Monica Maxwell screamed. "Olympia, I'm going to kill that hell-spawned fiend you call a daughter if it's the last thing I do!" she screeched into the locker room. "Tamika, where's your fucking sister?"

"You don't have to yell," Tamika Catchings replied. "And Tauja told me that there was no way she would baby-sit for this crew again, no matter how much we offered to pay her." Tamika calmly ducked as one of the young girls in Monica's charge hurled a sneaker at her head. The projectile didn't miss a target, though, as the minor spate of profanity from behind her indicated.

"You agreed to the schedule, Monica," Coquese Washington reminded her. "You knew that we were going to be playing Orlando, and we all agreed that if we were at home we'd help take care of the away team's children."

"Oh, shove the lawyer talk," Monica snapped. "If I need to sue someone, I'll call you, okay, Coquese?"

"I don't appreciate the lawyer jokes," Coquese said stiffly.

"Besides, she was on call when we hosted Cleveland and the Darling triplets," Nikki McCray pointed out. "And I know they ain't nearly as darlin' as their name."

"Oh, it's not the Orlando kids that are bothering me, Nikki. Chance, Michele, and Vince have been just what the babysitter ordered. It's our teammates' evil brood that's going to kill me before the end of the night. BreAzia, NO! Stop hitting Chance!"

"What's going on here?" Olympia Scott-Richardson, mother of the offending BreAzia, inquired, striding into the adjoining room in enough undress that Michele Franklin clapped her hand over her baby brother's eyes. "What did he do to start it?"

"I didn't do anything!" Chance McGhee lisped. "She just hit me."

"He took my dolly!" BreAzia whined. Monica looked at the ceiling as she performed a miraculous feat by not only stepping in between Chance and BreAzia, but also by getting in between Olympia and the entire situation. Somehow, she suspected it was going to be a long afternoon, and then it was going to be a very long night.