For the first time in months, she didn’t provide an update on her pubic hair. Instead, she sniffed that she missed her sister, Rita. “You spend eighty yeyahs with someone, and you know exactly how they would have reacted to something, and when theyah not theyah to do it, you miss it,” she explained.“Did something happen today?” I asked.“Something happens every day,” Bernice said.“Why so blue today?”I knew something had to have happened. After all, this was a woman who described the woman who mugged her in the Publix parking lot as wearing a very elegant hat. Bernice said, “I got this flyah — everyone in the building got it — that said six dollahs a room for carpet cleaning, three-room minimum. So I figyad for eighteen dollahs I’ll do both bedrooms and the living room.”“And?” I urged her to continue.“These burly men got to the apartment, and they said it’s going to be a hundred-twenty cawse I needed a deep cleaning. I said, ‘Who needs a deep cleaning?’ It’s not like I’m such a big shot.
