Surprise, sur-fucking-prise. My mother drinks. She’s not the falling down wreck-yer-life kinda drunk, although she can get a little mean on a Saturday night if she gets off the gin and on to the white wine. I’m not even sure she’s what you’d call an alcoholic, especially around here. Not like her old man. Black Bernie Fortune was a notorious drunk, and Mama will be the first one to tell you that he’s the reason she picked up a bottle in the first place. He threatened to beat her if he ever caught her drinking, and even in her youth, nothing flipped Effie Fortune’s contrarian switch quicker than hypocritical authority. So when he said, “Stay away from the bottle,” Effie went straight to the nearest bootlegger. As promised, the Old Man beat the piss out of her, and she took it with pride. She made a point of holding herself and her liquor in a way Black Bernie never could. Still, she can’t sleep without a few drinks, she’s unfit to be behind the wheel of a car more nights of the week than not, and she’s burned a few bridges when she was in her cups. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Aunt Janice was the only one in our family who ever literally burned a bridge. But that’s another story.

“What?” Mama says when I give her and the flask the side eye. “Gin’s medicinal. No different from the dope you and Willy Gimp were smoking down at The Wharf.”

And before I can stammer out a half-assed denial of what Mama somehow knew, she’s headed down to the kitchen. There I find her, muttering an exasperated string of “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” into the depths of her tea kettle. It has been sitting on the back burner, steeping and simmering for hours. That’s the secret to Effie Fortune’s Stove Top Sludge. The generous splash of milk and four spoons of sugar that leave a syrup at the bottom of the cup are just fancy flourishes. The essence of the brew lies in keeping the kettle hot all day long, and tossing in a new bag with the old every time more water is added. But you can only boil the bejesus out of old tea bags so many times before one of them ruptures. So there’s Mama, cursing at the wayward clumps of tea leaves sullying her kettle.

“Opportunity for an upsell. A product add-on. Effie Fortune’s Stove Top Sludge Tincture, now with Fortune-Telling Tea Leaves.”

“Shush now, don’t be talking,” she says. “Old Black Agnes used to read the leaves. That’s where all the troubles started.”

Mama dumps the kettle contents into the sink and rinses it down the drain with a blast from the tap. But not before making a quick study of the remnants of the busted tea bag in the metal basin. I pretend I don’t see her stare a second too long and purse her lips. And Mama acts like it never happened.

“Well, c’mon then, if that’s what you’re wearing.”