“Where?” she bellowed, squinting her eyes and pressing her chin in her chest.

“In my top drawer,” I answered, feeling my stomach churning as if I was about to throw up.

“Well go upstairs and open it to John 8:7. Or Matthew 19:19,” she said. “You got that? Think you can remember that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, “I can remember that.”

“John 8:7 and Matthew 19:19,” she repeated. “If more people in this world just paid attention to them few couple a sentences, this world wouldn’t be in the shape it is now. Don’t take but one least lil’ thing to make folks turn on one another.”

I kept my head bowed during her sermon, suddenly feeling pressure in my pelvis, having to pee but too afraid to interrupt her. I wasn’t trying to get kicked out of the house as soon as I got here. But she kept on talking, in a daydream that had nothing to do with me.

“I bought this house with my own money some years ago, what I had saved and worked for all my years. Now you wanna come up in here questionin’ me? Who up in here and how I’m doin’ thangs?”

“No ma’am.”

“Well that’s what it sound like to me. You settin’ there with a baby in your belly and not a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of, yet you wanna act funny ’bout who you sleep next to? You lucky you got somewhere to rest your head.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful…”

“Just ’cause you didn’t mean it don’t make it alright. Like I said, this here my place, started with my money. I married an army man, just like my own mama did, and when he died I had enough money to do what I wanted to do for a change. So I wanted to come to Chicago and dance and carry on, be young, you know …” She smiled and leaned back a little, before the scowl came back.