Summary

The narrator comes out of the shower to find her mother's older sister, her Aunt Alma, in her shared house. Aunt Alma is shocked the narrator lived the way she did; she finds the house dirty. None of the narrator's roommates are home, a fact about which she is grateful. The narrator doesn't know how her aunt found her there. Aunt Alma continues being critical until she tells the narrator that the narrator's mother is worried about her. The narrator knows how to react to Alma, a woman who people said the narrator "was more her child than my mama's" (95). Aunt Alma says that the narrator had failed to call her mother for the past three months.

Aunt Alma tries to be strong, but the narrator knows she is pained by the fact the narrator has not been home...