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Momma has the huge Messenger eyes and the hair that looks like someone’s been teasing it too hard. Her legs are thin and long and so are her arms, and when people see us together, the really old ones ask if we are twins.

“Separated at birth,” Momma always says.

On the way home from the beauty parlor, she refused to talk to me about anything but the party. And even then she was scant on the details.

“Just you wait,” she said.