long blonde hair, and said that she was going to Afghanistan to wear a burka and become head of the Taliban, Birdie would’ve been encouraged to do likewise.
Birdie hadn’t totally lied. Muffy was traveling to Hampton, Virginia. She just hadn’t told her mother the truth about why Muffy was going.
The real reason Muffy had gone there was to shack up with one of the up-and-coming football players. He was a young black man by the name of Lance George who was only twenty-one and had the physique and looks of a young Fred Williamson.
Birdie had met Lance first. He’d briefly visited Old Money to work at a pre-college job the previous summer. Birdie took to him immediately but he didn’t seem interested, so she moved on. She didn’t know he’d moved on to Muffy until a few months later. She saw them together walking down Rodeo Drive. It wasn’t the thing to do back then, with the color difference being a barrier. Muffy cared little for conventionality or their racial differences. She said it was love at first sight when Lance changed a flat tire for her at the Sears shop. They struck an instant friendship and her plan was to do anything to make sure that Lance made it to the NFL.
Birdie and Muffy had parted company when they landed in Virginia. Birdie moved onto the Hampton University campus and that’s when her life truly began.
Unfortunately, Lance suffered a career-breaking knee injury and ended up working at a Columbia, South Carolina post office. Muffy then decided that if the NFL didn’t want Lance there was little chance that she would either. She disappeared from South Carolina without telling either Birdie or Lance. At least that’s what Lance told the authorities when Muffy’s mother hadn’t heard from her daughter.
Hampton University always held a special place in Birdie’s heart. It was on that small campus that she’d lived and learned racial harmony, which was the total opposite of her exclusively Caucasian community in Old Money.
As she twisted and turned on the sofa trying to catch more of the uneven breeze from Needy’s old air conditioner, Birdie suddenly felt as if she could almost recall the aroma from the orange blossoms from the garden blending with the perspiration of her mother. It was as though time had transported her back to Old Money from Needy’s living room, and she didn’t want to return just yet.
However, she had to. It was just the smell of Needy’s cheap orange fragrance and her perspiration as she entered the living room.
“Are you ready?” Needy asked. She needed to make sure that Birdie was up for the job. When Birdie nodded yes, Needy became excited. “When we get finished with old Lyon Lipps, he’s gonna wish for death.”
Again Birdie nodded in agreement and then said, “I’m ready but I do have one more question.”
“What is it?”
“What’s in this for you? Other than being the president of the club and seemingly destined to remain single, what do you get out of helping us to destroy a man you’ve never met?”
Birdie’s anger at Lyon Lipps was beginning to fade as common sense revisited, accompanied by too many questions. But she didn’t want to use common sense, she wanted to stay angry. She needed Needy’s inspiration.
“What do I get out of ripping a new hole for this man?” Needy repeated the question while balling her fists. “Well, my biggest reason is that men shouldn’t treat women the way he’s doing, and he should pay for all the times men have treated me badly.” She stopped abruptly as her hairy top lip began to quiver. “They don’t seem to want dark-skinned women like me,” she continued. “So what if I have a little more on my chest and butt than most women. I’m a good person. I have feelings…” She seemed about ready to cry and that lip was doing its own thing.
“And what are the other reasons?” Birdie’s need to get answers from Needy was quickly replaced by her anxious need for Needy’s hairy top lip to stop shaking, so she didn’t know why she bothered to ask another question that would require a reply.
“My other reasons are the same as my first reason,” Needy snapped as she dabbed at her moist eyes.
Birdie decided not to ask more questions, particularly when Needy, on the way out of the house, became so agitated she slammed her fist against the old air conditioner. She hit it so hard the machine gave out one last sputter and died.
It was the perfect opportunity for Birdie to offer to buy her a new one, but she didn’t. Instead, the two women walked to Birdie’s pink Lexus in silence.
The death of an innocent air conditioner should’ve been a sign to Birdie to just leave well enough alone but she wasn’t carrying her Signs for Dummies handbook.
Birdie should’ve had that book stapled to her hand, because she was about to learn that both Needy and Ima Hellraiser had their own handwritten chapters in it.
4
The feminine blight on Pelzer’s otherwise stellar reputation lived about ten miles from Needy. She occupied a bright red, single-family house with its black shades perpetually drawn tight. From a distance it appeared haunted, sitting in the middle of a wide patch of tall brownish grass, with a small rock garden of Devil Snuff shrubbery as the only outside decoration. Neighbors often avoided the home by walking across the wide street void of traffic lights but busy with traffic. They’d rather risk being run over than walk in front of the feared residence.
Ima Hellraiser lived inside the house that sported the décor of a dungeon. No one visited unless they were coming for the torture.
Behind her back Christians and atheists alike, particularly those who could barely stand her, called her a reprobate witch. To her face, they called her Ima.
Inside her bedroom, which was decorated and patterned after old Hollywood horror flicks, Ima could barely contain her excitement after the phone call from Needy. So, with more force than she’d meant to use, she’d tossed her cordless telephone onto her round bed, barely missing her pet cat, Evilene.
Contrary to what most people thought because of her surroundings, Evilene was a cat with a smidgen of feline sense, but not much direction. When Ima found her, as a kitten, scrambling through the garbage in the back yard, she was the color of midnight black. Now Evilene at the age of two was almost completely gray. Ima had scared the black right off the cat.
Instinctively, Evilene squealed loudly, just as the large pillow Ima playfully threw sailed by close enough to part the fur on her back. She jumped off the bed, snatching her remaining lives, and fled.
The call from Needy came just in time. Ima had barely been out of her latest stint in the local jail a good two hours, and was bored by the time she’d driven out of the precinct’s parking lot.
Ima stood about five-foot-six in her stocking feet. Her flawless mocha-colored complexion accented curves that were so perfect and lethal they were secretly registered with the Pelzer, South Carolina police department. Most of her registration information was written in the little black books of Pelzer’s bravest in Pig Latin.
Despite her obvious beauty, Ima had severe issues with self-esteem. She’d been a child with a body that blossomed early and belied her age. She’d never known her father and with no qualified man to guide her, she learned by trial and error, on her own.
There was no rest from the sexual harassment. During school hours she used her limited wit to withstand the constant advances from her male teachers and even a principal. There was no rest at home,
