when I discovered truth…just getting over it will keep life from getting all over me, and truth be told…
YOU NEED TO JUST GET OVER IT, TOO.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
A Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
A Q&A with Pat G’Orge-Walker
Prologue
It was 2005 and in the town of Pelzer, South Carolina, during the month of June, weddings sprang up faster than gas prices.
It seemed that bouts of desperation had taken over the many physically and mentally challenged who seemed destined to remain unmarried. The why and how of the sudden marital surge was a mystery, except to those who were getting married. They didn’t care why, and for the most part, really didn’t care how.
However, most of the other town folks, tired of boredom, were happy to have something to celebrate. And, of course, having plenty of free food to eat on Saturdays when no one wanted to cook at home, in all the heat, was always a good thing.
There were a few of the folks not happy for the newlyweds. They were the just-couldn’t-get-a-man-to-save-their-lives members of the Oh Lawd, Why Am I Still Single Singles Club. Those women had never so much as received an obscene phone call let alone a marriage proposal. But for propriety’s sake, they tried to keep their opinions quiet, preferring to gripe among themselves.
They indulged and wallowed in self-pity. Their unhappiness didn’t bother the other Pelzer residents until there was one wedding that finally sent them over the edge. They could stand it no more.
The beginning of their push for freedom from unmarried misery began when suddenly one of their former members, Sheila Shame, got a man.
Fifty-year-old Sheila with chronic post-nasal drip, and one of the worst church soloists in the “A” choir history, announced she was getting married. Before folks could recover from her news, a flood of other wedding invitations poured into mailboxes all around town.
The wedding deluge spread out over several gorgeous sunny Saturday afternoons. The first one, which was Sheila’s, started like something straight out of a Disney movie. There were colorful birds chirping, smiling bees buzzing, and it was all for a woman no one thought they’d live to see walk down the aisle.
There was standing room only when Sheila married Pookie Bowser at an IHOP Restaurant. Sheila could barely control her joy at her good fortune. She grinned and cried endlessly at the altar, causing her makeup to smudge all around her bulging brown eyes. She stood at that altar looking like Pookie had given her a shiner. But before their “I do’s,” Sheila boasted to her guests.
“Y’all didn’t think I could get a man, but I did,” Sheila gushed, causing her makeup to spread and making her look like she wore a half-mask. To further her point, she turned and snapped her fingers at the guests.
Pookie quickly snatched Sheila’s burqa-shaped veil and covered her pimply face before he changed his mind.
Although they wanted to laugh, the guests could do nothing but nod in agreement. Some did bother to cover their mouths and muffle a snicker as Sheila stood, slightly askew, on her one leg hidden by her extravagant, long, off-white gown. And, with a quick shout of “Thank you, Jesus. I sure do,” when asked if she’d take Pookie, Sheila grabbed and leaned on her new husband.
Pookie, on the other hand, was elated because he finally had a chance to get his bucked and crooked teeth fixed. Sheila had both dental and medical benefits. The image of his name on an insurance card made Pookie scream out in joy, “Hallelujah.”
Although Sheila and Pookie’s marriage was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the singles group, they weren’t the only unlikely pair to wed that month.
There was Sister Patty Cake, the eighty-year-old, reed-thin co-chair of the Senior Choir. She had celery-colored teeth and breath so bad she could peel paint off a wall. She married a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican man nicknamed Kool Aid. He had dreadlocks that flowed like branches from his head. When folks tried to warn her that her soon-to-be husband was only marrying her to get a green card, Patty didn’t listen or care. Having never been married, she was so happy she gave him a matching green American Express card. Whatever he did to her on their wedding night pleased her, because even though he left the following morning, she continued to send him a weekly check. And she was happy to do it.
There were others. Southside Annie was forty with arthritis so bad she couldn’t thread a needle, but she snagged her a man. She married a thug named Klepto from the north side. They married quickly because he was only out on temporary parole. She declared she didn’t mind conjugal visits. And then there was Two-Ton Sally who married a fella from Alabama named Big Louie. He was about three times smaller than Sally. Despite the odds,
