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 the not-so-subtle whispering followed by snickering begin behind her back.
“Forget about perfection. We don’t have the hundred years to wait,” someone said.
Needy quickly spun around. She let her angry brown eyes spray accusatory bullets at the women and dared them to flinch. None of the usual suspects moved. It was as if whatever words had been spoken were frozen in time.
Needy decided to let the snipe go unchallenged for the time. “Why don’t y’all just go ahead and read the minutes from the last meeting.” A wide menacing grin appeared on her face before she continued. “Birdie, why don’t you do it since you and I are the only ones here that are college-educated.”
Needy gave the insult a minute to hit Cill and then she added, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Cill. I keep forgetting you decided to drop out and play in some Middle-East sand lot.” She didn’t wait for Cill to reply or throw something at her. “It’s only a few paragraphs at the most so y’all decide who’ll do it while I go and change.”
A collective sigh filled the room as each woman, thinking silently of what Cill had said aloud, came back to life.
“We’ll do that while you change,” Cill purred through her clenched teeth. “Take whatever time you need to pull yourself together.”
Needy could feel her chubby fists involuntarily open and close. She suspected that Cill had made the earlier dig. Although this time the comment was said softly, the voice still had the same venom that had spat out the unkind words earlier.
“Girl, you know I love you…all of you,” Cill said, gesturing to Needy’s wide hips.
“You wish,” Needy said as she sashayed past.
Like Petunia, forty-year-old Cill Lee was one of Needy’s oldest sometime-friends. Their friendship was on and off more times than a light switch. They’d reconnected while attending Hampton University.
College didn’t sit well with Cill. She’d always wanted to study automotive design. Although Petunia wouldn’t let her touch her prize Camry, Cill could, back then and even now, take apart and put together any engine. She’d thought it would be an easy degree to obtain in college. After a time, she began to feel differently about school, because it was all books and no hands-on. She thought the studying was too hard and definitely too boring.
Cill decided she’d join the army and spent four years trying to be all that she could be. Then she spent nine months in Kuwait. All the sand, one-hundred-plus-degree days in the sun, and lack of toilet facilities caused her to rethink her choices. She still wanted to be all that she could be—just not in Kuwait.
Six months after Cill had left the army, she returned home. She reconnected with Needy, and moved into a doublewide trailer next door. Somehow, she never noticed that she’d only traded Kuwait for Pelzer, because her trailer sat on a lot that seemed to have as much sand. During the summer, the humid temperatures were unbearable and she was in constant need of plumbing services. Sometimes she’d wished she was back in Kuwait.
Ten minutes passed and Petunia still had not come inside from trying to park her car, but it was enough time for Needy to prance back into her living room. She’d changed into a beige sleeveless housedress that covered her oversized blouse. She always wore something beige or in the beige family because she thought it complimented her muddy-brown skin. Her rather large legs and feet seemed an afterthought as they poked out from an even larger pair of khaki pants that didn’t seem to fit the rest of her body. But that was her normal, indoor, warm weather wear.
With all eyes on her, Needy placed her hands on her wide hips and began to bark at the other women like a sergeant in boot camp. Normally, she wouldn’t speak in such a manner but when it came to the singles meeting, she took on a different persona, and this time she wanted to insult Cill by imitating Cill’s masculine manner.
“Okay, I know you’ve had enough time to poke your noses into whatever I’ve bought lately for my house as well as into my business. Let’s get this meeting started properly because in about twenty minutes we’re gonna bring this pitiful gathering to an end.”
Her skin suddenly sprouted prickly heat
