But let’s face it, Lewis is the real victim in this family. He got some emotional problems. It would help if he stopped drinking so much of that crack-in-a-bottle otherwise known as Schlitz Malt Liquor or Old English. Lewis is a alcoholic, but he seem to be the only one who don’t know it. If he could get some help, maybe he’d be able to help Donnetta pay for his damn son.

And speaking of kids. Mama ain’t never got nothing nice to say about mine, except maybe Trevor, but then she went and accused him of being gay. Janelle told me she said it. Well, my son ain’t nobody’s faggot. I know this for a fact. He’s girl-shy, and he’ll grow out of it. Every time I look around I gotta hear about Dingus did this or Shanice did that in the two-hundred meter and how many books she read a month and even Lewis’s son, Jamil, who’s around Tiffany’s age, and who don’t nobody even hardly see no more, made that all-star soccer team that travel all over (she done sent me the newspaper clippings three years in a row) and broke her neck telling me all the details of how he got accepted to the junior ROTC program and that he been skipped a grade. Shit, Monique can play the flute like ain’t no tomorrow and she the leading rebounder on her basketball team, but all Mama seem to remember is that she got ADD—like they don’t have it out there in Vegas. And so what if Tiffany can’t grasp math or science? She write poetry as good as Maya Angelou, but have Mama ever bragged about her? It’s common knowledge that both my daughters got good sense, they just going through growing pains—waiting for their periods to get here—and things should turn around and quiet down in this house once they do. Trevor’s my bright star. He gets damn near straight A’s, but do I ever hear about Mama bragging on him?

Shit. Here I go again. I need to stop this before the kids see me getting all worked up. I take a sip of my Asti Spumanti and push the lever on the recliner so it go back as far as it’ll go. I’m sick of this blue shag. It shows when you spill anything. And I’m getting rid of this plaid couch and get one of those leather sectionals, since leather’s supposed to be so “in.” I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. Why do I always have to cry when I think about Mama? Probably ’cause I know that, no matter what I do, it ain’t never good enough. Sometimes, when I really think about my family, it feel like we ain’t got nothing in common except blood.

The girls is out there in the backyard playing in the last of the snow. The wall clock says it’s 5:46. That means it’s almost four o’clock in Vegas. She probably taking a nap. Mama always nod off after her stories go off. I hear Al coming from the garage. I ain’t speaking to him either.