Meet her latest addition, Loretha, in the first chapter ofIts Not All Downhill From Here.
Read below, or listen to the audio version.
Chapter One
I don’t want another surprise party.
I chuckled right back, even though I was serious as a heart attack.
“Don’t you worry, Miss Lo.
I’ve got you covered, he said as he hung up.
I knew he didn’t really get my drift.
It’s not that our life is boring.
Well, maybe it is, a little.
In human years, he and I will soon be the same age: 68.
His whiskers and eyebrows are peppered with gray, but unlike me, B.
B. doesn’t dye his hair.
I sat on the green metal bench and watched him sniff a friendly chocolate poodle.
I watch music videos on YouTube.
I have not forgotten how to dance.
In those moments I feel pretty and sexy and 40.
Here I go again.
Back in my 20s, I smoked a lot of reefer with my friends.
But sometimes, when I do remember, it feels like an accomplishment.
Like right now, I’m remembering last year’s dull party.
Now, Odessa is a bitch and proves it on a weekly basis.
Like I said, she’s my twin.
But there are two things about us that make us special.
First of all, we were born in different years.
I’m December 31 and she’s January 1.
We are also technically only half sisters, even though we’re fraternal twins.
Apparently Ma was a hot number back in the day and slept with two different fellas only days apart.
This probably explains why we are nothing alike and why we’re not as chummy as most twins.
It’s a fact that Odessa has been jealous of me for years.
Jealous of my being a successful entrepreneur.
She has never once come into my Pasadena store.
Never once given me a compliment, no matter how nice I might look.
I didn’t know our lives were a contest.
Then she started going to church like some people go to AA.
She started acting like she would get electrocuted from a mere whiff of alcohol.
My daughter, on the other hand, has the opposite relationship to alcohol.
I fired her from my store for stealing from me.
But I couldn’t be everywhere at once, and I’m tired of being punished for it.
She didn’t come to my party and hasn’t spoken to me in more than a year.
Jackson is Jalecia’s younger brother and the product of my second marriage.
He wasn’t at my party last year either, but he had a good reason.
He lives in Tokyo with his wife, Aiko, who had just given birth to premature twin daughters.
They still needed a few more months to grow and they needed their daddy there.
My BFFs were there, though.
Even Poochie made the trip from Vegas.
I grew up with all of them.
Occasionally we all get on one another’s nerves.
Sometimes to the point that our friendships get temporarily annulled.
Excerpted fromIt’s Not All Downhill From Hereby Terry McMillan Copyright 2020 by Terry McMillan.
Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
