Aunt Jessie had been at the cane-on-the-ceiling business for close to an hour when Rita came to share her troubles for the first time that morning. In that given period, Jessie had not accomplished one thing that she had not set out to accomplish and she knew it. The whole affair had, in fact, started just that morning, when Mary Lou and Sonny and Jessica had up and left the breakfast table without so much as a hello, good-bye, or kiss my ass, and then had stayed upstairs all morning without a peep..