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pick it up.”
    “Momma, please be nice,” Angel had begged.
    “OK. I’ll be nice. Darryl, please get your fat ass out of my kitchen so we can save some food for the guests, the invited ones.”
    He had taken offense but grabbed some more pieces of ribs and left the kitchen, telling Angel they should go.
    “Angel was invited!” Alma had yelled after him.
    He hated her, and she hated him, but the rules of a funeral say that you have to put your feelings aside and pay honor to the survivors of the deceased.
    *   *   *
    “Momma, can I
talk to you?” Jesse asked at the reception.
    “Sure, baby.”
    “Not here. Can we go in the bedroom?” Alma nodded. She would have to face the bedroom eventually.
    In her mind’s eye, she relived Harold’s cold, stiff body lying on the now empty bedframe. Todd and Angel had dragged the mattress outside, because Alma was too spooked to enter the room with it still there.
    “What is it, Jesse?”
    “Momma, I know this may be bad timing, but Daddy said he was going to give me money so I can get that trumpet. Did he leave me anything?”
    “Yes, son. A swift kick in the ass, and I’m going to give it to you right now if you dare fix your junkie mouth to ask me something that insensitive again,” Alma replied.
    She knew it had to be more than reefers he was smoking to be that disrespectful. That’s why she hated these funereal rituals, because of stupid people like him not knowing how to act. Jesse was lucky Rae Ann picked that moment to walk through the front door sporting a red miniskirt. Alma turned her attention to the noise in the living room. When she saw the perpetrator of the commotion, it took all of Alma’s children to restrain her as she snatched up her butcher knife.
    “Don’t change your clothes, folks, because there’s going to be two funerals tonight,” she said determinedly.
    “Why are you doing this, Alma? What did I ever doto you?” Rae Ann’s voice was slurred. She was drunk and probably wanted some closure. “I only want to pay my respects,” Rae Ann drawled.
    Alma hated her. Todd begged Rae Ann to leave, but she demanded a quick drink first. Alma threw a bottle of vodka at her head, and she ducked as the bottle splashed its contents all over her exposed legs. That was all the drink she was going to get.
    “You’re going to be drinking your own blood after I cut your throat, you little two-bit tramp. Get your bleached-blond ass out of here.”
    “Fine! I’ll leave. What goes around come back around, Alma,” Rae Ann warned as she defiantly turned and left.
    Harold’s brother, Fred, watched this drama unfold.
    “She gave Harold that heart attack,” he whispered to several non-family members, loudly enough for Alma to overhear. “I live three blocks from here,” he went on. “I know how much stress she put poor Harold through. He would come by all hours of the night, complaining how Alma locked him out or called the cops to make him get out his own home. Leave her. That’s all I’d tell him. Now look what’s happened.”
    This particular clique of guests murmured their agreement. Alma was livid. Angel squeezed her hand.
    “ ‘I can’t leave,’ Harold would say. ‘She needs me,’” Fred said mockingly. “I asked him what he was doing on my couch, then, if she needs him so badly. ‘She just needs a little space till the morning,’ he’d say. Can you believe this?Next thing you know, the sun’s up, and Alma’s waiting outside my place with a hot cup of coffee and buttered roll for him. It was the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen, but thank God I won’t have to bear witness no more. This is the last time I’ll ever have to look her in those squinty eyes. Good-bye and good riddance.”
    I’ve still got my butcher knife, little Freddy. Better watch your tongue,
she thought.
    When the guests
had departed, Angel helped her mother pull out the couch and make her bed.
    “Lay next to me until I fall asleep,” Alma said