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friends.
    Knowing Annie Ruth, she gonna go through my bed jackets and personal things before the funeral to see what she can take back to that Los Angeles, maybe my pink satin quilted bed jacket, to wear with some tight jeans or expensive evening dress.
    I can hear her now. "Oh, yes, this was my Mudear's. I just
had
to have something of hers." Little witch.
    God, them girls got ugly ways about 'em sometimes. They must get them from their father's people.
    You would think them girls were mad at me for something.
    Just like them to be mad at me for something I don't even know. Just like with the damn telephone. They knew good and damn well that I didn't answer the phone unless I felt like it. Never did anything else but that in their memory. But wouldn't they get pissed off with me when they came home from school or one of those little piece of jobs they messed around with and I was nice enough to tell them that the phone had been ringing off the hook all day.
    "
Hope wasn't nobody expecting no calls," I'd tell them, nice like, too. Then, they would get fighting mad. Well, not really "fighting" mad because then they'd be mad enough to fight they ma and don't none of us play that. I guess I got that to be thankful for, too.
    Just the other day I was looking at some talk show, coulda been Ophrah, that was talking about these children. Call them Fragile X. They all looked a certain way, long faces and big ears, and they all had the tendency to fight their mothers. I know it wasn't funny, but I had to laugh. Of course, Ernest didn't see the humor of it when I shared it with him later that night. But he's just about lost all his sense of humor over the years.
    I have always tried very hard not to judge my girls too harshly. For one thing, everybody ain't me. I learned that years ago.
    For another, they were too young to remember how it was before. To remember it and appreciate how much better things were after that cold, no-heat-and-no-lights-in-that-freezing-assed-house day when I was able to be what I am. A woman in my own shoes. And they don't hardly remember their daddy any other way than his meek, quietly self he is now.
    I guess you can't completely blame the girls because they don't know what their Mudear has done for them. Practically all their lives—to show them a good example.
    Wait a minute! What did she just say? "Mudear, now, she the kinda 'ho .. ." What the hell kind of thing is that to say about me, their own Mudear. Have they lost their minds or did they actually find some of that marijuana they wanted?
    They ought to know that dope make you crazy!

CHAPTER 5
    When Annie Ruth came back onto the porch, she still felt a bit shaky, but she carried the drinks on a silver tray.
    "You sure are getting bold," Betty said as she took her drink off the server Annie Ruth proffered. "First, you pour liquor in Mudear's special cabinet glasses. Now, you serving drinks off her silver tray."
    "If we don't use this stuff at some time it's going to revert to ore," Annie Ruth said. "I can still see what terrible shape poor Emily's hands were in after all those Saturdays of sitting in the dining room polishing all this silver and silverware and then putting it back in the breakfront and the blue velvet box for storage 'til it tarnished again."
    "I wonder why Mudear never let us use any of it. As much as she loved pretty things," Emily said as she took her drink from the tray. She was trying not to pounce on Annie Ruth's news, because while her younger sister was inside Betty had made her promise to take it easy.
    Betty swirled the ice in her drink a couple of times and waited to see if Annie Ruth was going to say anything. When she didn't, Betty said, "'Cause they were some of her wedding and anniversary gifts, that's why."
    Even Emily didn't need any further explanation.
    All the girls knew how Mudear felt about men, husbands especially. When Emily had gotten married to Ron, Mudear had refused to get out of bed to see the bridal