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 there was ever a time that Needy was happy that she knew a little something about being a Christian this would be it. She mumbled a quick “Thank you, Lord” before she glared over at Petunia and thought, she’s a pain in the butt but I need someone around who is even more pathetic than I am. Instead of turning the affront into more of a big deal, Needy decided to let the comment go. She still had bigger fish to fry.
While Needy gathered her thoughts to continue with her self-important oration, Mother Blister, who’d sat motionless and looking completely bored on one of Needy’s matching, wobbly wooden chairs with one missing slat from the backrest, interrupted her.
“I’m bored. Let’s get it started before my bladder kicks a mud hole in my behind.” Mother Blister was always straight to the point. She’d tell anyone that she neither had money to spend on frivolous things nor unnecessary words.
“What did you say?” Petunia asked Mother Blister, thinking that perhaps she’d missed something, particularly since the meeting was almost over and she hadn’t had a chance to start her usual drama.
Mother Blister tried to jump up. She couldn’t because of her age, and that mud hole her bladder had started was kicking like a mule on uppers. “Needy, where’s your bathroom?”
“It’s in the same place it was when you last said you needed to use it.” Needy’s voice dripped with agitation. Old or not, that elderly spinster was working her last nerve.
“You know you can lead a horse to a bucket of water but you still gotta show them where to pee,” Birdie chimed in with a wide grin plastered on her pasty face. She’d finally found the nerve to join in but as usual all she got were questioning stares from the others. She ignored the obvious and continued, “It looks like Mother Blister is looking pretty intently at your geranium pot over there as though it might need watering.” Birdie pointed and then leaned her head towards the flowerpot as though no one knew what she meant.
They didn’t.
It took a lot of effort on her part, but Mother Blister finally got up. She claimed her poor posture and back pain was the result of osteoporosis.
Some folks who knew her from way back whispered it was from her years of bending over when she worked as a house cleaner or cleaning out houses. The facts depended on who was telling the tale.
Mother Bea Blister had at one time spent some quality time in minimum security prison for theft and swindling. That well-known fact gave credence to the rumors of her extra-curricular, illegal, income-making ventures, and that the back pain resulted from bending over and picking the locks of several prominent homes where she’d worked.
Of course, there were others that had the misfortune of crossing Mother Blister’s path. They had another theory. They claimed that she was just Rosemary’s baby all grown up.
No sooner had she
