Alamena froze. Baby Sis was just a girl whom Mamie had taken in to help about the house, and had no right to criticize the guests.

"Girl, you're getting beside yourself," she said. "You'd better mind how you talk. Go open the door and then get this mess cleaned up in here."

Baby Sis looked sidewise about the disordered kitchen, her slant eyes looking evil in her greasy black face.

The table, sink, sidestands and most of the available floor space were strewn with empty and half-filled bottles-gin, whisky and rum bottles, pop bottles, condiment bottles; pots, pans and platters of food, a dishpan containmg leftover potato salad, deep iron pots with soggy pieces of fried chicken, fried fish, fried pork chops; baking pans with mashed and mangled biscuits, pie pans with single slices of runny pies; a washtub containing bits of ice floating about in trashy water; slices of cake and spongy white-bread sandwiches, half eaten, lying everywhere-on the tables, sink and floor.

"Ain't never gonna get this mess cleaned up nohow," she complained.

"Git, girl," Alamena said harshly.

Baby Sis shoved her way through the mob of crying drunks in the packed sitting room.

"Somebody open this door!" the voice yelled desperately from outside.

"I'm coming!" Baby Sis shouted from inside. "Keep your pants on."

"Hurry up then!" the voice shouted back. "Baby, it's cold outside," one of the drunks inside cracked.

Baby Sis stopped in front of the locked door and shouted, "Who is you who been beating on this door like you tryna bust it down?"

"I'm Reverend Short," the voice replied.

"I'm the Queen of Sheba," Baby Sis said, doubling over laughing and beating her big strong thighs. She turned to the guests to let them share the joke. "He say he's Reverend Short."

Several of the guests laughed as though they were stone, raving crazy.