I answer it. “Yes?”

“Janelle,” Daddy says, “I’m sorry you mad at me, and, the way things is looking, I don’t think it’s gon’ be such a good idea for me to have that drink with Paris.”

“You aren’t scared, are you, Daddy?”

“He should be,” Mama says. She’s back to Wheel of Fortune. This is a hard puzzle. A place. Three lines. “Tell him there’s another brown envelope in the mailbox waiting for him, if and when he in the neighborhood. It might hold his interest.”

“I heard her, Janelle. And to answer your question, naw, I ain’t scared: not of my own daughter. But I just get the feeling that y’all don’t understand what’s been going on over there for quite some time, and it’s understandable that you would take your mama’s side, but I ain’t done nothing wrong and I didn’t do nothing to hurt your mama on purpose. And she know that.”

“So—what do you want me to tell Paris, Daddy?”

“Tell her I’ll have that drink with her on the next trip,” he says. “When things cool down some.”

“I’ll tell her,” I say, and hang up without saying goodbye.

And, without taking her eyes off the screen, Mama utters: “He ain’t shit.”

“The answer is ‘San Juan Puerto Rico,’ Mama. And he’s certainly not alone.”

Bingo

“What movie y’all going to see?” I ask the kids from the laundry room.

“We wanna see Above the Rim with Tupac and Leon,” Tiffany yells, and then all three of ’em appear in the doorway. They wearing the ski jackets I got ’em that they ain’t supposed to be wearing until next year, but I don’t feel like saying nothing.

“There’s no way I could sit through that,” Trevor says.

“We’re too shocked!” Monique says, rolling her eyes up in her head. One day they gon’ get stuck up there.

“Well, which one do you wanna see, Trevor?” Tiffany asks.

“Actually, I was planning to drop you guys off and meet a friend at the fabric store and just hang out until your movie’s over,” he says, turning to me. “If that’s okay with you, Ma.”

“Why you need more fabric?” I ask. A whole corner of the basement ain’t got nothing but stacks and stacks of material, just sitting there, dry-rotting, right next to my treadmill, which is doing the same thing. “Can’t you think of something else you wanna do today?”

“This is what I want to do today.”

“All we wanna know is when you ever gon’ make me and Tiff a pair of them shiny Janet Jackson pants like you promised us for Christmas that wasn’t nowhere to be found under the tree?”

“Soon, soon, soon,” he says. “I’ve got a few other orders I have to finish first.”

It’s hard for me to even believe this conversation, but when you ask your one and only son what he wants for Christmas and he says just one thing, a Surger so he can finish off his seams like a professional, you shouldn’t be shocked to hear this. I just keep separating what looks like two tons of dirty clothes into three or four piles: dark, medium, whites, and filthy.