Your business is my business

Your business is my business

Your business is my business, not just because God exhorts us to be our brother’s keeper.

Your business is my business, not just because we are both women or young mothers

Your business is my business, not just because we live in a cooperative.

Your business is my business, even though we do not work together, belong to the same sorority or enjoy basic comraderie.

Your business is my business, not because you hunger or are destitute

Your business is my business, even though I have never seen your family or friends.

Your business is my business because you’re hollering up the stairs every week. So now I know: you’re not married, your baby father spent too much money on your kid’s sneakers. You have to tussle to get him to spend money, that way you think. Your child has the ugly traits of her father. I know you have a voice commands a passerby attention, a vocabulary that inflicts pain to drive a man away and no sense to be screaming all of these attributes at an 8-year-old child.