Aperture

The Hopkins Review 15.1, 2022

Tijani was an avid watcher, the only child to a single parent with no sibling to look up to, no one to play with. His mother, Mama Agnes, was a social studies teacher and a disciplinarian. Going out to play was often not allowed. When Tijani was not in school or doing homework or thumbing through his father’s old books, he busied himself with whatever was around, playing with what he could get his hands on—empty milk cans, bottle tops, the soft tube inside an abandoned tire. There was the old camera that Mama Agnes said used to belong to his father. Although it didn’t work, he used it anyway, spying on the streets through its cracked lens.