“There truly ain’t no party like a Turner house party. Like a single-celled organism, it can change shape and reproduce itself with little fuel. The food runs out by 9pm, no matter how much they make, but the booze never ends. The children, in a pop- and candy-fueled ecstasy, will do doughnuts on their Big Wheels in the basement. Or, minus miniature vehicles, they’ll play video games on the old big screen down there, standing up, jostling one another, fighting the big screen’s static, and only stopping for Faygo and pee breaks. In the absence of any toys at all - which is unlikely because Cha-Cha’s basement doubles as a toy graveyard - Turners under the age of twelve may resort to old school play, linking arms and running as fast as they can in a circle until someone vomits, playing tag in the dark until someone gets a minor concussion, or simply screaming at the top of their prepubescent lungs until an adult comes down and threatens them into silence. The adults will play dominoes, bid whist, and Po-Ke-No. They tell the same embarrassing stories about one another and guffaw as if they’re new. They make liquor runs; they make new boyfriends uncomfortable; they make neighbors consider calling the police. They will eventually kick the children out of the basement, tuck them away upstairs, and dance in the belly of Cha-Cha’s house to classics from the disparate decades fo their youths.”
- Angela Flournoy, The Turner House, 2015