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being an unfit mother. She snapped and slammed doors, broke lots of little things—the pink candy dish that had been a wedding gift, a saucer here and a bowl there from the family china set—bits and pieces to help soothe her frustration.
    “I can’t find the stink! I put him in the tub and washedeverything, everywhere. Maybe he’s sick,” she had reasoned.
    “Did you wash under his neck?” Harold had asked.
    “What do you mean? He don’t have no neck,” Alma had replied.
    Harold had lifted Todd’s tiny head and pulled back the skin, revealing a crease filled with stinky baby cheese that made them both bend at the middle and gag. It took a few days to eliminate the odor completely. After that incident, Alma had made it a point to wash Todd’s neck every time she changed his diaper. Todd had the cleanest neck in baby history.
    Now the preacher finished earning his money, sending Harold to heaven. Alma was ready to leave, too, but Angel explained to her that she couldn’t up and leave, because it was customary to sit and allow people to offer their condolences.
These people are phony. They just want to look me in the eye and rejoice in my pain.
    Angel lovingly gave her a pair of dark sunglasses—her Angel thought of everything—and patted her hand as the mourners passed by, expressing their sorrow. Alma simply nodded. She didn’t even look at most of them.
    She stared at Harold in the casket, wishing he would sit up and tell her he was only kidding. She grieved over every bad word she’d ever said to him and wished she could take them all back. Death was real. We agreed marriage was
till death do you part
, but we never put a face on death, so it didn’t sound quite so bad.
    Alma now saw the face of death, and it scared the hell out of her. What had she gotten herself into? Death was supposed to come in threes, an old wives’ tale. It never comes for only one person. Threes. She wanted to be the second of the three right now and wished she could be taken, because it hurt too much to be alive. Todd squeezed her hand to signal that someone was talking to her.
    “Momma, it’s Ms. Cartwright.”
    “I’m so sorry about your loss. Harold was a good man. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. I’ll be happy to do it,” Ms. Cartwright said.
    You can get out of my face,
Alma thought, then nodded and looked to Todd, sitting to her right. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why he had brought that white woman of his to a black church up in Harlem, but she was glad he’d come home nonetheless. Alma smiled at him, thinking he looked just like his daddy. A new, improved version of Harold. Todd had all his teeth, unlike Jesse, who was missing an upper front tooth. He looked like his father’s side of the family, but everyone said he was the spitting image of her, in many ways and for many reasons.
    Todd could have done much better than the
thing
sitting next to him, she thought. Hadn’t she taught him about the civil rights marches she used to participate in? Todd’s children, the mutts, had gotten a lot bigger than they were in the pictures he sent.
    Alma rolled her eyes as Angel’s husband, Darryl, a.k.a. Fatso, waddled past her. She was glad for the shades, becauseher eyes couldn’t hide her contempt for him. They’d had a little spat earlier in the day, because he kept digging his huge hands in the pots of food Angel was preparing. When his finger dipped into the barbecued ribs, well, that did it.
    “How big do you want to get?” she’d demanded.
    “I’m hungry,” he’d said between chewing, swallowing, and reaching for more.
    “You stay hungry. I’ve never seen somebody do aerobics running from pot to pot like you. Listen to you chomping on them bones like a wild boar. You making me lose my appetite.”
    “Talk to your mother, Angel,” he’d warned.
    “What are you going to do? I’ll throw the chicken in the middle of the street and watch you get hit by a car trying to