LITMIR.BIZ

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continuing. “Forget about a wedding, I hope we get to the meeting on time, today,” Mother Blister said as she finally found a comfortable spot, despite the concerned look from Petunia and the smile on Cill’s face.

      “Well, they can’t have a singles meeting without all the most promising singles being present,” Cill offered. “You do remember that we are going to discuss what other things we can do to meet our soul-mates, don’t you?”

      “You do remember that I’ve probably forgotten more about men than you’ve ever learned or will learn no matter how hard you try to be like one,” Mother Blister snapped.

      “I like keeping in touch with my masculine side. You gotta problem with yours?” Cill’d always liked tattoos and keeping folks guessing about her gender. She never questioned why. She just enjoyed the game.

      Mother Blister was old, but not stupid. She knew Cill would always try to get an argument going with anyone she could. “Watch yourself, youngster,” Mother Blister continued as she adjusted her false teeth as if she were going to take them out and use them on Cill.

      For the rest of the ten-minute ride to Sister Need Sum’s house, the three women alternated between arguing and apologizing. And, of course, Cill and Petunia had to give their edited version of Blind Betty’s “fiasco of a wedding,” as they called it.

      And they were the sanest women in the Oh Lawd, Why Am I Still Single Club.

      2

      It was Saturday morning and several sweat-stained gardeners were scattered throughout the Pelzer suburbs of the rich and wish-they-were rich population.

      Most of the men were young, willing workers, and arrived in small trucks and multi-colored vans. Their well-toned bodies were tanned from the hot sun and dirty from the hard work of mowing lawns and spreading fertilizer. That morning they came prepared to prune and to plant.

      Light testosterone whiffs of dripping sweat intermingled with the fragrance of jasmines and yellow lilac bushes that dotted the lawns of several plush homes. The homes of the rich and snooty residents of Hope Avenue were definitely not the homes of the single, but often desperation still came to visit.

      As they pushed their roaring lawnmowers, the gardeners’ sleeveless T-shirts clung to their bodies. Although the sight of the young men intimidated the well-dressed men struggling under the weight of their golf clubs, it wasn’t enough to keep them from driving off in their luxury cars and leaving their wives behind.

      Standing in the doorway with each hair in its place and nails polished to a shine, the left-behind wives leered at the workers. The sight of the promising young men caused the spoiled wives to daydream of slinging the golf clubs and their husbands over their shoulders, and depositing them at the curb.

      A little farther away the intoxicating mixtures of flora and perspiration had wafted towards the corner and into one of the homes on Drudge Road. It was a house where an old flowery faded mat with the furrowed face of a winking cherub, resting lopsided on the front porch, welcomed visitors.

      Townfolks always described Hope Avenue as looking “well-off.” They said that Drudge Road just looked “far off.”

      Inside the small, cluttered wood-framed eye-sore on the corner of Drudge and Hope avenues, where the smell of Icy Hot for back pain and Clairol plum hair dye was certain to attack a visitor’s nose, lived Sister Need Sum. Her close friends called her Needy. Moreover, even those who didn’t know her at all took one glance and called her that, too.

      Needy leaned out of her narrow bedroom window with a chipped pair of binoculars and inhaled the morning air for the umpteenth time since awakening from a restless night. I’m long overdue for some pruning and planting, she sighed as she mentally tore off with her teeth the shirt of one of the young gardeners. With her free hand she began to fan furiously with a torn Aretha Franklin album cover. Her heart fluttered as her mind began to entertain fleshly thoughts that she’d thought she’d overcome at a recent prayer meeting.

      Since she had her first kiss at the age of twenty-five, Needy struggled with issues of the flesh. “God’s still working on this building,” she always testified.

      “Buenos diás, Carlos. Que pasa?” Needy shamelessly yelled across and up the street at one of the workers who came dangerously close. She prayed her voice rose above the constant high-pitched buzz of the hedge clippers. “Oh you fine, young thing,” she muttered and then quickly looked sky-ward and added, “Lord, please forgive me for that flesh-ridden thought about what I’d love to do with that young man.”

      As happy as she was to see the bare chested young Spanish men flexing their toned and sun-kissed muscles, she was even happier to know that God would forgive her for her inappropriate thoughts. She knew this because she’d asked forgiveness far more times than she probably deserved.

      Needy was in her late thirties, if she’d been telling the truth. Unlike most of her single friends, she owned her home. There was nothing outstanding about her one-story green and brown frame house except that it sat cushioned between two trailer homes that teetered precariously on whittled cinderblocks.

      After a few minutes of inhaling as much air as she could without wheezing from the rag weed in her back yard, Needy shut her bedroom window and went towards the front of the house. Her huge head-wrap, a tattered dark linen towel spotted with hair dye, slowly began to unravel. She moved about as if she were trying to dodge flying objects as she quickly sprayed her living room with long misty streams of Old Spice cologne. The odor of Old Spice was as close to having a man in her home in the middle of the day as she’d been in the past year. And she was not happy about that fact at all.

      Needy had barely finished spraying the room with the odor of false hope when the urgent sound of her doorbell clanged though her home.

      “Hold your horses, I’m coming,” she yelled, angrily, even though she knew her visitors couldn’t hear her. She quickly looked at her wall clock and realized that her guests were almost thirty minutes early. She was annoyed but certainly wasn’t surprised. Plotting to catch a man was serious business. Blind Betty’s wedding had sent them into overdrive.

      The six female club members had become a tight-knit group. They hung out together and even planned their vacations together. They all worked in the same area of town and they still checked in with each other at lunchtime, every day, just in case one of them caught more men than she could handle. That never happened, but they still clung to hope.

      “Cill, Birdie and Mother Blister, come on in. How are you ladies today? Excuse the mess.” Needy feigned surprise and the appropriate agitation as the women entered in various stages of desperation, decay, and annoyance into her living room. “Y’all have a seat. Is Petunia parking the car?”

      “Yes, she’s outside trying to find a suitable parking space for that mess on four wheels,” Cill said, cheerfully. “We ran into Birdie while we were coming up the walkway.”

      “You look wonderful,” Birdie said softly to Needy while giving her a quick peck on the cheek.

      Needy returned the kiss, showing her appreciation for Birdie’s thoughtfulness. “Y’all came earlier than I expected. I’ll try to get dressed as fast as I can. After all, one can’t rush perfection.”

      She put a little something extra on the perfection comment feeling that she most certainly had to look a lot better than the hot messes, with perhaps the exception of Birdie, she saw seated around her.

      Every month for the past five years, Needy led the single and childless meetings in her tiny, cluttered living room. The only thing she’d gotten out of those get-togethers was the title of Madam President and about a twenty-pound spread of unwanted fat on her hips and thighs, along with a bushy mustache on her upper lip that if left alone, most men would’ve killed for. Needy carried around a pair of tweezers that were as necessary to her physical survival as the air she breathed. If she didn’t keep that busy, bushy top lip weeded, she wouldn’t be able to breathe or gossip.

      Needy had barely turned to leave before she heard

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