I ’ve warned Mama not to tell her story today. Mama has a visitor, a Mrs. Thompson from her Sunday School class. First Baptist believes in staying in touch. You could fit two of Mama into the green and orange knit that strains to cover Mrs. Thompson’s ample body. No wonder, the way she puts away the cookies, loads her tea with three sugars.
Mama and Mrs. Thompson started off discussing the lesson from Revelations, but now they’re onto something about colored bank tellers always making the wrong change. I don’t care what they talk about, so long as Mama doesn’t tell her story. I’ll break her skinny chicken neck if she does. I mean it. I’ll walk over, yank that afghan off her pale bony knees, pull all ninety pounds and eighty years of her out of the rocker and fling her against the wall — no, the brick fireplace — so she’ll shatter the way champagne glasses used to in the movies. I will.
