Of course, maybe I'd have a daughter like me, I was good to my mama till she got herself smashed up on the 405 the very day I had finally decided to take the car keys away from her because her reaction time was so slow I was afraid she was going to kill somebody running a stop sign. If I had taken the keys away from her, then she'd be alive but she'd hate me for keeping her from having the freedom of driving a car. What good is a good daughter if the only way she can be good to you is make your life miserable?

It only means that I'll never have a son like him, or a daughter foolish enough to marry a man like him, and that makes me about as happy a woman as lives on Burnside, and that's saying something, because by and large this is a pretty happy street. People here got some money, but not serious money, not Brentwood or Beverly Hills money, and sure as hell not Malibu beachfront money. Just comfortable money, a little bit of means. And only a block away from Cloverdale, and that street have real money, on up the hill, anyway.

She only got into Baldwin Hills herself because the earthquake knocked this house a little bit off its foundation and her mama left her just enough money to get over the top for a down payment—a fluke. But she was happy here. These were good people. She'd watch them raise their children, and suffer all that anxiety all the time, and thank God she didn't have such a burden in her own life.

Chapter 3

WEED

Ceese saw Miz Smitcher looking out her window at him and saw how she was talking to somebody, and he knew without even thinking about it that the person she was talking to was his mother. "Maybe this ain' such a good idea, Raymo."

"What you saying, Ceese, you just getting scared."

"You never seen my daddy when Mama gets mad at me."