“Word up,” Dingus says, and Paris hauls off and kicks his young stupid ass. I just pretend to be eating, but I ain’t been able to swallow the last two bites.

“If you so much as dial my number when you get to San Francisco, I will hire someone to blow your fucking brains out.”

“Ma?”

“Shut up, Dingus!”

“Well, it was worth a shot.”

“And Dingus,” she say pointing to him, “you can love the one you’re with if you want to, but just make sure you tell him that he’ll have to buy a season pass to your games, and if he does, they better not be within spitting distance of mine.”

After she do her movie-star thing and storm off like she got the last say in the matter, Dingus and his daddy go on out to the garage. I’m about sick of her and her high-and-mighty role, like whatever Paris say is law. Like what she say is final. I’ve had it with her thinking she Queen of Sheba. Well, she don’t run me. And since we ain’t got no audience except for a few stragglers, and most of them is drunk anyway, and since don’t nobody else seem to never have the nerve to tell her, I think it’s time somebody put this bitch in her place. She walks right behind me to the kitchen, where she act like she getting ready to start cleaning up. I hop off this stool and follow her and set my little paper saucer down on the counter. “That was cold,” I say.

She do that Linda Blair thing from The Exorcist with her neck and says, “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Charlotte?”

“I’m looking at you.”

“No, you’re not looking at me, you’re gawking. And what I say to my ex-husband is my business, not yours.”

“That’s true, but you ain’t got no right telling Dingus how to deal with him. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You’ve got some nerve. You haven’t spoken to me since I got here and these are the first words you open your little monologue with? Spare me.”

“You just always gotta be dramatic, don’t you, Paris?”

“Dramatic? Hah! First of all, who was it that put on a show at the funeral?”

“That wasn’t no damn show.”

“Yeah, well, you know what the old folks say, don’t you?”

“No, you tell me.”

“They say whoever yells the loudest is the one who feels the most guilt. And the reason you couldn’t look at Mama was ’cause she’d be looking back at you, and you know you did some nasty shit to her that you never quite fixed, am I right?”

“Fuck you, Paris. First of all, I ain’t got nothing to feel guilty about. I loved Mama just as much as you and everybody else.”

“Nobody’s doubting that, but I beg to differ with you on the guilt issue, little sis. First of all, you weren’t even speaking to Mama when she died. You didn’t bother to come out to see her when she was sick. You couldn’t even manage to come out and help me and Janelle go through her things. And then you seem to have had this sense of entitlement when it came to her furniture. Seems like all Charlotte really thinks about is Charlotte.”