“Is something going on at home that could be bothering her?”

“Well, her dad’s gone.”

“George is not her dad, and everybody knows she can’t stand him, Janelle, so I doubt if his leaving would throw her off kilter.”

“Well, it’s nothing the two of us can’t handle,” she says. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.” When she gets up, Mama’s shower curtain pops out from three of the loops. I guess I just must look stupid to her.

“Ma, can I go with you to get Uncle Lewis out of jail?” Dingus asks from the living room.

“Shut up,” I whisper loudly.

“Where y’all going?” Mama asks.

“To get something at the mall.”

“I said I wanted to go, too.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. I look at Dingus and make a motion like I’m slicing his neck off. “Okay, Mama, but first Janelle and I need to make a quick stop, and you can’t come with us because it’s a surprise.”

“What kind of surprise?” she asks, coming into the living room, wiping her hands on a yellow dish towel. She’s already dressed, in her pink cotton slacks and pink polo shirt, white leather Keds. Her hair is a mess. Square patches of dry braids fill her head, and she doesn’t have on any makeup. She’s probably been waiting for me or Janelle to do it.

“If we told you, it wouldn’t be one, now, would it?”

“I love surprises,” she says.

“We all do, Mama,” I say, “we all do.” And on that note, I decide that we will rush to get our stupid brother out of jail and get her car out of hock and then find out where that Thomasville furniture store is and get her stuff out of layaway and hope they can deliver it sometime today, and then maybe we can look for a black beauty shop that will deep-condition and maybe cut and perm her hair, and we can come back and take her to Red Lobster for lunch before we hit the mall, and who knows, if we have any time left, maybe we can take her to test-drive something new.

Liquid Jesus

Okay. So I messed up. I shouldn’ta never took a squig off Kirk’s bottle. Plus, I didn’t even know the dude. He could have a disease. Many diseases. What the hell. Now I gotta get ready for my sisters to lecture me all the way back to Mama’s. They don’t understand. And ain’t no way for me to get them to understand. I don’t want to have to drink, but while I was out here waiting for this dude all I was thinking was that here’s an opportunity for me to make some money, I don’t care how much or how little, but enough so that I won’t have to ask nobody for nothing. Especially my family.