“Liza, I want these boxes out of my hallway. This ain’t the UPS Store.” Bev pulled at her wig. The cascading platinum blond tresses shifted slightly to the left, then right. “What I heard in Bible study is that you were out there picketing for the gays,” Bev informed her.

She made it sound like a Motown girl group. “Mom, you can just say ‘gay,’ ” Liza said.

“Correct me again, and I’ll correct your behind!” Bev spat out impatiently. “I don’t want you involved in anything that’s gonna ruin the family’s reputation, you hear?”

Liza’s mouth twisted sideways. “Mom, ‘birthing the three prettiest daughters in Southeast’ is not a reputation, it’s an opinion.”

“Southeast? My Janae was almost Miss DC—the entire district—for three years straight. And if you’d stop wearing those no-prescription granny glasses and put on a high heel every once in a while . . .” Bev didn’t need to finish. This was a well-traveled conversational tributary that would eventually lead to her wailing that Liza didn’t try hard enough—for a job, for a man, or for herself.

Janae sighed. “ ‘Three-time runner-up’ will be on my gravestone.”

Bev eyed Liza again. “Your foolishness almost made me forget the good news. Where is your granny?” Bev stepped out of her shoes and handed them to LeDeya. “She’s on the Longbourne Gardens Green Committee, and those nice little people next door at Netherfield Court invited all the gardeners to their groundbreaking gala.”

Maurice sauntered into the front room then, dressed in a tan suit with a brown bow tie. He was going for a Nation of Islam look with none of the entanglements of having read any of the doctrine. He shook his locked hair out. At twenty-two, his face still flirted with handsomeness but never really settled there.

“Salutations, ladies,” Maurice said.

“Maurice, you missed church,” Liza said. “Momma, why didn’t you wake Maurice up for church?”

They all knew why she didn’t wake Maurice. Since he’d gotten back home from serving thirteen days for failure to pay traffic tickets, Maurice had been aggressively “woke.” He went vegan for exactly six days, paid for an Arabic class he never showed up for, and kept calling women “fe-males” in a way that sounded a lot like “bitches.”

“I think we should go to the gala,” Bev said, ignoring Maurice entirely.

Liza closed her laptop slowly. “Momma, you cannot allow those developers to try to sweet-talk these senior citizens out of their apartments!” Liza stood up. “The only reason they want the seniors there is to scope them out. Longbourne Gardens is the last low-income complex in the area. My rent rose forty percent above what I paid before, and here I am living with you. Where are the poor supposed to live if they tear this down too?”