She’d disappear from the house for hours and come back with no explanation as to where she’d been. About a year after my stepfather died, her best friend, a wonderful black woman named Irene Johnson, passed away and Mommy teetered at the edge again, standing over the kitchen sink washing the same pot for hours, sniffling back her tears, and snapping, “Get away from me!” when we approached her. “You only have one or two good friends in life,” she used to preach at us, and for her, Irene was one of those. She and Irene went back to Harlem in the forties when Ma first came to New York. Irene
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