Beep.

The machine cut me off. I’m tempted to call back, but I’m too excited. I ain’t got no choice but to call in sick, and when I do I plug my nose and cough a little bit to make it sound good, and then I spend the rest of the day daydreaming and doing nothing. I could get used to this.

For some reason, when the alarm go off like it do every morning at four-thirty, I can’t hardly move. I went to bed too early, is what probably made me tired. My body ain’t used to relaxing. That’s it. Get up, Charlotte. Get your rich ass up! Which I do. I can’t wait to get to work to tell Belinda. She about the only one there I can tell. But I ain’t quitting today, that’s for damn sure.

I press the alarm off and get in the shower, but as soon as I do I swear I hear the phone ringing. Now, who in the hell would be calling me this time of morning? I know it ain’t Al, ’cause he ain’t had too much to say to me since I put him out. But you never know. I grab a towel and wrap it around me. This better be important, that’s all I gotta say. I hurry up and pick up the portable right next to the bed. “Hello,” I say, and my voice cracks, ’cause I ain’t talked since last night.

“Charlotte?” somebody’s asking whose voice sound worse than mine.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Paris.”

“Paris? What you doing calling me so early in the morning? And what’s wrong, you sick or something?”

“No, I’m not sick. I’m in London.”

“What you doing over there? And what’s the time difference?”

“It’s not important right now, Charlotte.”

“What you mean? What’s going on, Paris? Talk to me.”

“Something’s happened to Mama.”

“What you mean ‘something’?”

“The worse thing that could possibly happen to her,” she says. I hope that ain’t crying I hear, and I hope she ain’t saying what I think she saying.

“Wait a minute, Paris,” I say real slow. I wanna make sure I’m getting this right. I wanna make sure I’m hearing what’s coming outta her mouth through this phone, in my ear. “Okay. Now, what has happened to our mama?”

And then all I hear is her crying and making sounds like she trying to talk but she can’t, and then I know. I start crying, too, and don’t stop till the kids come in the room and hold me and rock me and put me under the covers, where I stay for the next two days, until Al comes over and helps me get up, and Aunt Suzie Mae comes over and tells me that she ain’t going to Mama’s funeral ’cause she don’t care what nobody say: her sister ain’t dead. I wanna tell her she crazy as hell and to get her crazy ass out my house, but Al do it for me.