I landed in New York with six suitcases and a job I didn’t have a title for.

My brother needed help. His kids needed somebody in the apartment when he wasn’t. I’m 38. The job is nanny.

Zeke is three. Azzy is eight. They don’t know I just moved here. They don’t know I left a city, a relationship, an apartment, and a friend group I was still tryna figure out how to leave. They know I’m uncle.

That’s enough.

Zeke calls me Joshy-Wah. His three-year-old version of Joshua. Two syllables he sings together like they’re one word.

Joshy-Wah, can I have fruit snack?

He says fruit snack instead of snack. He says it all day. He’ll be three feet from a plate of food and ask for fruit snack. I’m still not sure if he knows what the words mean or if it’s just the sound he makes when he wants something.

Either way, I open the snack.

He also tells me he’s so tired when what he means is he’s bored. Says it wide awake, sitting up, eyes shining, with the gravity of a man who just worked a double shift.

Joshy-Wah, I’m so tired.

“Tired from what, man? You three.”

He looks at me like I asked a dumb question.

Can I have fruit snack?

“That’s not tired. That’s snacky.”

He does not laugh. Comedy is wasted on toddlers. He just stares at me until I open the snack.

He’s skinny. Bow-legged. Dark skin, curly hair. He runs across the room with the urgency of a small animal that just spotted something better in the next room. Then he climbs onto me and watches Bluey on his iPad with his head on my chest. He doesn’t put the tablet down.

I don’t ask him to.

Sometimes he just sits next to me and copies whatever I’m doing. If I’m on my phone, he’s on his iPad. If I pick up a cup, he picks up a cup. He doesn’t say anything.

He just wants to be in the same shape as me.

Azzy is eight. She watches me. Not the way three-year-olds watch you, looking for what you’ll give them. The eight-year-old kind. The kind where she’s tryna figure out who you are.

She told me me and Isaiah look like twins. She’ll sometimes mix us up for a second. I get it. I lost a lot of weight this year. My brother and I have the same face when we’re tired. Later, I catch myself in the hallway mirror and see what she means. Not twins exactly. More like two versions of the same man who learned different ways to carry pressure.

She’s into pop music I don’t know. She’ll play a song and I’ll nod like I do. She knows I don’t.

We’re cool about it.

Yesterday Azzy wouldn’t stop running.

Didn’t I say no running? I said.

She kept running.

Then why are you doing it? Why are you playing tag when you’re not supposed to be running? Do you not respect me?

She stopped.

The questions stacked. Each one tighter than the last. I heard my daddy in them. I heard my mama in them. I heard every Black uncle and pastor and big cousin who ever needed a child to know they had reached the end of the negotiation. The cadence is older than me. I used it before I decided to.

The need inside it was older too.

She wasn’t scared.

She just stopped.

Then she went and sat down with her brother, mad for maybe twelve seconds before asking if we could play music.

For the last year I’ve been managed, narrated, talked about. Loved on bad terms. Misread on good ones. Everybody had a version of me.

The kids don’t.

They just have me.

When Zeke wants something, he pulls on my arm and says my name. He doesn’t have a story about whether I’m a good uncle or a complicated uncle or an intense uncle. He has whether or not I’m in the room. Whether or not I respond. Whether or not the fruit snack gets opened.

The care is granular.

Open the snack. Find the shoe. Locate the show. Hold the door. Wipe the face. Carry the body. Read the book. Read the book again. Read the book again.

This is the work.

Ain’t nobody got an opinion about it. Nobody’s talking about how I’m doing it. Nobody’s gonna take what I did today and pass it through three rooms till it becomes a different story.

Just the snack, the shoe, the show, the door, the face, the body, the book.

I’ve been a youth pastor. I’ve been on stages. I’ve been the one who could say the right thing at the right moment to crack open a room. I’ve been good at being public.

I’m learning to be good at this.

Which is different.

When nobody needs me at Isaiah’s, I sit in his recliner and put the TV on low. It’s naptime. The apartment goes quiet in a way that doesn’t feel like rest. It feels like a held breath.

Before Isaiah leaves, he gives me the rundown.

“They ate already. Chicken’s in the fridge. Zeke’s gonna ask for fruit snacks. Don’t believe him.”

Then he’s out the door.

I pull out the laptop and get to work. Substack drafts. Marketing emails. Client work. The nanny job has windows. I live the rest of my life inside them.

Then I take the train back to my own place.

My apartment is half-empty. Furniture is coming this week. The air mattress is here too. Pigeons sit on the AC unit outside my window like they pay rent. Memorial Day fireworks have been going off in the borough for three days straight. Folks tell me they won’t stop till the Fourth of July.

I lay down. I put on my iPad. I journal. I text people. I sleep.

This is the part of the job description that didn’t make it into the conversation with Isaiah. The going home alone. The empty apartment after the full one. The pigeons. The fireworks. The quiet.

It’s fine.

The quiet is mine.

So is what comes in it.

My dad is older. I tried to see him before I left and it didn’t happen. I called. He didn’t answer. I don’t know if I’m gonna get another chance.

I’ve been sitting with that.

Holding Zeke does something to that grief I haven’t figured out yet. He doesn’t weigh much. He’s three. He puts his head down on my chest like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And I keep thinking about my dad’s chest. Whether I ever put my head down on it. Whether I would now if I could.

I would.

I would be a fantastic father.

It’s not a hope. It’s information.

Whether I want to be one is a different question. I love being alone. I love a quiet apartment, a long morning, a thought I get to follow all the way through. I’m not in a hurry to give that up.

But Zeke comes and asks for fruit snack and I give it to him without thinking and the calculus shifts a little.

There’s a difference between uncle and father. The kids feel it before you do. They come to me for things because they know Isaiah’s a little tougher. I’m the soft one. I can be silly. I can negotiate. I can let one more episode of Bluey happen. Daddy is structure. Uncle is play.

That’s a fine arrangement.

It also tells me something about what I would be, if I chose it.

The version of me in other people’s mouths can keep moving.

I’m not in those rooms.

I’m in this one.

Zeke is asleep on me. Azzy is reading. The train sounds different at night than it does during the day. The fireworks are still going. There’s a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the counter and I’ll deal with it in a minute.

This is what I came here for.

I didn’t know it yet when I was packing.

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