PART 3 — THE BIRTHDAY
Two weeks before that Sunday there was a birthday for our mother. About twenty-five people at our aunt’s.
I was in the kitchen with a serving dish and three of my cousins.
And Bree came in and took the dish out of my hands, put it down on the side, and said, loudly, to that whole room:
“Give me that. Rom’s gone funny about her house, everyone — don’t mention the towel. Sit down, Rom, I’m joking.”
There was a laugh. Two cousins and my uncle.
My mother said, “Girls.”
Nobody asked me one thing about it.
And I laughed as well. That is the part I have to own.
I stood in my aunt’s kitchen and laughed at my own complaint, in front of twenty-five people, because the alternative was explaining it, and explaining it in that room would have made me the difficult one inside about four sentences.
