“Jesus …,” Ma exhaled, and went to the freezer for the pint of Seagram’s she kept for these moments. She confined the shot glasses to a high cabinet above the refrigerator so she wouldn’t be tempted to retreat to her former pastime of drinking with nobody but Frankie Beverly and Maze. She stood on a chair to retrieve the glasses. Renelle cried soundlessly in prelude to one of Jewel’s unavailing monologues.

“Now Mrs….?” was how it began.

“Washington. Mrs. Washington. Just call me Renelle.”

“Now Renelle, I can’t say that I agree with your husband pushing dope but that’s not my business. I don’t pay your bills. I can barely pay my own. But I will say that I find something a lot wrong with the police traumatizing these children. Why does it have to turn into a Cops episode every time they want to arrest us? I can’t imagine your husband wouldn’t have let them just take him down to the station for a little questioning. They could have saved the rough-up for there, because you know when they tell you questioning they really mean battering. See, this is why, Annette. This is why! This is why I packed my bags and got the hell out of this city and I didn’t let you, Mama, Daddy, or nobody else stop me …”

“Black folks get arrested all over this world, Jew Jew, not just Chicago.”

“Well, Ann, I didn’t hear a lot of these stories in Denver.” Jewel smarted every time Ma put her in her place with her childhood name.

“You live in Denver?” Renelle cried to the stranger. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Jewel. My name is Jewel. And I used to live in Denver.”

“Denver? Wow, that’s far.” Renelle took a shot and Ma poured her another. She had finally stopped crying, leaned back, and in anticipation of more shots to come, unpopped the brass button on her faded stonewashed Cherokee jeans.

“Denver is a hike, but I swear you ain’t lived till you’ve seen the sky well above sea level. I loved it. Not to change the subject ’cause I know you’re upset, but you know, the West really is uncharted territory. Land and land and more land for miles.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Renelle said. “I been in Chicago all my life. I have family in North Carolina, and Mississippi, and Arkansas.”