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with a dash of hot sauce. In fact, she grew to
love many of the foods that had been so foreign to her when she
first joined the family—fried chicken gizzards and chicken livers,
okra and black-eyed peas, pig’s feet and neck bones. As a child,
she’d been curious about the hodgepodge assortment of food on their
table, while delicious; she knew scraps when she saw them. Grandma
Emma explained to her that the African American food tradition was
born of a necessity for survival. Slaves would make do with what
they had—things they could grow and meat discarded from the
master’s kitchen. As a young girl, it fascinated her that black
people had such a rich food tradition, an actual meaning attached
to the food they favored. Her mother’s Spaghetti Wednesdays and
Meatloaf Sundays could hardly boast the same.
    It wasn’t long before
Grandma Emma took Deena under her wing and showed her how to clean
chitterlings, pick the freshest collards, and deep-fry a catfish.
Each Sunday, Deena studied hard, in an effort to cook like her
grandmother, like a black person.
    She studied other things in
her effort to seem blacker. She watched her cousins for the
appropriate fashions, the proper use of vernacular, and suitable
music and television programs for a young black youth. As a
teenager, she pretended to love hip-hop in public though she
listened to pop and classic rock in secret.
    It was all an attempt to
fade into the fabric of the Hammond family—and by fade she meant
disappear. Oh, there were times when she was the center of
attention, when her contrary ethnicity came up, but many more when
she simply went unnoticed. And while unnoticed wasn’t synonymous
with acceptance, it was a step in the right direction.
    Two hours past the end of
church service, the Hammond family gathered around the supper
table. There were two of her three aunts, a smidgeon of cousins.
For a painful moment, Deena’s thoughts turned to Anthony, who would
never be around to lie about why he’d skipped dinner
again.
    “ So, I was thinking that
you could put one of those pretty roofs up in the fellowship hall.
You know, like them ones that aint nothing but windows? That should
be good,” Grandma Emma said.
    “ Naw, what you should do is
a regular roof but paint like angels and demons and stuff like the
one they got overseas,” Aunt Caroline said.
    Did she mean the Sistine
Chapel?
    Deena looked past her aunt
in a plea to her aunt.
    “ Grandma, please. I can’t
do this. I don’t have the time to work on a new fellowship
hall.”
    She stabbed at her collard
greens in despair. “You just don’t know my boss. He keeps us on a
short leash. In-kind donations have to be vetted through the proper
channels. And anyway, I’m swamped at work.”
    Emma glanced from Deena to
Caroline, tapping ash on the side of her dinner plate.
    “ If you don’t put that
goddamned cigarette out at your father’s table,” Grandma Emma said
through gritted teeth.
    “ Alright,
alright.”
    With an exasperated sigh,
Caroline stumped her Newport on the plate, ashes cascading into
three fat pieces of catfish. She shifted in her seat and with two
fingers, plucked the fabric of her dress from the wet folds beneath
her breasts.
    “ Listen,” Grandma Emma
turned back to Deena. “I gave them people my word that you gone do
that hall, now you ain’t gone make no lie out of me,” Emma said
with the point of her fork. “You understand?”
    Deena lowered her
gaze.
    “ Yes ma’am.”
    Emma turned to her
granddaughter, Keisha, Caroline’s fourth child. She was the same
age as Deena.
    “ Now where’s that eldest
child of yours at?”
    “ With his daddy,” Keisha
said as she poked at butter beans with a fork. “He’s the only one
that really comes to see about his kid, you know? Snow’s a good
dude.”
    Caroline nodded. “He’s got
some ways about him, but he does handle his business.”
    Aunt Rhonda looked up. “So
he still deals drugs?”
    Deena grinned. She loved
Aunt