Excerpt from A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But the house they arrived at wasn't white and blue. The place was painted a dull yellowish-brown, the color of old ginger cookies. Santos cursed when the van stopped. Sister Pamela turned and gave him a harsh, but brief, look. She also seemed concerned about where they were. Freddy told himself not to worry. For a robot, there was no such thing as an unwanted surprise.

"This is it," the driver said, scratching underneath the brim of his cap. He showed Sister Pamela the address written on a piece of paper and then pointed with the same thick finger to the number on the door. "This is definitely the place where I drove the other Sister."

After a heavy breath, Sister Pamela told the boys to sit tight, then got out and shuffled between the ugly hedges toward the house. Before she got there, a woman emerged from behind the front door. Freddy knew right away that the woman couldn't be Mrs. Johnson, but he wasn't aware until she appeared that he had still been holding out hope.

Against the protests of the driver, the boys slid open the heavy door and poured out of the van. They stood in a group on the sidewalk, and Freddy moved away from everyone's groans and whispered complaints, closer to the house so he could hear what Sister Pamela and the woman were saying. The woman was black, no different from him. Her skin was the same dark shade as his. She didn't seem like a maid or anyone else who would work in a big house in the suburbs. She looked older than his mother, but healthier, and wore a dark floral-printed robe that went down only to the middle of her broad thighs. The straps of her pink sandals matched the little shocks of color on her nails. Her eyes hid behind a large pair of sunglasses, and whenever she raised and lowered her arm, thin silver bracelets shimmied down her wrist. Her shoulder-length hair had been set and curled in a fancy way. It shone like hair he had seen in TV commercials, much nicer than his mother's had looked in a long time. Otherwise she could have been one of his neighbors in the South Bronx, the kind of woman his mother, in her ugliest moments, would call a bitch and tell him to avoid. The only thing unusual to him about these women was the way they dressed, in clothes that looked very expensive. Whenever he saw one of them in the elevator, it seemed like a mistake. He wondered where they went all day in their nice clothes. He wanted to ask why they didn't know where they were.

Freddy got even closer to the house. "Ain't no mistake here, Sister," the woman said. She was loud like his neighbors too. In response, the comments of the boys behind him rose above whispering. Sister Pamela looked back at them sternly before she resumed the conversation, asking about the man of the house.

The woman nodded and said, "But he's away, on business. He goes away on business a lot."

Then Sister Pamela mentioned the Johnsons.

"Yeah, just like you say. Him and the Johnsons go to the same church."

"Your husband, you mean?" Sister Pamela said, her voice rising.

"What are you asking?" the woman cried. "Hey, I got religion too, Sister!" She leaned to the side and stretched her neck to look at Freddy and the others. "Anyway, these boys here," she said, "they might as well be my own sons."

Excerpt from "I Happy Am" from A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley. Copyright © 2018 by Jamel Brinkley. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.