LITMIR.BIZ

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knew what to make of her kindness, generosity or naïveté.

      Birdie was also the latest woman to join the singles after their open invitation. This was her second meeting. She was forty-two years old, clueless, and the only white woman in the group. She and Needy were old college friends. They’d met at college shortly after Cill had left to join the army.

      Birdie and Needy were also co-workers at the Pinching Pennies Brokerage House.

      Birdie stood at least six feet tall in her bare feet, and her body was as straight as an arrow. Although she had more money than the others, with the exception of Needy, and had a bachelor degree in business, Birdie didn’t have a man, so they let her join.

      Under different circumstances, the women were usually quite a vocal group. Yet today they continued to sit like a row of dominoes, stoic. Whenever Needy threw a rant their way, each looked back with their chins rising, nodding in agreement. As soon as she moved onto the next person, the last would drop her chin again. They looked like bobble-head dolls as she ranted on about the unfairness of life.

      No one in the room would argue that Needy didn’t have a reason to be angry. She’d recently celebrated her thirty-ninth birthday—alone—just as she had for the last fifteen years.

      With the exception of Brother Lead Belly, no one called, including the regular yet annoying telemarketers.

      Needy was angry when she’d answered and heard him wheezing instead of singing a verse of “Happy Birthday.” In truth, she couldn’t stand the short, box-shaped, chocolate-complexioned, middle-aged man with jowls so fat and long they look like bat wings hanging from both sides of his nose.

      The feeling of abandonment left Needy in a lingering foul mood.

      Get a grip, Needy, she thought as she inhaled to regroup before continuing. “Soon it will be August,” she spoke softly as though she’d never raised her voice.

      “We’ve only just begun our three-week vacations and so far nothing has changed. I’m so sick and tired of us meeting with no new or decent man sightings or dates to report,” Needy whined, quickly abandoning her composure.

      “Oh my goodness,” she blurted out, suddenly grabbing the edge of the sofa. She was about to topple over from trying to be cool and collected and realized just how long it’d been since she’d had a date.

      Again, Needy tried to play it off and avoided the looks from the other women by pushing away with a dramatic hand sweep a wandering hair-weave track that covered one eye. She knew it didn’t work, because the women were looking on as though hypnotized, and she fought to take control of another escaping piece of hair that had come undone. She finally tossed it back over her ear as she swung her head back and forth like a pendulum.

      “It’s a shame,” Needy droned on. “I don’t know about y’all, but I can’t even find a decent man anywhere that’s fit to take out my trash, let alone me.” Needy’s head started to bob and weave again, like she was fighting something invisible and evil in the air. Her eyes suddenly narrowed as her voice rose almost to a shriek.

      She continued with her hands still on her hips. “What’s wrong with these men?” She asked the question without really expecting an answer. “When I used to act like trash I got taken out all the time.”

      “That’s true. Everyone knows that a lot of men will take out a trashy woman, especially when she begs them to do it—” Cill yelled out from the foyer. She’d only heard part of what was said. She’d left for the bathroom as soon as Needy started her second rant, yet she felt the need to voice an opinion.

      “You’re right about that,” another voice added with a little too much confidence. It was Petunia. She’d found a suitable spot and kept parking until it was her habitual twelve inches from the curb.

      When did she get here? I didn’t see her come in. Needy’s eyes narrowed so Petunia wouldn’t mistake her anger for anything more than what it was.

      Petunia ignored Needy just as she had when she’d opened Needy’s front door and let herself in without ringing the bell. Up to that moment, she’d sat quietly in the corner. Late or not, she still felt a need to put in her neurotic two cents.

      “I’ve seen on more than one occasion how Needy and her trashy, trifling ways got her big butt kicked to the curb. It happened, mostly, after the first date.” Petunia, too, had known Needy since childhood and always pushed her buttons. She did it because she knew she could get away with it but she truly loved Needy, in her own way.

      Petunia looked Needy up and down, showing her pretend disdain, and then nodded towards the other women for emphasis.

      Needy couldn’t respond the way she wanted to because she didn’t want to get blood on her rundown orange carpeting, and because she had bobbed her head in self-pity one time too many, and had come dangerously close to being stabbed in her eye by one strand of her stiff, gelled, artificially plum-colored hair.

      “Yeah, you was definitely a bag of trash back in the day; first-class trash at that. And, you were certainly freaky-nasty too, but like you said, you did have a lot of dates.”

      Cill had reentered the room and continued down bad-memory lane. “The way I remember it, you even made a decent amount of change from a few of them dates.”

      Cill was on a roll; however, she suddenly stopped and threw a conspiring wink at Needy as she pretended to be only teasing.

      When Needy didn’t reach over and slap her silly, Cill boldly continued. “Of course, it was a good thing you were getting paid because I remember each time you got locked up for trying to sell what yo’ mama gave you, you needed bail money.”

      Cill droned on like a bee with a bad lisp. “But back then you weren’t saved or paying tithes to a church, so you were only doing what came natural to you.”

      The room got eerily quiet as if the other women knew a volcano was about to erupt and didn’t want to set it off quicker than necessary.

      Cill was satisfied that she’d turned the spotlight off Needy so she turned and nodded towards the others, making sure she still had their attention. She had them by the hairs of their chinny-chin-chins. “Of course, I’ve known you since we were toddlers together,” she said, quickly looking back at Needy before returning her attention to the others. “I remember your mama saying that, even back then she knew you were gonna be a sorry hussy, because you used to tear the slit in your diaper just a little bit higher than it should’ve been, just to show off more of your fat thighs.”

      None of the women remembered moving, yet there they were—all bunched together. They looked like an Oreo cookie with Birdie as the white creamy center.

      Naïve as she was, Birdie magically produced a set of car keys and dangled them from her hand, ready to move out of harm’s way if she needed to.

      Needy’s patience was about to snap. She was so mad she could’ve tossed a pot of hot grits at Cill, and pinned each searing grain into her. Instead, she dismissed the insults to her character when her wandering hair track fell forward, again. She quickly leaned over the arm of her chair and snatched a bobby pin from atop the tall black beehive hairdo of Petunia.

      Petunia yelled as if she were singing an aria.

      “Ouch!” Petunia winced, grabbing the side of her elongated head. Unfortunately, the bobby pin was the only thing holding together her short au-natural hair that peeked through a ratty, discounted, burgundy-colored weave.

      “Dang girl! Do you mind?” Petunia snapped, leaping from her seat as if she’d sat on a pin. She snatched the precious bobby pin from Needy’s hand before Needy could use it. “Everybody knows you got dandruff the size of cornflakes. So don’t put nothing of mine in your hair and then try and give it back.”

      Petunia made her move just in time to pin up several tresses of her own coarse, unnaturally black hair that threatened to escape, split ends and all. Every bogus strand of that weave would’ve landed in her lap if she hadn’t.

      If

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