Carmel returns home from the Pentecostal church service for Sunday lunch. She is with fellow church members Merty, Drusilla, Asseleitha, and Candaisy, all of whom she has known since her childhood in Antigua. Barry dislikes the church they attend because he has discovered that they only pray for personal prosperity.

Carmel’s friends barely acknowledge Barry, as they are upset due to Carmel’s gossip about his late-night drinking and adultery. Donna, who is Barry and Carmel’s oldest daughter, also stops by for lunch with her 17-year-old son, Daniel. Donna is a single mother, and Barry funds Daniel’s expensive private-school education.

Carmel’s friends gossip about a fellow church member’s eldest daughter, Melissa, and her uterine fibroids. They insist that she has fibroids because she did not have children by 25. They also speculate that she is a lesbian and that God is punishing her. Donna stands up for Melissa, using scripture from Leviticus to argue that Melissa’s affairs should not concern them. Merty challenges Donna’s convictions by asking her if she’d like it if Daniel brought home a boy rather than a girl. Merty asks, “[I]f Daniel was one of them, an antiman, you’d be happy with that?” (63).