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back!”
    â€œThen can you take me to the bathroom.”
    â€œGrandbaby, this Joe,” Gramma Green said over a soap opera blasting from the giant-screen TV. It was next to the window facing the street, but the heavy drapes were closed. Bluish light from the screen illuminated a corner where a white-haired man with dark skin sat in work pants, a white wife beater and suspenders. He nodded.
    Gramma Green held out her arms. “Give me some suga, girl.”
    Victoria felt Joe’s eyes on her body as she bent to kiss Gramma’s clammy forehead. She wanted to say, Thanks for taking me in when everybody turned their back, but putting it into words would somehow make this feel real, and right now it still felt like a bad dream.
    As she inhaled Gramma’s perfumed medicine scent, Victoria’s mind flashed with the images of Daddy’s waxy white face, the eery stillness of his elegant hands crossed over his chest, all those folds of beige satin, and the casket closing on her life, too. None of his family had come to the funeral. In their eyes, Daddy had died when he said “I do” to life with the woman he loved. Those nameless, faceless relatives had never met Mommy, never seen Victoria or her siblings. And they certainly hadn’t come forward to take any of them in.
    â€œYou gon’ stay in Kay-Kay room,” Gramma said, pointing with chipped fingernails splotched with the remains of red polish. “Slow that fas’ chil’ down. But first, Henry, take her to eat in the kitchen. I know you hungry.”
    â€œI’m starving,” Victoria said. She was starving for satisfaction from food, and her fingers. A heaping plate of chicken, rice, and salad would be perfect. “But I need the bathroom!”
    Henry led her into that dark hallway ringing with foul language carried on by deep male voices, along with the sound of growling dogs and loud, chewing-smacking sounds. He stopped at a door, turned the knob, and pushed it open.
    â€œEh!” a man yelled.
    â€œYo, ma bad,” Henry answered. “Sorry, Vic, the throne room occupied. C’mon.”
    Victoria followed him into the kitchen. To her left, on the stove, pots and pans held pork chops in gravy, cornbread, green beans overcooked with chunks of bacon, and super-fattening macaroni and cheese. Yuck. She never ate artery-clogging crap that would make her butt as wide as that old refrigerator.
    Oh my God.
    â€œDay-um!” exclaimed one of four guys kneeling around four pit bulls that were ripping raw steaks to shreds in the middle of the floor. In the corner, a dog was running on a miniature treadmill.
    â€œThis can’t be little Victoria,” said another guy who was Henry’s younger brother, Hank. “Ain’t nobody that fine in this family.”
    â€œHer momma was,” Henry said. “Our momma was, ’til she hit that pipe.” Henry glanced back at a table in a sunlit alcove. Beyond three black handguns and a box of bullets, Aunt Harriett sat dazed, her skinny, scarred legs crossed. Bony brown shoulders protruded with grotesque skinniness from a halter top as she smoked a cigarette.
    Victoria’s stomach burned with disgust. How could that be Mommy’s sister? Something about the shape of Harriett’s dark brown eyes resembled Mommy’s so much. A sour heave bubbled up in Victoria’s throat.
    â€œGit!” Henry shouted at his dog. It scampered to the others to slurp that meaty mess on the floor.
    The guys circled Victoria, steamrolling her body with four pairs of eyes. She wished she hadn’t worn the pink sweater that always made Brian so hot and bothered, the way it pushed up her C-cups and exposed just a slice of stomach above those black jeans that were too snug for this ghetto family reunion.
    Brian. That bastard said he loved me. He said they’d be together forever . . . graduate together from The Academy, attend business school at the