Thrown-away Child

addressing everybody at the table, as though they were an unseen television audience. Like any family watching television, everybody seemed to have better things to do. Janice looked specifically at Ruby, and said, “Besides, for your information I got me a BMW.”
    “She doesn’t mean a car,” Ruby said, turning to me. “She means BMW—black man working. A little dig at me for marrying whitey.”
    “No, it is not,” Janice protested.
    “By the way, where is your BMW tonight?” Ruby asked.
    “Well, right at this minute he’s got things to do.“
    “He’s real good to you?”
    “He’s a doll.”
    Mama asked, “How come I never met this here doll of yours, Janny?”
    “Be patient, Mama. You will.”
    “I hope you’ll bring him by while my husband and I are still here in New Orleans visiting,” Ruby said in a butter-melting way. “What’s BMW’s name anyway Janny? What’s he like?”
    “Oh, he’s a very fine man, very successful. We got so much in common, you know. Haven’t even had our first fight. Seems we agree on everything.”
    “Two people shouldn’t agree on everything,” Ruby said, sticking her sister unmercifully. “If they did, one of them would be unnecessary. Don’t you think so?“
    “I’m going to fix me a serving of Mama’s good food, that’s what I think.” Janice picked up a plate from the table and huffed over to the Magic Chef range and helped herself to the étouffé. Then she found a spot to sit, as far from Ruby as possible.
    “Still didn’t get that fine boyfriend’s name,” Ruby called across the table.
    Janice pretended to be interested in something Uncle Bud was saying.
    “Janny?” Ruby persisted.
    “Oh—what?”
    “The name. Tell us your boyfriend’s name.”
    “Let’s just say, maybe he’s Mr. Right.”
    Miss Minnie clapped her hands together again and whooped some more. “Janny, you remember that first time you said you tell us you found a dreamboat man?”
    Janice groaned.
    Miss Minnie turned to me. “She just a young thing with her first-time case of love. Nobody too picky when they got a case of the screaming thigh sweats. Janny sure as hell wasn’t picky. It was right here in this kitchen, she say, ‘I’ve found Mr. Right, only I think he might be an abusive alcoholic.’ ”
    Teddy led the table in chortling over this latest remembrance. And eventually Janice, in spite of herself and her grand entrance shot to hell by Ruby, joined the laughter.
    And this was how the grown-up sisters managed to get the inevitable scuffling out of their systems. So this is family, I thought. So help me, I loved it.
    And so help me, I worried about the family member nobody joked about—Perry. I hoped he would call.

    Over the course of several hours and several more arrivals, the whole twenty-five pounds of crawfish and nearly all the rest of Mama’s spread vanished. Then when everybody was satisfied and variously slumped into sofas and chairs and rubbing their bellies and talking about all the food they liked that had not liked them in return, Mama opened up her photograph albums. She pronounced her collection “my treasure” and piled several albums into my lap, with the others set on the floor at my feet for later.
    “You don’t have to look at each and every one of these Negroes you don’t want to,” Mama said, sitting next to me on the couch and looking on. Ruby sat on my other side, and Janice had the easy chair. “Just page through and find the Ruby pictures. Oh, she and Janny, they quite the little camera hounds.”
    Ruby was not so enthusiastic as I was when I would come across her kid pictures, mostly black-and-white snapshots tucked into tidy slots of the heavy photo album pages. I particularly enjoyed the picture of Ruby when she was a seven-year-old flower girl at a family wedding, marching up the aisle in a floor-length dress over crinolines and her famous cat-eye glasses Her face was uptilted and those cat-eye specs were à glare of camera flash, and her little chin looked to be covered in butter.
    “You take that picture home to New York with you if you want,” Mama offered. Ruby said no thanks, but I snatched it off the album page and put it in my pocket. “I’ll have it copied at a camera shop I know then I’ll return the original,” I promised Mama.
    “Well then, take any of them strikes you.”
    So I helped myself to three more. There was the one of Ruby and Janice mugging on the kitchen stoop in their blouses and