Differential

  Inside, normally warmed Atlantans were in all sizes of winterwear.  "It's all hers," a surly yet effeminate man ("I lived with my mother, two grandmothers, and a sundry of aunts."/"It's not 'sundry' that's inanimate objects."/"Like what?"/"Like dry goods and stuff in a Bermuda hotel shoppe."/ He wrote: It's S H O P, but asked out loud, "Been to Bermuda, have you?") indicated the other side of the room.  He touched my broche and didn't ask, Special. "Where should I, I mean, we sit?"  

  "This is where the broadcasters are meeting Antoine.  Am I correct?" 

  "Madam-wah-szelle, you are.  And behind me," kisses on each cheek, "Are the black and to-be-famous." Others had caught up and were toggling around the Matriarchs.  "I see mine," a relative said excitedly.  "Those are not all black people." Antoine cringed at a Pastor's voice coming over and the tone of his name being said.

  "I'm stepping outside to smoke," I said softly to a mamere who couldn't see that well but who'd participated with the others to arrange themselves so that no handicap was going to make them miss a thing.  "Where you going?"  A husband and wife, dressed hansome-ly, took off rain gear and hung it on hooks in a side door, mudroom, area.  "Oh my God Karen and, and," she was pushed in the small of her back to step forward on her high heel boots, and she reached for both of my arms.  The doorlight behind them showed sun, then crossing shadow, then sun.  Kisses on both cheeks. 

  "Why is there dog being served as food?" A woman dark eyed and slightly stooped over appeared in between the main room and the little side entryway.  A whisper asked, "I thought you said she was better?"  I turned and stifled my instant heartbreak.  "I'll find out," I curtsied.