I said, "You get upset if I try to tell you what to do. If I make suggestions, you say you have always been responsible and have taken care not only of yourself, but us too, and that you have always been independent. But on the other hand you want me, or sometimes you want me, to carry your bags or argue with the taxi driver or something. And I just get frustrated and quit everything."

"I don't see why it's so difficult to observe common courtesy and respect. I'm not asking foryou to do anything for me that you wouldn't do for anyone else. I don't ask you to argue with any taxi drivers. And rarely do I ever ask you to carry a bag or something. But it's just rude to go marching ahead across the street without even looking to see if I'm in a ditch or knocked down by a bus or something. You act like I'm not even there. It's just common courtesy. And I'm your own mother. I don't see why that's so hard."

"That's not it, exactly."

"But you don't do it."

"I'm sorry if I was careless. I wasn't trying… But part of it is that I get so upset with not knowing what to do that I want to do nothing, because I don't know exactly how much to do."

"It's just simple respect"

Respect, I was thinking, is not so simple. I wanted to ask her what respect really was or meant. But I was choking on an anger as black as gravity. I wanted to scream "So what am I supposed to do?" but instead said quietly "I guess I don't really know what to do." It seems I get quieter and calmer the more upset I become. So I was almost whispering.

She was wiping the sweat from around her eyes with the bottom of her shirt and looking into the distance as if for focus. Then she looked at me like I had just told her I didn't know what a hammer was.

I said, "I mean that I need for you to be clearer and to tell me exactly what it is you want because for whatever reason I'm not getting it. I don't think it's you or me, but both of us. Whatever has happened has happened. And now we have to figure this out."

This had taken all of my energy and resolve, it seemed. I would have liked to get up then and just start running off down the road blindly with my arms flapping and my eyes looking straight up at the clouds the way you do when you are a kid, but it was too hot and I was paralysed.

She said "I don't understand what the problem is. I'm telling you. But it's not something I should need to tell you. You should already know how to treat other human beings, especially your own mother. I don't see why you're having such a problem with this. You're acting like a teenager who's embarrassed to be with their parents in front of their friends. What's the big deal. I really don't see why this is a big deal for you."

She was using her eyes and her mouth and her hands to make sharp and concise movements, cutting the air, as if physically building and shaping perfect concentration and attention as well as a secure and sound structure. And myself, I tried to think of what to say, but was thinking abstractly that maybe if you've already made a big puzzle you don't want to start scrambling it up again to start over. And then I was looking at the red dirt on the road.

My mother had stopped talking, my short mother with short grey hair and sweat lining the creases in her face. She rubbed her palms along the long legs of her crumpled shorts, blinking. And there was the terrible defiant sound of a motorcycle starting up and idling. We were rooted to the ground but could not feel it.

I lit another cigarette and looked at and touched one of my hankies which was now crisp and white.

"I'm sorry," I said.