Medicine bottles on a nightstand glitter in a spot of early May moonlight like the flash of silicone gems on a headstone.Elder Joe, in his bedroom down the hall, flicks on a nightstand lamp to torture himself with a recent edition of the black Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper. Tears well as he scans, for the dozenth time, one of its society pages devoted entirely to pictures and copy of the Acapulco marriage of Judge Evans and Marguerite Spingarn, adorable in peach peau de soie and lace.Joe silently screams, 'Oh Marite!' as he stares into the depths of the mesmeric eyes of her paper image. He groans, feels a hybrid twinge of loss, rage and guilt for Zenobia's Christmas Day stroke while serving her white woman's dinner party.He painfully remembers his creative nastiness until her stroke, calculated to punish her and zoom her blood pressure. This, of course, in the long absences of Young Joe, full time on his stepfather's plumbing job and part time as a night watchman. He rises to check on Zenobia, dead from the waist down, who is unaware of her inoperable cancer of the pancreas.
